Love and death

I think about death a lot.  I don't know if I think about it more or less than most people, but I do think about it a lot.  And it scares me, I admit it.  There are so many ways to die, and a lot of them are painful and some of them are gruesome and we don't get to know when ours will happen nor what it will be like.  (Yes, I use 'nor'.  I can't help it.)

Mostly, though, I'm not thinking about my own death, but about Sweet Hubby's.  Even just the thought sometimes feels almost impossible to survive.

But - Sweet Hubby and I have had good lives, and have shared a good life, for a lot longer than some people get.  We've had our injuries and crises, but nothing that has left either of us diminished.  I need to remember that, focus on that, be grateful for that, instead of being so fearful.  And I am, terribly terribly grateful for this life and for this marriage.  I am grateful to Sweet Hubby for being the wind beneath my wings, and to my family for giving me wings in the first place.  So I'll think about that.  A much nicer thought.

Those damned Christians

I am reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's beautiful, poignant book Braiding Sweetgrass.  Early in the book she shares the Native American legend of Sky Woman, a story full of the bringing of life, the sharing of resources and spirit, growth, soil, animals, plants, harmony, beginnings.

Compare that to the legend of Eve, a story of exile, shame, guilt, the curse of menstruation, the pain of childbearing.  I can't help but wonder why anyone would choose to believe in a god who is so judgmental, so cruel, who forbids the first humans to hunger after knowledge and punishes them and all of us ever after when they disobey.  And we do choose what to believe; let's make no mistake about that.  

So much has been lost to the world by the Christian/European purposeful, systematic destruction of this country's indigenous cultures.  (The same is probably true of Australia and Africa and no doubt anywhere in the world where superior weaponry overwhelmed and decimated superior thought and natural ways of living and relating to the natural world.)  I don't kid myself indigenous people's didn't struggle or wage wars or dominate others.  But the way they have been treated, mistreated, virtually eradicated by intruders and conquerors is an almost unfathomable wrong.

I despise religious institutions, most of which were at first attempts to codify spirituality but soon devolved into being about power and suppression and wealth and division.  I find Catholicism especially disgusting, and, again, wonder why anyone continues to buy into an institution that has given the world the Magdalena laundries, the schools that tore indigenous children from their parents and hammered on them to drive out their native languages and customs, the priests who have abused legions of children without consequence, the towering cathedrals full of gold set in starving towns and cities.

I know it is considered rude at best and shockingly inappropriate at worst to denigrate other people's beliefs, to which I answer "Have your beliefs, cherish them, follow them, but do not for a moment think yours take precedence over anyone else's, that yours are better, than anyone but you needs to believe what you believe.  Your relationship to the Great Whatever is yours alone.  Be content with that and quit judging everyone else."

As Richard Dawkins points out in The God Delusion: there are no Christian or Buddhist or Jewish children.  There are only children born to Christian or Buddhist or Jewish parents.  Left to themselves, every child to would come up with her own mythology and origin story and tenets.  If only we were all allowed to do that, to decide for ourselves individually what we believe, what makes sense to us, what helps us answer the unanswerable questions of how life began and what it all means.  If only.

One last quote from someone who was a heck of a lot smarter and more eloquent than I:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

The glee club

I have soliloquies going on in my head (mind? brain? imagination?) pretty much non-stop.  And because I figure I'm probably like everyone else, I assume you do, too.  These un-throated voices have been given lots of names: old tapes, itty bitty shitty committee, etc.  I call mine the glee club.

While these voices address an infinite number of topics, there are prominent recurring threads which have been with me my whole life.  They are:

1) I'm ugly, fat, stupid, old, a worthless idler, a fraud.

2) I'm special.  I'm capable of special things, I'm meant to do special things.

These feel very, very personal, of course, but I'm also guessing they are fairly generic and that most people have some version of both.  But I'm curious about that.  What does Trump say to himself?  I'm thinking that if he has only one of those voices, it's probably loud and fierce, and it's a toss up which one it might be.  What were the messages my dad gave himself?  He was clearly wrestling with demons he wasn't able to talk about.  What were his inner soliloquies?  The woman at the bus stop, the grocery clerk ringing up my produce, the daughter of my friend who died.  What do they think about?  Not the conscious thinking of "here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm going to do", but the sometimes insidious, constant background chatter that tells us who we are and what we are or are not worth.

3)  This one is a question, The Question.  Everyone has a central question, a question that is never answered and the asking of which defines us and guides our actions, our choices, our entire journey.  The Question is always particular to each person.  "Am I winning?"  "Can I trust you?"  "Am I safe?"  Mine is "Do you still like me?"  Not "Do you like me?", because I've always known I could get people to like me.  But it's fear of losing that affection, that amity, that haunts me.  It has caused me to hang on to and keep feeding friendships which are no longer alive.  It causes me to spend hours and hours on email every day (I guess the way some people are on social media).  It eats up Christmas, which, since I stopped giving and receiving presents,  has become a time of writing and mailing soooo many cards, even to those people with whom my only connection is that once-a-year hello.  In the past, it has inspired me to make myself the center of attention in every classroom and party.  Since people might not still like me if they knew my true self (see #1), I would at least make sure they found me entertaining and amusing.  (I can see now that I may have been exhausting to be around.)  

Since uncovering that question, pulling it to the surface so that I can work with it instead of simply being driven by it, I find I am more able to calm down and allow people to take me or leave me as they will.  I don't want my whole life to be about being liked.  There are so many more fruitful pursuits than that.  I accept that some people will, indeed, stop liking me at some point, and some will even actively dislike me, as difficult as that is to believe.

One of the most important steps in maturation is taken when we stop defining ourselves by what parents, teachers, friends, our culture tell us we are and begin deciding for ourselves what we want, what we can do, where we are going.  Another step is to stop letting those internal voices define us.  They will always be there; at this point I have no reason to think they'll disappear.  But I don't have to listen to mine, don't have to believe them.  Whether I'm stupid or special doesn't matter.  I just am who I am, I do what I do, I behave how I behave, I improve in the ways I am able to, I indulge in weaknesses sometimes.  I am responsible for myself.

I'm still intensely curious about you.