Adieu and Farewell

Two old Yankees are sitting in the back of a political  rally. This was the days before PA systems, and the speaker has a low voice. Finally, one of the old-timers turned to the other in frustration. "Whut's he sayin?" he asked. His compa triot leaned forward, straining to hear. Then he leaned back and turned. "He don't say!"
Many people with nothing to say still find much to talk about. That has been the biggest obstacle to writing this blog in an on-going way At first, it was a marvelous format for venting that had been lost when weekly sermons were no longer available. And it appealed to that inner child who enjoyed the attention, the showing off before others. But then I began to run into my own limits. Writing even a short blog takes time. I was constantly reminded how little I knew about so much. And I had little feedback, so the necessity of an audience became more and more obvious.
There is much recognition today of the importance of silence. People spend much time sitting in silence, go on silent retreats, encourage silence as the unanswerable argument. As I was told back in Vermont, it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and  remove all  doubt.
I have never been good at silence. Maybe it is time I found the wisdom of that Still, Small Voice. So this blog is going on hiatus. I appreciate those of you who read it (both of you) and wish you well. I reserve the right to speak up if there is some issue that demands a comment.
In the meantime, I will seek other ways to express myself.

Sticks and Stones

It seems that more and more people are coming forward with stories about being bullied in school, even the bullies themselves! Hesitating to participate in a mass movement that, lemming-like, doesn't accomplish much more than a communal purging, I nevertheless would tell my story of abuse.
My father was an ambitious man, and he was promoted over and over during his career. This resulted in my family moving many times in my childhood, sometimes staying in any one place only for a matter of months. We moved up and down the East Coast, and even overseas.
I was a quiet and bookish child, believe it or not, and made friends slowly and seldom simply because I never knew when we might move again. My classmates in the various schools I attended treated me as the outsider I was. My rapidly deteriorating eyesight made things worse, as I couldn't make up for my lack of social experience by any athletic skills.
Teachers in those days didn't know how to bring newcomers into the closed world of an elementary school. I can remember vividly one time when the class was to copy a picture from one of our classbooks. The teacher gathered these drawings and put them up for all the class to critique (presumably some sort of art lesson.) I am no artist, to be sure, but it quickly became obvious who was the class goat. As the teacher stood by, student after student picked out my picture- and mine alone!- to point out flaws.
Not until high school did I begin to fight back, futilely and franticly. Of course, I was disciplined when I reacted to the whispered teasing from the kid behind me in class by overturning his desk. Of course, I showed up at parties I thought I had been invited to only to find no party there. And we will not be distracted by talking about the young women who ignored me, denied any offer of a date, even plotted with my classmates to make me look ridiculous in public.
Two things saved me, and they are strangely linked: my faith and my acting. In my home church I found the acceptance I found nowhere else. And it was also there that I discovered an ability to act on stage, to transform into someone else.
That does not means the teasing, the nasty words, the rejection stopped. It took years before I came to terms with who I am, regardless of what others thought or said.
But it did leave me with this: because of all the hurts I have suffered, I can recognize and empathize with the hurts of others. Not that I would recommend that path to such a goal; As Mark Twain reported when he interviewed a man who had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail: "If it weren't for the honor, I'd just as soon have walked."

Consensus Yes?

My friends in the Society of Friends (that's Quakers to you) have a way of deciding things called consensus. When one of their committees or boards seek a resolution to whatever, everyone there must agree with the decision. That means when even one person objects, won't go along, finds just one detail unacceptable, the group must keep seeking some common ground.  No voting, no majority rule, no compromise that pleases no one.
Even amongst some coummunity action groups that do not follow this practice, there is a tendency toward consensus. I have been in such meetings where someone who is otherwise sympathetic and cooperative, becomes an obstacle to getting something done. They may be highly idealistic, impatient with the dirty details sometimes necessary, or just having a bad day personally. The resulting group dynamic is the same, with people trying to placate, manipulate, or sometimes abdicate,  just refusing to play any more
This might give some insight to those amongst you who cannot understand the (ir)rationale behind what is happening, uh, not happening in Washington these days. We have a president who still draws on his time as a community organizer (and please spare me from right-wing screeds about ACORN or its ilk). He does at times fall into the role of assertive manager and head of the whole shebang, but most of the time  he seems to expecting that Congress will show the sort of openness and tolerance associated with reaching consensus. He honestly thinks the best of people!
So he offers various suggestions, not realizing that the people he is dealing with interpret such as a concession, not a move toward consensus. Open-mindedness is seen as empty-headedness 
But there are politicians today who will not (can not?) seek a common ground. Such might be seen as (gasp!)weakness. In our winner-take-all society, the very word bi-partisan has become a meaningless noise. So when someone takes a stand, there is no possibility of convincing that person to move from that place.
Granted, we are all separate and unique individuals. But when we insist on everyone doing things our way, there are some who will reject anything we suggest, no matter how valid (or crazy.)
We share more than we differ. Isn't time to consider consensus?

Win or Lose

It is one of the most chilling moments in the Academy award-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers. An Israeli security official is talking with a Palestinian doctor, who surprises him by saying, "We're winning." How can you think that, the Israeli asks. Your fighting forces are being wiped out, your people are being pushed farther and farther into a corner. We're winning, the doctor asserted, because we're causing so much pain and suffering for you!
That has become a more and more common attitude toward differences and contention. The goal has become not to acheive one's goals and dreams but to stymie one's opponents from reaching theirs! In other words, the battle becomes an end in itself where winning or losing are not merely out of reach, but not relevant at all.
So we have national elected officials who spend as much time preventing anything from happening as they do actually doing what obviously needs to be done. The goal would seem to be to cause as much pain and suffering as possible for the other guy.
And we have relationships where no one seems to want anyone else to achieve anything. Husbands stand in the way of wives going to work or for further education, even though they need the income and there is nothing to be done at home. Or, in a warped sort of caring, some parents encourage their children not to go for higher education, not to move on in a personal life, under the pretense of protecting them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Such scenarios result in an on-going tug of war without any discernable reason or goal.
This modern-day version of the Red Queen's Race (see Lewis Carroll's Through  the Looking Glass) results in running as fast as possible while staying in the same place: frustration, despair, confusion. Oh, but our very resistance to anything productive enables us to continue our stance as helpless victims and to avoid risking responsibility.
I have never been a fan of our society's idealization of competition. If anything, studies have shown it as one of the least productive ways of interacting. But what we have now is nowhere near the old capitalistic ideal of winning and losing.
When we regain that sense of directions, goals worth working toward, then we can get past this societal gridlock where the struggle is all.

Never Say Always?

The young man calling was dismayingly common: he and his fiancee, with whom he had three children, were looking for couple's counseling. We ran into dat ole debbil moolah right away: I'm not eligible for Medicaid/Medicare, Husky, Title 19 or any of the  state insurance programs, and they couldn't afford even the minimum on my sliding scale.
But then he acknowledged they were just shopping anyway, so I could only suspect that they (or at least he) were just going through the motions.
It still raised the issue of relationships today. Ironically, at the same time that marriage equality has become an international battlecry for the LGBT community, straight heterosexual marriage has been more and more pushed aside especially by the younger  generation. The much-bandied-about statistic that nearly half of all marriages end in the divorce courts ignores the increasing number of couples who view matrimony as an expensive and extraneous institition. Justifying the lack of a wedding ring or marriage certificate as unnecessary for two people who are truly commited to one another, they move in together and go through very similar stages to their legally married brethren and sistern: buying property, having children, loving and fighting and reconciling like any husband and wife.
Of course, given the rocky status of matrimony, it should  be no surprise that the next generation might be wary of it. There is also a deep suspicion and rejection of traditional institutions such as marriage; we have a society that doesn't trust itself or any of the mechanisms which traditionally hold society together.
Inasmuch, as I said before, such couples might discard some of the legal ties (matrimony) but not others (property, children), it seems that people are being people and consistently inconsistent. Or may be it is a resistance to commitment.
Misunderstanding the reality of any relationship that no one is  signing on for forever, or at least shouldn't, couples should realize that,like everything that works in life, marrage is only for today, Carrying the issues of yesterday or worrying about potential issues of tomorrow keeps us from dealing with what is happening right here and right now. Otherwise, there will always be that little voice in the background that whispers, "You could always leave."
In any relationship, there will be days when things turn toxic. If we have made a commitment to keep trying, that is as much as anyone can do.

Boundaries

One of the givens today is movable boundaries.
No, it is doubtful that there ever was a time when there were consistently defined and universal standards, expectations of behavior, acknowledgement what is right and what is wrong. Sure, there were clearly codified rules ranging from Moses to Hammurabi, but we are talking about social norms rather than legal/moral dictates. And today it has become more fuzzy (or at least more obviously so) than in the past.
Part of this comes from the seismic social changes that have happened in recent times. Traditional ways (even those not always acknowledged or adhered to) have been questioned, even outright discarded. Yes, there are those who, even though they honored these ways more in word than personal deed, have sought to turn back the clock to times that may have never really existed save in nostalgic memory. And when it proves impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube, the blame game begins in earnest.
Does this mean we should give up any attempt to set appropriate boundaries? Of course we need to define who each of us may be and what we may be willing to do or tolerate from another; otherwise we fall into a psychological maelstrom of enmeshment between our issues and everyone else's. Nor should we give way to what one author referred to as "raging narcissism," where we only care for our own needs (paging Ayn Rand!)
One of the biggest tasks in most psychotherapy is dealing with boundaries. On one extreme is the client who resists leaving at the end of a session. On the other is the client who consistently arrives late (if at all) and wants to leave early. The spectrum runs from those who do not trust anyone at all to those who suffer greatly from the burdens of everyone else's problems. In addition, there are clients who want to know the therapist in every detail, and clients who come with their own expectations of the therapist.
So should we not seek any standards or accept and follow any ethical mores? There is some evidence that certain actions or behavior is universally condemned (incest, for example). And we all seem to have from childhood a sense of what is "fair" or not(butting in line.) Of course,  we have religious dicta that we carry from our faith, but that is where we get into the gray areas because they do not always mesh and can differ tremendously depending on how they are adhered to (do you eat pork?)
Before you begin thinking I have painted myself in a philosophical corner, let me suggest that the problem is not setting boundaries or what form of boundaries we set, but how rigidly we adhere to them. If we see our ethical/moral standards as goals rather than strict behavioral guidelines, we might be able live more honestly than we tend to do now. We might also save a great deal of emotional energy and anguish by not having to come up with rationalizations when we would not follow our own code of behavior, or feeling badly if we do. The point is having a goal to work toward, a sense of direction, something which might be at times beyond us but still whispers in our ear, come on! You can do better!

Just a Joke

He'd posted this joke on Facebook, and no I'm not going to tell it here 'cause (a) it weren't funny and (b) it was based on a series of sexist and ethnic slurs. Enough to say it was a regression to the old vaudeville gags based on insults and slapstick (which, as we all know, is really a comic form of physical abuse.)
Since I have this unfortunate difficulty tolerating that kind of thing, I pointed this out, in a low-key, polite kinda way of course. Next time I'll stick to something less hazardous, like wrestling alligators and poking bees' nests. Lighten up, I was chastised, stop being so "politically correct." It's only a joke.
Let us not be distracted by an old right-wing shibboleth, "political correctness." Let me, rather, introduce you to a little thing called "verbal abuse." When you use slurs, or stereotypes, even in a joke, you are putting someone down. You are belittling them, as in "putting them below yourself." Consider: would you say the same thing other than in the pretext of a joke?
Freud had a theory that most humor is akin to anger and hurt and humiliation. He might have had a point; consider the archetypal example of comedy: slipping on a banana peel. Why do we laugh at that? Is it because we feel superior to the poor person lying there on the ground?
Granted, there are variations on humor that depend on clever wordplay or identification with what is being talked about (Bill Cosby springs to mind.) But think of the most popular comedies out now: they are filled with people being hurt, humiliated, made to seem foolish. They are aimed at that particular stage in our lives when we can think of little funnier than putting down our peers. (In boys, as I remember, it happens around adolescence.)
And regardless of age, it is a common defense when confronted. I was just kidding. Only a joke, man.  But that elides the difference.
Yes, I have a sense of humor. Like to think that I am even witty. But when someone moves into that kind of humor that depends on putting someone down, where the laughter is a cover for tears, that ain't funny anymore.