Who am I in this?

Do the women who live a more (native/natural/indigenous/elemental/earth-based/primitive/tribal - take your pick) life than mine ever think to themselves "My legs used to be hairy but now they're smooth and I'm growing a beard"?  This is the kind of thing I have the luxury of thinking about.  Do they?

I recognize that every one of my problems is a first world problem.  (Side note: I have an idea of what the third world is and who is supposed to be in it or of it, but what the heck is the second world?)  And every one of my privileges is a first world privilege.  I flick a switch and have lights and warmth.  I turn a knob and have water, hot and cold and clean.  When I notice them, I am thunderstruck by the enormity and inequity of my completely unearned privileges.  I wouldn't last a day in a primitive, elemental world.  Or a war-torn world.  I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to cope or exist.  Yet there are millions of people who do.

So what am I supposed to do with this understanding?  I can't apologize for the luck of the circumstances of my birth, which I had nothing to do with.  I can at least say that I do see it, the disparity between how I get to live and how those millions live.  But so what if I can acknowledge that I'm better off than most people and through no virtue of my own and no fault of theirs?  What good does my acknowledgment do anyone?  It's like the announcements which have become standard before cultural events, acknowledging that the event takes place on the unceded lands of the indigenous peoples who occupied them before the lands were stolen.  So what?  The ruination of these peoples isn't undone or healed, no reparations are made, the native cultures are not restored so what good has been done?

I guess what is incumbent on me is what always has been: to live as kind and generous a life as I possibly can; to offer help where I see it's needed; not to take one moment nor one part of my life for granted; and for heaven's sake not to complain about my ridiculously trivial problems.  But still, what good will any of that have done to correct or balance the inequities of the world?

I know that life is just what it is, the world is just what it is, and there has probably never been a time in all of human history when there weren't some who lived better than others and that's just the fact of it and not my problem and not my responsibility.  But still, I just can't help but keep asking myself "Who am I in this?"

I saw something

Last night I saw something, or was inspired, or had a revelation, a moment along those lines.  It was about a play I started years ago, and have always wanted to return to, but hadn't gotten back to yet.  It's about four generations of women living together; the oldest is slipping into dementia; her daughter, in whose house the play takes place, is trying to hold the family together; her daughter is angrily bitter from a recent divorce; her daughter is recklessly throwing herself into the future.  I love love love this play, at least what it might be.

I hadn't gone searching for this inspiration.  I hadn't (consciously at least) been thinking about this play.  The moment came from the magical mire of my imagination. But all in that moment, I saw that the play belongs to the two older women; the other two are subsidiary characters who show up in the oldest woman's moment of clarity; I need to know their stories, but only tell bits of them.  I saw a new possible structure for the play, that it needs to take place in stages, and what those stages should be.  I even saw a complete scene unfold, one that made my heart feel sore and soft.

Also unbidden came the thought "This is the one.  This is the play I will finally get right.  This is the one which will get noticed."  I suppose I've had the same thought about other plays; I don't actually remember if I have.  But the thought was strong and terribly exciting.

Now, of course, comes actually having to write the darned thing, choose each word one at a time, in the hope of being able to fulfill on that thrill of promise and possibility which came to me all in a flash.

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.

It's ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ot!

There is a remarkable heat wave where I live right now.  Remarkable in that it's earlier than usual, and also because it's all anyone seems to be talking about.  Yesterday it got up to the 90's inside the house.  Hardly anyone has air conditioning, you see, because this kind of heat is not expected, not here, not this early in the summer, not for this long.

Sweet Hubby and I have fans going in almost every room, and our poor little kitty in his fur coat is sprawled on the floor, barely interested in food, which is also remarkable.  I'm not working out, am not focusing well on anything, but just sweating and drinking water and staying as cheerful as possible, or at least being not too crabby.

This kind of swelter, of course, brings to mind global warming, more aptly called climate change.  It's difficult not to feel terribly anxious about the catastrophe we humans are making for ourselves and the planet.  I'm more worried about the melting ice caps, because once they melt, they ain't coming back until another ice age.

However, I've decided that, rather than be anxious about something I have no control over, I'm going to be very philosophical about this wretched mess.  It looks as though we humans simply aren't going to make the changes we would need to in order to reverse, halt, or even slow the damage we are doing.  And in the end, we are only damaging ourselves.  The earth will heal just fine after we're gone.  Look at Chernobyl, which has become a lush natural preserve after all that devastation.  True, we're taking a lot of other species down with us, but life will continue on the planet once we've done ourselves in.  I certainly can't point a finger at anyone else.  I still drive a car.  It's a hybrid, true, and I take the bus a lot (pre-COVID), but I do drive.  And I travel by plane (pre-COVID) and do all sort of other activities that contribute to the degradation of the planet.  And even if I stopped all of that and lived much more simply, me doing it on my own wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.  The changes have to be global and they have to be mandated and that's just not going to happen. 

So I'm going to live and enjoy my life, with apologies to the generations to follow.  I'm still going to recycle and compost and turn off lights and take the bus, but I'm going to stop feeling so anxious about it all.  Earth will abide.  We humans will get our just desserts.

Kids - who needs 'em?

I have never wanted children.  Maaaaaybe if I had ever married someone who a) I thought would stick around, 2) would be a great dad, and 3) wanted children himself, I might have considered it.  But my first husband had already had two, to whom he was a neglectful dad, and he'd wisely chosen to get a vasectomy.  Sweet Hubby most definitely does not and has never wanted to be a father.  And I just haven't ever felt that maternal pull.

I am curious about how it is that some people know they do want children.  Where does that impulse live?  In the uterus?  In the guts?  In the mind?  I think about being a mother, and immediately what comes to mind is "Whew, glad I didn't."  My life would have been so different.  Maybe better in some ways, although it's hard to imagine it could be better than it is now.

Part of not wanting to have children has been about enjoying the freedom of choice and movement I have always had, but part of it is just plain cowardice.  I think being a parent takes more courage than just about any other venture I can think of (although bungee jumping is high on the list of scary stuff).  I can barely imagine what it must be like to allow one's child to cross the street alone for the first time, or how hard it must be when their hearts or bones get broken, or when they make choices that seem destined to end in disaster or are simply too different from what one would choose for them.  My life must have been terribly challenging for my parents since just about every choice I made as a young adult probably seemed perilous and way outside their square-cornered boxes.  They tried to advise and sway, but mostly resigned themselves to letting me make my mistakes and then pay the inevitable prices.  Could I do that, or have done that, if it were my child?  All I can do now is wonder.

No, I'm glad to have lived my life as I did, and don't regret nor grieve my childlessness.  However, as I age I find myself wondering who will show up for me when I'm old, old enough to need  help and company and cheering up.

When Mom died, which was unexpected, my sister and brother and I immediately showed up for Dad.  I mean immediately.  He and Mom had been on vacation, on a river boat on the Mississippi,, and my sister and I were there are the airport to greet him when he flew home alone.   We basically never left him.  My sister especially, with the rest of us pitching in, spent the next - and last - year of his life making sure he was taken care of and not alone. 

Who will do that for me if and when I need it?  I'm pretty close to my nieces and nephews, but none of them lives close by, and they all have their parents and their children and their lives.  I can't really expect them to stay with me (although I do expect visits and will make sure they know that, gosh darn it).  If SH dies before me, who will ease the aloneness?  Thinking about this is the one and only time I wonder if maybe having kids might have been a good idea.

Is it possible to adopt a 40-year-old, do you suppose?