My Day of Rest

Instead of my usual Sunday rant, I am going to be grateful today.

I feel like I have been chewed up and spit out after over 2500 hits in two days because I posted about something (again) that I believe in as an American and supporter of our president and the diversity in our country.

I had a lot of people try to shut me up this week. Got threats against my person, my [insert family member], my cat.

Come on, how fucking childish do you have to be to wish that someone's cat dies?

So here's what I am grateful for:

Tom: he has been unbelievably supportive. He wanted me to close shop after the attacks this week. He hated seeing me all worked up over people who were mean, violent, threatening and really just downright hateful.

He took me out on Friday for an awesome night. We had a great dinner at a local Korean place. Incredible.

Family: for those of you who know me, I have a great mom. She has been there with me through thick and thin. The best and worst times of my life. Not to say the rest of my large family isn't awesome, too, but she has really shown me what it means to be a good mother as well as a good person.

Friends: I have been honored to know so many people in my life that I call "friend". I am also immensely grateful for those whom I've met in the three months since I started blogging. You have given me a very tangible web of support here online that makes me a stronger and better person for knowing you. Thanks. I really can't say it often enough.

Our cat: she's alive and well and acting like a ten year old cat (instead of the 16 year old cat she is). She's gained weight, and the latest flare up of her CRF is stabilized. We still get a little more time with our little catter. We love her.

Health: I have to pause and remember how good my current health is, especially this time of year each year. I am a cancer survivor and was diagnosed 12 years ago next month. Still kickin' and still tickin' in complete remission.

Endurance: I am on the cusp of attaining a goal I set for myself eight years ago. I am about two months from my Ph.D. and cannot believe for the first time in those eight years... I'm not going to be a student anymore! I will always be a student in a certain sense, but the official schooling is coming to a great close.

Hope: Yeah, this one's a tough one. Because when I see the way the world it is, and how people choose to treat each other, this is a hard one. I hate my hope and fear the loss of it at the same time. But it has never left me, despite my many efforts to shake it off. It is a constant presence in my life whether it is just a whisper or a shout. It is always there. Telling me that change and time are gifts not to be squandered.

We only get this moment. Right now. And right now I am grateful for all of you.

Happy Sunday, all.

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We are One America

The upcoming inauguration has me thinking a lot about the dreams of happiness we have for our own lives and the efforts we make along the way to realizing those dreams.

I also have been thinking about the manner in which we treat others to get where we want to go.

Are our actions guided by love and hope or are they guided by a sense of fear and resented obligation?

I think it has to do with the nagging sense that we, as humans, are about to witness some major changes in our world as we know it. We are living in a moment of history and have means to record our place in that history as a country in ways never possible before.

I can only write about the wonder and awe I feel when I see our new President--a man who inspires people he doesn't even know to want to be better people. Inspires them to be part of their neighborhoods and communities because that's how we are supposed to be.

This is not hero worship as some in the burgeoning wingnutteries would like to believe. Those who cannot see the goodness in Obama are choosing to be blind. Are shirking any responsibility to join together with the rest of America in fixing our limping country. There's a lot of haters out there. And their speeches or rants usually start with blame or an excuse. It's never about taking personal responsibility.

As a (sometimes) reluctant optimist, I often am disappointed by what I see when I take a look out into the world. I see people hating and hurting each other over fear. Fear that comes from ignorance. Fear that comes from self-loathing. Fear that comes from not wanting to change or to be kind because that might somehow take something away from them. Fear that their "deciders" are no longer there to make their decisions for them. Fear that comes from a sense of powerlessness.

I see people trying to put others into neat boxes to keep their sense of order:

• Democrat/Republican
• Liberal/Conservative
• Us/Them
  
• American/Un-American
• Smart/Stupid
• Pro-intellectual/Anti-Intellectual
• Capitalist/Socialist
• Friend/Foe
• Pro-Choice/Pro-Life
• Pro Gun/Pro Gun-Regulation
• Religious/Athiest
• Christian/Non-Christian
• Blue State/Red State
  

Those dichotomies never get us very far. One needs look only to history to see the danger of such binaries and the atrocities committed in the desire to make one side the "right" side.

The more I think on it, the more I realize: there's only one way we will get our collective asses through the reconstruction of America.

Together.

Perhaps instead of focusing on the things that divide us, the things that make us individuals, we should focus instead on the things we ALL share.

We need to reconceive the collective American Dream.

Here's some of my thoughts (and I welcome any responses regardless of agreement or disagreement).

The American Dream is about living life:

• With a sense of purpose
• Free from the fear of oppression
• With the sense of responsibility to your fellow human beings.
• As an example to others of tolerance, kindness, and charity.

The American Dream is about everyone--not just a select few.

I start this inauguration week with a confession and a pledge.

I admit, I was not as vocal or as participatory in my government as I should have been between 2001-2007. In some real sense, the attacks on our country fueled my fear that life was way beyond my control. That I was just one person in a sea of billions who had no power to change anything. So my sense of responsibility atrophied. I focused solely on my own personal dreams.

I lost hope in the bigger picture. I thought that every person was out only for him/herself.

I could never quite fit into that mold, no matter how hard I tried.

I noticed that kindness and compassion were things that were ridiculed. In the class I teach, students have confessed they see kindness as a sign of weakness. To be polite is to be beneath.

Huh?

I hear this type of idea thrown out by the voices of dissent. "Bleeding heart" is spat an insult.

I care about you; each and every one. And that doesn't make me weak, or stupid, or liberal.

It makes me human. Just like you.

And I pledge starting this moment, to live up to the potential that Obama sees in me, in all of us.

It's not about just him. He's one person. But so am I. So are you. And together, we are one America.

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You live long enough, you might meet yourself. . .

So I'm going to share something pretty personal today (no, it's not my full name [you can call me Jess], or home address, or phone number), because I have a strange feeling in my heart. Also, covering that is an immense sense of gratitude.

I've had some pretty dark days in my life-- we all have. But I want to share a tale of one of mine (it has a happy ending, I promise). A lot of it stems from the fact that I have a notion of how peaceful the world should be and how people should treat each other with respect and love. Needless to say some of the time reality does not meet my expectations.

I remember a particularly rough spot when I had cancer and was about mid-way through my six months of treatment. Cancer patients HATE it when you tell them how "brave" they are. If I had a choice at the time, I would have opted out. But that experience did give me two very important gifts.

First, there are not many who can say "I know that my life meant something to others". When I was sick, I heard from old teachers, former principals, long-lost friends, extended family members, even total strangers--friends of friends or people who saw my name on a prayer list at my mom's church. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't have a card or a message on my answering machine from someone letting me know they were praying for me, that they loved me, or that they just wished me well.

Second, on one particularly rough Saturday (my treatments were on Fridays for five hours and then Saturdays were spent in whatever horrible way you wish to imagine), I got to feeling pretty sorry for myself. "Why me"? I cried to my mom (who was there at my bedside 90% of the time). She could only hold my hand and watch me cry.

After she went to bed I remember staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking, "I cannot do this, please let me die".

Now I'm not going to say I heard a voice, because I didn't; but I did have a thought. I "spoke" to my future self and asked: "Please, Jess of the future, help me to get where you are now". It gave me a sense of relief and hope I cannot explain.

Fast forward to about six months ago when I was driving to Indy to visit a dear friend. I had some quiet music on, music that I listen to during the times when I feel blue.

I was thinking about that night when I asked "whatever" to let me die. It occurred to me that I, the Jess driving the car, I was the Jess I had reached out to.

You cannot imagine how powerful a thing it is even still to think that I comforted myself that night in the dark. But, think about this as a possibility for any life-- reach out to your best, possible future self (Einstein's theory that every possible outcome that can happen, does, whether in the universe we experience, or in parallel ones).

That future self is waiting there, calling back to you now, urging you forward in your life to a time when you do meet yourself even if for a moment. All it takes is to listen and trust yourself that you will get wherever it is you need to go.

Today my message is: try to have an attitude of gratitude.

Thanks to all who visit here. May you have the best possible Monday.

Adieu, with a bit of a giggle:

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Post Bush 43: Day IV

There's an old saying: Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Well, in my humble estimation, I think our country feels bitten by our government to which we have fed millions of dollars while it destroyed our standing in the world and in the eyes of over half its citizenry.

It takes seeing what a mess everything is to understand (with cold certitude) that just about everything in our domestic arena has been ignored over the last eight years. Ours has become a administration focused on one thing: oil and the dollars it moves abroad. Of course, that's way over simplified. Oil has become the root of all our evils: high food prices, joblessness due to outsourcing, increased terrorism in the world, lack of funds for domestic programs, the outrageous deficit that neither I nor my children will likely ever see paid in full, oh, and yeah, the hundreds of thousands of lives our occupation of Iraq has caused Americans, Iraqis, and coalition forces. Not even to mention the flood of veterans who are coming home only half way, physically and emotionally.

Our President (elect-- although most of his policy suggestions over the last 22 months have been adopted by our current administration) and our country have a lot of work to do. What seems great to me (yes, there is a bright side coming) is that there are more folks than not who seem ready for that work.

I've recently been reading about assaults on Obama supporters by McCain supporters. One woman wrote she was assaulted by her neighbor for asking for her Obama yard sign back (which was displayed upside down in her neighbor's yard). She's got the bruises to prove his reaction. Yes, you read that right: neighbor against neighbor.

Instead of asking the same question I've been asking myself for the last eight years (wtf is wrong with people?), I'm turning over a new leaf in this dawning post Bush 43 Era. What's right with people?

People all want the same things.

We want to feel safe knowing that our government is considering its citizens in its global actions.

We want a government that doesn't lie to us (see WMD argument and the cascade of goose-stepping that resulted) or talk to us like we have the reading skills of a 5th grader. (Apologies to anyone with the literacy skills of a 5th grader reading this, or any actual 5th graders, while I'm at it :)

We want to breathe clean air, to know that the water we drink is safe, the food we eat won't make us sick.

We want to live in a country that we can ALL be proud of.

I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I sick of being afraid. I sick of being scared about what might happen. I'm sick of all of the intolerance the last 22 months has brought out in our country.

It's day four. Wonder what kind of pooch the White House is going to have running around in it? Hopefully it won't be a biter like Barney.

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