The Power of Re-Calculating

I love my GPS; I use it whenever I am going to a new place and it is extremely funny when I don’t follow directions and it is as if the GPS sighs and murmurs to itself because it has to recalculate a new route. You know. create a new normal.

I have come to understand that “new normals” are a part of life, even if we do not like them. I read Iyanla Vanzant‘s book, Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get through What you’re Going Through,” and marveled at how many times there has been a “recalculation” in her life and how many times her “normal” has changed. Another book of hers, The Value in the Valley speaks of the place we find ourselves before we climb up and out of our valleys into a new space…but what is clear is that once in a valley, if we use the valley experience correctly, our lives, upon emerging, will be different. Our inner beings, our personalities, our spirits, will have “recalculated” because our valley experience is meant to be a place where old experiences and thinking patterns and even old relationships are meant to be discarded. There is a better way to get to where we need to be, and it is the valley that we begin to realize that. We don’t willingly go into valleys. Life takes us there, over and over. It might be a diagnosis of cancer, a death in the family, a divorce, betrayal by a friend, being laid off or being fired …Stuff happens, and when it does, it seems to take us to valleys that we do not want to be in.

So recalculating is always going on in our lives.

I hear that Tony Robbins said that when he had valley experiences in his life, the way he got through them was to pour positive energy – and a lot of it – into work or projects that he believed in. It is while we are in a valley that we don’t want to do anything – not eat, not read, not even enjoy the beauty of a new day – but when we succumb to the tendency to wallow in the valley, we waste the experience. It is too valuable an experience to be wasted.

Valley experiences are meant to strengthen and encourage us. I have always taught my students the words of Psalm 30: “Weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning!” but have added my own two cents’ worth …”and morning always comes!” No matter how dark and long the night, morning will push through. The goal should be, while we are in a valley, to make sure than when morning comes, we are not the same as we were when dark descended. It seems that our spirits cry out to us to let them (our spirits) do their work, to let them reshape, reform, retry, recalculate – so that we can live lives that are optimally meaningful for us.

That’s what our spirits yearn to do, I think.

My spirit is in recalculate mode. I think I’m going to let her do her work.

A candid observation …

To Lose Gracefully

It’s a hard thing, to lose. It’s even harder to lose gracefully.

It has been a full two weeks since President Barack Obama won a second term to the presidency, and still, we are hearing the wailing of Gov. Mitt Romney.

Last week, he said that the president won the election because of “gifts” he gave minorities and young people. Those gifts included health coverage, contraceptive coverage in health insurance, forgiveness of interest on college loans…among other things I guess would be called “entitlements.”

But it wasn’t gifts, Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama won because he connected with more of the American electorate than you did.

It is hard to lose. It’s hard anytime, but when one spends as many years as has Mr. Romney, trying to be president, and as much money as he has spent, the loss has to be even more bitter.

One of the things I liked about Senator John McCain in 2008 is that he lost with grace – and he would not let his supporters be disrespectful to his opponent as he gave his concession speech. I will never forget his grace. I know the loss hurt.

Mr. Romney has not been so graceful. He has, in fact, shown that he did not or does not understand why he lost even now. He still seems to regard some people in America as baggage – and expendable baggage at that. He does not understand that America is not the “traditional” America that he and other politicians grew to love and to know; Bill O’Reilly pointed that out quite well. No, America is becoming more and more pluralistic. It is a coat of many colors. It will never be the same again.

It is a “new normal” that Mr. Romney has not yet accepted. Gov. Bobby Jindal sees it, and so do other Republicans who have spoken out since Election Day.

It might be that Gov. Romney is not going to run for president again. I hope not …because he is a gift that keeps on giving. His opponents – both in a Republican primary and in a general election, would take his “Obama won because of gifts he gave…” and run with it.

I think the former governor would do well to set up for himself a new normal. Seems like it’s about time for that.

A candid observation …

When Laws are Unjust

Sometimes, laws are unjust.

Unjust laws in this country allowing racial discrimination were part of the reason for the Civil Rights movement. With the laws in the nation and in many states in place, African-Americans could not feel protected by the laws, because the laws helped perpetuate their status and injustice perpetrated against them. African-Americans had no voice, “the law” notwithstanding.

In Ireland, it is women whose voices are not being heard. In that Catholic country, laws are on the books which prohibit abortion. Because of those laws, a young woman died after being denied an abortion. Her death has sparked outrage and protest by women, who rallied in front of the Irish parliament this week. (http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/15/thousands-rally-outside-irish-parliament-after-woman-repeatedly-denied-abortion-before-dying/)

We depend on our lawmakers to craft laws that protect the people, but in fact there are far too many laws on the books which do not protect but rather support discriminatory or harmful and unjust treatment of certain groups. Women in the United States and in fact all over the world have had to fight unjust laws so that they could enjoy full citizenship which included the right to vote, and still have to fight for equal pay for equal work. And …what women and cannot do with their own bodies is still an issue which divides the nation politically and religiously.

Women in Ireland are fighting for the right to live with dignity. Young Savita Halappanavar, 31, died because in spite of excruciating pain and several requests for doctors to terminate her 17-week pregnancy, they would not. It would be abortion because in spite of her pain, the fetus still had a heartbeat. After three days the young woman died, reportedly from septicemia.

It seems, on this side of the pond, that the laws in Ireland which would allow an otherwise healthy woman to die from a complicated pregnancy, are just wrong and unjust. They are just as wrong and unjust as were American laws which forbade black people to learn to read and write, or which prevented them, and women, from voting.

If individuals are silent in the face of unjust laws, they in essence voice their approval of those laws. That’s a lesson Dr. King drove home as people trained to be non-violent protestors. An unjust law, King said, needs to be broken, or at least challenged. Just because something is a “law” does not mean it is right or fair; some laws beg to be challenged, changed, or struck down.

People historically have challenged laws with which they did not agree. When Brown vs. Board of Education made it against the law for schools to be segregated, many cities and states balked; they thought the law was unjust and did all they could to disobey it, in spite of the law’s directive that schools should be integrated “with all deliberate speed.” Some schools were closed rather than obey the desegregation order. Other schools took as long as 10 years to begin desegregating.

Anything worth having, including justice, is worth fighting for; and many issues of justice must be fought for. Thousands of women in Ireland are protesting the death of the young mother, and another rally is planned for the weekend. That’s a good thing.

Power concedes nothing without a demand, noted Frederick Douglass.

Douglass was right.

A candid observation …

The Gift and Power of Struggle

I will never forget the struggle of my sister, who fought against cancer with a nobility and grace that was inspiring and humbling, both at the same time.

She had been diagnosed years ago, was on the brink of death, but fought it then. After she passed the crisis stage, and was gaining her strength, I asked her if she ever thought she was going to die. All of the doctors, after all, had thought she would …but she looked at me, straight in the eyes, and said, “no, never.”

She went years in remission before the dreaded disease returned two Thanksgivings ago. She was not happy it had returned, but she was ready for the battle, and battle she did. Several times doctors thought she had played her last card, but she rallied each time. It was as though she was saying that she might be going …but she would go on her terms, not on the terms of the doctors.

She died last year, but I cannot say she lost the battle. She fought and won, I believe, because she stopped fighting when she was ready.

Elbert Hubbard wrote that “there is no failure except in no longer trying; there is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.” My sister was not a failure because she never stopped trying, she never felt defeated from within, and she had an inherent purpose to live for a long time. Her focus and willingness to struggle gave her not only more days but quality days. She refused to give in. It wasn’t denial; it was determination and faith and hope that kept her going. She knew very well how sick she was, and yet, she “looked to the hills from whence came her help” (Psalm 121) and held on with the expectation that she would be able to hold on.

She was willing to struggle.

Sometimes, when it comes to race in our country, I wonder why it is we are not willing to struggle and to come face to face with our very personal disease. I have read much of the vitriol that has been spewed since President Obama won last week’s presidential election, and have been saddened. It is all so clearly race-based, but nobody will say it. Nobody wants to admit and face and deal with our issue. As opposed to my sister, who, invaded by a deadly disease, engaged in the struggle to fight it, America runs from the disease called racism and denies it exists. And so we are being consumed, even today in the 21st century, by this ever-present reality. It is like an autoimmune disease of our society, affecting our central nervous system and thereby affecting the very things we need for a full and vital life.

Why in the world do we run from it? Well, a big reason is because we, America, are not a community. We call ourselves the “united” states but we are not. We are far from it. Post-election, several states are circulating petitions to secede from the United States. There is no community. We are a conglomerate of different races and ethnicities, but we are far from having the commitment necessary to be a community. We do not respect the differences of each other; in fact, we live in ignorance about who each other is, and so, far from commitment and community, we live in ignorance and therefore, in fear of each other. M. Scott Peck, author of several books including The Road Less Traveled and The Different Drum, says that commitment is the willing to co-exist, and says it’s crucial in order for there to be true community.

We don’t have that in our country, and so, in this 21st century, racism is as ugly and as potent as it has ever been. People are referring to President Obama as the “n” word; they are calling him “monkey” and worse, and they feel all right doing it. Racism has never lost its place as an accepted way of thinking in America and since we are so unwilling to struggle, it seems highly unlikely that it will ever go completely away.

In any struggle, we have to see ourselves as we are, not as we would like to believe we are. Real struggle begins then, because with the admission that we have some faults and some issues, we have to do some real work. We don’t want to do that …and so bad, toxic emotions and feelings fester within us as individuals and within this nation as an entity.

The gift and power of struggle is that if we are courageous enough to engage in it, we come out stronger. We are no longer afraid of what used to frighten us. We are able to stand in the face of adversity because in the process of struggle, we learn our own strength. America likes to talk about being strong, but she is not. She is a nation divided, and therefore, is weakened more than we would like to believe.

We don’t want to struggle because we don’t want to hurt, but hurt is a part of the process of life, says Joan Chittister in her book, Scarred by Struggle; Transformed by Hope. It is in having the courage to struggle that we learn to feed on hope, and in that feeding, we become stronger.

I wish America would be willing to struggle. I wish she would stop being afraid and stop living in denial. It is so past time for us to be talking about the virulence and presence of racism here. To struggle with it genuinely would be painful, yet after the pain, there would be a new America. We would be able to move on to other things, which we must needs do, but we limit ourselves just because we do not want to struggle. We do not want to change. And because we do not want to struggle and change, we won’t, not anytime soon.

A candid observation …

Who Cares?

Years ago, while living in Detroit, I was visiting some friends. We were playing a board game and laughing and eating. Out of nowhere, a car backfired, and the husband of my friend was suddenly under the table, his eyes wide, breathing heavily. He had broken out into a sweat and was clearly terrified.

He was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (although it hadn’t been diagnosed at that time.) His wife said that he hadn’t been the same since he returned from Vietnam. He was nervous and edgy; loud noises terrified him, he suffered from nightmares, and just wasn’t the same. To add insult to injury, she said that she couldn’t get the VA to admit that he had anything wrong with him, so she wasn’t able to get him the medical and psychiatric help he needed. I moved from Detroit soon after and lost contact with my friend; I often wonder how her husband is doing.

Fast forward thirty, forty years and it seems that veterans are not having all that much better luck in getting treated well or in being able to get necessary medical and/or psychiatric help once they get home from war, if what I read and have listened to is correct.

According to an article which appeared in The New York Times, there is what is called a “crushing inventory of claims for disability, pension and educational benefits” for returning vets. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/veterans-wait-for-us-aid-amid-growing-backlog-of-claims.html?pagewanted=all) Far too many homeless people these days are veterans (http://www.newdirectionsinc.org/press_ap.html), many cannot get mortgages, some lose their homes while they are deployed, and reportedly the rate of suicide for veterans continues to rise.

I think about this sad reality as we celebrate this Veterans Day. Clearly, young men and women have sacrificed their lives for the United States. I am not so sure what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or, earlier, Vietnam, have been about, but regardless of my confusion, and the confusion of many in our country, young people went and fought. World Wars I and II vets, wars which seem a little more focused in purpose, produced a slew of veterans as well…and from what I have read, they were not treated much better than present-day vets. And if white vets have been treated poorly, it goes without saying that vets who are people of color have suffered even more.

It leads me to ask, “America, where is your conscience? How can our government treat vets so poorly?

People who go to war do not come back the same as they were. It would seem that coming back “the same” is impossible. If one gets into a habit of killing other human beings, if one sees ones friends blown away, sometimes in front of them, if one sees horrible suffering day after day, suffers egregiously on battlefields, and really can’t talk to anyone about what the stupid war is doing to his or her mind, it cannot be expected that he or she would be the same.

And yet, they are treated as being the same. I have seen vets hailed and applauded as they have gotten on flights, on the last leg of their flight going home…or cheered as they have gone off to war. We have somehow, for some reason, romanticized war…and yet, there is nothing romantic about it. After the applause at an airport, after or in spite of the annual Veteran’s Day parades, the sad reality of “being home” sets in, with nothing the same, and, presumably, not many outlets for help.

These young men and women, too many of them, walk around in torment, unable to function normally. Too many end up homeless; too many commit suicide.

One vet’s experience I read broke my heart. This young man returned home from war. He was a mess. He would wait for his wife to go to work and “pull the blinds and take out the booze.” He would toy with his gun, sometimes putting it in his mouth, courting suicide. Finally, his behavior became too much for his family. He lost his wife and family, and ended up homeless. (http://www.newdirectionsinc.org/press_ap.html) Sadly that scenario is all too common.

Who cares about the veterans? I mean, in the government, who really cares? Why is there such a backlog of claims for veterans seeking help? It seems wrong; the country is eager to use these men and women to “fight for America” and when their tours are up, America has little to no time for them. It is kind of reminiscent of how football franchises uses young men to win games for them to help make them rich, but when their playing days are over, the franchise has difficulty getting them help, especially medical help, they need. Many a football star lives a rough life, fraught with suffering, after their playing days are over.

Understanding how difficult it is for vets to get treated with dignity once they get home, the parades bother me anymore. Who cares about these vets once they get home? What is the celebration about? How can we celebrate wars fought if we cannot and do not really honor and take care of the human beings who fought in them?

A candid observation …