Archives for posts with tag: don’t hate
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Each Morning Following the One Before

November 22, 2016 //
0

I woke far too early, but wasn’t awake for long. Well, sort of. I woke coughing, almost choking, “on dust”. My throat was dry and scratchy. I looked at the clock, it was 3 am, one of those difficult to call bits of timing… Stay up? Go back to sleep? I took my morning medication and gave going back to sleep a try, pretty certain I’d be up in a few minutes. I may or may not have been asleep when the alarm went off; it came as no surprise, and did not startle me. I feel rested, I woke quite easily, if I was actually sleep. It’s sometimes hard to tell with me – I sometimes dream I am awake. lol

My traveling partner beat me to wakefulness this morning. His greeting was waiting for me when I picked up my phone. It was a lovely few minutes of conversation to share and start my morning, once I had replied.

I refrain from looking at the news; it has become a cesspool of hate, deceit, treachery, disappointment, and did I mention the hate? Ick. I’m also generally staying away from Facebook, even making a practice of logging out if I do access it at all. I removed it from my phone; I have to make a specific effort to check it, which includes reinstalling it, and logging in. This is not a “head in the sand” manuever; I am taking care of myself, and the surge in hatefulness is hard to bear witness to with regularity. So. Less of that. Less of all of that.

I’m not ignoring the hate, I really can’t. It’s not okay at all. I just make my stand quite publicly in everyday situations, every day. Giving up my seat on the bus to the pregnant woman who the other commuters are making an obvious point of ignoring. Saying out loud “Ma’am, would you like to take this seat? I see that the younger commuters don’t realize how difficult maintaining your balance would be, pregnant on a moving train” or sitting down next to a young woman who some creepy dude is intruding on, and making light conversation until he moves away, or gets off the train, or intervening in creep-tacular moments of weird with a firm “hey, that’s not okay, and it needs to stop” out loud, quite audibly, and no nonsense, directly to the person being objectionable, eye-contact free of charge. No heroics, I’m just pretty fed up with hateful bullshit, and at a point in life where I am fairly fearless about calling it out.

In the simplest terms, I’m no “bystander” – this is my life. If I don’t like hateful bullshit, it’s important to explicitly object to it. Every time. Tolerance is not an appropriate reaction to the mistreatment of others.

Just a reminder how pointless it really is to blame the incoming individual (for the role of president) for all the hate and rudeness in the land. He may have given it branding and explicit approval, but he’s not the cause; all the same things that cause it everywhere else cause it in him as well. We make it right by making it right. We right the wrongs by righting the wrongs. We end our silence by speaking up. It’s a very good time to practice treating others well, and learning that treating ourselves can’t be at the expense of others. Attempting to treat oneself well at the expense of others, or at the expense of the world, rather misses the point of treating anything well at all.

I'll make a point to stop to appreciate beauty, too.

I’ll make a point to stop to appreciate beauty; it is one way I treat myself well, and also very much worth doing. So many verbs!

I’ll spend the rest of the morning preparing for the day, meditating on loving kindness, practicing the practices that improve my quality of life in each moment, building a more resilient, emotionally intelligent woman to face in the mirror each morning. It’s a good morning for that. It’s a good day for kindness. It’s a good day to be the change I want to see in the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Choosing Peace

July 15, 2016 //
0

I woke with a terrible headache. I woke much earlier than I needed to be awake. I used the opportunity to open the windows and patio door to the pre-dawn breezes and fresh air, and cooling the apartment before the heat of the day. Doing so had no effect on the headache. I didn’t really expect it would. The headache made me ill with vertigo. I made it to the bathroom in time for nausea to avoid becoming a mess that requires cleaning up. A migraine? No, I think it over and realize it’s just one of the occasional outcomes of taking Rx pain medication (for me), pretty commonly; I was in enough pain last night to take pain medication.

I made coffee, did my morning yoga and physical therapy stuff. The headache continues. I take some Tylenol for the headache. I have a mammogram today. I barely care; this headache is kicking my ass – and winning. Half-way through my coffee, the nausea wins, too. 😦 Sometimes being a human primate is fairly disgusting.

I write a bunch, delete all of it, deciding I don’t prefer to write about war, violence, or hate today. My heart aches for the victims of violence, the living and the dead. What action am I taking? I am living my life peacefully, refusing to take up arms, and treating my fellow human beings as human beings; we’re all in this together, each of us quite human. Each having our own experience. Each likely thinking we’re the good guy, regardless what the other guy thinks of our actions.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

My evening with my traveling partner was delightfully well-spent. Even this cursed headache doesn’t dim my smile when I think about our evening together. It wasn’t fancy, but love isn’t about fancy things, or planned events, or expensive trinkets. Love depends on a quality connection, not a fat bank account. 🙂

Be love. It's a choice. Love is a verb.

Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.

This headache continues to mess with my enjoyment of the morning, although it has begun to fade after a third round of nausea becomes a third opportunity to become really skilled at vomiting. (So gross.) Wow. Headaches, puking, violence, love… this blog post has it all! I chuckle to myself, aware that this morning’s writing hardly amounts to ‘content’ at all. I feel very human, in the most limiting sense.  There’s no disappointment in that awareness, in spite of the headache, the violence in the world, or a few moments of nausea on a Friday morning; being human is so much more than those details. I love. I am loved. Each morning I face a new opportunity to choose well for myself, and to be present, to love – and to love more. Good stuff.

"Emotion and Reason" 18" x 24" acrylic w/ceramic and glow details

“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details

There’s so much fear and violence in the world. Fear. Violence. Fear and violence. Fear of violence. Bleak. It’s both bleak and tragic, on top of being so entirely unnecessary. Today I’ll do my small part to change the world by engaging strangers in genial conversation: brown strangers, dark strangers, fair strangers, ginger strangers, foreign strangers, male strangers, child strangers, woman strangers, strangers of no obvious gender or ethnicity, strangers of poetic beauty, strangers who appear disengaged and uninvolved with the world around them, strangers who want conversation – we are all human beings, and in that sense, we are not strangers to each other at all. There’s no reason to be afraid.

Today is a good day to choose peace.

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Healing Takes Time

July 9, 2016 //
0

It takes time to recover from an injury. I over-eagerly pushed myself to complete a longer than usual last Monday, and arrived home with a sore knee. Tuesday I stayed mostly off of it and it felt much better by day’s end. Wednesday, it felt better still, though not fully recovered, and I undertook some nearby errands on foot – and worsened the injury. I knew better. I chose poorly. Yesterday, with some discipline, I stayed mostly off of it again, and this morning find myself ‘better’ although I still feel it aching, and occasional twinges if there’s any hint of lateral movement…and my brain happily chimes in first thing with hiking suggestions! No. I’m staying off it today, too. 😦 It’s a more difficult choice than I’d like it to be.

A good day to relax in the garden.

A good day to relax in the garden.

Doing what I know is the correct thing, the most effective or appropriate choice to take care of my long-term needs well, is not always the easiest choice. It is, in fact, most often not at all the easiest choice.

After a night of rain showers, and a morning of sunshine, the garden needs little help from me besides enjoying it.

After a night of rain showers, and a morning of sunshine, the garden needs little help from me besides enjoying it.

I think about choices. I think about growth, and progress. I think about the world. I wonder about all the people who seem never to have taken time to reflect on that person in their mirror, to reflect on their choices, their actions, the outcomes. I can’t actually imagine that the vast numbers of ignorant hateful people shoring up our badly broken culture actually ever pause to reflect on what they do, on what they’ve done, or on why it matters so much that they learn another way – that we all learn other, better, ways. (We are each having our own experience. Most people, even really vile hateful people, imagine themselves to be the good guys in their own narrative.) I think about how far I’ve come myself, growing up in ignorance, and learning so much to come so far – to discover how very ignorant I remain. Different things. The more I’ve learned of life, of love, of things universal or specific, of science, of violence, of art, of madmen and monsters in the darkness, of the fictions I craft for myself, of journeys to be taken, and of all the many practices within reach to become a better person than I was yesterday… the more there seems to be to learn. About all of it.

"Where did I get that idea?" "Why do I think so?" These are important questions to ask myself.

“Where did I get that idea?” “Why do I think so?” These are important questions to ask myself.

I’m no longer so frustrated by my own ignorance; this is a journey, and I continue to grow. I may have observed that I am unsure what other purpose life has, than growth, development, learning. We become. We become, in fact, what we practice. (But what we think we know weighs heavily on what we may choose to practice.) I began life knowing nothing. I know so much more now – and so little compared to the vastness of all there is to know. “I am only an egg” says Valentine Michael Smith. I can’t argue with that.

It's a good day to begin again. A good day to learn, and to love. A good day to change the world.

It’s a good day to begin again. A good day to learn, and to love. A good day to change the world.

Today I will spend my time being – and becoming. Painting. Practicing. Breathing. Loving. Treating myself and others as I well as I know how to, and learning to do it just a bit better while I’m at it. Today that’s enough.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Opening Up

May 15, 2016 //
1

A few days ago I went into my Facebook settings and ‘followed’ everyone on my friends list. (Over time I had ‘unfollowed’ several friends, for a variety of reasons, and recently recognized how limiting that could potentially be for those friendships.)

I consider myself fairly open-minded at this point in life – though, actually, I ‘always’ did… and… I just wasn’t, for a very long time. I grew up with hate, primarily racism, sexism, and homophobia, with plenty of extra hate laying about for ‘strangers’ and ideas that didn’t suit my community – or my father. He was a fairly well-educated man, professional, with broad life experience and a good intellect. He also thought of himself as ‘open-minded’. He also was not. Definitions of terms are surprisingly stretchy, varying rather a lot between how we apply a word to others, versus how we apply it to ourselves. Why do I mention it? The quantity of peculiarly subtle hate that cropped up in my Facebook feed when I followed everyone on my friends list. I admit I was taken by surprise by the rationalized lack of tolerance, lack of compassion, lack of understanding, and the intensely dogmatic (and more than a little nationalistic) ‘us versus them’ perspective on the world. Fear-based thinking. Entitlement. Ad hominem and straw-man fallacies in abundance. It was an eye-opening and thought-provoking experience. It got me thinking about hate… and the woman in the mirror.

I don’t hate much. I mean that in the verb form, as in “I don’t indulge in the experience of feeling hate, or acting on impulses that may have their source in the experience of hating” when I recognize and can avoid it. I qualify it in that fashion (‘…when I recognize and can avoid it.’) because I’m human. Prone to irrational fears of the unknown, prone to seeing threats where no threat exists, and prone to negative biases – because at one time in the evolution of humanity, we needed those characteristics to secure our safety. Not very useful at this point, I must say, and obviously damnably difficult to let go of, based on what I see in my Facebook feed this past couple days. I’m not immune. I tend toward reactivity, versus responsiveness (as do many of us, it’s very human). I practice another way, deliberately, willfully, and with use of plenty of verbs – because I don’t find positive value in hate. Full stop. No need to justify my values there. This is who I am.

Now.

Yep. There’s the thing; it’s who I am now. I’ve grown and changed a lot over the years. There was a time when I wore hate like a luxurious cloak of finely made fabric; I brandished it, justified it, and felt righteous about my hate. I didn’t call it hate. I didn’t recognize the hateful nature of my words and ideology. I didn’t understand that I was hateful. I didn’t see that I was hurting people. I had little self-awareness and less compassion. I look back on that much younger self of long ago and I am embarrassed – and relieved to be transformed over time, through experience, through choices, and through the patience and acts of loving friends and associates who valued me beyond the hate, the prejudice, and the ignorance.

Thank you. (You know who you are.)

Hate is pretty ugly stuff. A lot of it sources with our fears, and our insecurity about our selves. Worse still, a lot of our fears and our hate, culturally, is manufactured bullshit – created to fatten up someone’s bottom line, either at the polls, or in the marketplace. That’s some sick shit right there, when a human being is willing to foment hate to profit from it personally. I’m not okay with that. I’m okay with being uncomfortable with what I don’t understand. I’m okay with being uneasy about what is strange or new or different. I’m okay with wanting or needing to set boundaries for myself, or having limitations as a human being – I’m a human being. Hate though? Not actually okay at all – not if I intend to say I am a civilized, rational, reasonable, good-hearted, compassionate, human being. The ‘us/them’ bullshit used to justify hate is precisely that – it’s bullshit. We are all human beings – even the fairly hateful loathsome ones who push my ability to tolerate human stupidity – and we are each having our own experience. I can’t actually ‘fix this’, though… except with regard to the woman in the mirror. I don’t do hate. It’s a choice. There are verbs involved.

…I have friends (and family) who do. Hate exists because people hate. That’s an unpleasant thing to have to accept… that there are people who matter to me who embrace hate. These are good-hearted people, generally, who likely don’t see themselves in that light, and who don’t recognize their words or behavior as hateful. They feel justified. They are also having their own experience. I am uncomfortable with hate. I find myself facing an interesting life lesson here. I am thankful that friends and loved ones who knew a more hateful younger me didn’t turn away from me; over time it changed me to see another way modeled by people I value.

There’s no denouement here, no handy lesson, no easy solution or catchy final paragraph wherein the good guys win. This is life. This is messy. This is challenging. Change and growth don’t come easily – and can’t be forced. I can continue, myself, to grow, to do better than I did a year ago, and to practice good practices, learning to treat myself – and the world – truly well. I can refuse, myself, to hate. I hope it’s enough.

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Being

February 20, 2016 //
0

I woke easily but wanting to sleep later. I lingered in bed for some time, but sleep wasn’t happening; the day had begun. I sat down with my coffee and opened my Facebook feed – generally a very positive place these days, because it actually does work to continue to refine my feed preferences over time. I block ‘news’ sites that aren’t legitimate news sites, choosing to refrain from injecting poison into my brain through my eye holes every day, if I can. I’ve even chosen to unfriend some long-time historical connections whose values, and means of expressing those, continued to cause me stress and rouse emotions like fear, panic, anxiety – hard to call them friends, if that is my reaction to their words, right?

The world is what it is, though, and incremental change over time on a global scale is crazy slow – because we don’t all share the same values, and frankly, it’s not even a given that we all make choices in favor of our own survival as a species. I mean… actually… it’s clear we don’t.

Isn't the beauty of a sunrise important, too?

Isn’t the beauty of a sunrise important, too?

Two articles got my attention in a fairly painful way this morning.  The first was an article about the artist Kesha losing a court case seeking to end her contractual relationship with a record company requiring her to continue to work alongside a producer who raped her. Wow. Seriously, Sony? Evil much? Is a record deal actually worth sacrificing a young woman’s mental and emotional health? My first thought is ‘how dare you?’, followed quickly by my own memories of attempting to report a sexual assault to my unit commander and being told I didn’t really want to ‘ruin that young man’s life that way’ and besides ‘it would be bad for unit cohesion’ and I should ‘grow a thicker skin – boys will be boys’. Yep. Apparently that’s still the world we live in. How about we fix that?

We could choose to change the path we're on.

We could choose to change the path we’re on.

The second article was entirely different, very peculiar, and tough to fit into my understanding of rational adult governance; the Southern Poverty Law Center produced their annual report of hate groups, and I guess I’m not really surprised, but… the Republican Party made the list this year. (Oh hey, guys – go you! It’s like an award for being… the worst people in the nation. WTF? Certainly validates my choice to register differently some years ago, just saying. Don’t hate.) Yeah. I actually don’t know what to say about it. I seriously doubt that my own Republican friends meet the definition of ‘a hate group’… then recall that I’ve unfriended a number of former associates, friends, and colleagues, for reasons very much relevant to the politics of hate: racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious fundamentalism, and political extremism of the sort that seeks to create a bigger and bigger divide between some arbitrary ‘us’ and some frightening ‘them’. So… huh. What now?

Taken in context, fully considering what you know of the world, yourself, are your individual choices building the world you want most to live in?

Taken in context, fully considering what you know of the world, yourself, are your individual choices building the world you want most to live in?

If Republicanism has indeed become a hate group… do we now see the wholesome, compassionate, educated, forward-thinking Republicans among us lead their party to a better way of viewing the world… or do they leave the Republican party? Those aren’t the only two options, of course. Another option is pissing and moaning about how misunderstood their hate is, and how they are only seeking to improve things for “everyone”, and perhaps something about how ‘that’s just a few extremists in the party’. Scary, though. If I were told, with supporting documentation and evidence, that ‘being an artist’ was a hate group… would I stop painting? Would I paint differently? Would living my own values require me to change my actions based on the new information – or would it require me to acknowledge the truth of it, and continue to live it?

What matters most? Taking care of me is not at the expense of others - it never had to be.

What matters most? Taking care of me is not at the expense of others – it never had to be.

When I realized I had gotten sucked into a very dark place quite early in the morning, even letting my coffee go cold, I set the world aside – it’ll still be here later – and take time for me. I calm myself with meditation, and take time to watch the morning unfold beyond the window. The sunrise was worth taking the time for it. A fresh cup of coffee is nice, too. I breathe, and let go of my own hurting resurrected by the unpleasant, uncomfortable, all-too-human hateful bullshit that snuck into my experience this morning. Hurts from the past don’t have to be indulged in the present; it’s something my traveling partner pointed out to me early in our relationship. Having the injury that I do, it’s often very difficult to ‘let things go’ once visceral real-time emotions are aroused, but it isn’t impossible. Verbs. Always with the verbs. 🙂

Be love.

Be love.

I don’t have to live within my emotional pain. It isn’t a requirement to hold onto the worst moments as though they define the present ones. They are now only memories, scars, and lingering impressions caught in my implicit memory. I allow ‘now’ to become prominent, again. I step more firmly into this moment. I hear the music in the background… it’s apropos and I smile, and relax.  I think of my friends, their wit, their wisdom – even the Republican ones. The world is damned scary filtered by fear and hate, isn’t it? That isn’t the world I actually live in, myself… You? Maybe it’s a matter of speaking up when we hear it around us, just simply saying ‘Dude, not okay!’, and reminding each other of Wheaton’s Law.  Maybe it’s bigger than that – maybe we’re not the most amazing primates, after all? Certainly we’ve got room to grow as beings. We live in the world we choose to build. Could we do better? Choose more wisely? Well… yeah. 🙂 Let’s do that!

Today is a good day for sunshine, and for logging off Facebook. Today is a good day for being. Today is a good day to buy products from companies that don’t promote hate, or rape culture, or slavery, or exploitation, or… I didn’t say it was going to be easy. It’s going to take practice. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »