Would the world be a better place if everyone saw it my way?

I've been thinking about perspective again, how mine contrasts with other people's. It's so easy to take my own experience and point of view and generalize it to the world at large.  I do it all the time.  Mostly, it works out.  I'm a pretty benign person, so if I go around thinking everyone is like me, it doesn't usually cause big problems.  But sometimes I am slapped with another person's reality, and I see that I've been living in la-la land again.


For instance, this morning I got up when my alarm went off at 6:15.  Whoa, wait a minute there.  You all know I'm retired.  What in the world??


I meet two still-employed friends to walk at 7:00, about ten minutes from my house.  If I didn't do that, I'd get no exercise at all.


So when I emerge, after plenty of Buddy kisses and offers of toys, I find Jill in the kitchen fulminating over political news concerning the NC legislature and their Constitutional Amendment to keep people of our tribe from ---- horror of horrors ---- getting married.  For me, it's a little early in the morning to be yanked into indignation, but she's been up longer than I have.


Fundamentally, I'm in agreement.  It is a nasty bit of goods they're trying to railroad through, for whatever political gain they think they'll harvest.  It's not right and I don't like it.  But I'm having trouble getting as "het up" as many of my friends over it, because it won't change my life one way or the other.  We already can't get married here.  We already got married in Canada, because of that.  We're not going to get any more married than we already are, whether this thing flies or not.  I'm not taking it personally.  They're trying to consolidate a voting block, which is what politicians do.  To expect them to do otherwise is like thinking Buddy will never hunt small game again.  It's the nature of the beast.


I understand and respect the activist impulse, the need to get out there in the public market place and agitate for justice.  Over the past four decades, I've involved myself both at the street level and the legislative level.  I know that if it were not for people who are willing to do that very difficult work, progress would not come of its own accord.  At least, not the way things are structured now.  But I have reached a point in my life that I value my own serenity and until I learn to become intensely involved in public debate without surrendering my essential peace, I will be careful how I engage.  I'm no good to anybody if I am enraged.  


So what's this got to do with perspective?  It's all about how I see my world.  I live in the same house with Jill.  We have a more intimate connection than I've had with anyone else.  We share many beliefs and ideas and we're constantly learning more about each other.  But even as closely as we live together, we don't live in the same world.  The very same stimulus can, and often does, evoke different responses from us.  We each bring an entire lifetime of experiences, beliefs, values, ideas and emotions to every day, every moment, and because of that we do not see the world in the same way.


I go along believing that my own experience, combined with all of the reading I've done, therapy I've had, theorizing I've been exposed to, makes me wise in the ways of people.  And to some extent that's true.  But that doesn't mean that I can read minds or tell the future.  And it doesn't mean I'm right.


An excellent friend today shared a little prayer that she uses and I like the reminder it provides:  
"God bless her and change me."
There's wisdom in that for me to use.

What to do?

I've had many people ask me, since I retired, what I'm going to do.  I suppose I understand that question, but it befuddles me a little. All the time I was in the rat race, working what felt like 24/7 at a teaching job that could never be done and never be good enough, I dreamed about the things I could do if only...


If only has arrived and I'm doing them now.  So when I answer the question ---- what are you going to do? ---- I'm not sure what to say.  I write and publish books.  That sounds like a real occupation, at least to some people.  Because that's what it seems like that question means.  What REAL WORK are you going to do?  What will you do to keep yourself busy? How will you justify taking up space on the planet, breathing the oxygen, using the resources?  Because, heaven forbid that someone in good health should not be busy, right?


So yes, I love my new occupation as novelist.  I even like the sound of that word.  Novelist.  It hearkens back to a probably imaginary time when staying busy and making money were not the sum total of a life well lived.  Literary discussions, salons, ink stained hands and hand-written manuscripts. Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott.  Katherine Anne Porter.


But truly, that's not all that I do.   As the weeks and months go by, I'm rediscovering facets of myself that I'd forgotten or never developed.  I listen to more music and sometimes I even dance around by myself.  The dogs would never think of laughing at me. I'm cooking again, from the imagination, from necessity, from cookbooks.


 I'm listening.  Every so often during the day, I close my eyes and listen to my breath and to the sounds around me.  It doesn't last long, but it brings me into the present moment and calms anything that's fluttering in my mind or my body.


Sometimes I watch movies, the ones that Jill won't like, or anybody else that I know.  I browse through the Netflix offerings and pick out the most obscure documentaries, the old black and white romances, the song and dance films.  If I fall asleep in the middle, oh well.  I'm sometimes napping, too.  I also can read.  I've read more books in the past 6 months than I did in the last 3 years I was teaching.  I thought, towards the end of my working life, that I was losing my capacity to read and remember.  I thought I was on the slide to, if not Alzheimers, at least old age and infirmity.  Turns out that's simply untrue.  Right now, my memory and capacity for reading and writing is better than it's been in years.  Funny thing about stress and lack of sleep. It seems  they're not good for you.


I do go out of the house.  I have plenty of opportunities to be of service, because isn't that the other thing you're supposed to do after you retire?  I'm lucky to be there for my mother as she needs more attention and more help.  I can run errands, give rides, make appointments, lend an ear or a shoulder.  And not just for her ---- I have enough family members around here to spread the good stuff around.


I go for walks.  I play with dogs. I clean the house and hang out the laundry and tend the vegetable garden and talk with my neighbors.  I have coffee with friends and meet new people at the dog park. I take good care of my wife, which makes me very happy.


If I'm not working, what can I do?  Pretty much anything I want!  And so far, I've only scratched the surface.

I wonder about subcultures

I wonder about subcultures.  I have recently "joined" two new ones --- retired people and dog people.  I'm still learning to read the signs, pick up the lingo and find my own place.


I think it must be a natural proclivity of humans to seek their own kind, however they define it.  It's so hard to relate to people in the aggregate, no matter how enlightened and in tune with the universe you may be.  I may love humanity, acknowledge my oneness with all living things, concern myself with social justice and equality for all, but it's really hard to call Everyone on the phone, or go out for coffee with all of humanity.


As you know, I'm a newcomer to the dog world.  I've had cats for 40 years, but only lived with a couple of dogs for very short times, and never really bonded.  Jill came furnished with a chain saw, a selection of ball caps, and 2 dogs.  I had none of the above.


Lucky Lu scared me, she was so ferociously territorial and protective of Jill.  Every time I saw the little red Kia drive up, there was Lucky in the front seat, and as surely as I would go over to say Hi, the dog would let me know the only thing between me and a trip to the ER was Jill --- and the closed window.  As I got to know her, I found out that she's actually a very sweet dog and many's the time she's let me use her warm back as a footrest. Torrie was much more laid back, but bouncy.  She jumped higher than I can reach every time I would open the back door.  She loved to curl up on the couch and have her head scratched, which was soothing for us both.  After some time, the dogs and I became accustomed to each other and reached a state of amicable coexistence.


Then along came Buddy.  He swept me off my feet, the little puppy with a huge appetite, unbridled enthusiasm for life, and boundless need for attention.  I found myself dropped into the world of dogs.  Suddenly, I saw dogs where I'd never noticed them before.  They're everywhere!  Besides having dog treats and poop bags in all my pockets, I started carrying a leash and water bowl in my car and, as often as not, when you see the silver rocket (HA! A Saturn Ion old people car) there's Buddy in the front seat, or with his head out the back window.  


People who have dogs, talk dog.  Breeds, age, rescue stories, vet stories, new puppy woes and memories of lost companions.  People who would never even meet, let alone talk, have conversations in the dog park.  You may not know the person's name, but you know the dog's name and you know how that dog interacts with your dog.  It's a world unto itself, and I never knew it existed.


This morning I met a young man, a seminary student, at the dog park with his newly rescued boxer.  First time out.  I felt like I was the old timer, showing him the ropes.  This is me now, guiding newcomers, talking dog talk, being sociable.  I wound up giving him the book I was reading because it wasn't really grabbing me, and I thought he would like it better.


Which made me think, a little later, about all the subcultures around me, and the unexpected places they overlap.  The book had turned out to be a little to Bible-y for me, as I explained to him.  I don't object to reading outside of my usual genres, but the references were so unfamiliar to me as to render it nearly incomprehensible.  It was like stumbling into a book about undersea diving or computer technology.  I figured he would get the inside jargon.


Do I meet a lot of seminarians in my daily life?  Not really.  How 'bout patently religious people, the kind who have that at the center of their existence and vocalize it frequently?  Not so much, though a certain amount of it is inevitable here in the South.  That's not a subculture I have selected myself into, so it's not a language I speak, it's not a worldview I share.


I do have membership in other subcultures.  Get a bunch of teachers together, and you won't get a word in edgewise, and probably won't understand half of what is said, anyway.  Oh, and don't come between teachers and their snacks! How about the lesbians?  Gay humor, among both the men and the women, is one of my favorite parts of that subculture.  It's the humor of self-deprecation and irony, recognition among the outliers.  


I've been in the Recovery subculture for 30+ years, another broad swath of the population, since addiction is "no respecter of persons" ---- that's one of those in-crowd phrases, instantly recognizable to the chosen.  The recovery community shares a large number of phrases and sayings, necessary in order to bring such a disparate group under the same umbrella.


I've been in and out of many others, as we all have.  I used to be a heavy drinker and partier, which is certainly its own subculture.  Political and religious liberal --- that's a big one.  There are smaller ones, too --- as a mom, I was on the crunchy granola, La Leche League end of the spectrum.  We had to band together for support.  Theater. Reader and writer. Overseas Brat. (overseas military dependent kids).  


I guess all of this is making me think about the polarization that looks as though it is tearing at the social and political fabric right now.  Unless you want to be metaphysical about it, nobody gets a choice about the culture they're born into.  We all have instant identifiers long before we walk out into the world.  But the interesting part is what we choose, once choice is available.  Who do we choose to share identity with?  And how strongly do we defend that identity?


There are seemingly a lot of people who identify everyone and everything with a political party.  (That's what I get from reading comments after news stories.)  The world is divided into them and us, good and bad, right and wrong, republican and democrat.  It's a strong identification that  looks as though it informs everything from beliefs about climate change, to what to have for dinner.  That becomes a problem when being one thing means everything else is wrong, e.g.
I breastfed my children, therefore every bottle feeder is wrong.  I recycle, so everybody in my neighborhood who doesn't put out the green bin is bad.  My dogs trump your cats.  People with trucks and SUVs are gas-hogging and selfish.  You get the picture.


I have to be able to find my place and feel at home with myself.  Humans are naturally social creatures, so I need other people around me who I feel safe with.  I'm going to make some judgments about who is "my kind" and who is "safe".  But transferring that level of identity to the entire world is not valid. This is where the long, broad view comes in. 


Just because I don't identify with gun-lovers, doesn't mean they shouldn't be alive. My personal preference to hang out with women doesn't mean men are bad. I can't have coffee with either Barack Obama or Michelle Bachman, but I will acknowledge our common humanity, the same humanity I share with children in Zimbabwe, parents in China, teachers in Sweden and maybe even the Koch brothers and Scott Walker.   


See what happens when you're retired and hang around the dog park?

No, No, a Thousand Times No!

I've been giving some thought to the nature of denial.  I ought to --- I've been practicing it all my life.  The earliest example I can remember is when I was five years old and cut off all my hair.  I was horrified at finding myself surrounded by my shorn locks, so I swept them under the bookcase and hid the scissors.  That took care of that!  It baffled me completely that my mother knew what I had done the instant she saw me.


That was me.  In the face of all evidence to the contrary, I could deny till I was blue in the face.  Of course, as I grew older and ran through all of Piaget's stages of cognitive development, my experiences with denial became more subtle, and much more inwardly directed.  I always had an explanation, at least to myself, no matter what other people might see.


I now believe that a certain amount of denial is rooted in ignorance.  When I was 5, I didn't understand that my mother would see the results of my behavior, even if I hid the evidence.  Lack of understanding and lack of experience can result in some pretty stubborn denial. And not everybody grows out of it.  All the ex-drunks in the room, raise your hand if you ever hid your drinking.  Uh-huh.  Like people wouldn't know if they couldn't see the bottle.


I knew enough about cause and effect to realize that when a person drinks too much alcohol, she will get drunk.  After I experienced that for myself a few times, I even knew what it felt like.  What I was ignorant of was exactly what a blackout was, and the emotional and psychological effects of  frequent inebriation on a person's development.  I'm not saying that knowledge would have stopped me, but it is hard to recognize something you don't know exists.


Most of us have enormous reservoirs of unexamined beliefs and half-formed ideas.  Given time, these can become codified into rigid systems of thought and behavior that seem to be laws of the universe.  People who are lazy, stupid, loud,irresponsible,poor, *** (fill in your favorites) are BAD.  That's not a judgment; it's truth.  People who are thrifty, organized, clean, wealthy, religious, *** (fill in your favorites) are GOOD.  Truth.  Undisputed.  Starting point.


I was astonished to find myself, a few years ago, in a heated discussion with someone who didn't believe it was right to teach children about world peace, or how to be peaceful.  It raised my blood pressure (because I was so OBVIOUSLY RIGHT) but hearing the words "world peace" nearly made her apoplectic.  She was certain that it was outside the realm of possibility and completely irresponsible to even talk about it. She even accused me of wearing rose-colored glasses! We couldn't have been further apart and finally had to walk away before we both had strokes over it.


So is that related to the same denial that got me in trouble when I was 5, that kept me drinking until I qualified for a twelve step program? I was clinging to my own construct of the world for dear life regardless of anything anyone else could say.  Isn't that denial? Holding a position until the ultimate end --- death? --- being "right" at any cost to self or others ---- some people call that holding onto principles, standing your ground, being strong.  It all smells like some form of denial to me.


All of this comes to mind right now because of the rancor in our political system, and in the world at large.  I have found over the years, slowly and painfully, that even when something is obviously awful and harmful, there is a nugget of truth in it, a starting point, a point at which it could have gone another direction.  That's true for my own behavior, and I think it's probably true for most everything else.  Since I don't give much credence to predestination, and see this as a dynamic, evolving universe, everything appears to me to be in process all the time.  That's what makes sense to me.  And if that is the case, everything changes, even (or especially) the things I don't want to change. If the wind is blowing so hard that it threatens to blow me away, it's not going to change things for me to close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears and pretend it's not happening. But there might be some action I could take that would accommodate the condition as well as save my skin.


This morning Jill and I were discussing the most recent news items we had come across.  She is passionate and has no patience for obstructionism.  When I ventured the observation that maybe some of the people she views negatively may have conviction behind their actions, may believe they are truly doing what must be done for the good of all, she wasn't very receptive, to say the least.  That's ok.  Her passionate nature is one of the things I love about her.


But it made me think again about all of us in this classroom of life, and of the nature of reality and denial.  I once thought everybody drank like I did.  Come to find out, some do, some don't.  I was completely convinced that the vast majority of people were unfaithful to their spouses.  Ummmmm.  Turns out that might be a bit of an exaggeration.  


When I am sure that the country is going to hell in a handbasket because of the misguided actions and beliefs of a solid portion of the electorate and officials, there is the slightest possibility that I might be inflating the danger.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But I have a lifetime history of  bolstering my view of reality with ideas and beliefs that turn out to be problematic.  


I think in this instance it behooves me to wear the world lightly, and not take any of it too seriously.  There are helpful things I can do, where my conscience urges me to take action.  Those things are here, now ---- just like the rest of my life.  But the world has been around for a long time and I've got maybe 20 or 30 good years left at most.  I don't want to spend them with my head up my ass (in denial) or chasing my tail (unreflective action). 


As I am often reminded, I am always at choice.  I don't get to choose all the outside circumstances of my life, but I DO get to choose how I respond to them.  I get to choose my thoughts, my actions, and even my feelings.  I certainly get to choose my judgments and opinions.  Hand me the rose-colored glasses.  That's what I choose today.