There is Judgment, and There is Love

I guess it's human nature to form opinions about other people. He is smart, she is pretty, he is shy, she is messed up.

But I wonder why.

What good did it do for those cave men to judge others way back when? I guess if you were worried about your survival, and somebody was heading out to hunt sabre tooth tigers, and you knew he couldn't throw a spear two feet, it would be good to recognize that weakness and, hence, pass judgment. Food, and safety, and survival, would be good reasons to pass judgment.

But our society has taken this way too far. We judge people by whether they're too fat, or by how they spend their time. By who their friends are, and by what profession they choose or which college they attend or even which sport they play. We judge them by which cell phones they have, and how they dress, and how they talk. And of course we judge them on their religious beliefs and their sexual preferences and skin color, and I fail to see how all this has anything to do with food or safety or survival.

And the worst part is that we don't just judge people we don't know. We judge our friends, our neighbors, and our family members...sometimes them even more than others.

Of course we are concerned for our loves ones, but there is a big difference between concern and judgment. Concern means we are hopeful for their survival and safety and happiness in life. Judgment is really just another word for egotism; we judge our loved ones not from concern but from that insatiable need to stroke and nourish our hungry egos with lofty opinions.

What we need more of around here is love. Pure unconditional love. Love that doesn't care about what you eat or how much you exercise or who you marry. Love that transcends the ego.

Yes, we need a whole lot more love, and a whole lot less judgment. That's one of my hopes for the new year.

Oh Glorious Foot

Ten days later I am still sitting with my leg up. Actually, I got doctor's permission to hobble around for a week and then she rescinded. Back to crutches and bedrest for my foot.

What I find amazing is how much an incapacitated foot impacts the emotional center of the brain. I am tired, lazy, bored, and depressed. I am tired of not being able to walk the dog, go shopping, stand in the laundry room on two feet folding laundry. Tired of not being in charge of cooking and cleaning and chauffering kids around. Tired of not chasing them down to nag or say goodnight. Tired of not being able to just go out and see the world comfortably, in a vertical position. Tired of shoulders hurting from the crutches.

And it's not just present tense. Because I don't know how much longer I'll be this way, I am already tired in the future. I can't get excited about making plans, like seeing old friends or setting up workshops or whatever. It's like I'm stuck in a void in time and space, watching from a different plane and noticing for the first time just how the foot is connected to the mind.

I know (or at least I hope) that this is just temporary, but it gives me new insight into what millions of people endure in times of illness or old age or both. Being unable to move and do the things you want to do is infuriating and depressing, so how do people do it for months and years on end? Poor Aunt Dottie used to get "stuck" where her feet just wouldn't move when she wanted them to. Later, she was in a nursing home in her final years and got to the point where she couldn't even speak. But what we never knew was what was going on inside her heart and her brain. Was she a vegetable who didn't know any better, who didn't care? Or was she trapped inside her own body, wishing she could claw her way out to see the world again, feel the sunshine on her skin, listen to the train's whistle? Could she remember those trips to Hawaii? The sewing machine humming as she pressed the pedal beneath her foot? Was she longing to once again feel the cold fingernail polish against her nails? Wishing she could go on those five mile morning walks, just once more, on her two healthy feet with her friends at her side?

I promise, yes PROMISE, that when I get my foot back again I will savor the steps I take, through the wet sand and surf on the Big Island or along soft pine-needle blankets on Cascade trails or even on the moving walkways in Ohare International. I will be thankful for how quickly I can get dressed in the morning and for how many times I have to trudge upstairs to wake up my son for school. I will gladly go out in the rain to take the dogs for a walk and I will sign up for a yoga class and show up every time.

How beautiful my sandaled feet will be once more! What strong foundations for me. They connect me to the earth and they move me where I need to go. They give me my life. Oh glorious foot, I can hardly wait for you to get better because then I will regain my energy, my joy, and my freedom.

Remembering Aunt Dottie

Hearty breakfasts, beaming faces, leaflike coasters, hide-and-seek;
Ceramic cats and wooden cats, cats on blankets, Dusty Blue;
Skirts and heels and short brown bangs with handbag always at her side;
Watching us with her brown eyes.
Spiese eyes.

Sewing projects, knick knacks, weddings, whiskey drinks, Hawaiian trips;
Downtown office working woman, notes sent in italic type;
On the train with Mom when younger; later carpool rides with Dad;
Muted peachy lipstick shades.
Warm smile.

Organized, meticulous, straightforward, honest, to-the-point;
Christmas Eves and Christmas grab-bag, waving camera girls away;
Faithful wife and loving sister, loyal to big brother Stan;
Loving aunt, always caring.
Always there.

Getting a Leg Up

Sitting around your house, with your feet up, watching stupid television shows, and having your family wait on you sounds heavenly. For about five minutes. Then, it's pure torture.

Under doctor's orders following minor foot surgery, I've been doing just that for three days now. I finished a book, edited a couple of chapters in my under-way novel, checked email a bazillion times a day, and occasionally ate something. I have asked my kids to return the remote control to me at least seven times a day. I have hobbled to the bathroom only when absolutely necessary. I have endured those pitiful, wanton stares from my black Lab who will never forgive me, I suspect, for abandoning our daily walking ritual.

And I find this whole 'sit back and relax' concept to be a bit overrated.

But I also find that it forces me to take a look around, and a listen, and so on. By sitting here I realize the fireplace needs to be swept and the floors desperately need vacuuming, and it reminds me of how much I hate housecleaning, and dust. I listen to the sounds of water in the pipes after someone's taken a shower or flushed a toilet and it makes me worry: with all the subzero temperatures we've been having, what if a pipe burst? I hear a distant dog bark, somewhere in the back of my subconscious, and it dawns on me that someone (me?) has left the dog out for too long.

I feel the cat rub against the back of my head as she creeps along the top of the sofa behind me; her fur and my hair generate static electricity, and she too wonders about my sudden fit of laziness, as though I had turned into a cat like her. I hear the clacking of my laptop keys; I am thankful my arms are no longer than they are else the thoughts in my brain might dissipate before they get to the keys. The sparkling water, I notice, tastes a bit sweeter than I recall.

Outside, the pine needles quiver as the branches bounce around in the breeze. How often do I even look at those trees? The snow looks like a frozen souffle about to collapse. The sun is shining and the sky is blue but I know they're fooling me; it's still bitter cold and for a brief moment of insanity I am grateful I am stuck inside.

But then I listen to the tense voices, observe the creased foreheads, feel the thickness in the air. The cupboards are almost bare. Christmas is still in boxes. Everyone is tired of the slavery.

The expression 'getting a leg up', I've read, originally referred to the help offered to a horseback rider when mounting her horse. In a way, I feel like that rider. Climbing a big horse can be a challenge for the inexperienced rider; climbing a big mountain poses obstacles for the inexperienced mountaineer. And climbing onto a sofa, to just sit around as a blob, is nearly impossible for the inexperienced couch potato. She needs help.

And with that help, the world begins to look a little different, whether sitting atop a steed or sitting right here on my sofa. Things look and sound and feel and taste (and even smell) a little different right now. And maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes it's good to tweak your perspective on your world. So I think I'll stay put, with my leg up, for a few more days until my doctor gives me permission to put my foot down...and do things my way once again.

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.