I have the right to speak

When I am not writing, I am supporting my writing by working in customer service.  Now, it may come as a shock that one who dedicates her life to writing what she wants to write, as opposed to writing what someone else wants written, would need to find material support in ways other than her writing, so I'll give you a moment to process that shock.

Working in customer service can be stressful at times.  It is certainly a far cry from the utopian vision of a quiet little hermitage in which to focus all day, every day, on communing with the Muse within and bringing forth great works of wisdom.

However, working in customer service also provides some valuable insights into people and personalities and human nature, insights which come in handy not only for writing great works of wisdom but for gaining insights into oneself and one's experiences that provide greater clarity, perspective, and confidence in everyday life.

Most people are a pleasure to work with.  They treat customer service workers as fellow human beings and conduct business as an exchange between equals.  As, of course, it is.  These are the people who keep us coming back to work, day after day.

But once in a while, there will be a customer who wants to dominate the transaction, especially when they are told something they don't want to hear, such as a policy or legal limitation that affects the transaction in some way.  They treat their position as customer as a bully pulpit, in which the customer service worker has no choice but to bend to the customer's will in abject and groveling submission.

I'm told there are places that provide such services, but generally they are not found in mainstream retail centers in the suburbs.

One of the classic tactics of domination is silencing:  shouting down, interrupting, reprimanding the other person for what they are saying, flat-out telling the other person to shut up.  The message is that the other person does not have the right to say what they want to say.

In a customer service context, communicating information that is in some way related to the transaction at hand, the customer service worker has every right to say what needs to be said, even if it's not what the customer wants to hear.  And we have the right to say what needs to be said without being interrupted or shouted down or otherwise dominated by the customer.  And we have the right to ask you to stop interrupting us and shouting us down.  We'll be happy to listen to what you have to say; you, in turn, need to be willing to let us say what we have to say.

On a deeper level, instances of being shouted down and silenced trigger old messages from childhood, messages many of us undoubtedly heard at one time or another:  You just don't quit.  You just keep speaking up.  When will you learn?

Believe me, I have learned.  And here is what I have learned:

I have the right to speak.  I have the right to be heard.

Others, as well, have the right to speak and to be heard.  And I need to listen as well as speak.

But nobody has, or ever had, the right to silence me.

The day I leave this existence is the day I will stop speaking.

And even then, my voice will continue to be heard.

And no:  I don't quit.

Go to the damn bathroom

Raise your hand if you've ever felt any pressure at work to limit your trips to the bathroom.

That's a lot of hands.

American business culture is effed up in more ways than there are stars in the rural night sky, but few things are more effed up than attempting to regulate people's bodily functions.  Our bodies did not evolve to synchronize themselves with Company Time.  Our bodies do not always conveniently wait until the clock says Break Time before sending a Call of Nature.  Our bodies and our bodily functions are paragons of Internal Self-Direction, utterly indifferent to their impact upon the quarterly P&L Statement.  And some people have a problem with that.

The rationale, to the extent that reason can be said to have anything to do with the way such people run a business, is generally along the lines that "excessive" use of the bathroom wastes time and cuts down on productivity and profits.  Or, in a rare moment of honesty, they might simply admit that they are control freaks who want to ensure that the employees work in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity and feeling as if they have no authority whatsoever over themselves or their work lives.

People do not exist to serve business:  business exists to serve people.  Contrary to what they told you in your economics and business classes in school, the central purpose of a business is not to maximize profits for a handful of shareholders.  The real purpose of business is to meet human need:  to reward the investments and financial risks of the shareholders, yes, but also to provide goods and services that meet the needs of the customers, and also to provide a decent living to the people who are working in the business and creating those profits with their time, talents, and labors.

People need to make a living, and they shouldn't be expected to wreak havoc on their own well-being in order to do so.

You are a human being with dignity and worth.  You are entitled to earn your living in conditions that honor your dignity and worth.  Fundamental to being treated with dignity and worth is the freedom to use the bathroom at will.

Go to the damn bathroom.

If your bladder is full, pee.  If your bowels are moving, poop.  If you have got your period, change your tampon.

And don't ever, ever, ever let anybody, anywhere, in any position, make you feel as if you shouldn't attend to your bodily functions.  The only time there is such a thing as "too much" going to the bathroom is when it involves an underlying medical condition, in which case, go to the damn doctor.

And the damn doctor will probably tell you to drink plenty of fluids and go to the damn bathroom as needed.

Returning to the empty tomb

Remember
   when we both were dead

Exiled
   to the same blank page
Speaking
   seeking truth in unflinching
   brazen lines

But then
   you faded, then
   you fled

Back
   to the margins of the
Island
   once called home

Smugly
   wrapped in what you knew
Broke
   your fledgling wings

Ridicule
   in security mocking vision
Absurd
   to one who fears to

Embrace
   the view beyond
Belonging

There is no spoon

Do not try and bend the spoon.  That's impossible.  Instead, only try to realize the truth:  There is no spoon. - The Matrix


There is no spoon.  Yet within the Matrix, people are experiencing spoons; and for some, their spoons have sharp edges, jagged edges, edges that cut them and drain their lifeblood in the very effort to nourish themselves.  Even in a world in which everything is an illusion created within human minds, those human minds are experiencing very real suffering and pain.

The spoon, in real life, is not entirely in our minds.  Yet the spoon, in real life, is not entirely outside of our minds.  There is an external reality, AND, that external reality is created and shaped and re-created by our internal reality.  It is not either-or, but both-and.

There are external realities that cannot be glossed over, external realities that inflict very real pain and suffering on very real human beings.  Yet we also see human beings who find within themselves the capacity to shape their internal, subjective experience to cultivate inner peace, creating what good they can, even within the context of objective external realities that are brutal and oppressive.

Furthermore, we see that even the most brutal and oppressive social realities are products of the human mind.  People created these situations, these institutions, these practices; and what people have the power to create, people have the power to re-create.

External change begins with internal change, a change in how we see and in what we believe and in what we are willing--or not--to accept as immutably true.

When we realize that the spoons are socially constructed, we realize our own power to bend the spoons, mend the spoons, construct our own spoons in more humane and nourishing forms.

Voice

I never did quite learn
the art of drawing
encouragement from gagging
noises and stopped ears.

Every stage, every audience
is opportunity to prove
myself.  Listen!  Look!
I really, really can sing!
See?  Hear?
I'm not that bad.

Perhaps not great.  I don't need
to be great, I need only
to unstop ears,
ungag voices, prove,
prove that I really
can.

A lifetime's vindication
rests upon each performance,
an expectation
my diaphragm cannot support.

So once again, in my solitary
third-shift computer room,
I render a flawless performance;
in cyberspace, where
no one can hear me
scream.


(1999)

The Meaning of Marriage

On this Valentine's Day, love is in the air, and so is change:  One by one, states and nations are  granting legal recognition to same-sex couples as well as different-sex couples, making government-sanctioned marriage licenses available to all non-related couples of the age of consent.

Opponents of marriage equality tend to define marriage in reductionistic terms:  Marriage, to them, is an institution created by society to safeguard the "fruits" of "the procreative act."

Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart.  Here are a dozen roses to celebrate the safeguarding of our procreative acts.

For most of us in the twenty-first century, marriage--and sex--means a little bit more.

We do not see sex as a single "act."  We see it as a multifaceted expression of intimacy involving the whole body, mind, and soul.  Sometimes sexual activity is motivated by purely physical desire.  In the context of relationship, however, sex is more than just working out a bit of built-up tension:  It is an expression of affection, emotional bonding, and love.

Similarly, while sex certainly can serve to reproduce the species, that is not its only purpose, nor even necessarily its primary purpose.  Social bonding, after all, also contributes to species survival.  As long as enough members of a species are reproducing themselves to keep the species from going extinct, the evolutionary imperative for the continuation of the species is being served.  It is not incumbent upon every single member of every single species to replicate her or his DNA for posterity.

Were that the case, the Earth itself would have gone extinct a long time ago.

Marriage in the twenty-first century is more than a vehicle for procreation.  It is a partnership between equals:  a shared commitment, rooted in love and affection and compatibility, to building a shared life.

Note that the above definition of marriage excludes "marrying" villages, toasters, pets, and other red herrings.

Marriage may or may not involve children.  With or without children, marriage always means becoming family.

Finally, let us be clear on one essential point:  What we advocates of marriage equality seek is not to create some strange new phenomenon called "gay marriage" but to create legal recognition of all existing marriages, including those of same-sex couples which are not yet uniformly acknowledged.

Because, whether the state recognizes it or not, these couples are already, inherently, very much married.  Marriage is a state of being that no man shall ever put asunder.

Failing to recognize the de facto marriages of same-sex couples will not make their marriages go away.  It just makes daily life in our society a lot more difficult for those couples to navigate.

Creating hardships for people who are doing no harm is a violation of basic human ethics.

Gay people are not going to go away.  Gay couples are not going to go away.  We have a choice:  to recognize them as our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and members of our communities, or to ostracize them and treat them as if they were less than human and continue to put up legal and societal obstacles to their happiness and well-being.

Now, at last, I will say the words

For weeks on end, it's in the air,
Sounding often like a dare;
I don't do dares, I do not care
What others think, or if they stare.

I will not say it when ghosts are nigh;
I will not say it over pumpkin pie;
I will not say it by menorah light;
And not while Labor Day is in sight.
I will not sling it in a war;
I will not swing it in a store;
I will not chirp it bright and early
While competing for cheap crap, all surly.

At the risk of sounding snide,
Christmas is for Solstice Tide:

It's time for songs, it's time to feast,
It's sharing with those who have least;
It's time for greenery and lights,
It's time to brighten cold, dark nights;
It's time to warm our hearts with cheer,
To remember life is very dear.

Most of all, let us recall
That Peace on Earth is a wish for all:
Whatever our faith, or none at all,
One people, one planet, divided we fall.

Now, at last, the day is here:
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Every time we use MERRY CHRISTMAS as a weapon, Baby Jesus starts to cry

Every December, sure as the turning of the Earth, the Great American Holiday Debate begins another round.  Likely every one of us has had the experience of witnessing a cheerful "Happy Holidays" being met with a "MERRY CHRISTMAS" that sounds not so much like a wish for peace and goodwill as a declaration of war.  Jesus is the reason for the season, they proclaim, and "Merry Christmas" is the only proper greeting at this time of year.

The season is what it is:  the onset of winter.  Days grow shorter, nights grow longer, the air grows colder, and our world feels darker as we approach the time of Winter Solstice.

Throughout human history, humans developed many traditions, holidays, and celebrations to make the season bright while awaiting the return of the light.  Many of the traditions we associate with Christmas are, in fact, rooted in other and more ancient celebrations, not with the religious observation of the birth of Jesus.  The only reason Jesus now has anything to do with this particular season is because a handful of bishops in the fourth century made it so.  According to biblical scholars, Jesus was probably born in the spring.  The church calendar was developed for liturgical purposes, not for historical accuracy.

It's also fair to say that the Great American Greed Fest, beginning as early as Labor Day and increasingly crowding out the traditional celebrations of fall, has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus; nor would Jesus likely want anything to do with it.  That this cultural holiday bears the name of "Christmas" is simply an artifact of the religious roots of the culture in which it developed.  Some Christians, looking with dismay at what the American Christmas has become, do not lament but rather welcome separating the secular aspects of the American winter holiday from the religious holiday of celebrating Christ's birth.

Yet the cultural holiday, even apart from any specifically religious elements, does have its positive side.  It's not all greed and materialism and smashing in thy neighbor's head to compete for a cheap computer on Black Friday.

Against the lengthening times of darkness, we light candles and adorn our homes with colorful lights.  We deck the halls with holly and spruce and we decorate an evergreen tree, all to remind us that even in the Earth's time of dormancy, life endures.  Red and green and silver and gold brighten the bleak midwinter.  We gather with friends and families and coworkers and neighbors in song and story and dancing and feast.  We tell tales of mythical figures, ancient and modern.

And, at our best, we invoke the spirit of giving, generosity, love, and compassion, not only in the gifts we give to friends and family but also to the help we extend to our neighbors in need at this cold, dark time of year.  We take time in solitude, we gather in community, pausing for contemplation and reflection and taking stock of our lives as the year draws to a close.

As an American who firmly believes in religious liberty for all, I welcome the trend towards a more inclusive label for our year-end festivities.  Personally, I prefer referring to our broader cultural celebration as the Winter Solstice, something all inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere have in common, but the popular designation "The Holiday" serves well enough, even if it sounds a little less poetic.

In making our holiday season inclusive, we are not denying Christianity, only shedding the long-standing illusion--reinforced in times past by the dominant culture--that everyone in our society is Christian.  We are evolving beyond the idea that the First Amendment freedom of religion means merely freedom to choose your favorite flavor of Christianity:  We are growing into the understanding that freedom of religion means freedom to practice any religion, as well as freedom to practice no religion at all.

While it's not true that Jesus is the reason for the Winter Solstice season, it is certainly true that Jesus is the reason for the specifically Christian commemoration of his birth.  As long as we realize that some people celebrate the former but not the latter, we can all get along in peace.

And for those who do celebrate the holy day of Christmas, please remember:  "Merry Christmas" is a wish for peace on Earth, not a challenge to a duel.

Empowering disillusions

Each of us learns lessons from the people around us.  Some of these lessons are helpful, giving us true knowledge and understanding of the world in which we find ourselves; others hinder our ability to take our place in the world with confidence and strength.

One lesson many of us learn is fear:  Lie low or you'll just get hurt.  The nail that stands out gets hammered down.  Resistance is futile.  Stay safe; stay invisible.  Survive.

Another common lesson is insecurity:  Self-worth is built up by tearing other people down.  Ridicule and put-downs reassure us of our own superiority.  Triumphalism masks deep-seated vulnerability.  The need to be right, versus the desire to understand what is true:  Truth spoken can threaten certitude, and thus threaten the sense of security that depends upon certitude.

Beneath these lessons, as well as many other lessons that hinder us, the bedrock belief is powerlessness:  The world is unfair; the cards are stacked against you; good people can't get ahead; you can't have the life and work you want; oh, well, what can you do; and just who the hell do you think YOU are, to believe you can have what you want, realize your dreams, create and shape your own life?  Do you not know that you are a powerless pawn in the hands of fate and at the mercies of a corrupt world?  You can only succeed if you become corrupt like them.  Power is bad.  You don't want it.

And many of us, whether as children or as adults, tried to challenge these disempowering messages.  We declared our determination to decide what we wanted and to figure out how to create it.  Set the vision, stay focused on it, and do the work to get us from Point A to Point B, with maybe a few speed bumps along the way.  Simple.

And, allowing for the ninety-nine percent perspiration of which Edison spoke, accomplishing a goal pretty much does boil down to those simple steps.  What we often fail to account for are not the concrete external obstacles but the subtler internal resistance which has been deeply ingrained in us--and will be thrown at us with renewed vigor should we persist in thinking we really can effect change.

Far from being seen as hopeful or encouraging, to speak of empowerment in the context of a disempowered system is perceived to be very, very threatening.  The communal story is that we are fundamentally powerless.  To suggest--or even worse, demonstrate--that we can find power within ourselves, whatever the circumstances, to shape our own lives is to threaten the truth of the communal story upon which communal security is believed to depend.

True security, however, does not lie in any of our stories.  True security lies in being at peace with life as it is, both the circumstances we encounter without and our power within to work with whatever we encounter, and in living each day from that sense of inner strength and power.

A story of experience

I first became interested in matters of food and health during my freshman year of college, when I realized I knew precious little about either cooking or nutrition.  From the campus book store I acquired two books to begin my dietary education:  a quintessentially 70s tome entitled Cooking With Love and Wheat Germ and a little paperback called Diet for a Small Planet.  The former introduced me to granola-hippie whole-grain whole-foods cuisine; the latter, to the idea that a vegetarian diet was the best thing I could do for my body and for the planet.  Ten years and many books later, after much experimentation with vegetarian meals and vegetarian foods, I made the leap and adopted a wholly vegetarian diet.

For most of those years my diet still included eggs and dairy, eliminating only meat and fish.  For a year or two, however, I did try a wholly vegan diet.  Having read that dairy foods can worsen respiratory allergies, as well as having encountered a popular wave of "plant-based diet" writings in the 90s, I cut out all animal products in anticipation of the soaringly vibrant health that a plant-based diet was supposed to bring.

One thing I learned from my dietary adventures is that some common ingredients in meat-free and dairy-free diets are hazardous to my health.

Nutritional yeast makes me feel ill and gives me a bad case of thrush.  Most soy products affect my digestive system in ways that nobody really wants me to write about.  As for wheat, that "healthy" whole grain which played a central role in my diet for a couple of decades, especially in my vegetarian and vegan years?  Of all of the dietary changes I've ever made, eliminating wheat from my diet created the single most dramatic improvement in my health and well-being:  I went from being semi-crippled from severe inflammation in my knees to being able to walk and move about in a normal manner for hours on end.  Respiratory inflammation, all but gone.  Mornings with lungs and nose full of gunk, gone.  Gurgling stomach and other digestive troubles nobody wants to read about, gone.

While attempting to live on a vegan diet, even one that included plenty of vegetables, I felt enervated and gained a lot of weight.  The diet was too low in protein, too high in carbohydrates, and too full of foods that made me sick.  Experiencing improved well-being by reintroducing animal products into my diet, I later learned that the forms in which some vitamins and minerals occur in plants are not necessarily absorbed by the body as well as those occurring in meat and other animal foods.

I am healthiest when I eat a balance of both vegetable foods and animal foods, excluding wheat and yeast, minimizing dairy, and not going too heavy on the carbs.  You'd think that would be a safe statement to make in discussions of food and health.

Yet it's not.  Do a search on stories of ex-vegans and see how much venom has been directed towards anyone who writes anything, however politely worded, that is remotely critical of the diet.  Saying "I tried veganism and it didn't work for me" seems to make die-hard advocates of plant-only diets even more angry than if they were confronted by a club-swinging cave-dwelling carnivore simply drooling at the prospect of a blood-dripping hunk of dead critter.

And, being the inquisitive, philosophical soul that I am, I ask:  Why?  My own focus is on making the choices that are best for my own body and my own health, not on telling anyone else what's best for them.  Likewise for most of the others writing on the subject of returning to an omnivorous diet for health reasons.  Why should anyone feel threatened by people simply relating their personal experiences?

I think back to why vegetarianism and veganism appealed to me in the first place.  First and foremost, I sought to be healthy, and these were supposed to be the optimal diets for human health, well-being, and longevity.  I wasn't particularly idealistic about the matter of killing animals for food, probably because even the most rudimentary understanding of Ecosystems 101 tells us that life and death are intertwined, but if helping myself also helped avoid harm to other animals, so much the better.  I did find raw meat aesthetically unappealing to cook with, and used to joke about being an "aesthetic vegetarian."  As for having a "taste" for meat, I could take it or leave it.  Were it possible to live on vegetables and hummus without any nutritional deficiencies or other health difficulties, I could probably do so quite happily, as long as I had a reliable supply of chocolate on the side.

Yet even my health-oriented rationale for vegetarianism had an ideological aspect to it.   A meatless diet wasn't just a diet, it was an ideal, a vision, the cutting edge of human evolution, the wave of the future for a more enlightened human race.  It was associated by some authors with a simpler, more holistic, less materialistic way of living.  Who doesn't want to be on the cutting edge, riding the crest of the wave into the future?  Who doesn't find it appealing to believe they have found Ultimate Truth about some fundamental aspect of living?

It was the story about the meaning of vegetarianism, as much as the vegetarianism itself, that attracted me and committed me to pursuing that way of life.

And this concept of story, I think, is the key to understanding the hostility with which the personal experiences of former vegans and vegetarians are met.  Saying "it doesn't work for me" undermines the story upon which the vegan ideal is founded:  that killing animals for food is wrong and therefore all human beings can and must thrive on a vegan, or at least vegetarian, diet.  If the conclusion is not true, then the truth of the premise upon which the conclusion is based is called into question.

Someone who is overtly adversarial--the critter-craving carnivore flaunting meat-lust in front of a plant-based crowd--is still reinforcing the fundamental paradigm of Good versus Evil.  The conviction that Plant Eaters are on the side of Ultimate Good remains secure against the attacks of Meat Eater heretics rebelling against what, deep down in their heart of hearts, they really know to be The Truth.

On the other hand, a former vegan or vegetarian who attempts the amicable agree-to-disagree approach, saying, "If it works for you, great, but your way doesn't work for me," is challenging the other person's deeply held conviction that their way is the One True Way for all people to follow.

The reality is that sometimes the One True Way simply doesn't work for someone.  And that means accepting that the One True Way is not, in fact, the One True Way, just one way that happens to work well for one particular person.  And that means separating our way, the thing in itself, from whatever stories we have created about the meaning of that way.

There may be some ways in this world that are worse than others--junk-food diet, hate-based religion--but there is no single right way that will fit every single human being on the planet.  Instead of expecting the diet that works for us to work for everyone else, we can recognize and respect each person's right to make their own choices for optimal health and well-being and create their own stories based upon their own experiences, rather than attempting to make their experiences conform to someone else's story.