Ultimatums Are Not For Winners

I recently watched the movie Thirteen Days, about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it (among other recent events in my life) gave me reason to think about ultimatums. In this case, the USA gave Russia an ultimatum: remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba...or else. After much stress and feather-fluffing and bluff-calling, the Soviets did what they were told to do. You might say the USA won the battle because a nuclear war was avoided. But there were costs and losses too. Russia and Cuba were deeply shaken and temperamental egos were riled up. Khrushchev was ousted. Cuba, because of the American promise to never invade, would remain Communist for decades, maybe forever. Allies, including Turkey, felt alienated. Within our own country, the strength of the Democratic party was shaken,and some believe this crisis paved the way for a defeat in Vietnam.

Ultimatums are demands, for one party to get what it wants and usually for the other party to have to give up something it wants or values. They are high-pressure strategies that look for tangible results, and usually are used as the last possible, final, uncompromising requirement with an implied threat of a very serious penalty. They are often used when one party is stronger than the other, though not always. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, which some say actually triggered WWI, was shocking to many because the ultimatum revealed Austria's self-perception of being greater than Serbia. Ultimatums are used widely in politics, often as a threat for one result but that actually creates unintended results too, such as widening existing rifts or alienating countries who aren't even involved directly.

Ultimatums are also used in business; in fact one consultant specializing in sales force management suggests that they are appropriate to achieve desired results, but only if the recipient of the ultimatum is adequately supported to achieve success, and if both parties to the ultimatum are committed to the same end result. But here's the rub: he also suggests that ultimatums are embraced by Type A managers who thrive on pressure, challenge, and urgency and are used to determine whether type B's can become type A's...and also to get type C's to leave the company. Obviously a manager has the right to tell a subordinate how to do his/her job, and obviously a failure to perform is grounds for termination. But it seems to me there is a fine line between natural performance measurements and results and ultimatums. Besides, not everyone is, or can be, or should be a Type A. A manager issuing an ultimatum, like the USA did to Russia, might think he has "won" when an ultimatum results in an employees' departure. And maybe he has. But there is also a cost: it could be employee morale, it could be a decline in productivity for a temporary period, or it could be signficant family or financial hardship for the person on the other side, who was forced to leave.

And then we come to relationships. Take a look at the self-help books or peruse the Internet. Ultimatums are used all too frequently in this arena, too. Relationships should be founded on equal footing between two adults, like two countries, except perhaps in the parent-child situation, which is similar to the manager-employee structure. Either way, ultimatums in relationships - as in government or business - serve as a means to establish control (the opposite of freedom). This might make sense in business or government, but this is not an ingredient for healthy interpersonal relationships. Ultimatums set boundaries, which are useful, but they do it in a manipulative way, thereby destroying the climate of love and cooperation that should exist between individuals. In fact, one psychologist describes them as tactical nukes.

So whether we're talking countries or individuals, ultimatums are nuclear. They might start with good intention, but they are a powerful form of assault. They may be non-physical, but they are still assaults.

I'm reading The Help right now, by Kathryn Stockett. It's set in the 1960's when civil rights movements were strenghtening. Blacks and whites alike were given ultimatums to change their behaviors, or else... And we all know there were huge losses and costs that stemmed from those ultimatums. It was a complicated time, and I can't say unilaterally that we all would have been better off without any of those ultimatums, because I can't say I've done enough extensive research to make that claim. But I am quite sure that some lives would have been saved, and some families much happier, and some relationships would have been free to evolve naturally, if people had been able to work together to address their concerns and their needs and their desires, without threats of control or violence.

And that's really what our time on this planet is all about, according to our country's forefathers. And according to me. Life. Happiness. Freedom.

So let's avoid those nuclear ultimatums and figure out how to cooperate with one another, shall we?

When Believing is Seeing

Annie Dillard wrote an essay called "Seeing" in which she talks about how difficult it is to see the things right before us. She describes a time she couldn't see the hundreds of blackbirds in a nearby tree until they flew off in a flapping frenzy. It reminds me of countless vacations where somebody saw something - an animal, a shooting star - and tried to point it out to someone else to no avail. Whales, in fact, are perfect sources of this sort of frustration, when everyone else seems to see them blowing water or breaching and I never seem to be looking in the right direction.

This also reminds me, though, that sometimes we have to really believe in something in order to see it, because we are preoccupied in seeing that which we are programmed to see. This is especially true in our children. We have hundreds of parenting books telling us how to raise our children, and a competitive society where children are compared with one another from toddler-time on, and an education and employment system that rewards overachievers and ignores the rest of the bunch. I've spent seventeen maternal years looking for things that I didn't find in my own children, while unexpected things popped out at me, and I've had to adjust my focus every time this has happened. And, as my kids became teens, this re-focusing became the norm.

What I wish I'd done, what I wish I'd known and been strong enough to do, was to see what I believed deep down was there, and what deep down was important, rather than to see the superficial things that society told me to watch for, to search for those things that were supposed to be there, according (once again) to society.

I saw lackluster grades. I saw defiance.I saw priorities that didn't match up to mine. I saw a lot of things that weren't on my original agenda, that weren't in the "perfect parenting" books, that weren't showing up in the lives of my neighbors' kids.

I didn't believe, enough, in my kids to see what was underneath all that. And I didn't believe, enough, in my own convictions to turn my back on society's ideas and look for what I should have been looking for all along.



On a recent trip to Utah, we were looking for pictographs in the red rock. Every shadow, every marking, seemed to represent something to me but not to anyone else.

"Come on, let's get going," they'd say to me. But I'd stand and stare at those rocks just a few minutes more because I believed something was there that we'd missed. Something important; maybe not as important as reservations or meeting times or other societal things, but important to me. And eventually what I'd believed in became clear. The images on those rock walls were really there, and although it might not matter to 99% of the population, it made a difference to me and, more importantly, to the individuals that created the artwork in the first place.

With all the pressures on us today, it's hard to know what to believe in. But what I've learned is that deep down I do know, and I have to trust myself to believe in order to see what really needs to be seen. My hope is that it's not too late.

Robbed!

You are going about your daily life, with all your dreams and hopes and plans, and you walk into your home and go about your business. But then something starts to feel wrong, and you can't quite figure out what it is, so you go about your business but with an impending sense of dread, and finally you realize what's happened: you've been robbed! First there is the pure surprise, followed by some mixture of disbelief and anger and grief, depending on what it was that was taken and what its value might have been. And then you call the authorities and report it. If you're lucky, the culprit is caught and your posessions returned and justice served.

But what happens when it's not material posessions that are stolen? What if the theft involves those very dreams and hopes and plans that were part of your daily life yesterday and are gone today?

I know women who have been robbed of their lives through cancer and women who have been robbed of their security through abuse and women who have been robbed of their self-esteem through, well, all kinds of society's flailings. These women had also been going about their daily lives when one day the bottom fell out. And then there are the moms.

Almost every mom I know once had a plan to watch her baby walk his first steps and bat his first baseball and learn how to swim and go on school field trips and go to school dances and graduate from high school to go on to college and have a job and maybe even get married and have a family. Whether deliberately or subconsciously she prepared for those events when she picked up his dirty socks and packed his lunches and reminded him, by text of course, of his orthodontist appointment. She went about her daily life organizing those plans and hopes and dreams the same way she stacked the clean dishes in one cabinet, separated the spoons from the forks in the silverware drawer, and filed pictures in photo albums and scrapbooks.

But some moms are robbed. It's not just that some things don't go according to plan. It's that things go terribly awry: the proverbial train wreck. Her train, and her child's train, are derailed. There's horrible damage, and much pain and injury, and, in the chaos and looting that follow, her plans and hopes and dreams are stolen as onlookers turn away .

At first she doesn't even know what happened, but as things become clearer and she senses the loss she also knows it won't be forever. She's always been able to kiss the knee and make it all better, so things will get better this time too. Right? After all, everyone else seems fine, their plans still intact. Her pain will heal, her losses resolve. She clings to hope.

But things don't improve and one day the hope is shaken by anger..the anger that reminds her how she spent years preparing for a day that may now never happen. The hope wobbles ever more, but she still clings to it until finally grief settles in. Grief for her child and eventually grief for herself. Grief for the hopes and plans and dreams that she cannot seem to forget. And grief for no longer belonging to the club of families on track.

And then one day she finally realizes what has happened. A crime has been committed: she and her child have been robbed. Their foundation has been broken and their futures stolen away. And it is a horrifying discovery for her because, in this crime, there are no authorities to call. No report to be filed. No culprit to imprison because this culprit is an elusive one; it might look like death or disease, depression or defiance. It snuck into her life like a slippery shadow and has by now moved on with destruction in its wake. It may not even have a name, and it most certainly can't be caught. This is a theft with no justice and a thief that cannot be contained by any one jurisdiction.

It' a crime that happens far too often in a society too blind to see it coming, too busy to stop it from happening, and too self-absorbed to really care.

The Thing About Night Sweats

When women my age get together, it's inevitable. The conversation will eventually gravitate toward bodily functions - in particular night sweats. Sometimes it's almost competitive: who's got the worst case of them?

But the thing is, they're not really that bad when you think about it. Your husband gives you a whole lot more room in bed, and you can turn down the thermostat in the winter and save on those harsh energy bills, and your cat will get a bonus salt supplement when she licks your arm in the morning, and you eliminate way more toxins in one night than in a week's worth of working out, and, because you're awake most of the night, you're tuned into the comings and goings of your teenagers and other strangers all night long.

As long as there aren't too many of us living north of the 45th parallel at any one point in time, thereby avoiding any adverse impact on polar bear habitat and floods of biblical proportions, it can really be pretty cool to be so hot.

Peace

I've been looking for peace.

For years, I thought peace was an environmental condition, like clear skies and quiet rooms, and I figured that living in a household with a husband and three rambunctious boys meant that peace was way beyond my reach. I found lots of other things: smashed Cheerios, dirty underwear, ABC gum, and other stuff in all kinds of dark, dusty places, but I never found one scrap of peace.

More recently, probably because I keep getting older, I've decided to look for inner peace. But it, too, is a slippery and elusive sort of beast. It disguises itself as dreams and ambitions and some form of spirituality, and I find myself running off in one direction or another, thinking I'm chasing peace...but then discovering the path I'm on has steered me off course from what I'm most in search of.

But then peace drops little hints along the way like ET and his Reese's pieces. Like reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love which was interminably long but started niggling at me anyway about smiling meditation. Or a nugget from a woman in one of my workshops who shared a quote from Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor's book Traveling with Pomegranites, about how the soul represents "the deepest impulse [of the psyche] to create wholeness." And a comment from a woman I interviewed today, in which she distinguished between peace of mind and peace of heart.

I know all sorts of people who are looking for wholeness and peace through diet and exercise and religion and acupuncture. And some who look for peace in their big paychecks and houses. Some find peace when their kids make the honor roll or win college scholarships. Some define peace as resting at the end of the day with a clean house and an extra gallon of milk in the fridge. Some think peace means having a loving family and friends, or giving back to the community. Some would say God's love is peace.

All that's good stuff, don't get me wrong. But something's still missing. None of those qualify as peace, at least for me. Peace, I've come to think, is that feeling on the inside, that feeling of absolute wholeness in the mind, and yes also in the heart, but maybe most of all in the gut, where one no longer needs to understand anything but at the same time understands everything, at least everything that matters, which as it turns out is quite simple. So simple that kids get it, and dogs get it, but is usually too hard for us grownups to get. What matters, and therefore what opens us up to peace, is pure, unselfishish love.

That is peace. Love. Love is peace.

Why Ask Why

I spend a lot of time asking why.

Why does my cat act the way she does?

Why do my kids do what they do?

Why can't I stop doing the things I shouldn't?

People tell me to stop asking. It doesn't matter why, they say. What matters is what comes next. Focus on the future, they say.

I get that. No sense dwelling in the past, for sure. But there are some very good reasons to ask why.

One is sheer curiousity about the world. If you stop wondering, then either you've ascended to a divine omnisicient state of being, or you've shriveled into vegetative dormancy. What's wrong with wondering what goes on in the mind of a feline behind those dilated pupils?

Another reason is more of a scientific, theory of causality, sort of thing. A get-your-head-out-of-the-sand sort of thing. If you understand what caused a problem in the past you might be able to avoid the recurrence. In other words, what parenting mistakes did I make with Number One that I can avoid or rectify with Numbers Two and Three?

And third, asking why is part of the process of retelling your story and ultimately having a deeper self-understanding. Reinekke Lengelle and Frans Meijers' article in the June 2009 edition of Journal of Poetry Therapy suggests four cognitive stages in retelling your story: sensing, sifting, focusing, and understanding. I like this.

I sense there are several reasons for choices I make or reactions I have. By asking why, I begin to sift through the layers of reasons until I find one that strikes a chord. I focus on that, spend some time with it, and eventually understand better why I made the choice I did. Why I lashed out at a loved one. Why I ate all that popcorn. Why I keep avoiding the novel I am supposedly writing.

Does understanding then lead to changed behavior? Maybe, maybe not. Does it lead to a heightened state of inner peace? I believe that sometimes it does.

Or does it drive you deeper into the pit of insanity? In other words, does asking why heal the wound or does it actually intensify the pain? I guess it could go either way.

And why, I wonder, might that be?

PS (One more why: why I can't get this blogpost to show breaks between my paragraphs?)

Ten Cooler Things

So here are ten things I like about cooler weather, probably in order of importance since this is the order in which they entered my brain from stage right.

1. Boots. And scarves.

2. Soups, stews, and chili.

3. My dog is happier in cooler weather.

4. My mom is happier in cooler weather.

5. Those ginormous harvest moons, and morning frost, and squirrels and chipmunks everywhere. Oh, and those huge racks on the fiesty male deer.

6. Crayola-colored leaves scattered around chubby pumpkins.

7. Hot flashes that don't last as long.

8. Sort of like #7 -less sweating overall.

9. I don't have to shave my legs so often.

10. Fleece jackets come out, swimsuits go away.

Next up: the top 100 things I hate about cold weather.