WHEN DID IT ALL GO WRONG? (and how shall we meet the moment?)

Here I am living my life in a western nation, a supposedly "civilized" nation, a nation of plenty.  So, why did I lie awake last night wondering if I am living in hell?

Well, there was the debate -- a string of lies from the Republican candidate and confusion from our current president.  Although, to be fair, the liar himself frequently spews whole nonsensical paragraphs at his rallies.  Let's face it - they are both too old.  

And yet, this is our choice.

Then there was the attempted assassination of the Republican candidate. Look, if you have been reading my blog for a while or if you know me personally, you know it would be an understatement to say I do not wish to see him in the White House again.  That does not mean, however, that I want someone to shoot him.  I have lived through three assassinations.  These shootings tear at the  fabric of our democracy, along with the bodies at which they are aimed.  

Here's another reason why I couldn't sleep last night.  I made the mistake of looking at the news before going to bed.  I am usually wise enough not to do this.  I guess I had a lapse in judgment.  I watched a video of three different young white men angrily threatening violence in response to the attempted assassination.  

How is anyone sleeping these days?

I haven't even mentioned climate change or the recent Supreme Court decision, granting monarch-like powers to the President or attempts to drag women back to the 1950s, not to mention the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Somalia.  I just can't go there today.  

When did the pile-up begin? Was it 9/11?  Was it Sandy Hook?  Was it Parkland?  (Too many mass shootings to list here.) Was it January 6?  Was it the pandemic?  

Is it just that I have lived long enough to be feeling the pile-up?  I did, after all, grow up during the Cold War, which brought with it the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear annihilation.  There were also the aforementioned assassinations--two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, the Vietnam War, and more.  

Of course, things were pretty bad before my time.  My father lived through two world wars, my mother through one.  They endured the bombing of their city during the Second World War.  

Really -- Was there ever a time when things were ok?  I have a friend whose father once asked her when in the past she might like to have lived.   She had to tell him that, as a woman, she could think of no time in the past when she would have wanted to live.   

Sorry to dump all of this on you.  Maybe I'm feeling overwhelmed because of my lack of sleep last night.  Tonight, I will not read the news before bed, and tomorrow I will be able to heed these words from the late historian Howard Zinn, posted by a friend on FB this morning:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.  It is based on the fact that human history is a history, not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.  If we only see the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.  If we remember those times and places--and there are many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we won't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

So, friends, let us take heart.  Let's live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us.

Let us be radically kind. 

 

In the words of Mr. Rogers, let's look for the helpers.  

 

Let's be the helpers.

                                              Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

YES, YOU CAN BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN

“You can never be too rich or too thin”

-       Attributed to Wallis Simpson, among others.

 

I beg to differ, Wallis.

Some time ago, I found myself alone in an airport with a few hours to kill before my next flight.  Looking for a mindless way to pass the time, I went to a newsstand and bought a couple of magazines.  Upon opening one, I was confronted with a familiar sight -- the first ten or so pages consisted entirely of photos of emaciated young models, wearing frowns (they never smile), and posing their puny bodies in aid of selling one thing or another.  

Without hesitation, I sat down on a bench and proceeded to tear out said pages.  As I was energetically tearing, a woman unknown to me came over to cheer me on.

"Don't those pictures drive you crazy," she asked.

"Yes," said I, ripping with ever greater enthusiasm.

I was on a roll.

Of course, my ripping out the pages was not going to change long-standing advertising strategies.  Still, I refuse to spend time looking at these images.  It infuriates me to have our daughters (and ourselves) presented with images of dangerously underweight women as if this were something to aspire to.  

We don't have to buy into this, do we?

Let me assure you that this is not the sour grapes of a woman with a large body. I have always been naturally thin.  (At least until menopause when, I gained a bit around my middle). My weight, however, is not a sign of virtue or of any particular effort on my part.  And I certainly don't aspire to look like those models.  In fact, at my age, too much weight loss is a sign of either illness or drug addiction.

Indeed, I suspect there are drugs involved in keeping those models so painfully thin.  

But, maybe it isn’t the models I need to concern myself with.  After all, if young people are reading magazines at all, they are probably reading them online, where ads can be skipped over.  Maybe I should be turning my attention to social media “influencers” bent on convincing average-sized young girls that they need to lose weight.  Down that road lie anorexia and self-loathing.  

I sure don’t want that to be the future for my toddler granddaughters.

So, yes, Wallis, it is possible to be too thin, and to create unhappiness by urging people in that direction.

And what of the notion that one can never be too rich?

I know there are plenty of people in this world who would conclude that I--sitting in my comfortable house, with a car in the garage, and a bit of disposable income--am too rich.  But for purposes of this post, I am confining myself to the filthy rich, the one percent.

Elon Musk’s wealth is estimated at $221.4 billion.  Jeff Bezos’ net worth is $210.2 billion, while Bill Gates comes in at $133.3 billion.  These are big numbers, and when we put them in perspective, they look even more alarming. A quick Google search revealed that the top one percent of Americans control more wealth than the entire middle class combined, with the middle class defined as the middle 60 percent of households by income.  

Okay.  That was wealth.  Let’s look at income for a minute. Social security data reveals that the average annual wage of the bottom 90 percent is $40,928; the average wage of those in the 90^th to 99^th percentile is $187,609; and the average wage of the top one percentile is $916,928.  Parsing things even further, the top .1 percentile earns an average of $3.7 million. 

One more figure:  CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021.

Enough with the numbers.***  It is clear that a few people control most of the wealth in this country, and that a great swath of our citizenry is scraping by, while their bosses get richer and richer. 

So, yes, I would argue it is possible to be too rich. Embarrassingly rich. And yet I suspect that the mega rich, cocooned in their bubbles of wealth, are not embarrassed.  (Asking for a friend – Do they not realize that if our way of life topples under the weight of their wealth, they will not be spared the fallout?  Do they not see that if their greed overcomes environmental concerns, their children will inherit a dying planet? That income and wealth inequity lead to social unrest?)

It is said that power corrupts.  So, I think, does great wealth. And they usually go together.  On that note, I will leave you with this suggestion. If you want an example of how power and money corrupt, get yourself a copy of Empire of Pain:  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. There you will read of the corruption, not only of a family, but of the lawyers and doctors they drew into their web, along with the FDA and the DEA.  As this book demonstrates, very few are immune to the twin siren calls of money and power. 

One last thing.  Perhaps it is time to update the adage with which I began this post.  How about this?  You can’t be too kind or too healthy.  

 

                                                     Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

*** Different studies turn up different numbers, but all demonstrate great income and wealth inequality.

 

YOU'RE DOING GREAT; NOW, LEAVE ME ALONE

When my daughters were toddlers and beyond, I responded to their actions and words by naming them -- clever, resourceful, kind, persistent etc. Sometimes, I would tell them something was unkind or dangerous, Now, my daughters are doing the same with their children.  They are going beyond "good job" and "stop that" to name the qualities they are seeing.  

I applaud this feedback.

It appears, however, that a great many people did not receive positive feedback from their parents and caregivers. or possibly they received a boatload of negative feedback. How else to explain the multiple requests for assessment I receive daily?

Almost every time I visit a doctor, hire someone to provide a service, or order something online, a survey asking how he/she/they did will follow.  Sometimes the requests for assessment come before the service is provided . . .

Seriously?  Are they that needy?

I have a life, people.  I'm not going to fill out your surveys.  

Here's another puzzlement.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, which often involve interviews.  It used to be that an interviewee would occasionally respond to a question by saying, "That's a great question."  Now, hardly an interview goes by without these words being spoken.

Honestly, the questions aren't always all that great.  And even if they are, isn't it the job of the interviewer to ask great questions? Is the interviewee stalling in order to come up with an answer? Inquiring minds want to know.  

And while I'm on my soapbox, I'm also not going to open the multiple texts I receive asking for money.  I'm going to block those numbers every time.  It's not that I'm against making charitable contributions.  To the contrary, I make them regularly. It's just that I don't want to see these requests in my text feed. Texts are for brief communications with family and friends.  

So, leave me alone, already. 

Same with requests for political contributions.  Not on my text feed.  Not on your life.  

And then there are the phone calls.  I no longer answer calls from unknown phone numbers.  If a call isn't from a scammer, I assume the caller will leave a message.  Come to think of it, scammers leave messages too . . .

For some reason email stopped working on my phone a few months ago, and I decided not to try to fix it.  So, I'm not dealing with those incessant dings anymore. Yay!  (Actually, a friend suggested turning off notifications for emails, which I did, but not having emails on my phone is even better.)

As for people who come to the house wanting to sell me something, I try to be polite.  I tell them they may give me literature, but I will not agree to anything while speaking through my front door.  (And I'm definitely not inviting them in.)

So, is it just me or do I have companions in wanting to ward off these intrusions?

 

                                        Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

UBI SUNT? (Where Are They?)

Yesterday I deleted three people from my phone's contact list.  No, I had not had a falling out with any of them, although you might say they had fallen from my life and the lives of those who loved them.  To put the matter bluntly, they had died--one recently, one a couple of years ago, and one a few years before that.

It was only while searching for someone on my list yesterday that I realized I had no further use for these folks' phone numbers and email addresses.  Still, the deleting felt strange, unsettling.  

It felt wrong to erase these traces of people with whom I had been more or less close, so I'm going to share a few sentences about each in order to counteract the deletions. 

I saw a lot of Charlie back in my 30s.  He was married to a very close friend. We had meals together (he was a great cook) and talked about books (he was an antiquarian book seller and a poet).  Our contacts were sporadic after he and my friend divorced, yet the connection was not severed entirely.  He read, critiqued, and encouraged my writing, and occasionally sent me a book.  

I didn't know Rick well--well enough, though, to have him in my contact list.  In my experience, he was a fine man - kind and thoughtful, a musician and a reader and a dedicated volunteer.  One of his last kindnesses was to replace the wooden handle on my husband's wheelbarrow.  

I had a fairly close friendship with Brian.  We shared a love of writing and would read one another's stories. We also talked about our kids over lunch several times a year.  I will always regret not calling him in the weeks before he suddenly and unexpectedly died. 

I had known all three, and then they were gone, gone whether or not they remained in my contact list. 

The words that came into my head while making these deletions were these: Ubi sunt?  Let me explain. Many years ago, one of my college English professors shared a Latin quotation, which he said meant something like, "Where are they, those who went before us?" 

In any event, I could only remember the first two words, perhaps glued to my brain by the pleasure of the oo sound twice repeated.  I had to look up the rest. Here it is:  Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

Ubi sunt, indeed. 

Does anyone really leave us in this digital age?  I confess I have not deleted, and do not intend to delete, the last two phone messages from my brother Jim, who died over a year ago.  Listening to his voice now and then makes me smile.

And there is this:  Two of the three people whose contacts I deleted still have active Facebook pages.  That's right.  Their Facebook "friends" can go back and look at what the departed had posted.  Is this a good thing?  I don't know. Maybe it's a comfort to those left behind. Maybe it's macabre. 

You decide.  

But let's return to the cosmic question:  Where are they now?  I tend toward the Taoist view that we come from what is whole, enter the world of forms, and upon our deaths, return to what is whole.  In his "Intimations Ode," the poet William Wordsworth wrote, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting . . . Not in entire forgetfulness,/And not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God who is our home. .."**  (You might substitute The Tao or Love for the word God, if that is more comfortable.). 

Wordsworth's lines were echoed by something my daughter Anne said at about age three or three-and-a-half.  She first asked, "Where was I before I was born?" Then, before I could take a moment to respond, she announced, "I know. I was part of all of the love."

Wow. 

In the same poem, Wordsworth went on to write about the memory fading as we grow older.  Apparently, Anne had yet to forget.  And if we come from an undivided experience of love, is that what we return to?  I would like to think so. That's what those who have had near-death experiences describe.  (NDEs, however, are a subject for another day.) 

Listen, I'm not trying to convince you of anything.  I'm just giving you my intuitions with regard to ubi sunt.  If I am wrong, and all is dark after death, I will never know. 

I do know this.  When we delete someone from our contacts, we do not delete memory or affection.  Those who have mattered to us live on in our hearts while we are here, and maybe that is enough.

** The full title of the poem:  "ODE:  Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood"

Photo by Dario Brönnimann on Unsplash

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

I am thinking of a woman I met at a lake on a summer’s day a very long time ago.  Was I 21 that summer?  I know it was the summer I had suffered a broken heart--a broken heart of the kind only a 21-year-old can know, the kind that leaves one unable to eat, breathless with the impossibility of moving forward.

 

Of course, I did.  Move forward, that is.  There was an eventual  reconciliation, followed by a final breakup.  But that is not the subject of this post, and, anyway, both occurred after that day at the lake.  

 

How did I meet her, the woman at the lake?  I was probably working for a temp agency for the summer.  Would they have sent me out for a turn as a mother's helper?  They must have.  Why else would I have been at a lake, herding young children, while their 30-something mom visited with her friends?  

 

She was pretty, the woman, and, in my eyes, worldly.  I don’t remember her name.  I do remember that she and her friends spoke fondly, if a bit flippantly, about their husbands.  I, still carrying around my shattered heart, doubted I would ever meet a man about whom I might banter with friends, let alone one I would marry.

 

In any event, a memory of this woman and her friends resurfaced this morning. I could still see the way she appeared to so comfortably inhabit her life, the casual ease with which she addressed her children.  She was the perfect illustration of a future, which, all those years ago, seemed out-of-reach to me.  

 

Why I was concerning myself with such a future at age 21 is a subject for another time.  Suffice to say that although I had fully embraced second-wave feminism by the summer of ’71, I had yet to leave the lessons of a 1950s childhood entirely behind.  

 

But I digress.  What struck me this morning was the fact that she, if she is still alive, must be in her eighties.  I am having trouble wrapping my brain around this transformation.  I cannot make the mental leap across 50 plus-years to picture what she might look like now.  

 

Here’s the thing.  Those we see regularly age along with us.  We do not notice the changes, unless we look back at a photo from two or three decades ago and see that, yes, they (and we) have grown older.  Even so, the sight of our long-time friends does not shock us in the way a photo on social media of someone we have not seen since high school might startle. 

What are we to make of those who have aged out of our sight? And why does someone I met so briefly and so long ago come back to me so clearly?  I think I will leave her there at water's edge - no need to age her forward.

 

(I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I'm inclined to believe our younger selves live on. Perhaps past, present, and future are not distinct.  Perhaps when I leave my body to enter the great mystery, I will learn that time is but a construct, erected to protect us from what our finite brains cannot process. 

 

I would like to think so.)

 

I don’t think I ever saw the woman by the lake again.  Either it was a one-day assignment, or the rest of the week has been buried under the accreted memories of 50 years.  Whichever it is, she has not left me.  Her younger self lives on in my mind, as I hope my younger self lives on in the minds of one or two people who have not seen me for 50 years. 

Perhaps, as we age, we carry the past for one another.  

I wish this for us all.

 

                                    photo by Sandra Fs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOTH, AND

A friend left me a phone message yesterday, asking excitedly, "Isn't this rain wonderful?"  

I could not enter fully into her excitement.  Yes, we need rain.  Yes, my garden is happy.  Yes, the big trees are happy.  And, yes, I am grateful not to be dragging hoses around.

But.  

There is so often a "but," isn't there?  

I am very happy it is raining, but the sudden barometer change affects my mood and energy, and not in a good way.  

Let's talk about the "but."

I have read or heard that it is good to change our "buts" to "ands." A but negates or, at the very least, takes the wind out of what came before. An and simply adds another fact, without taking away from the first one.  

So, instead of "I am glad it is raining, but rain affects my mood and energy," I could say, "I am glad it is raining, and rain affects my mood and energy." 

In the first sentence, the scale tips toward the negative.  In the second sentence, each clause has equal weight. 

Here are some others I have come up with:

I love spending time with my grandkids, and they are exhausting.

I dislike cooking, and I like to eat.

I love my house, and it's time to move.

I love spending time with my friends, and I never seem to have enough alone time.

I love my cats, and I want someone else to clean their litter box.

I like being alone in my house, and I would like someone to come and cook for me.

I am thrilled to have grandchildren, and I worry about the world they will grow up in.

I am grateful for all that I have, and I can't help but wonder why I have so much, while others have so little.

I am so glad I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I miss the friends I left behind when I moved here from back east.  

I have become happier in each decade of my life, and I would like to have my 40-year-old energy again.

You get the idea.  

We can hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, without one shoving the other out of the way -- can't we?  

                                                 Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I'm going to try to be more conscious of my buts and ands.  

I would love to see your ands in the comments.  

WHY?

Just when I think I have shared all of my first-world puzzlements and annoyances, more rear their ugly heads.   

 

So here we go again: 

Self-checkout lanes 

The last time I was at Target, there was one person checking out purchases, and a long line waiting for self-checkout.  My local grocery story is down to two humans doing the work of six.  Note to stores:  I will not assist you in taking away jobs, and if you insist on my checking out my own purchases, I would like a discount.   

(Good news alert:  I read recently that some stores are doing away with self-checkout because it has led to an increase in thefts.)  

Doctors and other medical personnel who look at their computer screens instead of at me

I quit going to a physical therapist who dragged her computer around on a cart, looking up only long enough to demonstrate an exercise, before turning back to her screen.  

In happier news, I visited a dermatologist last week, who talked directly to me, while a medical assistant took notes.  When I told him how pleased I was with this arrangement, he agreed it was best for both doctor and patient, but let me know that the next big thing would be an AI assistant taking notes. (?!)

Creepy. 

People who speak on their phones in public as if they were sitting in their kitchens

Yesterday, I was reading in the waiting area at my local Toyota dealership while my car was being serviced.  A man sitting behind me shattered my peace by conducting a very loud, very long phone conversation regarding family matters--which bedroom the person on the other end of the line would share with a grandchild, who would pick said person up at the airport, and much more.  Apparently, he was talking to his mom, or so I deduced when he said, “Bye mom;  I love you,” as he hung up. 

 

Men, I said to myself.  Why do they have to take up so much space? 

And then – you guessed it – a woman a few feet from me raised her phone and called someone named Barbara, launching into very lengthy, very boring monologue about committee meetings and the house her son wanted to sell. I wondered if Barbara had fallen asleep.  I hoped so for her sake.  

Are these people just rude or do they really not know how to modulate their voices to suit their surroundings?

The most egregious example of this behavior I have experienced was in a Starbucks, where I (and everyone else in the place) was treated to the sight and sound of a youngish financial advisor of some sort, loudly advising a client about very personal money matters.  I didn’t walk behind him, but assume that anyone who did could have seen the unfortunate client’s financial information on his open laptop. 

 

And speaking of money management . . .

The use of the phrase “wealth management” in advertising

Is this a dog whistle to the one percent or a blatant message that the likes of me should not call?  

 

People who enter traffic circles without pausing for cars already in the circle.

There are four traffic circles on the way to a daughter’s house.  Large signs instruct those entering the circle to yield to cars already in the circle. These signs notwithstanding, quite a few people seem to think the rule does not apply to them, and dive-bomb in as if they were chasing a criminal. (Possibly, the same people who make loud phone calls in public.)

I now take a different route to my daughter’s house. 

People who follow another car through a flashing, four-way stop when the bases are loaded

Dangerous and rude.  Note to city planners:  Please replace with regular traffic lights.  

Allowing bicycles in car lanes

Some clever person at City Hall, who has clearly never ridden a bike or driven a car, decided it was a good idea to allow bicycles to travel on selected local streets along with cars.  (Not in a bike lane – on the street in front of and behind cars.) There are helpful signs, but, really, can you trust the people who dive-bomb into traffic circles and run stop signs to travel slowly behind a bicycle?

Cars that cut me off in order to race to a red light

Testosterone poisoning?

Drivers who don't start moving when a traffic light turns green because they are looking at their phones.

Are we that addicted?

People who wear dark clothing while walking at night and people who ride their bikes at night without a light or reflective tape

Do you want to end your life, while ruining mine?

Emails that keep arriving after I unsubscribe

Where do I file a protest?

“Unsubscribe” in such tiny print as to require a magnifying glass 

Hah.  They underestimate my persistence.

Websites that tell me they are “checking availability.” 

The item is always available.  Do they really think I am waiting anxiously to find out whether the item is in stock?  Is AI doing their thinking?

Phone robots that try to send me to a website that doesn’t have the answer to my question.

You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.

Phone robots that tell me I will receive a call back in 20 minutes and NEVER CALL BACK.

You know it’s bad when I’m shouting in print.

AARRRGH!

                                        Photo by Julien L on Unsplash

And you?  Please add your frustrations in the comments.