Our Families Are a Door to Infinity: Asking Questions Before It’s Too Late

When I was growing up, I just didn’t think to ask my parents or my grandparents about “the old country” or their own childhoods. When my father was in his nineties and my mother had already passed away, I realized the time I had with him was coming to an end. He had in his memory a whole history of our family and of this country, that I knew little about. I didn’t want to lose all those connections. So, during the last year or two of his life, whenever possible, we looked through old photo albums and I asked him about his childhood and parents, but even he knew or said little of his family’s background in Europe.

 

My grandparents all came from eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. Did I hear so little about their lives before coming to the US not only because I seldom asked but because the memories were so intertwined with trauma? Had they felt deprived of their voices?

 

In  the novel Wandering Stars, by the mid 19th and early 20th century novelist and playwright Sholem Aleichem, one of the main characters sings a prayer in a “plaintive, authentic Yiddish melody.” It captures well one aspect of the lives of the characters in the novel, which takes place in a small Russian shtetl or predominantly Jewish market town at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

“…Dear God, the truth of exile

Is told in tears.

How long, how long, dear God, The awful fears

Of being beaten, driven

And no one cares.

When, oh when, dear God, wilt thou

Be who hears…”

 

Life wasn’t all pogroms and terror. There was love, family, and friendship. There was the Yiddish Theatre, religion, art and creativity. The singer was herself a possible future recruit for the theater. The culture and time described in the novel was also the culture and time into which my grandparents were born. Had they, like the fictional characters, lived in Europe as exiles from a “promised land,” or promise of home?

 

When I was young, my family lived in a ranch style house in a suburb of New York City. My grandmother on my mother’s side lived with us, with me, my parents, and brother, for half of the year. The other half, she lived with my aunt. Grandma was a short woman, in her sixties or seventies. She spoke little yet tried to live in accord with her memory of traditional ways of living and believing. When she was with us, for example, we ate Kosher meals so she would feel comfortable. But when she was gone from our house, she didn’t try to tell us how to live. And she provided a link to a reality, a history beyond what we knew in the U. S.

 

Despite her age, she could be fiery and passionate. She hated violence, for example. Maybe she’d seen too much growing up. One time, 2 older boys started a fight with me right in front of our house. I was actually holding my own against the two when grandma came rushing from the house with an umbrella in her hand. She started beating on the two attackers until they ran away. Then she started beating on me, while yelling “never get in fights. Never. Never.”

 

One evening, when I was six or seven, she and I were home alone…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Opening Doors in Time and Mind: The Bookstore Resistance

It was such a comforting moment. I was reading a book where the main character, a bookseller, was watching a customer reading the classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. The man was old and seated in a cushioned chair, at a table, sipping coffee. Books were scattered everywhere, not just on the wood shelves. There was mismatched artwork on the somewhat peeling walls. Lights hung from the ceiling creating areas of clarity amidst the soft darkness. Snow increasingly falling outside as the world turned dark. Yet inside, it was warm. A fire was going in the woodstove. Such a comforting moment.

 

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown is part urban fantasy, part mystery and adventure, part romance⎼ and partly an examination of the psychological effects of pain and grief. Shortly after the book begins, the main character inherits a magical book that allows them to travel from any unlocked door to any other they can clearly imagine. There are all sorts of magic books in the story⎼ a book of shadows, for example, enabling the holder to disappear and become a mere shadow passing through any space. There’s a book of Illusions, one of luck, destruction, etc.

 

We never know what a book might reveal. They’re all around us or used to be. Like doors. Like places in the mind, or in our homes, schools, or workplace; memories, ignored bits of reality. Places we can step through to taste or digest; or to dwell fully and beautifully. Some with a hidden power.

 

When I was 18 or 19, I walked through an open door into the old Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Village, on 8th Street & 6th Avenue, in downtown New York City. Back then, it was a smaller, more intimate store, not like the chain stores of today. I was just wandering the aisles, hoping to find a treasure, when I noticed a man and woman, maybe in their 70s, in the philosophy section in the back of the store. They were discussing the French activist and philosopher, J. P. Sartre and his concept of authenticity. They were both dressed in old but expensive clothing. The woman looked sort of regal, the man very professorial. They intrigued me but I respected their privacy and felt too embarrassed to get close enough to listen in on their conversation. So, I moved on.

 

I ran into them 2 more times. One time was at a lecture on Thoreau in an upper middle-class neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan. Someone at the lecture told me they had escaped from the Nazis in Austria. I don’t know the truth of this, but supposedly she was from a noble family, and he was a professor, but I don’t remember in what field. And later, back downtown on 6th Avenue, I was surprised to see the woman alone on the street, begging for money, and aggressively berating those who pretended not to see her.

 

Another doorway, in a recent dream. I entered what at first appeared to be the home I grew up in, where my parents lived for almost 30 years after I moved out. But in the dream my parents had sold that house. The dream home was slightly different, and in bad shape. The bathroom was not working. I had to sleep on the couch in the living room, not my old bedroom.

 

And my parents were very old. Someone said my mom was near death. My dad was in only slightly better shape. All at once, several people I didn’t know, mostly younger, in their twenties or thirties, came out from the back of the house, talking loudly amongst themselves and crowding the living room. Outside, through a window, I saw someone park, get off a motorcycle, and walk away. One of the younger people claimed the bike had been stolen and now returned. My dad, who had never in his life been on a motorcycle let alone driven one, put on a leather jacket and helmet, climbed on the bike, and tore off. Maybe he had stepped through a doorway to a younger self, as he looked so much younger, with his back straighter than it had been in years…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Caring for the One and Only World We Inhabit: A Community of Hope and Action

When we’re attacked, or the material supports of our lives are threatened, we might turn inward. We might do this not to bring light to our inner life but to shield our whole being. To hide from the attacker. To distance us from fear and pain.

 

We all need to turn inward sometimes for this, for self-reflection, to be present, to find peace. And to put aside memories, hurts, and traumas. But a fear and threat festers when left for too long inside us. When the time is right, taking action to break that impulse to hide, and instead to reach out to others, to learn more and fight back feels vivifying. It enriches. It might also save our lives. When we act to right a wrong, act to diminish pain and suffering, this can strengthen us, change us.

 

Saturday, 10/18/25, was such an action. The NO KINGS RALLY was a day to remember. One of the largest single days of protest in American history. Not just because almost 7 million of us in 2,600 locations, cities, towns spoke out against this administration’s outright corruption, suppression of the law, brazen infliction of cruelty and inhumanity. But because we the people acted on this day in a manner in stark contrast to DT and his Congressional sycophants. We acted peacefully. We acted lawfully. We acted joyfully. We acted patriotically, to protect the nation from a would-be King, Dictator. We spoke the truth.

 

They lied and said we hated America. But the rally showed something very different: exorbitant love. For the constitution. For the laws that DT blatantly ignores and undermines. For many brown and black Americans and so many others that DT and his ICE agents are abusing, detaining, jailing, deporting. For this earth that makes our life possible. For each other. As reported, with a bit of irony, in the internet news source The Feed, nothing says we hate America more than defending the constitution and exercising first Amendment rights. “No Kings” is literally the founding principle of this nation.

 

My wife and I were a few minutes late. As we walked to the rally site there were so many people on the sidewalk with us, with signs, and going in the same direction as we were. A few were turning toward a main road to share their signs with motorists. When we arrived, we listened to speakers talk about abuses of power, military and para-military agents turned against their own fellow citizens⎼ acts many in the military say they did not sign up for and deplore.  We heard talks about the impacts of firing of thousands of government workers. Heard the facts about how DT’s tariffs, and destroying the lives of working immigrants are raising the costs of living for all of us.  Heard how his super awful legislation is undermining our health. Heard how money approved by Congress for MEDICAID, for medical and scientific research is now going to the super-rich.

 

The people around us were neighbors and friends. Coworkers. Former students. Shopkeepers. A carpenter who worked on our house. A doctor who treated us. People smiled at us. We enjoyed the clever creativity of the signs people held. We felt empathy for the hurt that so many here and elsewhere have experienced at the hands of DT’s administration of cruelty. This is our home.

 

DT inflicts fear on the nation, hate and vengeance against anyone who speaks against him.  He attempts to make us feel isolated and powerless, that we have no future but the nightmare he’s creating….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Ken Project.

If We don’t Exercise It, We Lose it: No Kings and Protecting Our Right to Speak Truthfully

Is there any end to DT ‘s malignant corruption? We have a government shutdown. It’s lasted almost three weeks. Instead of negotiating and talking with Democrats and Independents, he attacks. He tries to hold us, hold our nation hostage. He says, you won’t go along with my taking money from your healthcare, undermining Medicaid, Medicare, hospitals, health insurance for millions? Raising your cost of living? So, I’ll undermine your healthcare even more. I’ll fire government workers who look out for your (our) well-being.

 

For example, DT fired workers from the Health and Human Services and the Education Departments. He fired employees at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He fired workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who respond to infectious disease outbreaks, who help those with chronic diseases and pain, help those with awful injuries. He also fired workers from Homeland Security and Energy.

 

And he doesn’t hide his power-hungry intent. He says the lay-offs will be “Democrat-oriented,” meaning aimed at Democrats. This isn’t politics as usual, or politics as an occupation created to serve us, we the people. Instead, he’s attacking all of us, trying to manipulate the news so we blame Democrats. But it’s clear to see DT is the villain here. He’s even pressured the GOP Speaker, Mike Johnson, to refuse to bring the House of Representatives back to legislative session and work to end the shutdown. The House GOP aren’t even pretending to do their jobs.

 

When we can stand it, and we hear the latest news⎼ when we hear about this and other outrages, hear about a president invading American cities that elected Democrat mayors, hear about DT trying to punish us for opposing him by firing those who protect us from forest fires, help us recover from floods, research how to cure illnesses, and enforce the rule of law, or rule of the constitution. So many of us, millions, are fed up.

 

So, what can we do? Well, let’s start with the October 18 No Kings rally. March. Speak. Join others. Some think marches do nothing. But they get us energized for more targeted actions later. They connect us, help wipe out a sense of isolation. Get us ready to first protect and then work to get out the vote in 2026. Assert our commitment that there be No Kings in this nation! No dictators.

 

And this rally is scaring DT and his enablers in the GOP, because it gets right at the heart of what we the people are struggling for and he wants to stop⎼ our right to speak freely, our right to be heard and for our lives to be valued. Our right to speak the truth. Our right to mobilize the vote. DT is trying to criminalize dissent and the truth. This is clear in so many ways, like his pressuring networks to cancel Stephen Colbet and Jimmy Kimmel. And then there’s his investigations and indictments against the DOJ officials, former members of his cabinet, prosecutors, politicians, etc. who spoke out against or prosecuted him for his crimes:  Letisha James, Jack Smith, James Comey, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, Mayor Ras Baraka,  etc.

 

The Brennan Center for Justice said that DT “authorizes punishments for even tenuous connections to speech he doesn’t like….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

The Message of the Stag: If we Don’t Exercise it, We Lose It

I was 18. It was early spring, with just a little snow left on the ground. I was in a forest, taking a walk, while a deep fog was emerging from the ground itself, covering everything, turning the world gray, indistinct. Hazy. And suddenly, ten feet or so away, the head of a deer appeared before me as if it had been born from the fog itself; as if a brand-new dimension of the ordinary had shown itself. It was startling. Unexpected. It stared at me, and I stood there with it, rooted to the spot. Not one thought in my mind. The whole universe had become just us, just this.

 

And then it was gone. The deer was gone, but the beauty of the fog, of the moment remained.

 

Last fall, another encounter with a deer. I was once again on a walk, this time it was fall, in the late afternoon, on our rural road, and I saw a deer crossing about 300 feet ahead of me. I continued walking and when I got closer, I noticed it was a stag, with maybe a 2-year growth of horns. Instead of running off, like deer usually do, it stopped, turned, and walked at a strong pace toward me. I stopped. He stopped and looked right at me.

 

I wondered if he was confused and mistook me for another deer, or if he was sick. Was he preparing to approach further to see what I was, or to attack? I got my cellphone out and took a quick photo. Only then did he run off.

 

What was the message here, if anything?  How do I understand this? Surely, one way is to read about and carefully observe deer behavior and figure out why deer act as they do. But each deer, not that unlike each human, is similar to but different from any other. Unique.

 

After he ran off, I took a breath and took time to enjoy what had happened. A wild animal had studied me as I had studied it. It was a beautiful moment, a gift of nature.

 

How we understand an event or sensory signal is at least as important as the initial stimuli we’ve experienced. I’ve talked about this in blogs about dealing with pain. If we interpret chest pain as a heart attack, it becomes crazily more intense than if we interpret it as indigestion.

 

The principle is the same in relating with other people. How we respond to comments from a teacher or friend, an event in the news or a statement of a politician, can be more consequential in our lives than what was originally said or done. Despite all the ugliness and fear in our nation right now, we don’t want to become ugly and always afraid. Despite all those who aim to make us feel small, isolated, and powerless we want to look at life as broadly and honestly as possible. What we see is obviously influenced both by what we look at and the attitude, or mindset we bring to it.

 

And how we interpret an event can determine how much we inhabit that moment of our lives. We evaluate stimuli, occurrences in terms of approach-avoid. Helpful-harmful. Pleasurable-unpleasurable. Good-bad⎼ or neutral. This is built into us. And we can subject ourselves to this same propensity, of looking for threats, dangers, mistakes before we see anything else.

 

Psychologists and others say we humans have a “negativity bias.”…

 

**To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

When Life is too Big for Pretense: Sometimes, Total Honesty and Authenticity Are the Only way

We’ve all experienced pain, both psychological and physical. It’s one element of being alive, yet can be too complex to figure out, so difficult to live with. It can feel like it could shatter us. Maybe we just want it gone and yearn for a pill to mask it or chase it away. Certainly, it exists to signal something is wrong, but it can take on a life of its own, beyond any apparent purpose. It can also house inside itself impactful revelations.

Just a few days ago, an anecdote in a book I had just started reading grabbed my attention. It was Gerry Shishin Wick’s The Five Ranks of Zen; Tozan’s Path of Being, Nonbeing & Compassion. Tozan was a ninth century Zen Master, and his work significantly advanced the practice of Zen.

A monk asked Tozan “How do you avoid the discomfort of hot and cold?” Tozan replied, “Go to that place where there is no hot and cold… When you are hot, be hot; and when you are cold, be cold.”

Recently, I’ve been experiencing a weird pain wrapped in chills. It can feel like an invasion of cold, and I then treat it as such and just want it gone. Other times, it seems to rise from deep within me. I’ve spoken with doctors and tried all sorts of medical, and psychological approaches. I’ve considered how lucky I am that it’s not something worse.

When I can, I try to notice how and from where it came. I notice my response to sensations, and the labels I use for them; our response to pain is as important as the original sensations. If we think we’re having a heart attack, the pain can become immensely greater than if we think we have GERD.

Sometimes, when that cold-pain overtakes me, I visualize in my mind a warm, beautiful day in a place I love. And sometimes, this works, if I don’t shake so much it shatters the image of warmth I had created.

We can get hooked on pain. Pain can narrow our focus, and we can’t let it go. So maybe we then expand the universe of experience, so the pain becomes only one stimulus amidst hundreds. We let it share a moment of our lives with everything else around us, chairs and tables, trees and birds, spatial distances from our body to the walls of the room, or between our nose and toes. Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins describe this method in Dissolving Pain; Simple Brain-Training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain.

But so far, no doctor has explained, no approach has fully healed the pain. So, this anecdote speaking of hot and cold, this story⎼ or what in Zen Buddhism is called a Koan, a retold conversation of a Zen master with a student meant to lead to awakening⎼ got to me. It felt so right but its reality eluded me.

What if instead of thinking myself separate from the pain and experiencing it as foreign, it became just one moment of a universe experiencing itself?…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Feeling Stuck in Someone Else’s Nightmare: The Dangers of a Would-Be Leader at War with Himself, and Us

Lately, I often feel like I’m stuck in DT’s mind and can’t find a way out. It’s horrifyingly unpleasant, a daytime nightmare. Then I step back and breathe, momentarily at peace again.

 

We all create a world in our mind. Our world. Each person’s perception is slightly different from anyone else’s⎼ the depth of color, what we focus on and ignore, what we listen to and hear, what we respond to or bury. What a scene calls to in our memory.

 

We all, to varying degrees, shape the physical and social world around us to fit our way of perceiving it. In a way, whatever we see is us. We perceive and experience what our senses and brain make possible for us to sense.  We never see or hear exactly what another person sees or hears; or what a dog or a bat sees and hears.

 

And the moment-by-moment play-by-play that most of us hear in our minds is unique to us yet shares so much with the experience of others. But we can learn to step away from the recording. We can enjoy and be fascinated by, maybe even love, what eludes our play-by-play; we can welcome what is bigger or other than what we’ve ever perceived before.

 

But not DT. He seems to be one of the very few who feel they must control, manipulate, fabricate everyone and everything until other people only walk, talk, and appear as they would dress them. Only a very few feel they can’t feel secure, maybe can’t breathe unless there’s no one or nothing but themselves in their world shaping it. They’re just too ignorant about controlling themselves they try to make up for it by controlling others.

 

For example, look at DT’s response to the killing of Charlie Kirk. In a way, this murder was both awful and a perfect opportunity for him and his sycophants. It provided a chance to fertilize the delusion, hate, and division they’ve been growing for years, for lying about and demonizing “the left,” which in their definition is anyone who opposes their lust to turn this nation into a racist dictatorship they control.

 

Charlie Kirk was an outspoken conservative activist. Oliver Willis, writing for Daily Kos, said it seems many have been forgotten that he was also “a bigot, misogynist, and a racist who regularly excused the very sort of gun violence that ended his life.” Kirk said, in 2023, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment.” Did he mean to excuse 47,000 killed by guns in 2023 alone? How about 27 killed in 2012 in Sandy Hook Elementary School or 19 killed in Robb Elementary School in 2022? What about 47 school shootings so far this year?

 

Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, comes from a Republican, Mormon, church-going family. He has no criminal record. He turned himself in to police after being encouraged to do so by his parents and a retired police officer who knew his family through their church. He even took responsibility for the vile murder on his social media platform, saying “im sorry for all of this.” He was dating his roommate, a transgender person, and the revelation of this relationship set up a tsunami of speculations, lies, and distortions led by DT himself.

 

Instead of using this awful event to bring people together in the face of violent death, DT used it to manipulate a violent reaction against Democrats, LGBTQ+, immigrants, and his opponents. “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime…” he said. This ignores the fact that for the last 40 years especially, most politically motivated violence came from the right. “The radicals on the left are the problem – they want men in in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders…”

 

He said…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

When We Turn Reality into Myth: Supposed Mythical Beings Now Walk the Streets and Stop to Stare Us in the Face

In the past, it seemed that the mythical meanings of events were more subtle and hidden, but no more. They walk the streets with us and often stop to stare us in the face. Myth can mean a traditional, sacred, or universal story, a story of heroes and heroines, creator beings and destroyers⎼ a story revealing a more intuitive way of viewing life, an invisible realm that parallels our usual one. And it can also mean an untruth or false belief.

 

And today, our president illustrates both meanings. He has taken lies, corruption, a lust for power and vindictiveness against opponents to such historic levels he has created for himself an image of a being larger than human. Many recognize his behavior as that of a wannabe deity, a destroyer being walking the halls of our capital. But for too many others who follow him blindly, he’s an angel of vengeance.

 

But instead of this mythical being living only in story and legend, he’s very human and all too real. And what we, the rest of us, are called to do can feel like something only a hero could accomplish. But usually we don’t feel heroic; we feel like ordinary beings facing a reality that is extraordinarily unbelievable, frightening, and despicable.

 

For example, the DT administration is planning to destroy or abandon satellites that collect information about pollution and carbon build up in the atmosphere, as well as terminate the collection of weather data that collects vital information on hurricanes.

 

And why such enmity for something as basic as weather information? Why terminate the satellites unless the goal is to end scientific research into⎼ and proof of⎼ human-caused climate change? He’s blocking the availability of information that can be used to protect the environment and sustain human life on this planet. And instead, he’s empowering private entities and corporations to abuse the environment our lives depend on.

 

Politico reports that DT has stopped information from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program from being distributed to users. This includes data on hurricanes that has been crucial in protecting people who live on the coast from dangerous weather conditions. Weather collection has greatly improved since Katrina, but DT’s actions can put that at risk, and put lives at risk. Will free weather reports and all regular weather satellites be destroyed next?

 

When I was teaching high school, students wanted me to not use the word ignorance. They disliked anything that sounded like bullying, abuse, being unfair; and calling someone ignorant can do just that. And I loved that concern by students. But ignorance can also serve a powerful descriptive purpose. The root ig means not, opposite of. And nore comes from the Latin gnarus, meaning aware or to know. Ignorance is not knowing, not-seeing what’s right there to see and know. It has a connotation of willful not-knowing.

 

In the past, ignorance was considered a detriment, even dangerous for a politician. Now, we have a president working to create a reign of ignorance, particularly about who he is. He’s pushing ignorance and greed over accurate knowledge and favoring the advancement of a few wealthy and politically powerful individuals over protecting the health and safety of all of us on this planet.

 

Unbelievably, instead of protecting our health, he’s directly undermining it….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Schools of Education Should Become Academies of Listening: Finding A Magical Eloquence

I woke up at 1:15 am. I didn’t want to be awake. I wanted to rest and dream. To be unconscious. Then, in the background, I heard a wonderful mix of sounds that surprised me with its steady presence. And my attention shifted to it⎼ to the continuous song of crickets, harmonizing with the individually louder, more irregular song of cicadas.

 

And maybe it was some quality in the sound itself or maybe it was in the focusing of attention, but the sound became everything. Afterwards, I thought it a bit magical, because all inner dialogue, all talk about missing sleep or missing anything, had also disappeared. This was not something supernatural, but revealingly natural. Inner dialogue requires a sort of split in being, an idea of a me to talk and another to talk to. But the song of crickets was both the speaking and the hearing, the subject and object. For a moment, hearing the crickets and cicadas was hearing listening itself. Then I fell asleep.

 

Sometimes our lives can be so precarious, painful, and bleak. Or it can seem banal one minute, and alive, unexpected, instructive the next. The focus on crickets doesn’t always work; it’s not a sleeping pill. It’s not automatic. But, I think, we all want experiences that are engaging and interesting, or that make us interesting, to ourselves, as well as to others. That, as the poet David Hinton says in his book Orient: Two Walks at the Edge of the Human, awakens in us a good story, one that exposes our uniqueness. This simple magic does that. We need a quality of attention to get there, that allows us to hear the eloquence of crickets and cicadas. That allows us to find in that eloquence a universe larger than where we often imagine we reside.

 

I usually meditate and exercise in the morning. For years, I’ve been learning how to keep attention awake to whatever arises inside or around me, and to attention itself, so it doesn’t get lost in distractions. Or I’d do a standard practice of counting each breath. This entails counting each exhalation. Then being aware of each inhalation and the space between the two. As I exhaled, I’d silently say onnnneee to myself. Then I’d feel the pause⎼ and let the inhalation happen simply by itself. And with the next exhalation, I’d say twwwooo to myself. But on this day, each pause became clear, and not just something to get done or cross off a list. Every breath, every moment became important.

 

I realized how my “normal” awareness often skipped over moments. And I didn’t want to skip so much of life. I didn’t want to lose the moments when crickets speak, for example.

 

And there’s another reason why the sound is so important to me. It has a personal meaning. Crickets get so loud at the end of summer. And when I was still working, still teaching, and August came around, the crickets would remind me that my vacation was almost over. The  new school year was about to begin, and the sense of summer’s freedom was almost gone. I had to take advantage of this moment now, before it was lost to me. So, each night, I would sit on one of the steps of my deck, one of my cats on my lap, and I’d do nothing but listen.

 

And this pausing in my life helped me prepare for the school year….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

We’re All Both Teachers and Leaders: Self-Governance Means More Than Voting Biannually

I recently saw Robert Reich’s film, The Last Class, and was totally engaged throughout the 72 minutes I was in the theatre. Part of this was because the film talked about issues at the center of my life now and in the past, on education, retirement, and aging, on equality, democracy, and freedom. He asked questions that reached right inside my mind and heart. Less than a year ago we had an election where only 34% of voters thought democracy was the primary concern. And although many recognized DT as a threat to democracy, how many of us truly believed he would immediately act to strip our constitutional rights and protections from us?

 

Reich asked, what is democracy? We talk about democracy as self-governance. But what does it mean to govern ourselves? Is self-governance just that we as a people, not some other nation, choose the person who leads us?

 

He asked, “who are the teachers,” and “who are the leaders?” Or maybe who will be the teachers and leaders? Who will awaken generations to the necessity to stand up for others, for equality, for our environment, for our right to an honest and evocative public education? And who will the leaders be? Especially, who will lead us with courage, sincerity, and compassion? We assume leaders need to have the backing of formal institutions. But Reich pointed out that some of the most striking and powerful had no formal position. Think of Mahatma Gandhi, and Rev. Martin Luther King.

 

In a democracy, all of us play both roles. We’re teachers not just in the classroom and in the home, but in the streets, the workplace, the playground. We teach by the example of our actions and character. And we also lead by example, as well as through what and how we speak, what we do and how we do it.

 

To live in a democracy is a demanding endeavor. It requires that “we the people” take responsibility for what the government does in our name and supposedly in our interest. In 5th Century Athens, possibly the first democracy, all citizens (which only included free men) were legally required to participate in government decision-making and could be fined if they did not. But it has taken me a good part of my life and DT’s threats to the nation to realize just how demanding it should be. For many years, too many of us took democracy for granted. We were selfish and didn’t want to take time from our personal lives to give to the collective. When I was younger, many of us thought of the government as a foreign body we had to resist. We didn’t realize how much we could lose by non-participation.

 

Thomas Jefferson said, “A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.” Democracy and self-government require we treat our life as citizens as a sort of continuing education or practice, and government as an extension of ourselves, not just a biannual obligation. Self-governance means governing our voices, our votes, our actions, our thoughts, to deeply and comprehensively understand our world. And doing this as a practice means we do it kindly, mindfully aware of how governing fits in the totality of our lives. This is too easily forgotten. And DT, in his own despicable way, is doing all he can to undermine any belief that government is us and exists to serve and protect us.

 

Maybe this is why some people voted for a president who said he’d be a ruler more than a leader; a dictator, who promised to take our voice, our formal power away from any of us who might speak out against him….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.