Tag Archive for: Elizabeth Aquino

Less Random Monday Thoughts

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Elizabeth posted this comment on yesterday’s random thoughts in response to my words about condescension:

“The more I think about it, though, the more I am convinced that the particular people I wrote about are never going to budge. That doesn’t depress me as much as it makes me realize that it’s not about vindication and that I will move forward even as they stay put. “

Yes. It isn’t about vindication at all and, if it was, we are all likely to remain incredibly disappointed by those in power who are not interested in shifting the dynamics.  For me, though, it is about being heard.

I am just naive enough (or maybe it’s idealism – I’ve been accused of both) to think that when someone invites me to be part of a conversation, they are actually open to hearing what I think. In the case of the meeting with the Surgeon General a few weeks ago, I was also naive/idealistic enough to think that it might really be a conversation, a dialogue between him and the parents in the room, but it was more like a transaction, a sales call where he showed up saying he was interested in what we wanted and ultimately sold us the only thing he had brought to sell – his canned comments and rhetoric. I don’t believe there was ever anything else on offer besides an opportunity to sit in a room and say his piece. Given the number of times he was asked a question that he failed to answer at all – instead steering his words toward another subject altogether – I am convinced that there was some preexisting agenda that included the rest of us as simply warm bodies to receive his message.

That, I am not interested in. I don’t want a transaction, whereby I simply sit passively and receive the information others want me to receive. Nor am I interested in vindication – some magical moment wherein the folks in power have an epiphany and shout, “You’re absolutely right! We should have seen it all along!” as they hang their heads in shame. That might feel really freaking amazing in the moment, but ultimately it doesn’t do anything to – as Elizabeth says, “move (us) forward.” And it doesn’t do anything to alleviate the frustration and/or suffering that came for years as I tried to get anyone to listen.

Last October when I was in New Mexico with the likes of Alice Walker and Gloria Steinem, someone said (I think it was Gloria, but I honestly can’t remember), “If you want to stop someone in their tracks, tell them you don’t believe them.” Yes. But, I would add, it is even more powerful to send them the message that you aren’t even interested in hearing them. And that is the message we get when these kinds of events are scheduled, ostensibly to hear various perspectives, and the only stories that are allowed any oxygen are the ones that have been told over and over again. This is a tactic that has been used for decades – deny that there is a problem. Pretend that those voices that tell a different story belong to folks who aren’t smart enough to really know what they see/feel/experience, or that they aren’t important enough to pay attention to and they will eventually go away or start questioning their own sanity.

The difference these days is that we have other ears. Social media has given us the opportunity to find others who are telling the same stories and band together to raise our voices. If we can’t have a dialogue, at least we can change the venue a little. Instead of continuing to hit our heads against that brick wall that the powers-that-be have put up for us to write our protests on, we can turn around and go somewhere else where we will be heard. We can validate each others’ perceptions and continue moving forward, with or without them.

“The Compassion Gap” and Other Musings

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Elizabeth highlighted this op-ed on her Facebook page on Sunday and, as it is fairly short, I urge you to go read it before you continue reading this post.  It makes me sad that the author is so spot-on as he calls out the responses of so many of his readers.  I agree with him that there is a lack of compassion in general in this country (and maybe in others – I don’t honestly know because I’m only here), but more specifically online. I think that it is much easier to assert our opinions in sound bite form with respect to challenging issues when they are stereotypical or beside the point.  I can cite several examples of nasty comments I’ve seen upon reading a news article or blog post that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, and serve only to attack either the writer or one of the main people in the story for superficial, usually physical, attributes or knee-jerk reactions to one minor point of the story.

We are all so conditioned to have an opinion and share it that we rarely stop to consider nuances and details of a story that may have eluded us. We are conditioned to talk instead of listen, and make up our minds but not change them.  Compassion requires a willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes, or at least acknowledge that their shoes are different from yours in a fundamental way. Compassion requires curiosity about the circumstances of another person’s life and it implores us to suspend (or altogether eliminate) judgment. In order to be compassionate, we have to take the time to build a bridge from the parts of us that are most human to the parts of others that are most human and that takes courage.

I struggle most with compassion when I am trying the hardest to keep fear at bay. When I see a parent grieving for their child, my mind races to find all of the reasons why that could never happen to me and often, that manifests itself as judgment. If that mom/dad hadn’t made the choice to ______________, this wouldn’t have happened. The more I convince myself that someone else is Wrong and my decisions are Right, the easier it is to feel safe, to believe that whatever horrible thing this person is suffering won’t visit itself on me and my loved ones.  Finding my way to compassion means that I have to step off of that righteous path and into the soft muck on the side of the trail, facing my fears and acknowledging that I am just as human as anyone else and I can’t know the details of someone else’s story. It requires me to open up and let fear and sadness move through me, to take up the mantle of shared humanity and responsibility and bear the weight of another person’s struggle along with them. It asks me to sit firmly in the knowledge that we are not ‘other,’ we are not separate, we all deserve love and acceptance and when we give it freely to one another we are stronger and happier for it.

It takes time and energy to be compassionate, much more time than is required to dash off a pithy, snarky remark about someone’s weight or tattoos or sexual proclivities. We have to be willing to consider, to listen, to really pay attention, and many of us don’t want to do that. We also have to be willing to forego the opportunity to see our own opinions in print or hear our own voices. One draw of the internet is that it allows us to all have our say. Our words can reach audiences we could never have dreamed of before and we don’t have to write an entire op-ed or letter to the editor of our hometown newspaper. But if “our say” is a twitter-length rant on how inferior someone else is or how they deserved whatever they got, it showcases our inability to understand the deeper connections and the vital points of any story.  Last week in our region an elementary teacher was convicted of having a sexual relationship with one of her students. The photograph of the teacher that ran on the news outlet’s Facebook page was of a mixed-race woman with facial hair. I cringed as I saw it, knowing what most of the comments would be like. Sure enough, there were hundreds of people questioning her gender, saying that of course she was a “child molester” given her physical appearance, and suggesting hateful things ought to happen to her, not because of her crime, but “because she needs to shave.” There were a few token comments from people outraged that the conversation was about her appearance instead of her crime, and a couple explaining the symptoms of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome which causes some women to grow facial hair, but the vast majority were hateful, even violent comments based solely on the photograph the media ran.

I asked Lola what compassion means to her and if she thought it was something that can be taught. She wasn’t very articulate about her definition of it, but she did say that she doesn’t think you can teach compassion. She said, “I think it’s individual for everyone. They need to come to it on their own and they can’t do it all the time. But you can put people in situations where they might think about it more – like volunteering at a homeless shelter or something – and then they might come to it faster on their own.”

I hope she’s right, or maybe I don’t. I’d like to think that compassion is something we can teach, but even if we can only plant the seeds and hope it spreads, that’s at least something I’m willing to put a lot of time and effort into, at least in my own household.

Equanimity

My word of the day.

Equanimity.

But it didn’t start out that way.  I awoke in the darkness for the fourth day in a row cursing Daylight Savings Time and the way it thrusts me back into a cycle of waking before the sun just when my mood has begun to lift.  I awoke to another day of Bubba in a different state altogether, missing his solid presence next to mine in bed and calculating the hours until the airplane’s wheels touch down in this city with him inside.

And then I got to kiss my girls awake.  Both of them, teenage-years-be-damned.  I got to lean over Lola’s warm, round cheeks that won’t lose their plumpness for another year perhaps and brush my lips across them, murmuring to her that it is time to get up.  I headed upstairs to stumble over books and underwear strewn across Eve’s floor, making my way to a precarious perch on the side of her bed and press my lips firmly on her forehead, oily with hormones and sleep.  I am so blessed.

We all did what we do, packing lunches, gathering homework and water bottles, steaming milk, walking the dog around the block, sliding in to the car for the short ride to school.

As soon as the girls shut the car doors, I flipped on NPR (they can’t stand to listen to it in the morning whereas I consider it breakfast) and heard that a Senate committee has approved an assault weapons ban that will now head to a full vote.  I listened to a story about the rape case in Ohio and another about the scores of individuals perhaps wrongly convicted because of tainted or fabricated evidence in a Massachusetts lab.  And I wondered…

What if we are all doing the things we are supposed to be doing right now?
What if humanity is pushing along at precisely the pace it needs to be?

I don’t mean to say that there isn’t injustice or incredible suffering in the world for so many people.
I don’t mean to imply that I don’t care about all of it.

But when I look around I see so much beauty and love. I truly feel an emergence of a better place, better working conditions for so many, more equality for individuals who have historically been disenfranchised, more awareness of our collective connection to each other.  And we couldn’t have that without all that has gone before.  We can only work at a certain pace to effect change and I believe that there is a building of energy and will like a tide coming in to sweep the beach. And just like a tide, it will retreat and build again and again.

I see people all over working to make their own lives better and to improve the lives of others and I am buoyed.  It is only by accepting the place where we find ourselves that we can hope to move forward.  Alicia wrote on her blog about some of the real challenges she faces in her everyday life with a special needs daughter, and she wrote about it with equanimity.  She wasn’t railing against her daughter or whatever “god” or “fate” set her up to have the unique behaviors she has, she was simply accepting, sitting back and looking at her own life with clear eyes.  I know so many other parents who do that every day – Elizabeth, Carrie, Michelle.  They absolutely have to marshal their strength to fight for things from time to time. They are all amazing advocates for their children and tremendously committed to finding resources and pushing for change and I am in awe of them all.  But they can’t be effective unless they first understand who they are fighting for. And that takes equanimity.  The ability to look at your life for what it is and find the beauty mixed in with the difficulty. The ability to seek the eye of the tornado and sit there while all swirls around you, knowing that it simply can’t be any different than it is right now, but it will most certainly be different over time.

Today I am finding solace and peace in knowing that the world is what it is right now because that’s where it is supposed to be.  Progress comes on the heels of many feet marching together for the long haul, but we can’t walk if we don’t recognize the ground we’re standing on.

Equanimity.

Do I Deserve This?



Elizabeth Aquino, a fellow blogger, lit a fire under my butt today with her blog post. You can read her post by clicking on her name, or I can give you the Cliff Notes version. Open-minded, open-hearted person that she is, she occasionally checks out blog posts from folks whose political leanings are vastly different from her own. In doing so recently, she came across one blogger who presented the notion that individuals who rely on social assistance for food, money, healthcare, etc. ought to be ashamed to do so as well as humble and thankful for the assistance. There was clearly some judgment about whether certain individuals deserve public assistance or if it is simply an enormous scam that a large portion of the population is taking advantage of.

Elizabeth had her own (very gracious) thoughts and ponderings on the subject and she asked for input from her readers. I started to comment and then realized this was going to be a looooong reply, so I had probably better put it on my blog instead. Here goes:
The notion of taxes was created in order to centralize a way to pay for things that we all, as citizens of a country or city or state, utilize to some degree. There have been many discussions about how to make this fair over the centuries, but ultimately, I think we can all agree that, even though we grumble about the amount of taxes we pay, we all enjoy some benefits from this system. I certainly sleep better at night knowing that if my smoke alarm goes off at 2AM, all I have to do is get my family out of the house and call 911. Ditto for the police officers in my neighborhood and the roads I use to get to school and work and the grocery store. I am grateful for the state employees that manage the public library and the DMV and the ones who maintain the sewer lines, among others. I don’t feel as though I need to apologize to them for using these services. Nor do I feel as though I ought to sneak around and pretend I don’t use them.
Sure, there are folks who use various services more often than I – the ones who drive everywhere all the time or sit at the library for hours on end job hunting or using the computers. I’m certain there are also those people who use them less often than I do, and I’m okay with that. Social services are the same as far as I am concerned. By the grace of God, may I never have to apply for food stamps or Medicaid. But if I do, it is a comfort knowing that they exist. And I don’t begrudge those folks who do use these services. I am certain that there are individuals who abuse these systems, but do I believe that everyone does? Nope. Do I think that just because there are some scammers playing the system, we should brand everyone using the system with the same iron? Nope.
I honestly believe that until we, as citizens, can shift our mindset away from our “individual freedoms” and toward a “collective consciousness,” we will remain separate from each other and some of the best solutions available. As Americans, this notion of individuality is centrally important to our identity but it only goes so far. And when it begins to damage our notion of what it means to be part of a team, acknowledging everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and working with them to create a better whole, rather than shaming individuals for things that are largely out of their control, we are all harmed.
I no more believe that it is shameful to access and utilize social services than to ride my Trek down the local paved bike path. Those things exist as a testament to what we can do together and for equal use by those who need it when they need it. So the next time you need a police officer or a firefighter, by all means, thank them, and then remember that these things, these lifesaving things, are a gift to us all from us all.