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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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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rabbits, tears, vampires & werewolves

I had a whirlwind of a weekend and it seems there’s so much I want to tell you about it all, but they’re little disparate thoughts that I can’t quite wrap my head around, so we’re going a little stream-of-consciousness today and hopefully some order will emerge from the madness by the end of it.

On Friday, my husband and I went to see this play performed at UCSB:
Rabbit-F09The Rabbit Hole was an amazing production. We were a bit leery before seeing it because we had heard that it wasn’t very good. By intermission, we were sure we had been had. It was funny, it was raw, it was real, and in many ways, very touching. The story was about a husband and wife suffering with the loss of their little boy who had been killed in a tragic accident. The boy had been playing with the dog, when suddenly the dog ran out into the street, the boy chased after the dog and got hit by a car driven by a young high school-age boy. The play deals with the aftermath of their grief: how the husband and wife lose touch with each other, the feelings of guilt of all the things they could have, should have done, the feelings of blame that they try to tamp down because it was an accident and no one is to blame, feelings of jealousy seeing the irresponsible sister get pregnant when the bereaved one was clearly the better (i.e. more deserving) mother, and the struggle of negotiating a way between holding on and letting go. Holding on to their son’s memory and their grief, and letting go of him and moving on with their lives.

Also, the set design was absolutely brilliant. It was set up in an arrangement I understand is called something like “tennis court seating”, where the set is constructed in the middle of the room and there is audience seating on two opposite sides. So as the play went on, I could see the faces of the other audience members reacting to what was happening in the play. Somehow it made the whole thing more intimate as the lines between stage and audience blurred and audience became part of the stage.

What I loved most about this production actually comes from a line of insight written in the program. The playwright explained in his bio that a teacher of his had told him that to write a good play, one must write about something they fear. He said he didn’t understand this immediately, and it was only after his son was born that he finally really got it: his worst fear was the loss of a son. And I love that he didn’t just make a play about being scared to lose a child, what he did was play that fear out. What would happen if one lost a child? What are the consequences and repercussions of that loss? What does that fear really consist of? So his play did not deal so much with the act of losing a child as it did with all the subsidiary feelings and relationship dynamics that occur as a result of that loss.

It makes me see my own work in a new light, and gives me ideas for some direction to take in the future.

On Saturday, we attended another performance that dealt with a particular kind of loss: this time, it was suicide. NECTAR performance company produced a collection of dance, spoken word, video, and music all centered around alchemy: turning lead into gold, taking pain and making it something positive, powerful and uplifting. Proceeds went to benefit families who have been affected by suicide. It ended with a moment of silence, where people collected together and spoke softly the names of people this performance had stirred up for them. It was an intense moment, and tears were shed. I found myself remarking on my weekend being steeped in death: both accidental and intentional. It made for a heady weekend.

I could probably say something weighty here about how we foist off death, doing so many things to stave it off and pretend it doesn’t exist, instead of recognizing it as part of life, or about how sometimes we go through life so unthinkingly, on autopilot, and how we might look and wonder what about our lives is so very different from death. But instead, I’m just ending with an observation that something I was told I wouldn’t like was something I found profoundly moving and important, while something by all means I was supposed to enjoy, I found less satisfying.

Sunday ended with a trip to see New Moon, which really…I have to say was crap. I was entertained, but it was crap. It sort of dragged, but thankfully being only 130 minutes long, did not drag as long as the books did. There were moments when I cried, but only because I have been in a dark place like that before. There were moments when I laughed, but it was mostly due to the cheese, like when Robert Pattinson ran Baywatch-style, through the woods. The part I found most entertaining, honestly, was the audience, who sighed, and swooned and gasped every time some dark, muscled man ripped off his shirt. Ladies, I’m sorry, but y’all need ta get laid. And after spending two hours looking at dark, muscled men, it is a bit of an unpleasant shock to go back to thin, pasty white vampire. Makes the whole Team Edward thing a little difficult. I would say I’d be Team Edward, but given the choice between snuggling up to a warm man versus a cold one…I’d probably chose the furnace. There are some parts of my body that just would not abide a cold one. I’m just sayin’. Shrivel, dry up and wince are words that come to mind. I did read all the books and found them addictive, but mostly because I just HAD to know how it ended. Everything in the middle was just one long drag of puff. I know how it ends, so I’m not clinging to the movies, desperate to find out anything (and really, how she resolves the whole love triangle thing is just weird). So the next two…it’s all about the Netflix. The first movie (which shock of all shocks as I’ve never said this before about any movie-book translation) was better than the book and shall remain my favorite purely for entertainment purposes.

Grand takeaway from all this? Man, I’m pooped.

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Monday, November 23rd, 2009

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addressed to anonymous

sidewalksceneHave you ever left things unsaid? Is there anything you wish you could say, but haven’t, or someone you wish you could talk to, but can’t? What if you had the chance to change that?

There is a new blog called “Addressed to Anonymous” that tries to deal with this very thing. As the blog author explains:
“Yesterday I had a lot of emotions I wanted to purge. I wrote them and sealed them in a letter, but had no where to send it to. So I got to thinking…what if there was somewhere to send that letter anonymously. Some place to put it out into the universe and maybe even to get response (not from the intended recipient, but from someone who could relate or just wanted to provide comfort and wisdom). Out of this I started a new idea/blog/community share site. Addressed to Anonymous. What do you have to say that you can’t or just haven’t? Who would you write a letter to if it could be anonymous? Don’t tell me on here…start writing the letter.”

Do you have something to purge? If so, maybe it would help to send an anonymous letter out into the ether. You never know. Even the process of writing the letter alone can be profoundly cathartic.

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Monday, November 16th, 2009

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trip to the zoo – a photo essay

Animals don’t speak our language…or perhaps I should say we don’t speak theirs. Yet somehow they still communicate so much, through a look, through body language, through posture, even in their silence.
baldeagle
bluegoldmacaws

cock-or-two

eagle-and-prey

gator

lizard

otter

otter_standing

sad-elephant

sadmonkey

scarlet-macaw

snuggling-otters

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Monday, November 16th, 2009

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reclaiming our….

If you take a little gander over at my right hand column here, you’ll notice I’m reading a book titled with that one little c-word. I’ve been wanting to write about it, about the things it makes me think about and wonder, though I’m having a little difficulty pinpointing exactly what I want to say. Mostly because 1) I don’t want to come across as some kind of crazy femi-Nazi when I cry out for women’s rights, and 2) I think this book is SO important, something EVERY. WOMAN. IN. AMERICA. needs to read. And I don’t wanna mess it up when I talk about it. So because it is so important, I am going to talk about it, and I apologize ahead of time for the rambling.

So the reason it’s called…what it’s called… is because it didn’t use to be a bad word. It used to, in ancient times, just mean woman. But because, in the way of history, what is associated with women often carries negative connotations, so the word acquired negative meaning. And so on, through the ages. Inga Muscio, the author of this book, says we need to reclaim this word, reclaim it in a positive sense, in a way reclaiming ourselves: our womanhood and our femininity. (Because vagina, apparently, means “a sheath for a sword”, and we ain’t nobody’s sheaths, thankyouverymuch.)

“There will remain much sadness in the world until people are willing to rise to the task of facing the world’s pain in the bathroom mirror.” She talks a bit about how we hold ourselves to unrealistic beauty ideals (how cliche that sounds, but I promise, you feel the truth of it deep down, emotionally, when she talks about it), often basing almost our entire self-worth on how we think others think we look. (I would say men, but in all honesty, I think women dress up to make other women think we look good, mostly to compete with other women.) And we hate ourselves when we think our thighs are too chubby, our tummies and arms are too flabby, our knees are too knobbly, our noses are too big, our lips are too small, or whatever whatever, because it’s all a bunch of crap. And we hate it so much, we mutilate ourselves with knives and needles and chemicals and machines, trying to meet these ideals. And we hate ourselves when we look in the mirror. While we live in a patriarchal society, I’m not sure there’s much use in blaming men so much as just realizing how we engage in our own persecution and oppression. Yes, we engage in our own persecution and oppression. And we hate on other women who don’t meet our standards of professionalism, creativity, beauty, ideas on breastfeeding, child-rearing, etc. instead of supporting each other and realizing we each just do the best we can. Why do we hate on other women so much? I dunno. I mean, yeah, we’re great with our friends (most of the time). But other women? We can be so catty with each other, can’t we? This is why the problem of achieving equality is so damn hard: because the inequalities are so subtle, so hidden, so insidious, and because we can’t get rid of the self-hate.

This is also the part where I part ways with corporate feminism. I don’t think we prove our power or achieve equality when we act like men, when we play cut-throat in the professional world and pooh-pooh the “mommy track”. I think we gain power and equality when we demonstrate how vital and important a feminine perspective is: when we run offices like collaboratives rather than hierarchies, for example. When we celebrate people in all endeavors and place value in all creative/academic/professional pursuits because each person has an important role to play and service to perform: the homeschooling mother, the baker, the florist, the accountant. When we say what happens in the home is every bit as important as what happens in the office, in the classroom, or on Capitol Hill.

Muscio also touches on rape, and how because of the way our bodies are built, we are subject to violations that some persons can do in the space of a coffee break, but that have ramifications that last a lifetime, or lifetimes, into the next generation. The statistics on rape are appalling, especially when you look at the numbers perpetrated on young children, and that is only counting the ones that are reported. “If you haven’t been directly targeted, someone in your family most certainly has. And if it has affected your family, it has affected you too, possibly in deeply personal ways, in phobias or neurosis, in anxiety or self-esteem issues. No one is exempt.” If you think you haven’t been affected, remember: silence is the perpetrator’s best ally, and “denial is one of the most common responses to heinous abuse”. Muscio is not far off the mark in saying we exist in a rape culture, when those of us who have not been raped feel lucky for having escaped it thus far, when the persecutions of rapists are so meager, and when so many movies in Hollywood glorify it, portraying it in a way that is sexy rather than offensive. (FYI: for those who have suffered from sexual assaults, or those who would prefer to avoid movies with violent sexual scenes, there is a website Movies That Trigger where someone has compiled a list of movies containing such scenes so you can be properly forewarned and avoid movies that may trigger panic attacks or depression.) For this reason alone, we should learn how to protect ourselves properly and develop strong systems of support – because any woman who has experienced sex that wasn’t entirely on the up and up can probably have an inkling of how deeply traumatic those violations can be. Even I, who abhor guns, am gearing up my guts to learn to shoot. I dislike them so thoroughly I will absolutely never own a gun, or keep one in the house (especially when I have kids), but one never knows when one might be presented with a situation in which one has to use a gun. So it’s best to know how to do it safely and properly.

So I don’t agree with every thing she says, but it is a good feeling to be shaken up sometimes. To be metaphorically slapped in the face and forced to think differently about something, even if it’s just for a while. Even if you don’t change your mind. To have someone lovingly tell you, “Wake the f— up.” Because it is gratifying to wake up, even if it is to disagree – if you honestly consider her point and really, really figure out why you disagree – and even more so when you are shaken out of your rut long enough to be reminded to love yourself. That you deserve to be loved, and most of all, that the love has to start with you, when you look in the bathroom mirror.

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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

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you capture – red

The color red encompasses so many things:

from lust, passion, excitement, and love – oh, above all else, love -
youcapture_redpassion

to caution, rage and anger, and anger’s patron: fear. The red haze of fear.
youcapture_redstop

Isn’t it interesting how red encapsulates such disparate concepts as love and fear?
But perhaps the true irony is how often love and fear go hand in hand.

To love someone means to protect them: to defend them from harm…but also to prevent ourselves from losing them.

And isn’t it strange the things we do when we are afraid?

We fear difference because we fear the possibility we might be wrong. So ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ becomes ever more difficult as the perceived differences and distances between neighbors increase.

When we fear infidelity, what do we do? We invade privacy; we curtail liberty. We read through emails, sneak into cell phone data, we snoop and we spy. We do this to our loved ones at home as well as to our fellow Americans and fellow citizens of the world.

When we fear our significant other is about to leave us, what do we do? We leave them first. When we fear being hurt, we push others away. We shut them out and wall ourselves off. We cause our own loneliness and isolation to prevent someone else from committing the act of leaving us alone.

We withdraw our love to preempt the possibility that we might be unloved.

Sometimes we even tell ourselves we do not deserve love, so it might not hurt so much if we are ever proved right.

Fear is strong, it is compelling, whether it is fear for the sanctity of our bodies or of our hearts.

So the challenge, then, is how to love, even in the face of fear. The challenge is to shed the walls of anger and distrust and to find the courage to take a leap of faith and give out love, even when we are afraid.

To see what others have captured in red, head over to Beth’s website, I Should Be Folding Laundry, and check out this week’s You Capture challenge.
P.S. Did anybody else get Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” stuck in their head with this challenge? “She dreams in color, she dreams in red…can’t find a better man. Can’t find a better man….” Sorry. I’ll stop now.
Photobucket

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Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

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MaeKhun.

The yogini walked around the class dabbing essential oils in our palms; some mixture of roses, citrus, and yleng yleng. As I rubbed the oils between my hands and brought the scent to my face, I was hit, forcibly, with the scent of my grandmother. She died two years ago, and still her scent has the power to undo me. Overcome, I lay there, crying in shavasana.

My grandmother was the salt of the earth. Raised on a farm in Supunburi, Thailand, she knew what it was to till the soil and set ancient roots. She gave birth to five girls, and when her husband met an untimely passing, she raised them on her own. She was solid, heavy-boned. Her skin looked like worn, browned leather, but felt like soft butter cream. Barely 4′11″, she was compact in size, but dynamite can come in small packages. She didn’t talk much, but she never hesitated to tell it like it is.

She used to tell my father, who had quite inappropriately never paid a dowry when he married my mother, that proper Thai women will massage a man’s feet when he comes home from work. My dad would eye my mother and say, “I don’t get any of that.” My grandmother would retort, “You get what you pay for.”

Because we lived on two different continents for most of my life, I never spent much time with my grandmother, and most of the time we did have together, I was fairly young – around 7 or 8. She spoke only Thai, and at the time I spoke only English, so most communication revolved around sleeping, eating, and making funny noises at each other until we both heaved with laughter. With such little verbal communication between us, I don’t suppose I can say I knew her in the way most people know others. But somehow I don’t feel that I needed to. Because sometimes, when it comes to family, words are superfluous. I feel in her my blood, and in my bones, and it is there that I know her.

My Asian grandmother was like a solitary storm cloud hovering on the south east horizon. She was silent and steady, heavy with the volition of ancestral spirits. Though diminuitive in size, her presence was larger than life. She was hardened, tough, and weathered by the processes of time. But there was a depth to her; a depth so profound that one couldn’t help but always keep her in the corner of one’s eye, even when she was far away. She was the matriach. It was foolish to make a move without first considering her. All of life moved below her, under her watchful eye. When she passed, it was like the heavy storm cloud dissipating into the light. Though she is gone, the memory of her is an indelible imprint; like a footstep pressed into sand.

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Friday, August 7th, 2009

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Happy for No Reason

Yesterday, while running errands, I tuned into a segment on NPR where Marci Shimoff, author of Happy for No Reason, was giving an interview based on her research into happiness. I only caught a brief snippet of the interview, but what stood out to me was that she said everybody has a happiness quotient. This is the baseline ratio or number of how happy a person is, regardless of circumstance. You could win the lottery and within a year, you’d return to this baseline number.

This happiness quotient is about 50% genetic, but the rest of it is largely up to individual choice: how one chooses to view the world and respond to it. True happiness has nothing to do with what happens to you, what things you have in your life or what things you don’t have. That happiness is superficial and fleeting. True happiness comes from what you give out. So for example, one of the things she said is that being loved is not a cause for true happiness. But giving out love, in gratitude, forgiveness, doing for others, caring for others…that’s what brings true happiness. She quoted a Chinese proverb:

“If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”

It seemed from what I caught in the interview that much of what she said was based on scientific research, though when I went to her website, it seemed very commercialized, with very little mention of data or credentials. So that makes me a little skeptical. But what she says has a lot of face validity to me – it sounds logical and true on it’s face. It certainly reflects my own particular perspective and experience in the world.

What really struck me was the notion that people have a baseline happiness quotient regardless of circumstance-and that that happiness level has an affect on the people around you. I have known people whose mere presence in a room can either brighten it, or suck all the energy out of it.

There is a very remarkable difference between happy people who fall on hard times, and truly sad or angry people. Even if the hard times are lasting for happy people, and they turn to others for support, it is never an encumbrance to help them and be there for them. But people who are naturally more negative can be intensely draining to be around, even when they are in a decent mood. With them, there is always a problem, always a drama, and in my experience, they always find passive aggressive ways to let you know they’re upset. And while I have been known to be passive aggressive when I was younger, once I got old enough to really see what I was doing, I worked hard to recognize and change that about myself because I can’t stand passive aggressiveness. It’s weak and ultimately harmful because: 1) it makes solving the problem infinitely more difficult because you’re never dealing with the real issue, only smoke and mirrors and symptoms of the issue, 2) the passive-aggressor is only punishing everybody else for the unhappiness they feel, instead of ponying up to their own responsibility, and 3) the passive-aggressor gets to pretend they’re the victim, they’re misunderstood or unappreciated. They’re so good at pretending this, they can’t see past their own bullshit. They martyr themselves for others and resent it all the while.

But I digress. You can see this is a pet peeve of mine.

I don’t know if Shimoff’s argument is appealing because it contains both an ability to blame unhappiness on something over which we have no control, and an element where we can tell ourselves we can change how we feel-that we do have choice and control. We can tell ourselves, “I’m not to blame, but I have the freedom to change if I want.” It’s the epitome of American dogma, isn’t it? I have long believed that happiness comes from how you choose to respond to the hand life deals you, but maybe we are predisposed-whether through nature or nurture-to be more optimistic or pessimistic. But I do know, of the unhappy people I’ve known, some could benefit from a healthy dose of gratitude for what others do for them and the others could do with a little bit of forgiveness.

But then, perhaps, they don’t want to be happy. This is something else I have observed: some people are actually genuinely and perfectly content to wallow in a cocoon of self-pity.

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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

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The Language of Love and Grief


Several years ago, I heard a theory that people give love in different ways and it is important to learn to speak each other’s language of love so that your loved ones perceive and appreciate your tokens of affection and so that you can see when others are giving love in return. It is when we misinterpret or don’t even see each other’s efforts that feelings of hurt and under-appreciation arise.

According to this theory, there are five languages of love: quality time, words of appreciation, expensive gifts, acts of service, and physical intimacy. We all engage in all or most of these actions to greater or lesser extent, but we usually tend towards one or two predominant ones. We give love and expect love back in those terms (or at least recognize it most easily). Quality time people relish most the time spent in their loved one’s company. The act of being together, even if not really doing anything, often is more meaningful than the finest diamonds in the world. Words of appreciation people love to lavish praise and verbal affection, and it is warm words that mean the most to them. Meanwhile, for others, words are not as important as other gifts. For some, love is measured in extravagance. These people love to spoil and pamper, and the cost of the gift is proportional to the act of love. For others, love is measured in gifts of devotion. Cooking special dinners, helping with various and sundry tasks, and otherwise doing for others becomes a demonstration of love and affection. And finally, physical intimacy and the need and desire to embrace, hold hands, or just be in touch with someone (literally) becomes a manner of expressing love and affection.

I would say my language of love is primarily acts of service, with quality time and physical intimacy as secondary traits. I do engage in the other two, but to a much lesser extent. My husband, however, I would say is primarily and “expensive gifts” person, with quality time and physical intimacy as secondary traits. I used to expect more acts of service from him, and felt slighted and undervalued when I didn’t always receive them. It wasn’t until I began to see all the little and big tokens of affection – anywhere from buying groceries, to taking me to dinner, to the fabulous, expensive coats – as all the ways he shows me he loves me that I could truly see and appreciate his devotion on the level it deserved recognition. But with quality time and physical intimacy as both our secondary traits, we speak easily in those domains.

However, I think what might be true of love, might also be true of stress and grief. I’ve been listening to various family dramas lately and it occurs to me that people deal with grief differently too, and if we don’t understand and respect each other’s way of dealing with grief, increased conflict and hurt feelings could result.

From what I have seen in my limited experience, I think there might be four languages of grief: sympathizers, bottlers, imploders and exploders. Sympathizers (of whom I would be one) reach out to others for empathy in their grief. They love to console and be consoled, and this constitutes a major part of the grieving process for them, as well as a way to bond with others. They see empathy in times of need as another way to deepen a relationship. Bottlers, on the other hand, shut people out. They may even act passive-aggressively in dealing with their grief, but they keep it close to their chest and much prefer to deal with grief and anger on their own terms. Imploders are similar to bottlers in their sense that they are better left to themselves when upset. They grumble in anger, they may even be spectacularly violent in their fury and perhaps destroy a few inanimate objects, but if left to their own devices, their pain is usually short-lived. Finally, exploders are those who deal with anger and grief outwardly. In more positive ways, they may insist upon dealing with problems and hashing out concerns with the targets of their frustration, working at a problem until it is resolved. In more negative manifestations, they may engage in accusations, argumentation and blame.

I think these categories may even fall along two dimensions: intimacy and time to deal, where intimacy refers to how inwardly or outwardly grief manifests itself in relation to other people. Time to deal refers to how long it takes to manage and resolve the grief.

While I’m a sympathizer, I would say my husband is an imploder. But I quickly learned to give him space and he learned that a warm embrace and a few sweet words go a long way towards me finding me inner peace again. Thankfully in doing so, both of us help each other deal with grief more efficiently so the bad times don’t last any longer than they have to.

But this is just a theory based on my own personal observations. I would be very interested to know if this theory holds true in other lives. Also, being a sympathizer and married to an imploder, I feel I might understand these perspectives a little more clearly – and may have given short shrift to the other two personality types. If anyone feels they can elucidate those two perspectives better, I would be most willing to amend my little theory here. It’s a work in progress. Please pardon my dust.

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Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

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