Worried About Your Finances and Your Future? He’s Just So Incoherent, So Racist, and So Weird

This question can give me nightmares: how can people follow him? Economic matters, high costs, have been of such concern for so many of us. But which Presidential candidate might best help reduce these burdens? And which candidate would protect our vote, our power and rights so we could influence government policies to serve our needs? Wouldn’t that take someone who cares about the quality of regular people’s lives?

 

DT said the following on 7/26/24: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore…. [For in] four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…” In other words, vote for me now, and you’ll never be able to vote again?

 

He said of V.P. Kamala Harris “She was Indian all the way, and then she became black.” And “She is a DEI hire.” As if a woman, or someone black just isn’t talented enough to earn on her own merit any important position, for example as a prosecutor, Senator, Vice President or President?

 

He even told his own nephew, whose son has a physical disability, “these people (with disabilities), all the expenses…they should just die.” And a few years later he literally told his nephew he should just let HIS OWN SON die because of his physical disabilities. Would this person care at all about the majority of us except to get our votes?

 

Commentator Brian Tyler Cohen added⎼ DT threw his own VP candidate under the bus by saying: You’re not voting for a VP candidate—you’re voting for me. This reminds me of how he treated his former VP, when he stood by watching the Jan. 6 insurrectionist mob chant “hang Mike Pence”? Only I am important. And maybe DT’s right to dismiss his new VP choice, who said in 2021, the nation is run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies,” who have no stake in America and are miserable at their own lives. America must go to war against the idea that women don’t have to have children. And: people without children are “psychotic,” “deranged.”

 

Over the last 5 years, many people have had to face awful choices due to high prices for purchasing a home, food, or other goods. But: Will a person who cares only for himself improve the economic situation for most of us if he ever became President again? Or: Would we be better off now if he had lost his influence once he had lost the 2020 election?

 

DT boasts about his great economy. From the distance of 4 years, the past might seem better than the present. We might forget the harmful chaos of the DT administration. And who really benefitted, especially in the long run, from his economic policies? Did his economy help cause the pain many of us now feel?

 

The only big economic legislation he helped pass was the 2017 tax act, which heavily favored the rich. “As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.[2]” Most of us had a temporary tax cut; corporations (and thus rich executives) had a permanent one, from 35% to 21%. As a result, government income was greatly reduced, and a heavily increasing debt was created.

 

In testimony to The Senate Committee on Budget and Policy Priorities, Samantha Jacoby, a tax and legal analyst, said:

Cutting corporate taxes costs significant revenue, and evidence is sorely lacking that the benefits have trickled down. Executives, disproportionately wealthy corporate shareholders, and highly paid employees have reaped virtually all the economic gains from the corporate rate cuts, research suggests.

With less money going from the rich to the government, the rest of us pay more, for schooling, to maintain infrastructure, to finance health and science organizations, for the military, etc. By 2019, DT was leading the nation into a total downfall that had begun even before the pandemic….

 

 

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

How I Relate to Another Being is How I’m Living Life Now: The House of My Hearing Has Many Doors

Relationships are, clearly, at the heart of our lives; or maybe I should say that for most of us, they are our heart. Especially a marriage and those longstanding partnerships. They can be so miraculous, exciting, engaging, frightening, painful, and confounding that we lose perspective on the central role they play in our lives. Something comes up, a disagreement or hurt, and we focus exclusively on that. To the degree we feel engaged, we want to disengage. We can lose sight of how the relationship influences not only how we think of ourselves but all other relationships.

 

Despite the many relationships we have, we often think of ourselves as me-alone. Me separate from others, separate even from our world. But we’re never as fully separate as we might imagine. And core relationships have enormous power to reveal that. By recognizing this as a possibility, the relationship itself comes alive. The character of our lives improves.

 

Recently, I noticed that any marriage, or any core relationship, models for us what relationship itself means. It can become a school for learning how to deepen other, important emotional connections. For example, each friendship, in its own, unique way contains the possibility of developing a degree of the openness and emotional intimacy that a core relationship might develop⎼ a similar caring and being cared for, mutual discovery, trust, and exploration. Or if the core is dominated by resistance, pain, dishonesty, and projections, so might other relationships.

 

Such discovery and caring makes us vulnerable. When we’re open, loving, we’re vulnerable. That’s just what caring means. When we care we don’t wear bulletproof vests or build concrete walls around us. When we’re “open” our senses and feelings reach out. When we reach out, others can reach in. And this dynamic helps us grow in character.

 

This, of course, can also be frightening. It can scare us into shutting down. But being frightened can itself be a sign that something we’re feeling is meaningful and worthwhile. That we’re in a state where what we don’t know about the future of the relationship, or anything, might exceed what we do know. And we’re willing to risk that.

 

And this not-knowing is always with us. We might assume that when we’re open or vulnerable we’re less safe. But maybe we’re safer. If we’re more able to perceive what’s there, what’s real⎼ if we’re more cognizant of just how much of the future we don’t know, and more aware of what we’re doing and saying, then we can make better decisions. A relationship can help us recognize what’s real.

 

We can better recognize that right here, in this moment, this person⎼ is my life. I breathe; they breathe. I feel; they feel. Zen teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh called this inter-being⎼ we inter-are with others. Likewise, Australian Zen teacher Susan Murphy borrows an Aboriginal term, us-two, to describe relationships. Our relationship with another person, being, or place is not between separate, disconnected things. Instead, me-and-you and everything are dynamically creating this moment together.

 

As I sit with them, whoever they are, I sit with myself….

 

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

If 6th Graders Can Learn to Do This, Why Not the Rest of Us, and Society?

There are moments in life when we’re given an opportunity to participate in something special, a once in a lifetime moment.  Or maybe, it’s an opportunity to realize that every moment can be a unique, once-in-a-life moment.

 

This past weekend was the 50th Anniversary Reunion of the Lehman Alternative Community School {LACS] where I taught for 27 years. It’s a school that gives students, and it gave me, the opportunity to figure out who we were. For me, it was where I spent many of the best years of my professional life. It provided the chance to learn how all the disparate aspects of my life made sense and showed me how to pull all those aspects together. Just when I needed it most, and maybe when the school most needed me, we found each other.

 

The event began Friday night with a meet and greet dinner. Saturday, we gathered in the gym for welcome activities, photos, a talk from all 4 principals of the school⎼ the one who founded the school and led it for 30 years, and then the 3 principals who followed him.

 

Then there were school tours, art shows, and workshops; examples included The Seeds of Pedagogy, Climate Activism, Work in the Garden, etc. And the one I helped plan, on how our experiences in theatre classes and productions at the school and elsewhere empowered our lives.

 

On Saturday afternoon, a movie on the school was shown; there were meet ups for different groups, and an All-School Meeting was held. At night, a talent show hosted by graduates. And on Sunday, a lunch together at a park⎼ that nobody wanted to end until we were all exhausted.

 

The theatre workshop was a panel of graduates discussing two questions:

How has theatre helped you in your life?

What has been your experience pursuing your passions and exploring your career since leaving the school?

The panelists covered almost 45 years of our history. The moderator was a contemporary senior. 4 of the panelists were theatre professionals or studying in college to be one. The 5th used their theatre experience in their corporate career.

 

I had few coherent images of how the panel might turn out, just dreams and wishes. But the reality exceeded the dreams. The event was a testament to the profound possibilities that can occur when any group, certainly any group of young people, are trusted and given the opportunity, guidance, and support to openly be themselves⎼ and are encouraged to think deeply about the real issues of their lives and the world.

 

I was totally engaged with stories by graduates about how theatre, and the school in general, shaped and benefitted them, including how to face adversity and pain. There were stories about how theatre prepared one panelist to testify to congress and directly face all the giant cameras focused on them. Another panelist discussed how their experiences at the school showed them how to love auditions and be successful in movies and tv. Another talked about how it prepared them not only to direct theatre productions in Manhattan, but also to teach acting to college students. Or to follow their hearts and act to benefit others and society in general. An audience member, who is a medical examiner in New York City, shared how theatre prepared them to testify in trials.

 

Democratic decision-making is at the heart of the school….

 

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

Who’s That Walking in My Shoes

I remember when I was a late teen or college student getting ready for a “date” or to go out with friends. I would listen to Bob Dylan, or some music that I could sing or shout along with that would bring me alive. Make me feel real. I wasn’t sure back then who I was, or if I was boring, or what I had to offer other people.

 

Another form of this question sometimes arises before meditating. I’ll feel something like reluctance, or fear of just being there, a fear of sitting quietly for a specified length of time. I’ll suddenly feel uncomfortable in myself, locked up by time. And I might notice a fear of letting go of distractions or that of things I’ve hidden away would come to the forefront. I might be afraid of what would happen if I stopped living life as a story written for myself.

 

This is why it’s so important to choose our own ways to silently rest in ourselves; why it’s so important to be as real with ourselves as we can in that moment. Maybe even kind and loving. When we’re unkind, it’s so hard to let ourselves perceive who we truly are or what’s truly there.

 

A few years ago, a study apparently showed that many people have great difficulty just sitting still. Many of us can’t sit for even 15 minutes without turning to our phone, or music; or for something else to distract us and occupy our mind⎼ or something to shock our attention. Besides asking people to just sit, alone, the study added a little twist. It allowed those who felt bored or incapable of sitting without a distraction to deliver a physical shock to themselves. The result: 70% of men and 20% of the women chose the physical pain.  Some did it repeatedly.

 

The study (or studies) concluded: “In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.”

 

The researchers could not determine if the women who didn’t shock themselves were better at sitting still, better at resisting the shock treatment, or maybe better at being alone with their thoughts. And the situation has just gotten worse with FOMO and the increased use of social media.

 

Maybe we’re looking at this from a confusing angle. When we’re on a line waiting for popcorn, or to buy movie tickets; or we’re on a flight to a distant destination, the length of time can feel oppressive. When this happens, it’s our thoughts about the future making the present feel inadequate or burdensome. Or when we meditate and think about the half hour we’ve set aside, we can become focused on time as an abstraction. There’s nothing to hold onto but a mental creation, something separate from ourselves, and we lose our sense of breathing in and out. We lose our sense of now….

 

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

Biden v DT: What is the REAL Debate? Only Action by All or Enough of Us Can Save Us

Even before a word was uttered, it was difficult to believe what we saw. So much hype. So many emotions. So many watching. So much on the line.

 

When he first emerged, I couldn’t quite read DT. He seemed a bit unsteady but determined. President Biden looked stiff, like he was fighting something internally.  With the first question, he hesitated, couldn’t get his words out clearly. With his stumbling, it seemed, at first, that I was witnessing the destruction of our future.

 

At the end, a commentator on MSNBC, as well as former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, called it “kind of a Defcon 1 moment.” The fate of democracy, this election, had reached a threat level of DEFCON 1. Some called for Biden to step aside.

 

Meanwhile, columnist Scott Dworkin said Biden won the debate by a landslide and DT should’ve stayed home. He had good reasons to say so, but a landslide? No, or at least not at first look.

 

While Biden was giving his first, halting, almost indecipherable response, looking like he had a cold or the flu, DT seemed to be smirking. Like he had caught the opponent he had long dreamed of. Like he had his enemy in a trap and was salivating at the thought of attack. And attack he did. That was all he did all night. Attack. He showed he was good at attacking. But we all knew that.

 

He showed that he was just familiar enough with truth to know how to fashion the most outrageous lies. He knew he was a criminal, so he called President Biden a criminal. He knew he was an incompetent President, so he accused Biden of being one. He knew he disparaged soldiers and the military as “suckers and losers”; he knew he had said of Senator John McCain, a captured war hero, “He’s not a war hero…I like people who weren’t captured.” So, at the debate he denied calling soldiers “suckers and losers,” and attacked Biden’s use of the military.

 

In contrast with Biden, who shows empathy and concern for others, DT cares almost nothing about anyone but himself. So, in the debate he said he had a gigantic heart. Come on. He knew he struggled with mental acuity, so he claimed he had passed competency tests. Look at me, the genius. The genius who avoided more questions than he answered. A genius who had sacrificed millions to COVID through his malignant incompetence and lies.

 

A genius who used lines modeled on or borrowed from Hitler. A genius who pushed tax cuts to the rich, calling them a tax cut for all. But it resulted in a tremendous increase in the debt, and a tremendous shift of wealth and power to the rich, leaving the rest of us to pick up the bills. A genius at deception, at lies, yes.

 

In fact, the section of the debate on the economy was, according to Dworkin and others, one of Biden’s best moments. “There was no inflation when I became president,” Joe Biden said. “You know why? The economy was flat on its back. He decimated the economy. Absolutely decimated the economy. That is why there was no inflation at the time. There were no jobs.” Biden mentioned DT’s new tax plan for the rich which would, according to most economists, cripple our economy and raise the de facto tax burden for 99% of us up to $8300, while reducing the burden on the superrich….

 

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

The Conversation that Arises Out of Everything: What We Feed in Ourselves Lives in Ourselves

When a conversation begins in our mind, what do we do? When we respond to such a conversation by just listening, wondering, then letting it go, we learn from it and it usually passes. When we talk back, or hold onto it, the conversation continues. Even if we step back from it for a while, it carries on someplace in us. What we feed, lives.

 

A feral cat has lived in our neighborhood for at least 6 months. For months, he kept coming to our house. He would show up at different doors of our home and call to us. He would hang out with one of our cats sometimes, or at least not get in a fight. But if we’d try to get close to him, or even open the door when he was there, and he’d run quickly away. He’d never let us close.

 

Then one day, my wife gave it food, despite knowing the likely consequences. It was just too painful to hear him cry or see his need. Then a few days later, she did it again. The cat appeared more often, but still ran when we opened a door and roamed without us seeing him for hours or days. Then my wife did it again. And then every day. Then twice a day. Then he let her touch him. Then he let me pet him. And now? Now he acts like he’s ours. He follows us around or hangs out by the front door on our deck, looks in the kitchen window with pleading eyes, and dreams of us taking him in.

 

It’s the same with the content of our mind. What we feed becomes us, or “ours.”

 

The painful follow up with the cat is that we took him to the ASPCA, who vaccinated and neutered him, but wouldn’t take him in for adoption; they were too full. We next took him to our vet, for tests and further treatment. It turns out he has feline AIDS. Now, we must figure out what to do next. We have two other cats, who are indoor-outdoor. Even though feline AIDS is not easily transmissible, and humans are safe from it, there’s still a chance he might infect our other pets. In fact, our vet said that if we took in the stray, infection would be inevitable. Plus, he would need to live only indoors so he doesn’t spread the disease or get injured himself.

 

He must’ve had a home, once. Did they kick him out of their home and cut him from their heart? Or did they just run out of money to care for him? I wonder if they even knew he was sick and were afraid of, or didn’t want to face, a cat with AIDS?

 

What we try to ignore or cut from our hearts stays with us. The cat might be physically gone for this person. But the memory? The pain? The guilt? Cutting out is just another and more harmful form of feeding. It’s feeding what psychologist Carl Jung called our shadow, the part of our self that we deny, won’t or can’t acknowledge and try to project onto others but carry with us as a weight. To let go proficiently, we must do it with awareness, care, compassion, even love. What we feed in us becomes us.

 

I have to say that hearing that the cat had AIDS hurt so much….

 

 

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

A Convicted Felon, Finally: When the Language of Democracy is Used to Destroy Democracy, Or the Language of Legal Matters is Used to Destroy the Rule of Law

It’s been almost 2 weeks, and I’m still amazed to know DT was convicted, and so quickly and definitively by the jury. I heard the news just as I was worrying about the possible effects of a not guilty verdict. What a relief!

 

Yet, it was disturbing to hear GOP politicians continue to or even increase their desperate attempts to defend him from his conviction. Who knows what chaos and instability they might yet create? They echo DT’s baseless claim of a justice system “rigged” against him and the GOP, despite the blatant example of Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict being announced less than 2 weeks after DT was convicted. They do this despite the fact DT was given such special treatment, and treated so gingerly, and fairly, with breaks and delays that no one else would ever be given.

 

During the trial and afterwards, the GOP who tried to protect him did not spend much time presenting evidence of his innocence or pressuring him to testify in his own defense. Instead, they focused on attacking, seeking vengeance against anyone who tried to hold him responsible. Many GOP either lied about or attacked the justice system itself, the judge, his family, witnesses for the prosecution; and now they’re going after the jurors. One pro-DT forum accused Judge Merchan of treason and suggested that he should be hanged.

 

DT’s followers just revealed a blind obedience to their leader and a craving for power, calling for politically motivated investigations of Democrats. They cover their own weaponization of government (for example, using the power to investigate supposed wrongdoing by House committees) by accusing others of weaponization. For over a year they searched to find, or to create, something illegal to accuse President Biden of doing; and they found nothing. They recently went after Attorney General Merrick Garland, and for two years, they pursued Dr. Fauci, and they looked foolish in the face of witness testimony.

 

These GOP do this not only for retribution, but to undermine the rule of law itself. They want to hide the facts of this obviously fair jury trial behind clouds of distortions or lies. Maybe they hope to make this fair trial seem as suspect as their own investigations.

 

I should be inured by such acts by now, after 8 years of hearing DT and his followers spout ridiculous and malicious claims. On the street, they can get away with lying or saying almost anything that pops into their heads. In the courtroom, to say anything they must first meet a burden of proof.

 

Each of us who cares about having the vote⎼ or having the freedom and right to speak our minds⎼ the right to control our own healthcare, our own bodies⎼ the right to clean air and water and a livable planet⎼ the right to have free public education, not enforced religious indoctrination⎼ the right to have a jury of our peers and to be presumed innocent unless proven otherwise, instead of being presumed guilty unless we support a DT dictatorship⎼ each of us needs to do all we can to speak up and get out the vote in November if we want to stop the DT/GOP from taking all of this and more from us.

 

No matter how compassionate we are or try to be, it can be difficult to even look at him….

 

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

Aging Isn’t an Illness to Recover From: Lowering Our Resistance to Living with Kindness

As I get older, I realize the images and expectations I once held of “old” people were distorted. We are not those images. I can do so much more now at 65, 75 and older than I once expected I could do. And I sort of laugh gleefully. Aging is a more complex, engaging experience than I ever realized before.

 

The same applies to facing death. Our culture has a prohibition against speaking openly about the subject, which can be so damaging and isolating to us all.

 

I once imagined being older was a time of increasing feebleness or diminished capacities. That people spent more time looking backwards than forwards. And that except for maybe having more “free time,” there was nothing positive about it. A popular meme was “don’t trust anyone over thirty” ⎼ until my whole generation was way over thirty. I’ve found there’s plenty of looking back, but there’s even more of an appreciation of each moment now.

 

It’s true, however, that when I was younger, I might see a doctor once a year, at most. Lately, it’s almost every week. A frequent question that arises when I feel pain or physically “off” in some way, is whether the symptom is due to “normal aging,” or something else. In the past, when I was injured or developed some medical condition, I approached it as a problem to solve. Bodies could usually recover, injuries usually heal. But now, ankle or hand pain, for example, doesn’t heal as quickly as it once did, or at all.

 

Aging isn’t an illness to recover from. But our attitude or understanding of it is another story. We hopefully re-learn daily who we are. We re-learn what change means, what living means, that living is change. To even breathe we change, every second, taking in, letting go.

 

And as we get older, so many of those we know leave the world before us. I remember my father, who lived to be exactly 96.5, saying, “I’m the last of my friends, and the last of my relatives from my generation.” There’s an awful pain and loneliness in this. In each friend or loved one’s death we can feel friendship dying in us. We can feel loving is dying; loving is being vulnerable. To love is to make ourselves vulnerable to loss, yet we do it anyway. Dying is there in the loving itself; the two are almost indistinguishable.

 

So, every once and awhile now, I look up and see the reality of death getting closer. I can’t claim I’ve accepted it. Surprisingly, it doesn’t depress me, despite the moments when I experience intense fear. Or when I realize everything beyond what I can see in front of me right now, beyond what anyone can see, is an unknown we haven’t yet learned how to embrace or face. Maybe death is there as a sign, or a reminder, a message from reality.

 

And this reality touches and hopefully improves my relationship with everyone, with good friends and relatives, and especially my wife. My wife and I have been together for so many years, and the commitment to each other is as real, as clear as anything could be. As wonderful. As present. There is less judgment. Less impulse to distance. Just feeling.

 

Yet, different ways to trick myself into ignoring the reality of death still occasionally leap into mind….

 

 

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

Healing Divisions, Both in Ourselves and With Others: The Brittle Weakness Exposed by Not Compromising

There’s the old, oft-repeated story, that if frogs are placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated, they will not realize the danger of eventually being boiled alive until it’s too late. However, says psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant, frogs will leap out as soon as they sense the heat. But we human beings are feeling the increasingly hotter world temperatures caused by climate change but are not leaping out and are not doing all we can to turn the heat off.

 

Maybe frogs are more intelligent than humans. Or maybe we are just too good at imagining reality as being other than it is?  At creating “alternate facts” and diversions? Or are too many of us just afraid of change? Or too traumatized?

 

How do we loosen the boundaries in ourselves? How do we let go of rigid ideas of who we are or must be or of what is real? And how do we help others do the same?

 

One of the biggest obstacles to changing anyone else’s mind, or our own, is realizing not only it can be done but it’s happening all the time. For example, before 2012, the country was opposed to gay marriage. In 2013, the majority supported it. In 2015, the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same sex marriage.

 

Another science journalist, David McRaney, in his book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, argues we evolved to work to consensus, to helpful adaptation. But it can happen in punctuated spurts, times of great argument and division and no clear change, then a sudden burst of change. Hopefully, we’re near such an evolutionary adaptation now.

 

And lately, I’ve found in myself this same resistance to facing people with rigidly held opposing ideas. It seems impossible to reach or even talk with those who disagree with me about climate change, or the “Big Lie,” for example. With the global earth and ocean temperatures rapidly reaching such high levels, the increasing number of dangerous weather events, wildfires, droughts, and floods all make climate change seem so obvious. And I saw the 1/6 attempted coup and the big lie enacted live on national tv. It just feels like what seems so clear to me should not be so hard for others to see.

 

But part of that difficulty comes from the fact that for all of us, our beliefs and even rationally constructed understandings of the world are the ground our lives stand on⎼ or appear to stand on. To question those views can feel like we’re washing away the ground under our feet; it can feel like abandoning our sense of ourselves.

 

In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,  Grant points out we often prefer the “comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.” We resist rethinking, or talking with those with different views, not only because of the time and energy required, but because it would mean questioning ourselves. Such questioning might add more unpredictability to an already unpredictable, often threatening world. We need to recognize that what we believe is not who we are. We’re a universe infinitely larger than our worst opinions. It takes courage, not only to face those with diametrically opposing beliefs, but to unlearn what we believe, or think is true.

 

Especially now, it’s become difficult to change our minds. It can even be dangerous. Politically, acts mislabeled as flip-flopping are considered by many cowardice, or a sin….

 

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

Are We All Just Trying to Figure It Out? Changing Hurtful Habits

In Mary Oliver’s spectacular poem, The Summer Day, she asks,

 

“…What is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life.”

 

Of course, for some, life is more frightening than precious. But her evocation of such a spectacular day is so visceral and truthful.

 

And maybe we’re all always trying to figure this out, in our own ways. It’s certainly a question as old as humanity, as old as self-reflecting awareness. What can or what must we do with our lives?  Who or what are we? How can we or must we respond to a situation, to just waking up or going to work or school⎼ or to the threats that loom over all of us? Like the threat from those who are trying to impose a white nationalist dictatorship on all of us? The threat of the climate emergency, from wars, and who knows what else? Every moment the question of Who are we arises. We create ourselves through our answers to this question. And for most of us, our answers change.

 

Mary Oliver talks about attention, deep attention, as she rolls in the grass. As she feels herself as the grass or the creatures around her. And maybe this is one thing for all of us to do. We might let ourselves simply be with as much of what’s around us as feels right⎼ grass, trees, streams, and other living beings. This is one way to help save it, or them. To get us to care deeply enough to take action to save it, or us.

 

Did you hear that sound? The air disturbed by a moving car? The cough-talking of a raven? That peeper? That sparrow? That raven is cough talking not only the beauty of the day, but the grief it feels over the depleted air. Do you hear that sparrow? It’s not only calling its mate. It’s calling out in grief over the diminishing food resources it can find to feed its children.

 

I notice that when I regret something I did or didn’t do, maybe I misunderstood something, or treated someone unfairly, and I might call myself names. Wonder how I could ever be so mistaken. And this hurts. I might even imagine that mistake is frozen in time⎼ that I’m frozen in time, merely a memorial to a mistake. And that I can’t change or free myself from it. We might even try to blame someone or something else for what we’ve done so we no longer feel the pain.

 

Why do we do this? It’s such a weird way of thinking about ourselves and our lives, isn’t it? So distorted and inaccurate. If instead we listen deeply to this self-talk and imagining and go beyond it, not get stuck in it, so much might be revealed. Recognizing a mistake is the first step in correcting it. It can be a growth of awareness if we just listen mindfully and take it and our response as a lesson.

 

We might do the same anytime we look at ourselves….

 

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