• Baby Boomers,  Personal Growth,  Spirituality

    Experiencing Reality

    February 26, 2014

    Here I am once again and I must write.  We listened to Deepak Chopra Sunday night and it was quite good.  Reality and how you experience reality is a choice.  Last night, as we discussed this concept I told Bruce the story of a woman that I know who pretended that she had a great and wonderful family.  She would lie and contrive and even take fantastically staged photographs of her fantastic family.  The truth of her family is that her husband had sex with their daughter when she was a teen and then decades later he had sex with his granddaughter.  This woman would never admit to such atrocities and in this situation, these were the worst of the bad things.  Every single day was a challenge into the truth, this woman faithfully pretended that her drug addicted son was just going through a rough patch (of 24 years until he died) and that her sons who were fathers, were very good fathers and look at these pictures of how good they were to their children!  The unsuspecting by-stander who looked at her photo album would be lulled into a sense that this is a happy family who took care of their own.  Lies, lies, lies, and yet all her reality.  The new gurus tell us to make our own reality, and I am just not sure about this.

    I think we need to sort things out first.  I think we need to talk about denial and wishful thinking and all kinds of concepts like this.  Reality and how you experience reality must include genuineness and authenticity, and these are conversations.  When I talk about the woman I know, who denied the reality of her family, there is much deceit and secrecy abounding in those relationships.  I think this is the key to genuineness and authenticity:  they are part of the conversation that we all must have to define our common reality.  The key concept is conversation, because, the truth should not be a secret that lives in the dark.  When reality is practiced in secret and in the dark, it can become a pack of lies.

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  • Baby Boomers,  It is What it is...

    Oh Despair: We Age

    February 23, 2014

    The body – It’s not the sagging so much as it is the misappropriation of fat.  The shape is changing, and not the way that I want it to.  It also has different energy levels.  I honestly don’t need as much food as I used to, and I am sensitive to everything.

    When I was young and I looked at older people, I saw androgyny and asexuality.  I had no idea!  Whether or not we look or feel “hot”, we are still sexual creatures.  That’s amazing.  I’m sure my kids are thinking or saying, “ugh, please mom, don’t talk about sex!”

    But, I am not (talking about sex that is) I am talking about aging.  Older people have all of the feelings, thoughts, wishes and desires that everyone else does.  They want to be close to their offspring, their family and their friends.  They want to have a successful life and they want to feel as if they have been successful in their endeavors.

    The majority of our culture dismisses and disrespects aging.  I don’t understand this and now that I am here I do not like this.  Why did I believe that I was exempt from aging?  Why did I think that I would never be the shape of my mother?

    Well here I am and here it is.  I sure hope that I can do this gracefully.

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  • Baby Boomers,  Economic Equality (A Goal),  World Affairs

    National Rifle Association EF YOU!

    February 14, 2014

    This morning as I was getting ready to go to my granddaughter’s elementary school award ceremony, I had a terrible fear.  I was afraid of a bloody shooting.  Somehow, over the last couple of years my brain has switched its association with elementary school from a comfortable affection to an association with a paralyzing blood bath.

    I did not even know that it had happened until this morning.

    I am somewhat disappointed in the way that my country handles these (school shootings) tragedies.  While I believe that the 2nd Amendment is very well and very good.  I also know my history and all that preceded the founding fathers’ document.  Preceding America’s adoption of the second amendment is a worldwide history of ruling despots who raped the peasants to gain “royal” wealth.  Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake” is the best example of callousness to the indecency that humans suffered.  The peasants of France were starving and could not even afford bread to eat, when this famous princess made her statement.  This statement is a good example of a wealthy ruling class gone mad with its own comfort over the health and well-being of the people.

    Over 100 years ago we created our own royalty here in the United States and we call it capitalism and anyone with a bit of luck who gains money will be respected and revered by the entire country.  If you are not able to get money, why then, there must be something wrong with you that makes you inferior and undeserving of wealth.  This is the story that we tell in America.

    How is our current American wealthy any different than the European despots who ruled so carelessly that peasants starved while royalty laughed in ignorance?

    In any case, back to guns, the English were very concerned with peoples’ rights to defend themselves.  They were concerned because the people were mistreated by royalty and in order to have ultimate control, royalty attempted to outlaw the ability of people to own weapons.  It is very simple, it is not a long and convoluted story about Americans who want to defend themselves with firearms.  The founding fathers wanted dearly to make sure that people were not mistreated in the hands of sadistic and ignorant despots who hoarded wealth for themselves.  Gun ownership is not the only way to assure that the wealthy class does not mistreat humans.  In fact, guns are not even the best way.

    Now, Americans worship capitalism instead of royalty, we find ourselves being influenced by a propaganda campaign that is financed by gun manufacturers and dealers.  Because the National Rifle Association (NRA) wants us to believe, that there is nothing wrong with gun ownership as it is now, Americans often believe it.  The campaigns against any action that would protect us from crazy gun toting homicidal maniacs are insidious and nefarious.  The result of these campaigns is that normal, regular everyday people get upset when you mention the regulation of gun ownership.  How can that be?  The NRA has the bigger single wallet.  The NRA wins, again, because what we worship in this country is money and the glamorous representation of money.

    I want regulation of firearms.  I know that it is not guns that kill people, it is people who kill people DUH!  Please don’t tell me that again – I don’t want to hear it.  A homicidal maniac is much less effective at killing people if he has a cupcake instead of an automatic rifle.  Wouldn’t you agree?  Don’t tell me that if we outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have them, I don’t believe that either.  Nor do I suggest that we take everyone’s guns.  Surely there is a better solution than what we have now.

    We seem to be more worried about guns than we are about what the wealthy are doing to this country.  We seem to have lost our ability to take action to make things better.  The whole point of the 2nd amendment was to protect the common person from being sadistically starved and controlled by uncaring rulers.  Yes, it is a defense mechanism for people who had been abused.  But today, we miss the point.

    We are Americans and our elementary schools are not safe, and this is not because of middle eastern radicals, it is because of us.

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  • Psychology of Life,  Speaking as a Parent,  Womens Issues

    Single Mother Cries

    February 10, 2014

    The hungry wolves feed on the young of the single mother.  She is blamed for everything, she can never do enough or be enough for her young – and it is for one simple reason – she is not a man.  In the hungry and predatory world the single mother works and works, thinking that with money she can make choices for her self and for her children.  What she does not know is that the hungry often wait for her to leave her brood so that they can feed on the innocence of those who are left alone.

    Single mother is desperate and tries all that she can think of to make the right life for her young, but no matter what, she can never get there, one alone cannot, does not and never will be able to do all that two can do in synergistic energy.

    What can the single mother hope for, what can she count on?  Will she ever stop being blamed?  Will society ever help her by protecting her young?  Will she ever reach economic freedom?  Is she doomed to blame and pain?

    Her child is 4 and he cries and cries when separated from her, she says “Mommy must go to work”.  And then, still, her child is 38 and says to her “why did you leave me alone?”

    Single mother cries.

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  • Baby Boomers,  It is What it is...

    BFF Gone Wrong

    February 6, 2014

    As a sociology undergraduate, I recall studying an issue about groups of families who live in the subsidized housing and are on welfare.  It turns out that those who have an opportunity to go to school and gain a higher income, will often not take the opportunity, because the social group that surrounds the impoverished family will reject the family who reaches up and beyond the impoverished circumstance.  Sociologists documented this phenomenon and reported being mystified by the outcome of the research.  For decades studies have shown that a person’s social group is very powerful in determining a person’s circumstance and future.  It is not just teenagers who live and survive by virtue of the peer group, apparently, it is all of us.

    I passed an old friend on the crosstown expressway this morning and it put me in mind of that sociological research and here is why – my BFF (best friend forever) loved me as long as I was suffering.  She gave me advice, she wanted to rescue me and she often bragged about what a great help that she was to me.  The flip side of that, the side that is somewhat painful, is that she did not like me so much when I was successful and happy.  When things are working right for me, I don’t need advice so much.  However, there are some people and this BFF is one of those… that cannot stop giving advice.  It does not appear very pleasantly to me because they seem to want to interject their opinion into every statement that someone makes.  After a while, it becomes somewhat tedious to have every conversation interrupted with “well, if I were you, I would do ____”.

    I can’t tell you how many people have lost my interest because they cannot stop advising me on the proper way to live.  Some of these people seem to know everything.  If you mention knee pain, they have had meniscus surgery and they can tell you every correct thing to do, even though they have not attended medical school.

    These sorts of people are lurking everywhere.  You may be afraid to open your mouth in the lunch room because you know that it will start a long and tedious ‘know-it-all’ discussion.

    That is how my BFF went wrong.  My real BFF would be happy for me if I was happy; she also listens intently, even when I am being stupid.  My real BFF would not talk over me to give me solutions to problems I do not have (hint, they are really her problems).  I wish that I could have been a better friend to her; I just got so tired of being treated like I was 16!  I’m not.  Give and take is how to have a relationship, if the relationship has only one direction, it won’t endure the hard times.  To my old BFF, I do miss you: I just do not miss the advice.

    And – as for the sociological studies that indicate you will lose your peer group if you reach for a higher ground – I hope that you will not hang onto BFFs who just want to keep you down.  I hope that your true BFF lifts you higher.

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  • Love and Relationships,  Speaking as a Parent,  Spirituality

    Love and Acceptance, It’s the Only Way…

    February 4, 2014

    I just think the best way to operate is with love and acceptance.  If what you are interested in is being right – you want to show someone the “right” way to think, act or be, then you are wrong.  I just don’t know any other way to say it.

    The only way to be “right” is if you operate from love and acceptance.  If you operate from fear, anger, or anxiety, then again, you are wrong.  It won’t work, it never does.

    If you are wondering why your relationships are not working, try this one simple step: open your heart and accept whatever the other person is doing.  Pretend as if you have unconditional positive regards for this person.  No matter what they do, you will appreciate and accept this person.  This is the best way to treat people that you must be with.

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