the road we take

“But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it’s wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them….Even a language won’t stand still. A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. They stake everything on that moment, posing for photographs while planting the flag, casting themselves in bronze. Washington crossing the Delaware. The capture of Okinawa. They’re desperate to hang on.

But they can’t. Even before the flagpole begins to peel and splinter, the ground underneath arches and slides forward into its own new destiny. It may bear the marks of boots on its back, but those marks become the possessions of the land. What does Okinawa remember of its fall? Forbidden to make engines of war, Japan made automobiles instead, and won the world. It all moves on.”
– The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver, p. 384.

Our politics today make me tired. I’m so bloody tired of hearing the same old diatribes repeated ad nauseam, over and over like wheels on a tired, creaky, aged wagon. They talk and talk and it’s like buzzing in my ears. For they say nothing new and none of it even applies anymore. It feels like they’re talking about Spaceman Spiff, when the rest of us are staring at moldy cheese in an empty refrigerator. They talk in the language of the Cold War, and the rest of us are sharing DVDs with the Japanese and watching You Tube videos coming out of Iran.

We have real problems and real concerns. And they’re still talking ideology. The world doesn’t operate on ideology. It operates in the handshake between neighbors, the crops grown by farmers, and the earthquakes and hurricanes that steal our homes away. Who cares about ideology when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun?

I hear the noise and it makes me tired. I hear the lies and it makes my bones melt. I hear the anger and I feel sorrow.

But when I turn off the noise and look at people, I see a different story. I see people buying produce from local farmers. I see people biking to work. I see people wringing their empty pockets to give to others in need. I see people ignoring corporations, eschewing industry and taking the path less walked. Home schooling. Midwives. Etsy. Blogs. Project 3/50. Interracial marriage. News, products, food, and information home grown and shared neighbor to neighbor.

We throw the pills that cause atrocious side-effects down the drain and we eat better food. This is not a revolution. This is not the masses rising up in revolt. This is the world moving on, like ants marching steadily out from under the boot through the gaps in the platform of the sole.

So you can have your soapbox. Let the potentates feed the lie. Let the corporations write our politicians’ speeches. We’re not listening anymore. Because while you sit there spouting and playing your chess games and lining your pockets while everyone else suffers, one by one, we take the road less traveled by.

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Monday, March 8th, 2010

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women unbound – reading lolita in tehran

reading-lolitaReading Lolita in Tehran is a powerful account of a woman’s journey through the Iranian Revolution and the gripping challenges her young students had to face as the society underwent cataclysmic changes. Iran went from being a country that could rival many of its Western counterparts in the freedoms and liberties it offered its citizens – even the women – to one that became among the most repressive regimes ever seen in the modern world.  The different generations of women lived in different time zones, it seemed, with the older generations experiencing more freedom than the younger ones could.

Some of the earlier chapters are the most poignant…after a while the book did get a little repetitive and difficult for me to wade through (especially since I’ve become a pro at skimming – thank you, grad school). But I pushed myself to read it in its entirety. It is worth reading, to catch a glimpse behind the veil. To see what these women had to endure and how they found inner resources to help themselves survive imprisonment (on multiple levels), fear, violence, erasing of self and theft of their rights to do even the most basic things like express who they are and love whom they choose.

But the part I loved most about this book is that Nafisi, who is a university professor, collected a select group of her top female students and invited them to weekly meetings in her home – free from the oppression of prying eyes and suspcious ears – to read literature together. In these classes, the students read everything from The Great Gatsby to Pride and Prejudice to, of course, Lolita. And through the literature, these women were able to find themselves. They used important themes from the texts to discuss the world around them and to understand their place in it. The literature gave them a forum in which they could break down the barriers they had around them and begin to talk about their own lives; first, obliquely, and then more assertively and directly as they gained confidence and built mutual trust and respect. Indeed, the book itself is divided into four subsections, each one based on a different piece of literature. Each subsection draws from its literary namesake to highlight themes Nafisi faces in her own life as the Revolution begins, when the oppressive regime comes to power and she is forced out of job and under a veil, until the time when Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the students must make their own plans for survival.

It is for this reason I love this book. It highlights and illustrates so well why books are so important for us. We have our favorite books: ones that entertain us, that uplift us, that comfort us. If there is a lesson here, it is one we already agree with and and maybe already intuitively know. Or, perhaps it is something we can just appreciate, even if it differs from our own experience. But then, we have our books that touch the essence of who we are. They help us see our own world in a different way, and maybe help us understand who we are and what our situations are a little bit better. Reading them is like an epiphany. And sometimes it rocks you to your core.

I have one such book that has been important in my life: Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Shantaram almost isn’t even a favorite book, though it is a really entertaining read. But I’ve only read it once; it’s not one I go to for comfort or escape. But it speaks to my heart. And why should I be able to identify with it so much? It’s a book about an Australian convict who escapes and flees to India, gets involved with some humanitarian work, the local mafia, the movies and eventually the muhajadeen. It’s quite the adventure (and based on a real story) – but far from my life. But the main character is a powerful narrator, and under the adventure was pain, loneliness, emptiness and a swollen and bruised heart. And that I understood. I was in that place and his words made me understand the blackness, so that instead of staring at a gaping, dark hole, I could begin to see fragments and facets of life. Dimensions to hold on to, and through understanding, grasp and clutch my way towards finding forgiveness and redemption.

It has beautiful quotes like:
“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”
and
“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.”
and
“In this way justice is done…because justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving…justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

Do you have a book like this? One that has changed you or been important to you in some way?

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Friday, February 12th, 2010

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fortune cookies!

fortunecookiesI got bit by a little artsy-craftsy bug today and wanted to make something fun to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which falls on Sunday, February 14th (also Valentine’s Day). So I made a bunch of these little fortune cookies, inspired by this tutorial, and filled them with funny “Confucious say” sayings. I thought they’d make fun little gifts for friends and family next weekend.

This year is the Year of the Tiger. “Drama, intensity, change and travel will be the keywords for 2010. Unfortunately, world conflicts and disasters tend to feature during Tiger years also, so it won’t be a dull 12 months for anyone. The Year of the Tiger will bring far reaching changes for everyone. New inventions and incredible technological advances have a good chance of occurring. For all of the Chinese horoscope signs, this year is one to be active – seizing opportunities and making the most of our personal and very individual talents. Everything happens quickly and dramatically in a Tiger year – blink and you could miss an important chance of a lifetime!”
(Source: wayangtimes.com. For your horoscope, click here.)

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Saturday, February 6th, 2010

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on the nature of being human

banner_social_policyThe story we are told about human nature is that man is inherently self-interested, pleasure-seeking, sinning and utilitarian – doing the minimum to get the maximum benefits for oneself, and that this nature is driven by a life that is nasty, brutish and short. Indeed, all we have to do is take a cursory glance over history, and we’ll see the world stricken with crime, wars, genocide, power games, and greedy, greedy people taking advantage for themselves, to the detriment of everyone else (*cough* Bernie Madoff *cough*).

But maybe we are overlooking something. I heard an interview with Jeremy Rifkin, which you can listen to here, in which he discusses his new book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. You can read the first chapter of it here. I haven’t read the book yet, but the interview alone blew me away. Rifkin talks about evolutionary biology and a wealth of science coming out now that suggests that human beings may not naturally be so self-interested. In fact, what really drives humans is our need for social contact. We are social beings and we engage with others through our ability to empathize. (This makes sense right? Why else would we love literature and movies so much except by our ability to empathize with the main characters for example? Why else would we need love and affection, friends and family in our lives if that weren’t so? But that is not our view of ourselves, especially not where politics or religion is concerned.) What we see when we look at history is not actually the norm of human behavior, but rather the product of historians who are interested in power games and struggles, in wars and who has power and who doesn’t. In short, historians are interested not in the norm of human nature, but in the aberrations. People helping each other with their daily survival needs, people talking kindly to each other, people working together…none of this is interesting.

If you are unconvinced, think for a moment about our news. Our news is filled with the Iraq War, Afghanistan, political scandals, intrigues, anything that involves sex, blood or mayhem. Saying hello to your neighbor and giving money to the homeless is not newsworthy. So if you consider what is deemed “interesting”, you see it is the stuff that is different, outside the norm of accepted behavior. Thus what we have of recorded history is what was “news” of the time. In the historical research I’ve done, (looking into ancient Greece and ancient Persia for example) it is far easier to find records of warfare, technology, and kings and their courts than it is to find out the social ceremonies when people invited guests into their homes. We might have records of what they ate and how they worked, but it’s harder to find out how they greeted each other and how often they had time to socialize. As it was put in the interview, “history is made by the pathological”. It’s not normal human behavior that gets recorded, nor is it normal people who usually lead nations. That turn of phrase really made me think just how much of human history might have been lost to the fascination with the pathological.

The interview goes on to discuss how young babies are not inherently scheming, self-interested utilitarians. What they want most is social connectedness. They yearn for the connection with their mothers, and when they do not get it, that’s when we begin to see narcissism, selfishness, and a very slow erosion of the ability to connect. This insight really caught me because I recall earlier parenting advice often advocated letting babies cry themselves out, instead of going to pick them up every time they cried. But, if I understand correctly, there has been a shift in thinking (for example, with advocates of babywearing) that suggests babies should in fact be picked up when they need attention because that need is very real and very important for their development.

Towards the end of the interview, Rifkin discusses the different ages man has gone through and how technological development has shifted man’s consciousness and ability to empathize with others, moving from blood kin through religious associations, national affiliation…to where we are now on the precipice of a global age, aided by digital technology that puts us in touch with people all over the globe. He warns we must be clear about what we want from this technology and how we apply it, in our ability to empathize with others.

If it is true that humans are naturally social, empathetic beings, that has powerful implications for the possibilities of our entire world order, how we engage in politics, and how we understand ourselves. I’m sure Rifkin’s book explores this angle much more fully. But what I find fascinating is the possibility that we assume man to be self-interested utilitarians and that this frame of reference actually shapes how we interact with each other. If we can take empathy as the status quo, how differently would we behave? If we assumed others merely wanted our love, how would we treat them?

It also strikes me that this view of human nature has a decidedly feminine bent. By feminine, I don’t mean female in the sense that only women have this trait. Rather, I mean, if humans have both masculine and feminine traits, with each individual (and maybe each society) falling somewhere along a spectrum between extreme masculinity and extreme femininity…this worldview has a feminine quality to it, with its emphasis on social connectivity and emotive needs and desires. And the view we have had before has had more of a masculine quality to it, as it has been written primarily by men and about men. Now I want to be careful here. I’m not saying masculinity is pathological. Obviously not. Both sides of the spectrum have important and valuable contributions to a functioning society. But I’m suggesting that our view of mankind might have been skewed by a suppression of the feminine voice. And what I find most interesting is that so much of scientific, psychological, sociological, and literary pursuits (among a wealth of others) are starting to reflect the feminine voice more – and this coincides with research that suggests women are beginning to move more into positions of power. They are graduating at greater rates than men, they are scoring higher on exams and getting higher degrees and beginning to take up greater proportions of typically “male” fields. Now it is no where near parity and equality has not been achieved in a lot of areas. But it is happening at a rate that educators are beginning to fear there is a gender gap crisis – with boys being the ones who are falling behind.

I know I’m connected in meaningful ways with people with whom I’d never have been able to in any other time before this. And all of that is due to the wonders of the digital age. But can the digital age really fuel greater connectivity? And can it really provide a means for helping us change our basic assumptions about those with whom we connect?

* Photo courtesy of: http://thenewwriters.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/a-possible-vision-social-harmony/

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Sunday, January 31st, 2010

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beauty behind the veil

behind_the_veilMy sister-in-law said it best last night, when she said, “It seems like the world is conspiring to make me a feminist.” Yes, yes, and yes. I always used to avoid race and gender studies, believing that they weren’t ultimately very helpful: that looking backward didn’t help us move forward, and that focusing on one race or gender to the exclusion of another didn’t do much to advance equality or mutual understanding. But I didn’t realize I believed a lie about what those studies were all about. And the more I see of the world, the more I can’t help but take umbrage at how ridiculously backward so much of it is. Once you start seeing bits of it, you start opening your eyes to entire swaths of it.

For example, Oprah just conducted a “Marriage Around the World” show highlighting cultural differences between married women in various countries. But as this article illustrates, she appeared to have a preconceived notion that Western women are inherently more liberated than others, presuming the hijab (or head scarf) equates with repression. Contrast that with the Rick Steves’ interview with Justine Shapiro, filmmaker and producer of A Summer in Tehran, where she discusses the time she spent with a variety of Iranian families. She observes that in Persian culture contains many veils (both literal and figurative). They make a sharp delineation between the public and private spheres of their lives, with the public sphere characterized by formality, politeness, and guardedness while the private sphere is far more familiar and comfortable. In the privacy of their own homes, they wear tank tops and Persian women exude sensuality. There is freedom and sensuality within the home, but the minute they step out the door, on goes the hijab, their choice of clothing and sensuous figures tucked discreetly beneath.

What these women see when they look at Western women are nearly nude figures objectified like toys draped over cars. They look and see a world where women are not treated with respect, and are not honored (which, frankly, with today’s hookup culture, you kinda gotta see they have a point). We say we are free, but we measure our freedom in how much of our flesh we can show off to tantalize men (and maybe even incite the envy of our fellow women). No one can tell us what clothes we can wear, but it’s not as if our society doesn’t have rules we abide by, even when it is not healthy – or even when it hurts. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a bikini wax. Or if your feet have hurt from stilettos. Or if you’ve ever gone hungry to lose a pound or two, had your eyebrows plucked, undergone cosmetic surgery or dermatological procedures, or gotten a tattoo or piercing in the name of beauty. This is not news. We all know this. And yet we still do it to ourselves and call ourselves free. With a “no pain, no gain” kind of chagrin, we accept that sometimes we have to suffer to be beautiful.

Compared to all that, donning a simple piece of cloth doesn’t sound like such a hardship. This is not to say there aren’t real inequalities in women’s rights with assets after divorce, or in persecuting rapists, or in receiving equal pay for equal work (ahem). The point is: let’s not be so quick to point fingers because you never know what the world looks like on the other side of the veil.

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Friday, January 15th, 2010

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women unbound – queen bees and wannabes

queenbeesWhat? Two posts in one day? Two Women Unbound posts in one week? What’s going on here? Actually, this post is totally impromptu – I just finished reading a book I happened to come across a reference of, had to read it asap, and was SO ENTHRALLED by it the entire time reading it, I just had to post about it immediately.  And I would say any parent with a daughter over the age of about 7 MUST READ THIS BOOK.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman is a parent’s guide, but it is a perfect candidate for Women Unbound because it is all about empowerment: empowering young girls to navigate the murky, dramatic, and sometimes crippling waters of adolescent life and still learn how to treat herself and others with decency and respect.

I say this book is a must read because, quite honestly, and as the book makes clear, the world of adolescents today is a different beast than even in my day and most certainly in my parent’s generation. Adolescence, as much as we might cringe to acknowledge, is starting at younger and younger ages because kids have all kinds of social and media pressures to act older – which is problematic because they’re still just learning moral guideposts, but they’re faced with more and more situations where they have to figure out for themselves what the right course of action is within the confines of the very rigid and demanding framework of rules of their social world. And nothing has had more of an impact on their world than technology. When we were kids, if rumors were spread about us, it was by word of mouth. Now, when kids spread gossip about each other, it’s across the school and on the internet in seconds. If a girl takes a picture of her breasts with her cell phone and sends it to a boy she likes, hoping it’ll make him like her, there’s little stopping him from sending it to all his friends or for any of them from emailing it to all the other kids in school, who can all then call her a slut as they pass her in hallways. These kids are on Facebook or other social media sites, often with multiple accounts knowing their parents check one, and they’re very susceptible to “trolling” and acting online in ways you never would in person.

And it’s frustrating for parents or others who are trying to be good role models for these kids because it’s an age when the kids are trying to pull away from their parents. They alternate, sometimes without any apparent rhyme or reason, between being insecure and needing your hugs and rolling their eyes at you and treating you like you’re the biggest jerk ever. Ironically, I found it actually comforting that it’s completely normal to have moments where you really just DO NOT LIKE this kid and wonder how your sweet, wonderful daughter turned into this crazy person overnight. And it’s not just your kid…it’s pretty much every kid. Because whether they’re the Queen Bee, the Torn Bystander, or the socially outcast Target, they all have some role to play in their world. They all do something that maintains or challenges the social order and their actions affect their relationships with other kids AND what they learn about intimate relationships that can have repercussions throughout their lives. Even if their daily actions don’t, they will almost inevitably face moments where they will have to make critical decisions. And they bring that baggage home with them and it affects their moods and how they deal with family and others.

We’re all familiar with this because we all lived through this before too. But I think the reason this book is so helpful is because Wiseman (who is an educator who spent over a decade compiling observations and talking to a wide range of girls and boys and having them look over her drafts to ensure accuracy) helps explain things in the framework of the logic of the girl’s world. We, as adults, usually forget how this logic works because we’ve grown up. We see things with an adult perspective and respond in kind. In a certain sense, having an adult perspective means you see some things more clearly than your daughter does – and so you wonder why she puts up with it when others treat her like crap, or when she is the one being bossy or judgmental when you certainly didn’t raise her to be that kind of person. But sometimes our knee-jerk reactions (like when we say “Just ignore it” or “They’re just jealous of you”) don’t make sense in the framework of their logic and so are ineffective strategies.

And what is extra amazing about this book is that at the end of each section, Wisemen takes a moment to have parents reflect on their own experiences as adolescents and whether those experiences are informing how parents are acting as role models. It made me really reflect on some of my more formative experiences. For example, I think one of the biggest experiences happened to me in high school – and I didn’t even really recognize how big of an impact it had on me at the time; only with hindsight do I see its effects. In my junior year, I developed a crush on a friend (we’ll call him Daniel) and I found out he liked me too. But before anything happened between us, I went to Washington, DC for a week (it’s amazing how much can happen in a week when you’re a teenager) through an extracurricular school program, and when I came back I discovered after much drama and a flurry of back-and-forth phone calls that my friend (we’ll call her Alice) had gotten jealous and decided she liked Daniel too. And Daniel liked her back. And Daniel (oh, aren’t boys so sweet?), caught in the middle, came up and told me he liked both of us and wanted to date both of us simultaneously.

…

I was like, “Fuuuuuuuck no.” (Pardon my French.) Actually, I didn’t cuss him out. I just told him that if that was how he felt, he and Alice could just have each other. I was NOT going to be involved in that. I’m glad I stood up for myself and didn’t let him use me that way. But the whole experience did have a very dramatic impact on my ability to trust girl friends after that. And it was a long time before I could really develop female friendships with other girls that were really based on equality, trust, and mutual respect.

So it helps to think through what our own emotional baggage might be, to see how that might color the kind of guidance we give as role models.

And the key, fundamental guidepost behind the strategies Wiseman offers (that have been checked and approved by adolescents themselves as being helpful) is a core commitment to decency and respect – and giving kids the tools they need to act with that commitment in mind in a way that makes sense to them.

Does this meet any of your experiences? For those of you with adolescent daughters, have you had times where you were just at your wits’ end about how to guide her? Have you found her or her friends doing mean things over text message or the internet? Or has she been a target of such meanness? Do you have grade school experiences that have shaped you?

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Thursday, January 7th, 2010

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how can you tell?

weeds-seasonI just read an interesting post on Bitch, PhD about the show, Weeds, and how, at its core, it is about a working mom dealing (perhaps not so perfectly) with the balance of her job and raising children on her own – and how there’s an implicit symmetry about the illicit nature of her work and the illicit joy and guilt working moms might have when they have success at work at the expense of being at home with their kids. The comment stream after the post was interesting too, as several commenters debated whether the racial stereotypes in the show were satirical (and thus highlighting the absurdity of stereotypes) or non-judgmental (and thus implicitly condoning them).

It reminded me of a conversation between my hubby and good friends of ours about the show, Glee.
glee1One side was contending that the stereotypes in Glee were pretty outrageous, and the other was arguing that they were of the satirical sort. The producers were blatantly pushing the stereotypes to make a point about them.

It makes me wonder how audiences can tell whether stereotypes are an unwitting function of the producers’ biases and whether they are meant as satire. If you’ve watched old movies, it’s clear blatancy, consistency, and humorousness of the stereotypes are not particularly helpful measures. So what can we use that doesn’t ultimately boil down to 1) whether or not you like the show (or movie or book or whatever) or 2) how sensitive you are to that particular stereotype? First, I suspect that oftentimes, if you like a show you’ll be willing to defend it (oh, selective perception and cognitive dissonance…can we never escape thee?), and if you don’t really like it, you’ll be more inclined to see it less positively. Secondly, I did a bit of a Google search on the subject fearing that this might be a stupid question and came up with all kinds of responses where people like satire on some subjects but not others. Isaac Hayes, who played Chef on South Park is one such example: he had no problem satirizing any number of religions, but left the show in protest against the show poking fun at his own, Scientology.

We can laugh at the apparent hypocrisy of people, but I think somewhere in there, there is probably a legitimate question of how and when satire is actually really useful (perhaps related to how well it is executed) and when it is just in poor taste – and when you can recognize real biases where they exist.

I wonder, even if the stereotype is satirical, doesn’t that at some point become a one-liner? Stereotypes can be bad. Well, no sh*t. (The mere fact that people complain about whether a show should be watched or not because it employs stereotypes demonstrates that, in our heads at least, we know that stereotypes are to be avoided.) But the question is: why are they bad?* Instead of having a knee-jerk reaction: oh, stereotype! – oh, bad!, how do we recognize problematic biases in ourselves? How do we overcome them – and still maintain a healthy sense of humor about life? I think maintaining a sense of humor about it all is important too, because it’s not helpful if we all have sticks up our asses about it all either. Because, if we’re honest with ourselves about it, stereotypes have become stereotypes because there is a kernel (note I said kernel!) of truth to them. They are humorous to us because they resonate with personal experience. And maybe the real question is whether we are laughing to put someone else down, or whether really we are laughing at all of ourselves: for the human condition, for what we all have to put up with in this crazy thing called life.

I think the only way we can begin to answer these questions starts with breaking down the stereotypes.

But how do we do that? One way is to provide characters that defy stereotypes (or alternatively provide prejudiced characters who end up the fool), thus showing why the act of stereotyping is problematic. Another, I imagine, is to have a stereotypical character who somehow shows how the stereotype is itself problematic. Let’s take, for example, the stereotype that gay men are “pussies”, implying they are easily frightened and unable or unwilling to “man up”. This stereotype completely neglects to consider the real courage that people often must have when coming out of the closet, for example.

Or let’s take the “quiet Asian” stereotype (one, incidentally, my own FIL has subjected me to repeatedly). In that stereotype, at least how I’ve seen it applied, there is the implicit assumption that because one is not talking, one is not thinking. Besides the fact that not talking might actually mean one is listening, weighing, considering, and learning rather than trying to simply prove one’s point, this stereotype runs in complete contradiction against the other usual Asian stereotype: the high performer. (Though perhaps it doesn’t entirely: that stereotype seems to assume that Asian success is due at least as much to over-driven, hard work and perhaps a predisposition towards the hard maths and sciences – brain as calculator images come to mind – as it does to any actual intelligence.)

So, getting back to the shows, I think in both cases the shows intend the stereotypes to be satirical, but the extent to which they are useful and don’t just further stereotypes, I think depends on whether they make attempts to break down the stereotypes one way or another or tell us something useful about how to deal with them. But maybe that is too high a bar, and then it just pushes the shows to become too ‘preachy’?

Or maybe we as a society are dripping so much in irony the satire loses its effect?

Or maybe we as a society just need to get over ourselves? What do you think?

* There are some fascinating books in political science, psychology and in the mainstream (for example, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell) that suggests that the way the human mind works, in seeking out patterns (which arguably is partly responsible for our ability to create stereotypes) can actually be beneficial in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to address this point much here.

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Monday, December 14th, 2009

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addicted

phonesTime for a confession. Do any of the following statements apply to you?

I check my email several times throughout the day.
I have multiple email accounts and check all of them every time I check my email.
I check my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or other social networking sites several times throughout the day.
I check it multiple times an hour if I’ve posted something, to see how others responded.
I’m actually logged into Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter constantly throughout the day.
When I feel my phone buzz with a text message, I can’t NOT look at it, even if I’m doing something else important.
I have very defined rules in my head about text message and voicemail etiquette and get really ticked off if someone violates those rules.
In my spare time (i.e., not time counting work, eating, or sleeping), I often spend more hours in front of a computer than away from it.
I often find cause to check out something online or on my iPhone when I’m out spending time with friends or family.
Even if I want to put the computer away for a while, I keep on coming up with things to check online.
I find it difficult not to talk on the cell phone when I’m driving.

If you said yes to any of the above, you might just be…

…exactly like me. Addicted to technology. And even more specifically, addicted to social media technology. I actually hate talking on the phone, so the phone is less of a problem, but sometimes I do find it difficult to put the computer away. But I honestly don’t even consider myself that bad about it. I still spend a lot of time with friends and family where I don’t so much as even give a thought towards any of the stuff, I read books often, I rarely watch TV (though I do watch movies regularly), and most importantly, I have the ability to turn it all off. I practice yoga, and one of the mantras you learn in yoga is to be present.

BE present.

It seems simple, but it’s often a difficult thing to do these days. Nevertheless, I believe very strongly in it and have tried to cultivate a habit out of it. Too often I thought so much about tomorrow, I forgot to enjoy today. But we never know how many todays we have, so each day, I try to be as mindful about what I’m doing in the present, instead of letting myself become preoccupied with something outside the moment.

But I’m of a generation where these technologies are new-fangled amusements. I might be diverted by them, but I’m not dependent upon them. I was largely resistant to getting a cell phone, and only did so when it became much cheaper to keep in contact with people far away than it was with the regular phone. The question is, what about the next generations? The ones who grow up living and breathing these technologies. It’s becoming a problem in the classroom. It used to be we had to yell at students for letting their phones ring in class. It used to be that if we saw them text messaging, we could give them a stern look, they’d feel guilty and put the god-forsaken things away and refocus their attention in class. Not anymore. They know to keep everything on silent, but that doesn’t stop them from still clinging to their machines. They have no concept that we can even see them fiddling with their phones. When we give them a stern look, they have no shame and don’t seem to realize they need to stop with the texting and put their mind back on the work at hand. They simply can’t NOT text. More and more now, they don’t know how to be present in the moment, nor do they grasp the idea that texting someone while somebody else is talking to you might be considered rude. So not only is their attention diverted away from learning, social etiquette is going out the window too.

The problem of addiction to technological diversions really came home to me when I heard an NPR podcast on the subject of new teenage drivers. These kids have grown up in an age where they always had their gameboys and whatever else to occupy them in the backseat of the car while their parents drove them around town or on longer road trips. They were playing video games and watching movies, not watching lane lines or license plates, or counting how many cars you’ve passed. They grew up being distracted and kept quiet by digital media. They did not grow up with the driving experience. They have no experience of what it is to drive and be focused solely on the task of driving.

California recently passed a law banning cell phone use while driving. At first, pretty much everyone obeyed the law. But less than a year later, it’s becoming common place to see someone pull off a stupid move – and lo, and behold – they’re on the phone. And of all the people I’ve seen do this, almost all of them have been under the age of 25. Nonrandom sample, I know. But there is probably some truth to it. Because while everyone else has grown up with at least some portion of their lives unattached to these doohickeys, these kids haven’t been. And as the speaker in the NPR podcast pointed out, these kids already have high accident rates. The last thing they need is another distraction while they’re hurtling a 2,500-pound hunk of metal at 80 mph down the highway.

Am I making sweeping generalizations here? Yes. Are there a lot of positive benefits to these technologies? Definitely. Can these kids put their phones away if they really wanted to? Probably. But does that mean we should just ignore all this? I think not. I just think it’s important to not only learn how to use them, but also learn how to put them down when it matters.

It’s important to remember to take a moment and just BE. Here. Now.

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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

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you capture – sunrise/sunset

youcapture_sunset1In the era before the birth of Christ, and before the emergence of Islam, the ancient Persians used to believe that all of the world’s existence was engaged in a mighty cosmic battle between good and evil. In this battle, the sun god, Ahura Mazda, a god of truth, goodness and the light who was said to have created all life, fights against Ahriman*, the spirit of darkness, of lies and evil.

youcapture_sunset6The two were destined to wage a war against each other through the millennia, and the earth was to be their battlefield. Ahura Mazda claimed guardianship over a host of angels, while Ahriman led an army of demons.

youcapture_sunset5Though the battle is said to last for centuries upon centuries through the ages, it was believed that in the end, Ahura Mazda would prevail.

youcapture_sunset4But in the meantime, all creatures on earth would participate in this battle, humans included. And each person had to make a choice. Each person must choose between the truth and the lie.

youcapture_sunset2Each day and night represented part of this cosmic battle. In the morning, Ahura Mazda would rise victorious, to fall each night into the hands of Ahriman. But each morning, he would rise again victorious.

Sometimes the time of Ahriman seems long and full of pain and fear.
youcapture_sunset3But sometimes that experience helps us appreciate more deeply each day that the truth, the goodness, and the light rises again.

For more captures of the rising and setting of the sun, see what other You Capture participants have come up with at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

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*Or alternatively called Angra Mainyu (from which our word “anger” derives)
P.S. I hope it’s clear I mean this as a historical metaphor, not as a promotion of religious beliefs, though these beliefs do survive even to this day amongst the Zoroastrians. So I hope it does not offend; it is not meant to.

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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

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Women Unbound – The Red Tent

If you’ve been following my blog lately, you’ll know that I’ve decided to participate in the Women Unbound challenge. This challenge asks us to read both fiction and nonfiction books written by women authors as part of a group enlightenment/discussion surrounding women’s issues. As a participant in this group, I will post my reviews of these books here on Tasting Grace. But I’m not going to do a traditional book review where I give the synopsis and my thoughts, end of story. What I’d like to do is give a hint of what the book is about, but then talk more about what questions the book raised and what it made me think about. So if you’re not a participant of the challenge and/or haven’t read the book (or even if you have!), or even are not particularly chuffed about women’s issues, please stick around! What I’m hoping to do is pose some things to think about and hopefully engender a discussion here and try to get different people’s thoughts and share ideas. And hopefully learn something really fascinating in the process.

redtentThe first book I read was The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It’s a very beautiful book that tells the tale of biblical figures from a woman’s perspective. It tells the tale of Jacob and Leah’s daughter, Dinah, from Dinah’s own perspective and weaves a story of four sisters wed to the same man and raising his children together. It tells of her marriage and “rape” and the carnage and aftermath which ensued. With a wealth of historical detail and deep emotional connection, the book opens a window for modern readers to see what life was like for the silent figures in the Bible: the women. I highly recommend it, and if you like historical fiction and books about the bonds of kin, this book might just be your cup of tea.

There are three things that struck me while I read the book. The first regards ceremony and rites. In the early parts of the book, Diamant delves a lot into what women did together. As they were not members of the public sphere, their lives involved much cooking and child-rearing, yes, but they were also very connected inter-personally and spiritually. Diamant talks at length of the community of sisters who see each other through major transitions in life and celebrate together moments like the moment when a girl sheds blood for the first time and becomes a woman: the time when women learn that blood is the price for giving life. As I read on, I realized that we have comparatively little in the way of ceremony and rites-of-passage. Part of this might be due to the way society has progressed: that with science and learning that fertility festivals do not actually increase fertility and dancing before the cloud gods does not produce rain that we have learned more about how the world works. But I wonder if maybe we haven’t lost something along the way. We have proms and marriage and religious holiday traditions (and what we do have has largely become uber-commercialized and sometimes engenders at least as much stress as joy), but most of us no longer celebrate things like when a girl becomes a woman and a boy becomes a man. Important passages go unmarked and unrecognized and there is little sense that these life transitions are indeed special and worth attention. Mothers show daughters how to use a tampon and they both move on without another thought. There is little of the sacred feminine, little celebration, little sense of community, sisterhood or brotherhood surrounding the different stages of life. Comparatively. Perhaps the biggest coming of age surrounds crossing an arbitrary age barrier delineating the legality of driving and drinking alcohol. Which neither are things that say anything substantial about people’s relationship with the larger community. And I wonder: to the extent that some of these communal celebrations have disappeared, have the binds that tie us as a society weakened?

The second thing that came from this book was a very real sense of what it was like for women to not have any choices in life. When things really mattered, very often, choices are made for them by men. It took real manipulation and chicanery to take control of one’s own fate. And what Diamant illustrates so deftly is that women in this time could not even cry foul at injustices. Not only were they not allowed to, they could not even conceive of the possibility of claiming an act against them had been unjust. It simply was the way things were. It is a difficult thing to wrap our heads around now, when we can look and say, “Why didn’t she complain? Why didn’t she fight against her oppression?” There were socio-cultural blinders preventing these women from even entertaining the possibility of fighting back. It’s easy for us to judge in hind-sight, to see outside the social frame of the time with the benefit of a different perspective. But it does raise the question: what are we blind to? Are there things that we don’t even see because it never occurred to us to question them?

And finally, there is a moment between Dinah and a dear friend of hers who says, “Dear one…I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength.” I am so honored to be the vessel. Herein lies what I believe to be one of woman’s most incredible strengths. We have the strength to endure, to survive, to sacrifice, not only for ourselves, but also for others. When we falter, our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends become the vessel when there is too much to bear. (I don’t mean to say men don’t do this too; men can be incredibly caring, strong, and supportive.) But can we recognize in our sisters fellow vessels of the world’s burdens? Can we, even where there are betrayals between sisters, forgive and live with an undivided heart?

If anyone has thoughts on any of this, I would love to receive them. I would love to have a discussion and hear what others think. I hope you all find this fascinating too.

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Friday, November 13th, 2009

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