Learning CPR

I never did learn how to "do" CPR, cardio pulmonary resuscitation. Years ago, the dental office staff and I had more than adequate instruction. I just never mastered the correct rhythm; which made me feel more of a dummy than the CPR "dummy." 
        However, I feel I have come very close to mastering another type of CPR: learning how to be calm, patient and reasonable with myself. 
  
In this crazy, mixed-up world of ours it's not easy to remain that way: calm, patient and reasonable. It seems as though we're being pummeled on all sides by dire news and the admonition to be afraid. Afraid and fearful and wary.
        My semi-religious upbringing occurred in the Christian Science Church. As limned in several earlier blog posts, in an attempt to live what she felt were the tenets of that philosophy, Mother would not allow in our home any discussion of, mention of, word of, the world's strife, war or upheaval. Dad seemed to relish dwelling on the same. Talk about a Yin and Yang household! 
      (Yes, I am aware that Yin and Yang, together, create wholeness and completion and for over 63 years, until Dad's death, Mom and Dad seemed to epitomize this philosophy.)

My thoughts of late regarding calmness, patience and reasonableness have less to do with the impact from the outside world and more to do with my sometimes frightened and unsure interior mindscape. 
            I'm learning to be patient with my physical self and its ever-enlarging litany of limitations. I'm practicing ways to stay calm when my mind wants to wander to new worries and concerns. I'm concentrating on being reasonable, not beat myself up, when I now and then forget a word or have a momentary lapse about where I placed my car keys.
            The more I practice my own type of CPR, the more often my breathing calms and my mind clears. So, this "dummy" is just going to keep on practicing. Yet, what an odd world: when I finally feel I've gotten my mind together, my body sometimes feels as though it's falling apart. 

My Halo is Personal

My 22-degree halo

These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear.

That’s why, like rainbows, halos around the sun - or moon – are personal. Everyone sees their own particular halo, made by their own particular ice crystals, which are different from the ice crystals making the halo of the person standing next to you. 

"Everyone sees their own particular halo," just as we all have our own particular take on life's occurrences and anomalies based upon where we're standing, metaphorically and physically. 

The "ice crystals," or experiences that make up my "halo" can never be seen by those interacting with me. 

Conversely, no matter how I may study, change my literal or figurative position or attempt to move to the space where another stands, I cannot actually "see" what he sees. 

I've finally realized that if I move just a tiny bit, those "ice crystals," those seemingly frozen concepts I've held for decades, actually begin to refract and the light that emanates helps me see much clearer into a myriad of  issues, social and personal. It's a matter of moving just a few degrees.

I always get to where I'm going by walking away from where I've been. 

~The Tao of Pooh

Tolerance, Privilege and Security

This Simon Jenkins article from The Guardian, "So you think reason guides your politics? Think again," has been a Blog draft since I first read it over three years ago.  I'm aware Jenkins' piece is political in nature. However, I've gone back to read it again and again. Each time, setting aside the article's political bent, I zero in on particular statements that intrigue me. Here's one:

"Reason is ... a weapon we deploy to persuade others that we are right, and they use to prove us wrong. It is not a coming together but a driving apart."  

  It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

~Dan Simmon

The statement I found most provocative is, "[T]olerance is itself a privilege of security. Intellectually it is appeasement." Online there are more than 520 comments about Jenkins' article and the one receiving the most opprobrium is the one just quoted. 

I've never been homeless, have never gone without sustenance, have never experienced intentional physical or emotional harm. I consider myself a fairly tolerant person ... you live your life, let me live mine ... and yet admit tolerance on any level is likely much easier when one has good health, a comfortable home, and food in the fridge. 

When you don't know what you're talking about,

it's hard to know when you're finished. 

~ Tommy Smothers

Ah well, as my brother said when he was four years old, "I have a lot of thinks in my head." 

.

  

Having my way with Words

There is this need to put into words just how deeply I am affected by exemplary, stellar writing. I am awestruck by the author who possesses the talent to deftly and thoroughly insert a reader into the story.

My nature is to quickly devour that which I enjoy. Ah, but I refer to food and drink. Not to my beloved words! 

Words and the arrangement of words I savor and save, roll them across my mind, "see" their form and beauty, marvel at their ability, when skillfully strung together, to move me to tears and to anger; to provide comfort and solace; to educate and enlighten me. 

I often stop dead in the middle of a paragraph, in the midst of a sentence, stare away from the page and dwell on the adroit parsing of language, the beauty in the use of, the way with, words. I want to continue with the story, but several minutes pass before I drift back to the page.  

This experience can occur no matter what genre I'm reading. Poetry often has this effect. However, I read poetry knowing there will be intensity and deep, deft expression of feelings and ideas. Even before opening the book I am emotionally ready for the reactions that emerge.

A voice which is now silent but which will live on forever is that of Brian Doyle. His books, essays and poetry are the epitome of rich, detailed, shining writing.  

An excerpt from Doyle's The Wet Engine - Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart:

What " ... might we be if we rise and evolve, if we reach and leap, if we deepen and sing, if we come further down from the brooding trees and out onto the smiling plain, if we unclench the fist and drop the dagger, if we emerge blinking from the fort and the stockade and the prison, if we smash the bricks from around our hearts, if we cease to stagger and swagger, if we peel the steel from our eyes, if we yearn and learn, if we do what we say we will do, if we act as if our words really matter, if our words become muscled mercy ... and become as if new creatures arisen from our shucked skins ... become what we are so patently and brilliantly and utterly and wholly and holy capable of … 

What then?"

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. 

Sometimes I write one, and I look at it until it begins to shine. 

~Emily Dickinson

The Burden of Hate

Yesterday, a cold, blue-sky day, I made a trip to the local grocery store. As I entered the store, I smiled at passersby (and received warm smiles in return), collected my coffee and other items and headed to a checkstand. 

As the man in front of me (male, white, about 30, clean, casually dressed) turned to leave with his groceries, I noticed the back of his black T-shirt emblazoned with:

I had never seen the slogan before. The words, along with the skull partially camouflaged by the American flag, chilled me.  Of course, I am well aware of the extreme animus and hatred brewing in our country (especially toward persons of color or different ideologies). 

For some reason, I felt the need to engage this young man. So, while the clerk rang up my purchases, I took the opportunity to ask, in a non-confrontational manner, "What's the meaning of the words on the back of your T-shirt?" 

He stopped, turned, looked at me with dark, stern eyes and said, low and forcefully, "It means I hate Muslims." 

"You hate them? Why is that?"

He continued arranging his groceries in the cart and matter-of-factly stated, "They're murderers, rapists ... I hate them."

I had ventured into what was, for me, uncharted territory and my instincts were to pull back. I fell silent. I titled my head to the side, looked at him quizzically, and, tight-lipped, turned back to the clerk checking my groceries. 

Why didn't I say more? Judith Glasser writes in Psychology Today, "I’ve discovered that being outspoken requires three things: 1) the courage to speak up, 2) the courage to listen, and 3) the courage to stay in discovery until you find the best way for your voice to be heard."  Obviously I didn't have the courage to "stay in discovery." 

I wonder what his response would have been if I had offered, "I am a Muslim, do you hate me?" 

I have fantasized that his response would have been, "No, I don't know you," leaving the perfect opening for me to say, "Exactly."

Many of my friends, with love in their hearts and conviction in their voices, would have definitely asked that question. 

I am not Muslim, they are not Muslim. However, we stand solidly against the pervasive blanketing of a culture, religion or ethnicity based upon the heinous acts of some members or adherents. 

Today I took the opportunity to Google the phrase I'd seen on the man's shirt. I clicked on a page that took me to a site so filled with hate, categoric falsehoods and venomous words, I felt as though I had thrown my entire mind into a pile of excrement ... and the stench might even be palpable.

          I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

~ Martin Luther King

Natal Day Nattering

 To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, 

and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. 

~ Henri Amiel

Yes, another year rolled up to my door and rang the bell. "She" had been waiting patiently just around the corner. I knew she was lurking close by, and yet her appearance right there on the porch took me by surprise. 

My mind has always been open to whatever life brings. Admittedly there are times when I feel like railing against much of it, but I smile and carry on. 

The smile on my face doesn't mean my life is perfect. 

It means I appreciate what I have. 

~ anon.

If I'm honest with myself (and more and more in the past twenty years, being honest with myself has become easier), I don't like a lot of the stuff that's happening to my body. I'm not particularly surprised at the changes, just not all that pleased to discover that my usual stalwart way of facing life's challenges doesn't serve me quite as well as before. 

Sometimes it hurts like hell to get up out of a chair and even if I do rise with some amount of grace and (feigned) aplomb, the first steps are painful and slow. There's no hiding the fact that the woman tottering toward you is in (at least!) her 8th decade.   

As with anyone who has lived through many decades, life has provided me with more lessons than any schoolbook, how-to-book or all-knowing guru could have ever prepared me for. There are no answers to the question of how to age happily and gracefully. You just carry on as best you can.

What I know for sure is that I got out of bed this morning older than when I got in ... but younger than I'll ever be! 

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.

Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.

Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.

Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.

~ Yoko Ono

   

        

Paucity of Language: Parsing a Plethora of Information

A man I have known and greatly admired for decades, recently wrote, "We tend to get caught up in the words that we have, which may not be extensive enough to explain everything. I remember Zeno, or some Greek, telling us, ‘No cat has nine lives; my cat has one more life than no cats, therefore my cat has ten lives.'  I really think our paucity of language is a deterrent to [communication]." 

Linda Tirado, writing in Elle, states, "Solipsism [the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist] is self-soothing. It is easier to believe that everyone knows everything you do, and thus you ... assume that when they come to a different conclusion than you have, they are being intentionally wrongheaded, or selfish, or evil. Only, what if they aren't? What if you, given the information they have, would have reached the same conclusion they did? What if the problem in America is that millions of us, on the right and on the left, have been propagandized? In all the discussions of fake news, we seem to keep missing the most important conversation of all: Different information leads to different decisions for most rational thinkers."

Our "paucity of language," combined with our seeming inability to use critical thinking to read and analyze varied streams of information (not simply that which aligns with our beliefs or opinion) sets us up for divisiveness. 

We shy away from communicating with those who have differing viewpoints or beliefs because we either fear what we assume will be their bombastic wrath or we simply have no stomach for dissension of any kind.

Therefore, we keep to our own group of "think-alikes," talk over the same issues, come to the same conclusion: "It's them, not us! They are the problem!"

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation 

for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use. 

~Soren Kierkegaard