Humility is oil in the engine of relationships

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of establishing the difference between humility and humiliation.

"Humility (adjectival form: humble) is variously seen as the act or posture of lowering one self in relation to others, or conversely, having a clear perspective, and therefore respect, for one's place in context.

...

Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, often in contrast to narcissism, hubris and other forms of pride.^[6]

The act of imposing humility upon another person is called "humiliation"."

What I really want to point out here is this:

"having a clear perspective, and therefore respect, for one's place in context."

Pope Francis recently provided a wonderful example of this by responding, "Who am I to judge?" when asked about the status of gay priests. His humility ensured that his office didn't mean that his place in the world somehow changed him from just another sinner in God's eyes.

What it also meant at the same time was his affirmation of others' place in the world. He was saying to them, "Yes, you and I are both here, together and you have a place in this world, and it's the same place as mine." His response was a complete reversal from years of attempts to push people out of the church, to take away their place both in the world and in heaven.

Humiliation is an external pressure to try to enforce humility, so it is therefore cannot be humility which is internal.  And any attempt to externally enforce humility cannot succeed, because there is no respect both towards oneself, or toward another.

If you have humility, you don't have to be afraid of humiliation, embarrassment. You don't have to be afraid of being found out as a worthless, incapable, bad person, because you have tried to clearly assess your own flaws, weaknesses, foibles, and you remain open to the process of learning more about them.  No one can humiliate you when you have humility, because you know your place in the world, and the respect accorded to others extends to oneself.

Without humility, criticism can sound like condemnation and humiliation.

It's not always as simple and clear cut as saying, "I don't like this". Any kind of even implied criticism can feel like that. And if you are feeling condemned or humiliated, what happens? You start avoiding people and situations. And people start walking on eggshells around you and vice versa.

There are whole avenues of conversation and thought and feelings that must become off-limits in order to maintain a relationship with someone that could perceive almost anything as criticism, whether or not it was intended that way.

Without humility, apologies are perceived as capitulation to external force, rather than sincere attempts to repair and restore a relationship.

If I believe that being forced to apologize to another person means that I am acknowledging that I am a bad person and they have "beaten" me, imagine what that means when I am in a position to accept an apology? 

I might feel that because they had to apologize, I am inherently a better person. They are the ones who were bad, and by comparison I am not as bad as them. It doesn't necessarily mean that I think I am a good or great person. But at least I am not as bad as them.

Or I might feel that by asking, or even seeming to hint, that I wanted an apology for something I would necessarily be causing them humiliation, so if I saw myself as a "kind-but-proud" person I would surely try to prevent anyone from feeling that they might need to apologize. I would just swallow all bad feelings caused from hurt, because if I had to apologize for something, I would feel humiliated. This logic gets all twisted up until you can't apologize or be apologized to - there are no longer any methods to repair and restore relationships. There can be no relief from pain, and no way to provide it for someone else either.

The Privilege of Ignorance

In the phase of society and culture that we have arrived in there is a lot of examination of privilege.

So I will dare to ask this question:

Is it a form of privilege to have been raised in an environment of physical non-violence? And is it okay to ask for a bit of understanding from people who have been protected from that for the damage done to those who grew up getting the shit beat out of them all the time?

I can't even believe I'm asking this question, but it's been bothering me for months now.

I understood it when people wouldn't be sensitive to it because it was so goddamn common, when it wasn't called abuse it was discipline. I also understood when it was a matter of something to be hushed up, not acknowledge it as really happening.

Because even in those situations there was a tacit understanding that yeah, kids were getting the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis. We grew up with violence being done to and around us. Some of us were protected more than others, some had no protection at all.

And in the 80's and 90's there was a cultural shift and suddenly a ton of kids were growing up in a world where beating your kids wasn't called discipline anymore, and the casual violence that reigned in so many of our homes didn't get passed down in that same way. Although I don't have statistics, I can say that I've observed that, at least, and read about it, and listened to people talk about it.

So, there is this generation of us, scared and scarred, veterans of violence from our parents, relatives, teachers, and friend's parents, and...

But there are kids growing up now who have no idea, which brings me to this incredibly strange question of privilege.

Do we assert ourselves and confront the kind of privilege that ignorance of all the damage that violence has done, become outraged when someone jokes about violence, or start crying when someone makes an unserious threat (or serious, because how the hell do we know)?

That seems like a dangerous thing to do when you grew up in a world where doing so would ensure that you got the shit kicked out of you again.

And so we do what we've learned to do when violence enters the picture again. We run and hide in the deepest, darkest place we can find a bit of protection in.

It's a lonely sad place, but at least there we can be safe.

This allows a lot of ignorant people to think that those jokes or "unserious" threats are no big deal. And maybe they aren't... to them. But they are a super big deal to anyone who understands what happens when it's very serious, very real.

Is it necessary to go so far as to call ignorance of the consequences privilege though? Is it necessary to draw lines, to set up a situation where you draw boundaries and force apologies from people who are "just joking" or "not serious"? The thing I come back to when I ask myself that question is - what are the consequences to the people who go through their life wondering when that joke is suddenly going to be not-a-joke anymore? What is happening to the people who flinch when another person makes a sudden move or shifts their weight in a sudden way?

And when you consider that it's not just the kids, it's the veterans, it's so very many people who have experienced terrible things done to them.

To stay in ignorance of the consequences of that, to not fucking care enough to try to understand how we might help each other live in less fear is, I think, a privileged dick-move.

I am super happy that there are people who do get the privilege of growing up and living a life that is safe and happy. They have lessons to teach us, ways of viewing the world to share. But wrapping themselves in an ignorance so that they carelessly will say and do anything they want and that it shouldn't matter to someone else is beyond foolish. It hurts people, which is the golden heart of what the privilege movement is about.

What you do matters to me - whether it's good or bad, it matters.

Testing... Testing...

Today is my 5th day with my new med. I am deeply frightened of how happy I've become. It was almost an overnight change, which makes everything more frightening, because I've learned from my life that when I'm happy I make mistakes - big ones, small ones, some invisible to anyone else but me. Somehow the mistakes are more bearable if I'm not happy, but when I make them when I'm happy the crash starts, dropping first to the place where I have enough misery to do something terrible and enough energy left to do it, and then into blankness then into utter indifference to everything.

Happiness is tinged with guilt and fear for me and I don't know yet if I can ever unhook those things. Inside I'm vigilantly watching my hands moving, afraid they will do something they shouldn't. If I laugh, I frantically search everyone's face around me in case I laughed at something I shouldn't and hurt them. I'm trying to not say anything until I've thought through it twice, and if I do say something without thinking through it, I search everyone's faces again.

No, I'm just now in a constant mode of looking at people, wondering when I will do something wrong, because I will. And there is a wise part me that knows this is going to be okay, and I will be forgiven. But what I don't know at this moment is whether or not this calm peaceful, but still deliciously giggly sometimes, happiness will turn into what it always does. Or will I somehow get through it without the normal destruction?

One of the most horrible things about the dynamic of the crash that happens when you are manic is that in the middle of the storm you have just had unleashed in your mind is how at the very moment you likely have done something wrong, you become the most vulnerable and in the most need of support, often from the very people you have just hurt. That starts a vicious cycle of guilt like you wouldn't believe.

So I'm scared... and happy...

But it's a different kind of scared, and still... happy!

^_^

When being wrong is so terrifying...

...that you can't look yourself in the mirror and admit that you did something wrong, and can't look someone else in the eye and say from the bottom of your heart "I'm sorry" and hear back "I forgive you and I love you."...

I think that must be the saddest, loneliest person in the world.

To A Friend

My friend, when I found out that you went to the hospital yesterday, I was so relieved. 

Mixed states.

Rapid cycling.

When you feel terrible enough, shameful enough to think you should probably die and - most dangerously - with the energy and impulsivity to be capable of actually doing it. A firestorm in the brain, neurons crashing and shorting and you can't even remember what peace and calm is, much less how you can navigate back to center.

But you will.  ^_^

I think that somehow I knew, just from those two Facebook posts, no matter that I'd only met you once in person, even though we spent most of the party in two different rooms.

But those two posts were open enough for me to read between the lines, knowing what I know about us.

We understand extremes all too well. It's the pattern we've read in our lives, in our minds, even while our hearts are just pleading "Please, I just want peace, I just want calm, I just want to be in the center..." Happiness is suspect, knowing what inevitably comes next.

And those posts were a sign that you were looking for an extreme solution. The problem is that it's only possible to make them work when we ourselves are capable of acting extreme. And our minds don't give us that drive and force of will often enough or long enough to sustain that. So they can only be a sign that we're in dangerous territory, and we are about to become terribly vulnerable at the worst and most critical time, a time where we are desperately looking for something, anything to hold on to, to fix damage that we've caused.

People can't tell from the outside how close we are walking on the edges of a crumbling cliff, with two abysses below. The hardest lesson for me to learn is that often I can't tell either, and you are getting one of these lessons now too. If only we could warn people, "Watch out, I might be acting impulsively even though it's going to seem rational to me at the time!" and "Please, help... I don't want to hurt us..."  If we could at least warn people, then we could ask for grace and forgiveness ahead of time.

But instead, because we often are so unaware and used to our version of normal, we often aren't able to warn people and then it just seems like a really terrible and embarrassing excuse. The shame crashes down. We know this about ourselves, we know we are dangerous, we've navigated this before both successfully and not. We should know better by now. But we did it again.

But think about this really carefully right now. How many times have you gotten through this and didn't do any damage? I bet a lot. That's pretty incredible when you think about it.

So now, forgive yourself. It's not an excuse, it's just our reality. The truth is that the meds can mitigate a lot but not erase completely. Oh how I wish they erased, but they just don't. Adjustments become necessary, especially during times of extreme stress - the kind you've been going through lately.

Only when we can forgive ourselves can we ease our own pain enough to become vulnerable to empathize and sympathize with the people we've hurt. And only then can we heal each other.

This is easier said than done, of course, as I've already admitted...  ^_^

One of the scariest things, my particular monster in the closet, is the inevitable feeling of dependence on others. It just emphasizes our particular lack of control and stability. The dependence on meds is easy compared to the dependence on the people around us to watch out for us, pick up some the slack when we lose it, to deal with their own pain alone until we are capable of helping, and forgiving us before we are capable of asking with our whole heart.

That's a whole lot to ask of people, and boy do we know it. So we try to manage and fix it on our own, to try to ease the burden we know we are putting on them. In our attempts to control the uncontrollable and with the best of intentions, we set ourselves and our loving ones up for failure. Because when we fail, we need them to understand that we do try to fix it even as we've done our damnedest to hide how difficult it was to do so. It's the shock of it that often ends up creating the most havoc for us all, amirite?  ^_^

So I'm saying to you now - you have been trying so very hard and it's okay to be too tired. It's okay to let go of that. I see what you've been doing, and it will be okay. You don't have to be perfect all the time, but especially you don't have to do it right now. 

Whether or not you and I ever learn to be vulnerable and transparent is something we can't promise yet, I think. We can hope and strive and throw our whole hearts into the effort, but right now we don't know the way yet. Right now we probably shouldn't promise much beyond keeping ourselves safe and that we'll try our hardest. It's a bit humiliating, but perhaps it's the most honest and from what I've been hearing that's what they want. (And WE'RE the crazy ones?!) There are reasons we're the way we are, and it will take time and more mistakes as we fumble through to finding the reasons and understanding of how to do it other ways.

That's okay, it really is.

Your friend along the cliff,

Jocelyn

Meanwhile, in another Universe, Danger Mouse tucks the Friendly Lion into bed.

I read A Brave New World last night for the first time. I like to space my dystopias out over the span of as many years as possible, as I'm prone to depression and can often just not bear the misery. But I do like to think, and dystopias are great for making you think alongside all of the "feels". Honestly, after reading it, all I really had to read was the quote at the beginning by Nicolas Berdiaeff about how we should do everything in our power to make sure Utopias are never arrived at.

Well, duh, I read the Bible too. And The Lord of the Rings.
Wasn't that the message of both of those stories or was that just me?

I perhaps do injustice to the story's impact by having received the message from other authors who incorporated its message into their own work. They conceived of the grain of gold and pulled it out from the terribly irrelevant "science" and passed it on.

Having received the message and already integrated it, I was left to only learn the stuff that makes no sense from a social-historical, neurological or even biological standpoint.

It made a terrible, terrifying sense when he wrote it, when the Industrial Revolution, Communism, Nazism, and "Better Living Through Chemistry" was new, it pulled at the fears of the day. But, unlike 1984 those fears aren't supportable anymore. The fears tugged at in George Orwell's book are still all too easily imagined and made more real as the technology develops.

I am also a teensy bit weirded out by the "bliss pill" concept. I'm bipolar and take meds for stabilization. Seriously, I actually am taking a pill to make me happy when my neurons are shouting at me "No, everything is wrong!". So how weird to read about a pill that makes the point that, well, everything actually is wrong and you are just using a pill to make you "happy" anyway. Any person using meds to mentally stabilize struggles with the strangeness of this on a daily basis - "Am I still me?"

Where William Gibson (@GreatDismal, Neuromancer and others), Neal Stephenson (Snowcrash) and Tad Williams (Otherland)** took many of the most compelling priciples of Brave New World is, I think, the natural progression given the development of the science and tech since then. In their stories, the opiate is "online". The content is generated and compels consumption that is used by power/corporations/elites to maintain order and stability. Their stories are all much more complex and layered, with a lot more in there than that single sentence, but the principle is still there.

What those stories don't address is the fundamental nature of Utopias being inherently, inescapably Dystopian. While I certainly haven't read even most of the literature even in my favorite genre, I haven't heard of any other story that makes this point so well, other than religious or political texts. Trying to create an orderliness out of disorder is a task given to the gods and politicians and kings. When men (historically, with a few exceptions) have acted to bring it, they are imbued with a mantle of "righteousness" or "great leader". The dystopia is not examined in the text, just in the wars, persecution, prejudice, judgmentalism, condemnation, the "othering" in daily life.

**True confession I haven't read a lot of these writers' more recent works, although I've the intention to soon. I'm combatting my extremely reduced attention span caused by my Twitter addiction, see "online content".

You Kiss Me On The Eye

We're driving 45 minutes down I-5 to celebrate the first birthday of the newest nephew. We're singing at the tops of our lungs- Bon Jovi, songs from The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Killers, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pink, and then with a twinkle Roland hits play...

"Slow down, we've got time left to be lazy
All the kids are bloom from babies into flowers in our eyes
We've got fifty good years left to spend out in the garden
I don't care to beg your pardon, we should live until we die"

We sing loudly at each other, exactly one week before the 21st anniversary of the March 17th that he asked me to be his girlfriend. It's the year of our 20th wedding anniversary, and we're not waiting for July to start the giggling, the long dreamy look of '...forever with you...', the "Remember when we...", and slipping off to the bedroom.

"We were barely eighteen when we crossed collective hearts
It was cold, but it got warm when you barely crossed my eye
And you turned, put out your hand, and you asked me to dance
I knew nothing of romance, but it was love at second sight"

I didn't make it easy for him. So May 1st he walked past the guard to the girls' dorm, yelling "Maintenance!" all the way to my room, set down a tiny little basket of flowers, knocked so hard it echoed in the room like a kettle drum, and he and his friend (the real 'Maintenance' there to cover) ran laughing down the hall. I opened the door to 7 girls gathered around cooing and giggling.

"I swear when I grow up I won't just buy you a rose
I will buy the flower shop, and you will never be lonely
For even if the sun stops waking up over the fields
I will not leave, I will not leave 'til it's on time
So just take my hand, you know that I will never leave your side"

"Oh nooooo," moans Betsey, 18, knowing how close she is to...

"It was the winter of '86, all the fields had frozen over
So we moved to Arizona to save our only son
And now he's turned into a man, though he thinks just like his mother
He believes we're all just lovers, he sees hope in everyone"

I hear a sniffle the backseat... I didn't look back, she hates how easily she cries...

"And even though she moved away, we always get calls from our daughter
She has eyes just like her father's, they are blue when skies are gray"

Broken sobs, so I reached out and held her knee.

"And just like him she never stops, never takes the day for granted
Works for everything that's handed to her, never once complained"

"God, you guys!!" Aspy and 17, Tori huffs at all of us.

"You think that I nearly lost you when the doctors tried to take you away
But like the night you took my hand beside the fire thirty years ago
'Til this day, you swore you'd be here 'til we decide that it's our time
But it's not time, you never quit in all your life
So just take my hand and know that I will never leave your side
You're the love of my life, you know that I will never leave your side"

Roland and I wipe our own tears, humming and singing a little brokenly.
Two separations throughout our marriage, once for a year. Papers were filed once, but when we didn't show up for the court appearance, we happily paid the $30 each for wasting the courts time and stayed married after fighting things out, some meanness, bitterness, then apologies, forgiveness and grace.

"You come home from work, and you kiss me on the eye
You curse the dogs, you say that I should never feed them what is ours
So we move out to the garden, look at everything we've grown
And the kids are coming home so I'll set the table; you can make the fire"

Happy-silly contentment. And still apologies, forgiveness and grace.
He feeds the dog too much cheese, sigh...

The Gambler by fun. Live

They will be at Bumbershoot this year!

I Admit I Bit You, It Was A "Thing" (An I Love You Letter To My Sister)

Two friends have recently had to endure pretty shitty things done to them by their sisters, and my heart cries for them because nothing hurts quite like sister-hurts.

There is also nothing quite like being loved with sister-love, and laughing with them, watching "our shows" with them, and from what I hear from others - pulling pranks with them. I would like to make it clear that my sister and I don't pull pranks as neither of us is clever in that way, but we enormously enjoy watching them being carried out, and if they are clever/funny enough so that we can enjoy them afterwards we don't mind being the target of them.

I was a ferocious biter when I was a child. My 5-years-younger brother was the recipient of the Biting Incident of '84 "...In Which Dad Was Woken Up While Exhausted, And Didn't Ask Why There Was Screaming Before Smacking Ensued...", but Dani received her fair share. She doesn't recall them, but I do as my mom would give me flick me hard on the cheek when I got caught.

Man, she was annoying though, always hanging around and making me feel like an evil ugly Cinderella-Stepsister, jealous of how fucking adorably cute she was. Looking back at pictures from our childhood, I can see that it wasn't really like that as much as it seemed to me while living through it, but there's no way for me to fix it now. My readings over the years reassure me that this is a common occurrence in sibling relationships, and I saw it repeated with my daughters.

Getting back to the love part...
We have't had an hours and-or days long conversation in weeks. I'm not doing so well. She offers to drive over for lunch on Sunday. I begin weeping with happiness. Because even though my partners will be there and I'll also talk to them, there is Nothing like talking to and being with my sister.

My dearest sister, you went through it too, that crazy family stuff, and since we married brothers, the crazy other family stuff too. And you keep loving me, and accepting my love back.
Do you know that whenever you say you miss me it's like having a rainbow bloom in my heart?
I bit you, and acted like a pretentious teenaged jerk, and condescended to you, and more, and you still love me and miss me when you don't see me for a while, I think each time you tell me you love me

I am fairly marvelous, this must be said, but still...

I love you, and miss you too, when I don't see you. You have this clarity and insight, as well as hilarious cluelessness. You have this goofy adorable infectious sense of humor. You cry and bring me to tears. You are fierce and meek, humble and proud. You are intense and so very smart.

Thank you, dear one...

I'm Special-ized

Having undependable emotions presents unique interpretations of reality.
I've heard of a few different methods, and have a partial inventory of my own.

Believing you are special.
From everything I've been able to gather, this is a bipolar I specialty. I've not met, read a book of or by, or heard of a bipolar II who is able to successfully utilize this method. I've glimpsed small sparkles of how this is achievable in my very rare (hypo)mania states. I would immediately and utterly ruthlessly squish those sparkles with all of the abundance of evidence to the contrary, but if I lived in mania more often it would be a lot harder, possibly impossible.

You can't live without me.
Ahhhh, caretaking, my drug of choice, the favorite of bipolar ii's everywhere, from what I've seen, read, heard. What was a toxic mix of dysfunctional family dynamics gave me was also a helpful coping mechanism for a bipolar eldest child. It's a money-mix of distractions from one's own problems, and a heady sense of imaginary control over emotions. Sure it's not our own emotions, but it's control!

Intellectualize Everything.
I can't feel, therefore I am. It's how I'm still alive.
No joke.

If I can't see it, it's not there.
Intellectualization also requires compartmentalization, although the reverse isn't true. The ability to compartmentalize is hardly a bipolar specialty. Getting through a workday successfully when we're worried about our sick dog, or through a Friday when we have a party that night both require compartmentalizing emotion. It's a skill where you successfully or unsuccessfully slice huge chunks of reality off and shunt them out into the netherworld either forever or temporarily. If it's temporary, and you can manage to re-integrate that reality intact (or relatively intact, let's be real here) then compartmentalization is a healthy coping mechanism. If chunks go into the netherworlds and never come back in any recognizable form, it's pretty crazy-making for everyone involved. And if we're the ones gas-lighting our own-damn-selves, it also gets really truly absurd.

It's a war zone out there.
A huge number of bipolar ii's have agoraphobia - ie, a fear of places. I'm riddled with it.
The speculation is that the unexpected can trigger swings and so we learn to fear places where either swings have happened, or might happen. This rings astonishingly true to me. Knowing this, while it gives some reassurance that there's a logic to my crazy, does not therefore make it go away. Going to places I've never been makes me sick with fear.

To Thine Own Self Be True

I'm in a very precarious stage in my life right now.

I'm trying to learn new things.
Perhaps I should re-phrase: I'm trying to learn if I might like different things than I've ever thought I would like.

Given the number of people in my life who are used to me being a certain way, this has now caused the first amount of distress.

This shall not be the first post on this topic.
I have developed a certain amount of rigidity in my life, as a coping mechanism for correspondent chaos. I don't feel bad about the rigidity, anymore than I feel bad for my rigidity about breathing -it helps me survive. But in going through this period of growth, I am looking certain fears straight on and challenging them.

And then doing what I've always done and charging straight at them, sometimes falling off the cliff that was between them and me.

I used to sigh about Roland doing this, without realizing that I do the exact same thing. I never found it strange that I always understood Exactly what he was doing and found it something to admire. Of course, I don't even realize I'm doing it unless I fall off the cliff, it's so instinctive, it's so how-I-do-things.

What I'm going to take away from this is that it would be a good idea to try to be self-aware enough to warn people - " Hey, I'm pushing a limit here, that I developed along through my life-fumbling-around in, and I might have some emotional cliff that I won't see coming and suddenly Totally Freak The Fuck Out on you, and It's Not Your Fault."

That presents certain uncomfortable scenarios in and of itself though.
Being self-aware requires awareness of discomfort with certain unavoidable things - like people who I may or may not know, deadlines, expectations, locations that are unfamiliar, and such.

Does this mean that the horse that goes in front of the cart is growing into a comfortability with discomfort? I'm not sure that I can afford this nice tidiness. I'm not sure that life and growth can be so easily arranged.

Words of wisdom from an 8-year old:
“If you cannot control your peanut butter, you cannot expect to control your life.” ~ Judah-ism

And yet, dear nephew, I make excellent peanut butter sandwiches. Perhaps I should content myself with this and make everyone around me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk.

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside

Every time I think about describing how bipolar II works it crazy thing in my brain, I automatically start by humming the lines sung by the Duke in Moulin Rouge.

Here's a link: "It's a little bit funny...this feeling inside" Spectacular, Spectacular

Poor man was told the girl actually loves him, and acts like a goofy idiot because of it...

Unreliable information...

There's been something that has been simmering around in my brain for a while, ever since I started talking to autists and their experience with something called Sensory Processing Disorder. What happens to them when experiencing sensations seems really similar to how I experience feelings with bipolar.

There are difficulties of modulation - it's too strong, too loud, exhausting, too weak, too quiet, ephemeral.

What really got to me was the question of - what happens to a person when they cannot experience the world reliably through sound, vision, touch, balance?

It's the profoundly unreliable experience that really got to me. I get that with an understanding that prickles along my skin, aches in my bones.

What happens to me because I can't reliably gauge whether something will make me happy or sad? Or -too happy- or -too sad-? Or have any feeling at all?

___________________________________
There's been additional insight into SPD actually being a THING, since the oh-so-lovely invention of fMRI's. I really hope they are getting bipolar brains under those electric microscopes.
Sensory Processing Disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_disorder
Intense World Theory Interview: http://www.wrongplanet.net/article419.html
Intense World Theory Science-y stuff: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/
SPD Study Science-y stuff: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039906

When I discovered my Religion, developed my understanding of Economic Theory, and That Bright Shining Moment

For a lot of people it was the stories of Ayn Rand. She was the person who told the story that touched their souls, helped them understand their place in the world and the world That Could Be.

For me it was another story. We were visiting my aunt and uncle. My cousin Matthew rushed me to the kitchen table, "You have to read this story!"

I raised my eyebrows, I'd never understood his taste in literature even though we both preferred the same genres.

"It's not long, read it." I took the stapled pages, obviously a high school assignment handout, knowing that in his notebook would be the accompanying "Write three paragraphs about your understanding of this story." Ick... Teachers didn't usually assign stories with elves...

"With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea..."

So now I say, "Read this, it's not long."
Ursula Le Guin - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas


I stood at the kitchen table and read this not-long story. And at the end, hands trembling, pulled out a chair and sat and read it again. And again.

It was That Bright Shining Moment when I understood that Terrible Beauty, my world crumbled and was rebuilt in those moments. I walked through the fire, I had my moment on the Damascus Road, I beheld an old man, I emerged from the cave.

I was 16, I think. That's a good age to have some morality smash it's way into a human being's soul.

Throughout my life I was informed of the general principles of objectivism, given that they were the guiding forces of the terribly destructive "self esteem" social experiment that started on my generation, and then hideously refined with the succeeding one. I understand the comfort of those principles, given the radical social changes in such a short amount of time. There were no existing guidelines and social structures that could teach us how to understand what birth control was going to do to our society. The codified principle of following one's instincts must have been a huge relief.

I could understand objectivism, but I've always felt that objectivists can't seem to grapple with the child, and each person's responsibility for the child, to oneself, to everyone else. This question cannot be answered or contemplated using objectivist principles without a complete denial of responsibility to anyone.

We don't live in Omelas. We aren't shown the child as a rite of passage.

But the child is still here, everywhere. Do you take responsibility, understanding deep within your soul that every action has a cost, that every act of goodness, kindness, gentleness, graciousness can be a way of honoring and thanking the child?

"Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free."

I have wavered back and forth over the years, but right now at my time of life, I'm pretty sure I would not walk away. But I never stop thinking about it.

"Sometimes also a man or woman much older..." and how not?
The responsibility can be heavy.

Calling for an ancient Sesame Street clip

There is a song that I will be singing every time I write a post here.
It's apparently a Sesame Street song, but I never watched it. It was sung to me for the first time a few months after I turned 20 by my recently-wed husband, who sang it while acting out the adorable puppet-y scene.

I want this clip on YouTube, so that you can sing it with me. I might do a video of Roland and I doing the strange melodic cacophony that we do together.

It'ssss... FRI-day
Friday'sgreeeeeeat
I put on my Friday hat
FRI-day is where it's aaaaaaaaat

And there have been Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Teusday, Wednesday and Thursday versions.
This is a song we sing to each other to psych ourselves up to face the day, armoring ourselves with a little bit of goofy cheer before we go out into the world. It's our longest standing ritual, but it's a little meme that hasn't spread beyond the two of us. The girls have always been completely, irrationally, hostile to the infectious cheerfulness of this song, or admittedly it might have been the aforementioned cacophony...