Musings on a New Way to Live

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We know about biorhythms – the idea that human beings have certain cycles they go through that affect wellness and health. Circadian rhythms dictate when our bodies release hormones to help us sleep (melatonin) and wake up (cortisol). Other cycles include menstrual cycles and control fertility and reproduction. We know that our biology and physiology are affected by the rhythms of nature as well – mood and energy are affected by the number of hours of sunlight in the day, and for people who live in the extreme parts of the planet where there are endless days of light and then later, endless days of darkness, it is well-documented how their moods and productivity are affected. Similarly, people who work the “night shift” or graveyard shifts often have a difficult time synchronizing their sleep/wake patterns and can suffer from depression or anxiety and develop sleep disorders.

School-aged children have rhythms for their school “year,” at least in the United States, where they can expect to be in classes nine months of the year and then have summers off. We have decided that a work week ought to be five days on, two days off (if you’re lucky – many people with more than one job or who are engaging in work that requires overnight or weekend shifts don’t often get that cycle). In the case of summer, it is widely acknowledged that this began because of the agrarian cycle – that is, that families needed children home during the biggest growth and harvesting time of the year so that they could pitch in and get the work done. Now that our society is increasingly not driven by agriculture, there is a push to eliminate this and have school run throughout the year, and I have to say, conceptually, that seems to make sense, but when I think about cycles and rhythms and nature, I wonder if it’s a really bad idea.

If human beings have biological cycles that are influenced by the natural world, such as circadian rhythms, and if when we push past or ignore those influences we tend to struggle, I think it makes sense that there are additional, natural cycles that make sense to adhere to as well.

As we are in Fall in the Northern Hemisphere right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to watch the plant life around me ready itself for a hibernation of sorts. I remember learning in my Plant Systematics class in college that it’s best to plant new trees in the early fall so that they will take root and then rest during the winter before “waking up” again in the Spring and starting to grow. It seemed counterintuitive to me, given that soon after planting, the leaves would fall away and the ground would become hard and cold. Wouldn’t it make more sense to plant them in the Spring when they are beginning to really burst forth with new growth? My professor said no way. Fall is the time when trees focus their energy on developing roots – just because we can’t see it happening doesn’t mean it isn’t. In the Spring, the tree’s energy is directed toward flowers and leaves and new branch growth, which doesn’t leave much for roots, and since roots are what the tree really needs to thrive, Fall is the time.

Several years ago, I became aware of a similar phenomenon in my own life. I have the privilege to work on my own schedule, and I noticed that there were distinct times when I would become less productive as a writer. I do much of my “writing” in my head, and that part was definitely still happening, the deep thinking and rumination, but as far as putting actual words on paper that resulted in coherent essays or book chapters, it wasn’t showing up. I got frustrated with myself and tried to disrupt my normal practices, forcing myself to sit in a chair and type words, figuring that I was being “lazy” or just not trying hard enough. Everything I wrote during those times was garbage.

Generally, about halfway through February, I found myself on fire with ideas – writing writing writing and producing pitches and essays and making headway on manuscripts. Whew! I was back. Until about October – when things died again. It took me a few cycles to figure this out – I wasn’t *not* working during this time, I was simply not producing visible results. Everything I thought about, scribbled little notes about, chewed on in my mind, during this fallow time somehow made its way in to my finished products in the late winter or following spring, like buds on a tree. Beating myself up during the time when I was working on roots wouldn’t change anything about the end result.

Our culture is so obsessed with progress. Goals. Continual growth. But the truth is, there is no such thing as constant growth where you surpass old milestones over and over again. Yes, trees get larger and larger, but they do that with a built-in fallow period, where they rest. We know that much of brain growth in humans occurs during sleep. To expect ourselves to be continually setting goals, working toward them, setting new ones, working toward those, setting more, working toward those, and only expect rest to happen at the end of our lives (retirement, for the folks lucky enough to afford it) is making us sick. The natural world knows that we need rest on a regular basis – that there are times when resting is actually in our own best interest if we want to stay healthy and keep growing. Education researchers know that giving kids time to sit with new ideas and incorporate them on their own after they’re introduced is important. Instead of packing class time full of content from beginning to end, kids process information better if they’re given opportunities to ruminate on new content, turn it over with classmates in discussion, let it rest.

All the signs point to the importance of rest and fallow states, both for physical and mental health, but our culture isn’t set up for that. We revere the folks who can survive on four hours of sleep, praise the kid who goes to school, plays sports, and has a part time job, and expect parents to work full time and then come home and help kids with homework, prepare meals, do laundry, drive to extracurricular activities, and volunteer for the PTA. The failure has come for us humans because we’ve centered the system and not the collective good. Centering the system is what leads us to ask questions about where we can impact “the economy” or why it’s dangerous to let our kids have the summer to play instead of looking for jobs that will look good on a college application or going abroad on a service trip (that will also look good on a college application). It means that the families who see their kids burning out and falling to pieces feel as though they have to find a way to help their kid do the “personal work” of assimilating to the system as opposed to listening to their own inner guidance that will tell them what they need (often, rest and a recalibration of their energy toward their passions and values).

But this centering of the system, where has it gotten us? Centering the system is also centering those who benefit from the system (often, white, male, capitalist, Western-ideals, individualism-as-paramount) and sacrificing the rest of the people to that system. This is how we end up with an increased suicide rate among adolescents, college sophomores declaring majors because they have to, not because they actually have spent the time cultivating their own ideas about what is important to them and what their true passions are. This is how we end up with mid-life crises where people who believed in and followed the system suddenly come to realize that their own satisfaction and well-being are not important in this schema.

So why center the system? Why buy in to it? Because we’ve been told that it will keep us safe. But we’re learning on a large scale that that was nonsense. Actively disrupting our own biological rhythms and imperatives, cycles of work and rest, the phenomenon of belonging and cooperation, has meant that we are divided and miserable, and burning our own planet. Our blind faith in the system (or desperate clinging to it as a life raft in the middle of a burning sea) leads us to ask questions like “how will we pay for universal health care” (centering the system) instead of asking ourselves whether or not we truly believe that each and every person deserves to be cared for (centering the collective).

When we as parents and educators of kids shut down conversations about disrupting the public education system for the good of all by saying “it’s too expensive” or “that is too hard” we are acknowledging our allegiance to the system and not to our children. Many of my personal heroes have been people who didn’t follow the “traditional” pathways, but who recognized their own worth and the value of connection to others and forged ahead. Those who followed them often did so because that message stirred something inside them – a longing to be like that, to find themselves rooted in and cared for by the community, not isolated by a competitive, capitalist, lone wolf system.

Our world is literally burning and flooding right now because we’ve centered the system (and the folks who benefit from it in the short term). We have some choices to make and I, for one, feel like listening to the kids. If we haven’t completely crushed their sense of wonder and curiosity and passion and desire to belong to something bigger than themselves, they will lead us.

The Values of Belonging

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I am reading the most fascinating book right now and it is spurring all sorts of wonderings in my mind. The book is “The Values of Belonging” by Carol L. Flinders and every paragraph is an opening and a widening and a deepening of understanding.

The Values of Belonging breaks new ground by examining human value systems from the perspective of how we live, not our gender. “There is a way of being in the world that recoils from aggressiveness, cunning, and greed,” writes bestselling author Carol Lee Flinders. This way of being arose out of the relationships our hunter-gatherer ancestors had with the natural world, one another, and Spirit — relationships that are most acutely understood in terms of trust, inclusion, and mutual reciprocity. This society’s core values, which include intimate connection with the land, empathetic relationship with animals, self-restraint, balance, expressiveness, generosity, egalitarianism, playfulness, and nonviolent conflict resolution, are what Flinders calls the “values of Belonging.”

She contrasts the “values of belonging” with the “values of enterprise” that came about when humans began cultivating the land and domesticating animals. She speaks of how profoundly this affected the way we saw our place in the world – changing us from believing we were one integral part of something bigger to a culture of ownership, of dominion, of power.

I have pages of notes and sketches. I dream about it.

It has prompted me to start asking questions about Enough.
What is Enough?
What can I take part in without owning it?
Do I need to own things? Do I need to control them?

Part of the trouble with owning things is that, if we ascribe a certain level of value to them, we then start to fear losing them. And when we’re afraid of losing something, we often begin to believe that its value is greater than it once was. Then, we see anyone or anything that could potentially take those things away from us as a threat and this further severs us from a culture of belonging. Or, it means that we’ve created a new set of things to which we think we belong (and which belong to us) – inanimate objects or scraps of land, or even people, but this kind of belonging is ownership, not connection.

So many of the things that plague us today stem from a loss of connection. Depression and anxiety, relational aggression, climate change. These are all things that came about because of our desire to have, own, be in control of – these cultural values that make us believe we are safe and important. And they are tearing us apart. Owning land and cultivating it, drawing lines around “our” borders and rejecting those who we perceive to be a threat, these things might serve the short term purpose of feeding us and protecting us, but they are anathema to our long-term survival because no matter how hard we might try, we will never be separated from the natural world and each other. We are all intimately intertwined and, in fact, it is our biological imperative to live that way. Our brains are hard-wired to respond to connection by releasing hormones when we cuddle an animal, nurture our young, give or receive a hug. It is why, when we offer help to another person, we feel good about ourselves and when we walk in the woods our nervous systems calm down.

So how much is Enough?
How can we begin to return to each other and the natural world?
Can we integrate the values of belonging with the values of enterprise without destroying ourselves?

I hope so. I haven’t finished the book yet, but for now, I am asking the questions and spending time noticing how I feel when I imagine more connection and less dominion.

We’ve Lost Our Way

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I am so tired of “systems.” So tired of bureaucracy, protocols, and guidelines. Tired of “procedure” superseding common decency.

When the leader of a country can speak openly about other human beings and their homes in vulgar terms and dismiss an entire population with “shithole,” never suffering a consequence worse than outrage in print, we’ve gone too far.

When four security guards can wheel a sick, unclothed patient out in to the freezing weather of Baltimore and dump her off without a thought, we are broken.

When a state can, without any research or due diligence, simply begin requiring its Medicaid recipients to work for their benefits, our systems have taken over our humanity.

I wish I knew what it was going to take to bring it back. I want to live in a place where the systems and protocols are secondary. Where we check in with each other, where we feel comfortable saying, “Hmm, I know that is what the paperwork says we’re supposed to do, but this doesn’t feel right.”

I don’t want to live in a place where one person in a room is horrified that the president speaks of Haitians with disdain and disgust instead of ALL of the people in that room being horrified. I don’t want to live in a place where the narrative becomes about politics and not humans. I don’t want to listen to reasons why this is strategic (to keep us from thinking about the corruption investigation) or unimportant “in the grand scheme of things.” I want to be in a place where someone speaks ill of others or decides to deposit a woman on the sidewalk in winter without clothes on and EVERYONE around them remembers that we are talking about fellow humans, sentient beings, not people of color or poor people or some other “class” or “group” of people.

We are all sentient beings.
We all deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.
We are more important than protocols or guidelines or rules or budgets.

We are not illegal.
We are not lazy.
We are not addicts or millennials or Democrats or Republicans or liberals or …

We are human beings who have different strengths and needs and stories and dreams. And the systems were put into place in order to help us, but the systems have taken over, become a means to manipulate the human beings they were supposed to serve.

Anyone who can watch this video and shrug, not see a fellow person in need of help and feel absolutely sick that she was treated this way has lost their humanity and needs to go back and find it, STAT.

Anyone who can laugh at or dismiss Drumpf’s callous, hateful remarks in a meeting of fellow leaders of this country as unimportant is missing the point. The only job our government has is to serve its people, and when the focus becomes maintaining the status quo or disparaging the people it is supposed to serve, the government has become part of the problem.

Do me a favor and really look at every person you see today. Take a second and remind yourself that regardless of their circumstances or their appearance or their heritage, they are first and foremost, human, and they deserve your respect. It seems so elemental, but it is so vital. If we are ever to swing the needle back to a place of peace, we have to reaffirm each others’ humanity and stop pandering to the systems that keep us from really seeing each other. Please.

That Pesky Minimum Wage Conversation

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Photo from The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/07/democracy-vouchers-seattle-politics-low-income-homeless#img-2

It’s been a while since I posted anything even remotely political here – likely due to the daily onslaught of information a la the Drumpf shitshow. Generally, when I post something in response to the political goings-on, it is after much thought and reflection, because often these things are murky and I like to have a clear head when I write about my positions. With the fast and furious, continual chocolates-on-a-conveyer-belt (think I Love Lucy) nature of our current administration, it has been nearly impossible for me to clear my head long enough to say anything coherent. I know I’m not alone.

However, one issue that keeps coming up in my world is the $15/hour minimum wage conversation. It was passed in Washington state, is being pushed in other states, was recently passed in British Columbia, has been analyzed by several university studies, and is hotly debated even as a national standard. I’ve read the news coverage of the studies, observed debates online, listened to folks talk about it on NPR, and am having a really hard time not being cynical about all of this.

For me, what it comes down to is humanity. (Ok, most everything comes down to that for me.) The simple fact is, even though some places have passed minimum wage legislation, there is nobody that I know of who works a minimum wage job and is currently being paid $15/hour. All of these measures are “phased in” over a period of time. And to be clear, $15/hour is NOT A LIVING WAGE in most places. $15/hour for a 40-hour week means that you are making $600 a week before taxes. That means that you’re making less than $30,000 a year before taxes. Depending on how many people are in your household (would have to be five or more), that doesn’t even qualify you for Medicaid without extenuating circumstances because the federal poverty level for 2017 for a family of four is $28,200.

So, the places that are passing these minimum wage bills are generally the ones where the standard of living is higher (ie. Seattle), which makes sense, given that if you want to live in Seattle and you’re making $15/hour, your entire paycheck will go toward your rent. But since you don’t hit the federal poverty level, you don’t qualify for SNAP benefits, so I hope you like the taste of carpet, because that’s all you’ll be able to eat. Unless you work in a restaurant and you can nick some food there.

But, oops, remember, that these laws are being phased in. So if you’re working a minimum wage job in Seattle right now, you aren’t making $15/hour yet.

So. Yeah. Humanity.
One of the most vehement arguments against the $15/hour minimum wage I’ve seen in my liberal enclave of Seattle comes from small business owners like restaurateurs and hipster shop owners. They “can’t afford” to pay folks that much and stay in business.

Go out of business.
I mean it. That might sound harsh, but if you can’t afford to pay the people who work for you, the people in your own damn community, the people who are the face of your American dream, enough money so that they can live with a roof over their heads, know where their next meal is coming from (and it’s not the trash can), and get to work without a 90-minute bus ride, you don’t have a solid business plan and you should probably go back to the drawing board.

Businesses are not more important than people.
Just because you have a great idea for a small business that you think hipsters in Seattle will flock to doesn’t mean you deserve to be in business. It should be part of your business plan to analyze whether you can pay your workers enough to live on, and offer them paid leave and health insurance. If you can’t, find a place that’s cheaper to set up shop so you can or go back to your day job. I have a dream, too. Lots of them. But if I am going to build those dreams on the backs of people whose lives depend on Medicaid funding and SNAP benefits (in this administration? Oy), then I’m living with blinders on. Big, white privilege blinders.

The studies that say that the $15/hour minimum wage will “hurt the economy,” are putting businesses before humans. They are putting some nebulous, unpredictable “economy” before humans. Are we really a country that is so concerned with an idealized, unsustainable, continually growing pile of money that we are willing to let the people who work in entry-level and service jobs live on the streets? If we continue to argue that these kinds of policies will hurt businesses while we cut social services, that is exactly what we are saying. And in Seattle, it is what we’re living. There are recent studies showing that the majority of people living on the streets are those who were working in low-wage jobs, with families, who simply couldn’t afford to pay their rent – either because of some unforeseen medical catastrophe or by some slow attrition of their ability to pay their bills despite working at least one full time job.

I am not an economist (thank God!), and I appreciate that this is a complicated issue in some ways. But in the way that is most important, it is not complicated at all. If we care about our fellow human beings, we will find a way to make sure that they are taken care of. Period. We will lead with our morality and common humanity and figure out a way to make it work. That is how all dreams are made. Follow the dream and work out the details as you go.

It’s Complicated…

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By Kurt Baty – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

I know that, and yet, there is still something so appealing about believing that the world is black and white, that things are either good or bad, and so are people. It is both efficient in terms of time (I can decide whom or what to invest my energy in and when to walk away) and emotionally satisfying (no agonizing over the minutiae, just make a judgment and move on).

And it’s rarely true. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only things that are black and white are those two crayons in the box. (Don’t get me wrong: there are some things that, in my mind, are Absolutely Wrong and I will continue to acknowledge the nuances within, and still condemn the behavior.)

I am a social-justice-minded person. I have strong values and strong opinions and I love fighting for space for those without it, hearing new voices, expanding my view of the world. And sometimes, I read about something in the news and let the ethical warrior side of me take over. I re-post things and sign petitions and vow to boycott companies and sometimes, that feels like the exact right thing to do in terms of aligning my behavior with my values. But sometimes I get conflicted.

Like when scandals come up involving giant companies like Uber. While I went along with the suggestions to delete the app from my phone and vow to use other rideshare companies when the news came out about the CEO’s reprehensible behavior and choices that don’t support my values, I was still a little worried. Mostly because I thought about the drivers – the vast majority of whom I’ve ridden with that are pleasant and professional and friendly. The drivers who are working in this flexible gig-economy world because they have other jobs and obligations that don’t fit in with an 8-5 job. Maybe they’re going to school or parenting or taking care of their aging parents. Perhaps they don’t speak English well enough yet to get another type of job or this is the thing they’re doing while they train for a better job. Maybe they’re retired and on a fixed income and this is the way they put aside a little money in case of emergency. Doesn’t my boycotting the company they work for impact them more than it impacts the CEO, at least percentage-wise? He’s already a millionaire. Maybe losing some revenue will affect his company’s bottom line a bit and perhaps his ego will take a big blow, but for the driver who depends on every paycheck, I may be creating more hardship for them than their employer does.

Two weeks ago, I saw a message on a Facebook group I’m part of (a FB group that is all about supporting and empowering women), asking if anyone would be interested in joining a day-long women’s empowerment and employment event to provide a breakout session workshop. They were specifically looking for content that centered around wellness and well-being and self care. I was hooked.  After a few emails, I realized that the event was being put on for women who are Uber drivers in Seattle and I admit to having a twinge of discomfort. Digging a little deeper, I discovered that this event centered around helping these women, who are mostly part-time drivers, understand the gig economy a little better and enabling them to find other ways to get into it to support themselves. Uber’s partner for this event is a local organization called Tabor 100, an “association of entrepreneurs and business advocates who are committed to economic power, educational excellence and social equality for African-Americans and the community at large.”

Whoa.

I signed up. Other breakout sessions included one that helped women envision their own paths as entrepreneurs or career growth, one dedicated entirely to self-care, and another that helped women learn to manage and grow their wealth. They provided a beautiful continental breakfast, a full lunch, free headshots by professional photographers, and the opportunity to get your business certified with the Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises. Oh, and childcare. Full. Day. Childcare. For free.

This day was truly about empowering women to be part of the sharing economy in a way that works for them, with a ton of information about the opportunities that are out there as well as tips and tricks to more fully engage in those opportunities. My workshop centered on using mindfulness to ground yourself in your values, create personal boundaries, and find joy everywhere you go.

I vowed to go in with an open mind and I came out with a full heart. This is the kind of company (at least the Seattle version of it) that I can say I’m proud to have been associated with, even for just one day. This was not some gimmick to show the world that Uber is a friendly company and win back shareholders. I don’t even know that it was widely publicized. This was an honest attempt to acknowledge the employees of this company, remind them how important they are, and help lift them up.

So, it’s complicated. I reinstalled my app because I hope to see some of these women on the road soon and get to know them a little better.

Two Reasons I Think Single-Payer HealthCare Needs to Happen

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Warning: Rant coming in 3, 2, 1

There have been times in my life when I have been so f%*king DONE with our country’s convoluted system of healthcare that I wasn’t sure whether to cry, throw myself on the floor and pound my fists until they’re black and blue or scream bloody murder from the highest peak I can find.

I know lots of folks who can relate.

Seriously. Socialized medicine, folks. I mean it.

I know it won’t make everything easy-peasy, simple and clean, but it can’t make things worse.

When I went to college, I was determined to become a pediatrician. That’s all I had wanted to be since I was in elementary school and I could see it happening. I took organic chemistry, cell physiology, medical ethics classes. I struggled with some more than others, but I loved them all. My senior year, I studied for and took the ridiculously long MCAT and spent hundreds of dollars applying to medical schools and then decided to take a year off to work in the field before deciding whether to go ahead and go.

I ended up working for several years as a surgical assistant for a small group of doctors and I learned about the other side: the business of medicine. I hung out with the business manager and discovered how to tweak our diagnosis codes and pore through the (then) printed catalogs of allowed procedures to bill things so they would get paid for. When patients came in for emergency surgery, after the OR was scrubbed of blood and every last instrument was cleaned and put in the sterilizer, we convened for a quick meeting to determine just how to position the procedure to whichever insurance company might be involved so that we could have a higher chance of being paid. This not only determined which codes we used to bill, but it often meant that the doctor had to dictate his notes in a particular way so that, in case the insurance adjuster (not a physician or a nurse in most cases) asked for them, they would fully support the billing we submitted.

During those years, I discovered that if what I truly wanted to do was build relationships with patients that impacted their lives and their health, going to medical school was not the way to do it. As the surgical assistant, I spent more time with the patients than anyone – pre and post-op – and heard about the other things going on in their lives as I changed bandages and removed stitches. The doctors, while they may have liked to have more time to spend with patients, spent the majority of their time maximizing insurance payments by dictating notes, seeing a ridiculous number of patients per day, scheduling back-to-back surgeries to maximize OR usage, and occasionally getting on the phone with an insurance company who was refusing to pay for more than two scalpels or two hours of anesthesia to defend their choices.

Needless to say, I chose not to go to medical school.  And in the next several years, I spent time fighting with insurance companies for a physical therapy business, a dermatologist, and the state mental health division, not to mention myself and my family. I learned just how insurance companies make rules that increase their profits and narrow choices for their customers. I discovered that the high-level relationships that are made between drug companies and major hospital groups and insurers almost never benefit the health or wellness of a customer unless it happens to be in alignment with the bottom line of the companies involved.

A few weeks ago I called a doctor’s office for a family member to get diagnosis and procedure codes for an anticipated surgery. I then called the insurance company armed with information to ask whether these codes were considered covered procedures. After nearly an hour on the phone I came away with a vague answer that included information about the deductible and the potential coverage depending on a number of variables over which we have no control.  If the doctor is “in network” (he is), his services are covered at X%. If the hospital is “in network” (they are), their nursing and OR services are covered at X%, as long as it is a day-surgery. Overnight stays are covered at X-Y%. If the anesthesiologist is “in network” (we have no control over that and no way of knowing until the day of the surgery who that person might be), their services are covered at X%, but if that doctor is “out of network,” services are not covered at all. Not only that, but on “out of network” providers, the amount the patient pays is not applied to the deductible or the out-of-pocket maximums for the year (presumably because we had the audacity to go rogue – even though we have no choice in the matter). There are further decisions about OR supplies (one would think that those would be considered part of the surgery facility charge, but, no, it seems they are billed separately), so if the surgeon chooses a more expensive bandage or stitches, it is likely those won’t be covered at all.  I could go on, but you get the gist.

This morning, I phoned our dentist’s office to discuss a particularly high bill we received and after another hour of talking with them and the insurance company, I was told that Lola’s emergency dental procedure last summer while we were on vacation was not only not covered (out of network), but none of the $500 we paid for it were applied to our deductible (out of network). I calmly asked the representative,

“So, this was literally an emergency. As in, the plane touched down, we stopped at the pharmacy to get pain killers for our daughter, and as soon as we hit the hotel we asked the concierge to recommend a dentist who could see her ASAP (Saturday morning in Hawaii). First of all, does your insurance company have in-network providers in Hawaii? And if so, am I expected to call all of the islands to find one who happens to practice on the weekend and is willing to see my daughter? Is that a thing I should have done?”

“No. It’s not a thing,” he says.

“Explain that to me, please.”

“Was it a medical emergency? Because if it was, you should have run it through your medical claim instead of dental, and then it might have been covered even if it were out of network. But it wasn’t, and it’s too late now. It was processed as out of network and that’s how it’s going to stay. And, no, we don’t have any in-network providers in Hawaii.”

So, ultimately, it’s my fault that I didn’t sell it as a medical emergency? Or is it the dentists’ office fault? The dentist who got up on a Saturday morning and spent three and a half hours with Lola patiently tending to her and then calling us that night to make sure she was ok.

And why wasn’t my out of pocket amount applied to the deductible? Because we went rogue. Because we didn’t follow the rules. Because, if it had been, the insurance company (Premera Blue Cross, btw) would have been on the hook for all the rest of the follow up procedures that have taken place as a result of this situation in the last nine months. But they aren’t, because it all started with us needing dental care somewhere else in a hurry.  When I pointed this out to the representative this was his response:

“Well, you just really want to have your dental emergencies when you’re at home. That’s the best way to do it.”

Duly noted.

Socialized medicine, folks. Single payer. The same rules for everyone.

Health care (even dental care). It’s a basic need.

It’s All Bringing Me Down

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I’m having a hard time remembering to focus on the positive. I spend way too much time following this ridiculous presidential race and it is taking a toll on my attitude. I am like a moth to a flame, flitting around looking for warmth and illumination and banging into the bulb a few times before I remember it’s not real. A day or so later, I do it all over again.

I watched the Democratic debate last Sunday and talked back to the TV screen. The girls rolled their eyes at me and admonished, “they can’t hear you.” I know, but somehow it makes me feel better to counter one candidate’s point with my own response, especially when they don’t call each other on their bullshit.

I am a firm Sanders supporter for a whole host of reasons, and I think he did well in Sunday’s debate, but I have to caution myself that there is no one candidate with whom I will agree on everything. I fell in to that trap with Obama and found myself very disappointed from time to time. I don’t know why I found it so surprising when he made a decision that ran so counter to my beliefs – cabinet appointments and trade agreements and energy policy. I have lived in this world long enough to know that I won’t agree with anyone about everything.

I am so overwhelmed with the negative, though. The news (repeated news) from the Drumpf rallies of physical violence against protestors, both by Secret Service agents and random attendees, is so disheartening. The angry, hateful language that is inspired by all of the GOP candidates and reported with glee by media outlets is a tsunami that washes over my head every day. I heard a teacher say on the radio the other day how hard it is to talk to students about compassion and empathy for each other when the biggest bullies they see are famous for being bullies. These men who are loud and brash and don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves, who are rich and powerful and disregard the rights or feelings of anyone else, whose names show up on TV and the internet all day long every day, they are the antithesis of empathy and compassion. I am used to seeing it in comments online, the trolling, the gas lighting, but to have it showcased from a stage with lights and flags and people clapping is disconcerting to say the least.

At this point, November seems like a very, very long way away. And as I listened to an interview with the head of MSNBC yesterday, defending their decision to fire Melissa Harris-Perry and substitute election coverage for her show’s time slot, I shuddered with a premonition that I hate to even give voice to: that news outlets will get so addicted to ratings that come from covering hateful, yelling politicians that even after the election they will continue to spotlight the negative. Say it isn’t so. It feels as though it has been heading that way for a long time, even before the election really heated up, and I wonder what it might take to interrupt the cycle. I can only hope that MHP finds another forum for her show, one that is committed to entertaining diverse, productive discussions and interesting discourse rather than reality-show-themed shouting and rhetoric.

I am heartened by the voices of those who talk of peace and democracy, and I suppose that is why I am such a fan of Bernie. While he could be seen to be the personification of patriarchy – white, male, older than 50 – his words and actions belie that description. He is, to my mind, more concerned with listening than with speaking. He is not convinced that he has all of the solutions, and his record shows a careful consideration of details and implications, and a distinct lack of interest in intervening heavily in the affairs of other countries to disrupt or “solve” issues that are particular to them. I am reminded that there may be issues about which we disagree, but I think that it is his approach, his entire ethic that excites me and not necessarily the nitty-gritty details.  I am holding out hope that his message will continue to make it through the noise and that those who are willing to pay attention will end up being the ones who make the difference in the end. And, I have come to the conclusion that I have to spend a lot less time listening to the chaos of the mass media if I am to stay optimistic.

It’s Time to Get Out of the Water

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There is a saying that has been rattling around in
my head for the past several days – ever since the terrorist attacks in Lebanon
and France last week, to be honest. You can put a frog into boiling water and
he will jump out. But you can put a frog into tepid water and raise the
temperature slowly and it will stay in there and allow itself to be boiled to
death. 
I believe that this is what is happening in the
world right now. The acts of terror that have been recently committed are ones
that are reminiscent of a pot of boiling water, to be certain. But the rhetoric
of Republicans in the House of Congress and GOP governors and GOP presidential
candidates who want to deny refugees and propose tracking programs or selection
based on religion are a sign that the water is being heated to boiling around
us and it’s time we noticed and got the hell out of this pot. 
Donald Trump and Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and John Kasich (and their cohorts
Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) have been saturating the news with
their ever-increasing intolerance of anyone who doesn’t look like them,
think like them, talk like them. But if you look back at the things these
individuals have said and done in the past, there is a recognizable trajectory
of hatred and isolation. The problem is that because it has been ratcheted up
over time, each individual statement doesn’t seem that much worse than the one before. But we are about to boil over.
Consciously or not, it is this phenomenon that leads many sexual
predators to groom their victims. Many young children become convinced over
time that someone in their life is safe because they don’t act in sudden,
shocking ways toward them. Small incidents might seem a little odd, but often there
is no real alarming behavior to point to – it is like climbing a staircase.
Suddenly you’re at the top, and the perspective from up there is very
different, but if you weren’t paying attention to how you got there, it is
difficult to determine where you might have interrupted your path. Victims of
sexual and physical abuse are often questioned as to why they didn’t say
something or fight back or simply leave, but often the progression of events
was subtle and continuous and it is confusing to think about when or why you might
have noticed that something was wrong.
I believe that a great many people with good intentions end up following
politicians like Trump and Carson because they simply didn’t understand how hot
the water was getting. It is only when you’re on the outside looking in that
you can see how shocking it has become. Many of the statements that have gone
months before – from Carson saying that a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the
United States to Trump demonizing immigrants – led up to a climate of “otherness”
and intolerance that meant that Trump could stand up in public with his hands
spread wide in a gesture of “isn’t it obvious?” and say that every Muslim
person allowed into this country ought to be registered and monitored closely.
He seemed shocked that anyone would disagree that this “management” idea was a
breakthrough. Except that it was pretty much what Hitler did to Jewish citizens
just before World War II.

It’s getting hot in here, folks, and if those of us who have voices don’t
raise them up to point out what is going on and work to turn down the heat, we’re
all in a fine kettle. We might think of all of this as the consequence of
living in a country where we have freedom of speech, but when our elected
officials and presidential candidates are actively talking about how they would
plan to persecute people based on their religious background, it’s time to shut
this shit down.

Work-Life “Balance” for the Stay-at-Home Parent

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First of all, I think that the way we generally talk about the entire concept of “work-life balance” misses the mark. All too often, I hear it spoken of as though it is a fixed point, something to achieve and then rest in. As I creep ever-closer to middle age, I am cognizant of the fact that assessing the time and energy I put forward into different areas of my life is an ongoing process. Before I was married, there were certain goals and values that drove how I spent my time. After marriage, they shifted. When Bubba and I bought our first house, they shifted again. Having kids threw a huge wrench into how I saw the minutes of every day, and now that they are older and more independent, I am re-evaluating again. There is no such thing as a fixed target to shoot for.

When I left my paying job to stay at home with my kids, there was this assumption that I had no “work,” and to be completely honest, I bought into that idea for way too long. The fact is, because of my inability to compartmentalize the different aspects of my life, what really happened was that my work became my life. That is, everything mothering and household-running was so important and so pressing that I did it 99% of the time, but because I didn’t consider it my job, I didn’t fully acknowledge that I had ceased doing so many of the things I enjoyed doing before that I considered my “life.” I had allowed everything to bleed together and become one which meant that I had very little that was just mine.  Because very few others recognized what I was spending the majority of my time doing as “work,” it was hard to justify my frustrations with this dynamic, which made me all the more unhappy.

Prior to having children, I had lots of ideas about the kind of work I wanted to do, things I might find meaningful and worth spending 40+ hours a week doing. I wanted to enjoy my work, but I also wanted to be able to fully enjoy those other parts of my life like working in the yard and hiking with Bubba and having dinner with friends. As soon as I quit to stay home and the hours of “work” were not  clearly delineated, the shift was monumental. When I was at my office, I couldn’t empty the dishwasher or fold a load of laundry or fix the bathroom toilet because I wasn’t physically at home to do it. Now, suddenly, at home, it felt as though I were cheating if I chose to sit on the couch and read instead of doing any of those things because my home and my children had become my work and it was staring me in the face all the time.

Over the past fifteen years, my level of freedom from parenting and household work has ebbed and flowed, and I have had the opportunity to make choices over and over again about what other kind of meaningful work I can do – paid or not. I have obviously chosen writing as one of those things, but I have also found volunteer positions with organizations I want to support. I have come to understand that the most important question I can ask when I consider doing any kind of work is not “do I have time for this?” but “how will this feed me?” If I choose to spend my time engaged in activities that align with my passions and interests, even if they are intense and challenging, I know from experience that I will ultimately end up feeling energized and sated. There will be times when that work means I won’t cook dinner from scratch for the family or the dog won’t get his customary three to four walks a day or the laundry will pile up, and that’s okay. The freedom to schedule my own time, to float between different types of work is something for which I am immensely grateful. Being the primary parent to my kids means that my work is often a reaction to something else – hunger, dirt, transportation needs – and it is generally satisfying, if only until the next meal or pile of laundry or basketball game. Having the ability to engage in other work that is proactive and creative is something that feeds me in a different way, and that is just as important. My work and my life are very closely intertwined and it is often hard to see where one leaves off and the other begins, but I’m not sure that it is important to discern those boundaries.  Knowing that there are some tasks I will engage in that I really don’t enjoy is okay as long as they are part of the bigger picture and the larger goals I have. For me, the trick is to make sure that I am mindful of the tasks that ignite a fire in my belly and I find a way to do them with regularity. Often, emptying the dishwasher again can feel like a slog, but if I’m doing it because I know I will be able to sit down and write or read or go to a meeting without wishing I’d done it, I have more mental freedom to fully engage with what I’m doing.

The typical way that we talk about work-life balance sets up a dynamic where the two are pitted against each other in some surreal tug-of-war where one necessarily ends up losing and the other winning, at least for a while. But the fact is, if we are actively choosing to spend time not working for pay (at least not full-time) and staying home with our children, the most important thing is not to parse out bits of time for “work” and “life” but to recognize that within this setup, we can actively choose to engage in things that we find fulfilling and interesting. When we do that, we are enhancing our lives and, by extension, our children’s lives because what they end up with is a happy, energized parent. This notion of some elusive “balance” between the energy we put into working and the energy we get from living is wholly false. If we are lucky, the two overlap in a Venn Diagram that allows us to find compensation and purpose and a sense of enjoyment without guilt. And as our children grow up and become more independent, we will have given ourselves the gift of meaningful work that we can continue to engage in more and more.

Bubba and I have recently begun having conversations about what our life will look like in five years when Eve and Lola are both gone to college. At that point, it will be important for both of us to have some shared purpose and some individual interests. If we apply this particular way of looking at “balance,” and are able to identify the things that we enjoy doing together and apart, and fully support the others’ need to engage in both, perhaps the shift to this new lifestyle will be smoother. (Not that I won’t cry a big, ugly cry when my last one moves out, but, hey, it’s a start…)

Sweeping Without a Broom

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“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.” Josiah Charles Stamp

Ahh, personal responsibility. We are a nation enamored with the concept. We are also enamored with the notion of individuality; individual freedoms (to a certain extent), individual rights, individual responsibility. We expect people to clean up their messes if, for some reason they haven’t managed to avoid making them in the first place. Unfortunately, we don’t always provide them with the tools they need to do either of these things. And therein lies the rub.

We are a nation that loves instant gratification and thrives on the ability to “keep up with the Joneses.” Hallelujah for credit! Visa and MasterCard give us the opportunity to spend money we don’t have on things we want now. Sub-prime mortgages and “zero down” financing offer us chances to spend money we won’t likely ever have. Our children and grandchildren see the economy collapsing under the weight of such ridiculousness, and hear every day on the news that the economy would rebound more quickly if we just went out and spent more money. Huh? Is it any wonder they’re confused? And how many of them will learn about money management in school? How many of their classes will educate them about saving money and contingency planning? If these classes aren’t available, how many of their parents will be able to talk to them about these things? I remember two of the “life skills” classes I took in high school: Personal Finance and home economics. We talked about calculating interest rates and were taught the proper way to write a personal check in Personal Finance class. In Home Ec, we did a little sewing, a little meal preparation, and one very memorable day, a cosmetics expert came in to teach us the proper way to apply our makeup without creating wrinkles around our eyes. I didn’t feel precisely qualified to manage the finances of a household upon graduation. I’m certain I’m not qualified to teach my kids money management skills based on those two “practical life” classes.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed yet another bill that is aimed at blocking access to reproductive healthcare for millions of American women. They claim that their intent is to reduce the number of abortions (hopefully to zero) in our nation. If this is an attempt to force women to live up to the consequences of their mistakes (ie. premarital or unprotected sexual activity?), I fear that they are asking women to sweep up a mess without providing them a broom or proper instruction on its use. Defunding Planned Parenthood and making access to other facilities where women can get objective, non-biased information about their own bodies is worse than that. It is actively denying them access to the broom and the class on sweeping. How can we expect people to avoid mistakes or learn from them when we don’t offer them information? If we fight against sexual education classes in our schools and rail against birth control, we are expecting people to gain this vital education by what, osmosis? If we don’t teach each other what we know about the more difficult things in life, we can’t expect any change. You can’t hold someone responsible for making a mistake they had no way of preventing.

Individuality is important. Differences are often what creates color and vibrancy in life. But not enough can be made of the power of tapping into a collective base of information. There will always be people who learn best by making mistakes over and over again, but for those who could benefit from the wisdom of others, isn’t it our responsibility to pass that information on?

Albert Einstein once characterized insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This applies to entire cultures as much as it does to individuals. We can’t keep telling generation after generation that we expect them to clean up their own messes if we don’t provide them with the tools to either do so, or avoid those messes in the first place. Rebuilding our economy by asking people to spend more money only props it up for the next generation to overspend again. We will find ourselves right back in the same position, just as we have so many times before. And telling women and girls that they ought not to get pregnant without giving them ways to prevent pregnancy won’t affect the rate of unwanted pregnancy in our country. Personal responsibility is a good thing, but it is impossible to sustain without knowledge.

“Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.” Dalai Lama