The thinking woman's guide to conflict

I have often been accused of being contrary, argumentative, obstinate, and an "exactitude" (which according to the dictionary is "the quality or state of being accurate or correct").  I couldn't agree more!  Wait, is that out of character?  Maybe I'm just being contrary?

I love to play with ideas, rock them about in my palm like dice, throw them on the table, see where they land and try it again.  I live by the Voltairian (or at least, this was attributed to Voltaire and never proved) ideal of wanting to hear people express themselves, even if I disagree with them, and being willing to defend their right to those opinions, even while I squash them as foolish or erudite!  What fun!  What madness the human ego that tries to make itself the thing that it expresses!  Let us pull this apart and expose our ridiculous underbellies: our fears, our attachments, our magical thinking.

After thirty-two years of pissing people off or sending them running for the hills, I've accepted I'm a bit of a Jordan (thanks Brent Curtis, for finding my doppelganger):

"I'm 19 and I'm brilliant and I'm hyperkinetic so guys are a little afraid and if I'd stop to think about it I'd be upset."

Maybe this isn't such a bad thing.  I know I can appear aggressive and overwhelming to the conflict-adverse (friendship-sweater, anyone?), but aggression is by its definition the pursuing of aims at the expense of other people's rights and freedom.  I would like to think I am more assertive than aggressive (though I have, I'm embarrassed to admit, kept on talking to people through bathroom doors or followed them into washrooms - see this clip for a perfect example), not because I'm a boundary-bashing-rights-violating-monster (I hope!) but because I am completely unaware of the fact (when I'm caught up in a thought-experiment) that other people's bodily needs (and need for privacy) trump intelligent and meaningful idea-sharing!  My friend Julia, bless her, calls this being "aggressively helpful."  My mum just tells me to "give her five minutes of peace" and then promises to let me continue my diatribe.  Now that I have two boys who try to sit on my lap while I urinate and follow me everywhere while chattering incessantly, I totally and blissfully understand.  Good debates can, and sometimes should be, interrupted.  I've gotten better at being patient.  I can now wait almost ten minutes without talking.  It gives me time to refine my argument and make it better so when they emerge I can be triumphant!  Hurrah! 

All is not lost!  New research is leading me to believe that there may be a method to my madness.  Willful ignorance (pretending not to know that which you know because you don't want to do anything about it) has always driven me mad (especially when I engage in it myself).  Today I watched Dare to Disagree, this excellent TedTalk by Margaret Heffernan, in which she argues that "openness alone can't drive change"; that thinking aloud together (even purposefully looking for defects in one another's arguments which I have always been told is "too critical" of me) is actually creative, problem-solving, and necessary.  There is a distinct difference between "stirring the shit-pot" just because you are bored and/or attached to discord and being actively and acutely aware of the ramifications of your hypothesis and sharing it anyway. Whistle-blowers and change agents are often seen as "crazy" or anti-authoritarian but it doesn't do us any favors to surround ourselves with partners/friends/colleagues who are echo-chambers for our own beliefs, values, and opinions.  

This isn't saying we should marry an atheist if we are a born-again Christian and expect it to work out, it is saying that we may LEARN something through our failure to co-exist.  And that is the fascinating thing about life: learning, which seems to me to be intricately intertwined with conflict.  When we all "just get along" we may feel safe but we may also be perpetuating horrible deeds in our "groupthink" mentality (Holocaust, anyone?).

"The truth won't set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it."  ~ Margaret Heffernan.

Here's to trying!  May I have the humility to have my ideas and opinions tossed about like cannon fodder without being attached to them as piece of my soul.  May I learn how to engage people's intellects without making them feel as if I am attacking their person-hood or invading their space uninvited.  May I develop the skills, habit, talent and moral courage to be a better truth teller, and seeker, than I am at present.  And may I have immense gratitude for the lovely people in my life who are willing to engage in this quest with me!

Safe Spaces

Today I have been thinking a lot about safe spaces.  Places where I feel most like myself.  Or the person I most want to be, my highest self.  Places where that simmering, shaking quiver of anxiety that holds my chest tight and my breath shallow recedes.  Places that feel like home.

Even though I have the tendency to be quite extroverted, most of my safe spaces involve being alone, or with other people only on the periphery: bookstores, libraries, hiking trails, lonely beaches.  I love being in empty yoga or dance studios or curled up in a sunny porch, reading or knitting.  I love lying in a field of grasses staring up at the sky, or lying on my living room floor listening to records, or lying in a snowbank at night, staring at the stars.  I'm not religious, but I love being alone in giant, ancient, echoing cathedrals and cloisters, zendos, shrines.  It is the quiet I crave, not the doctrine.

I feel very calm around plants, digging in the dirt, riding a tractor, stacking hay in a loft.  I like animals but their unpredictability makes me nervous.  I'm more at home in an empty barn, when everyone's out to pasture and I'm shoveling shit.  I often feel the same about human animals.  I watch them with intense fascination, observing herd patterns and mothering odd ducks and spindly runts; but I'd rather deal with their messes (perhaps more abstractly!) than be in their constant company.

I relax in an art studio, in front of a typer and a blank page, or a sewing machine, as long as what I'm doing isn't perceived as work and there are no deadlines.

A wall of books and a comfy chair and nothing else to do but drink a cup of hot tea is heaven.

I love sitting up high in trees, looking out at the horizon, or in a greenhouse, smelling the moisture and growth.  Any type of water attracts me, lake or river or swimming pool.  And any type of fire.  I love running, hard, like I'm being chased, through woods and over hills and glens, jumping roots and rocks and water puddles, my heart screaming in my chest.  Preferably, predictably, alone.  I don't want to race.  I don't want to fall behind or feel like I have to slow my pace.  I just want to run.

If I am with someone I love, I want to snuggle in blankets, walk hand in hand through forests, read under the same light bulb and discuss what we've learned.  I talk out of nervousness, boredom, the need to share and grasp at connection, the need to help and heal others, wanting to resolve conflict, wanting to develop ideas that are only presently vague notions, and to attack and defend my private cathedral.  When I truly feel comfortable with someone, I'm able to say nothing and let them into my safe space.  This is a rarity.

I feel like there is some magic key in these revelations.  Examining my safe spaces feels like a road map, telling me future destinations, urging me to go back and dig up treasure I'd long ago buried and forgotten about.  I think there are answers here about where I should be heading, where I should live, what I should do for money and what I should do for fun, and with whom I should spend my time.

Where do you feel safe?  Where is your metaphysical home?

One.

As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the colour and fragrance of the flower;

so do the wise move through the world.

Dhammapada: Flowers, verse 49

Yesterday I was wearing a bright red t-shirt that mum gave me that says, aptly, “In a world where you can be anything, be yourself.”  

My parents have always encouraged me to share my opinions, to ask questions, to change my mind, to stand up for what I believe is true and honorable, and to admit my mistakes and vulnerabilities.  They taught me to use my empathy and intelligence to make ethical choices, even if they didn’t agree with those choices.  Raised by strong-minded, atheist parents while being baptized into the Pentecostal faith by a doting and morally rigid, maternal grandmother, my whole childhood and adolescence was a Voltarian exercise in allowing others the space to air their opinions and practice their beliefs, even if they weren't shared by all parties involved.  For such life lessons I will be eternally gratefully.  I may also be perpetually inquisitive, or hungry for truth, if there is such a thing.

What they weren't able to teach me, perhaps because they didn't know how, was how to cope with the rejection, ridicule, and overarching, aching loneliness that comes with having divergent ideas, rigorous morals and a singular vision that runs counterpoint to almost every single other human I have ever come in contact with or loved.  I have absolutely no idea how to present what I believe in, set boundaries, and be open to other people’s points of view without also feeling a profound and enduring aloneness.  I often wonder if my ideas are just elitist constructs subconsciously designed to separate myself from others as a measure of security, a painful padding against closeness that protects neither the victim nor the assailant (if you can even tell one from the other).  Or rather, as a dear friend likes to remind me, perhaps I just "think too much."

I also don’t know how to accept that other people will continually make choices which appear to be unethical (or at least, morally and/or intellectually lazy) and about which I can do nothing but stand my ground, bite my self-righteous tongue and watch from the sidelines.  I cannot be the world's moral gatekeeper.  It isn't my responsibility.   

In other words, having an identified “self” has led to much suffering, both my own, from dissatisfaction and loneliness, and others’, when I have judged them.  Is there a way to observe the world with discernment, step in when it is necessary to relieve another’s suffering, but to cease making constant comparisons between how things are and the way I think they ought to be?  

What do you think?  Do you ever feel like by "being yourself" you are condemned to loneliness, or even ostracism?  Do you prefer to do what everyone else is doing so you don't feel left out?  Do you think we even have a "self", or is this simply a personal construct we can observe but not buy into?

How to Be a Woman

Any writer, male or female, that can spend an entire chapter riffing on pubic hair so hard I nearly pee my panties and then turn around and deconstruct the entire recorded history of women into the depressing thimble of: we've-been-too-busy-and-tired-giving-birth-and-cleaning-up-after-you-twats-to-do-anything-important has my attention.  This lady is smart.  Smart and brash and awkward and so spot-on sometimes you'll want to argue with her but then you realize she's right.  The thing is, feminism has become a dirty word.  And not in a good way, like saying something naughty under your breath makes you feel powerful behind the back of an overbearing boss.  Feminism has become embarrassing, for everyone.  Conjure up the image of a feminist in your mind and I bet you picture a short-haired, ugly, makeup-less middle-aged woman screaming bitter tirades about absolutely NOTHING.  You just want to give her a valium and a warm bath.  Nobody in their right mind wants to be that woman.  Or sleep with her.

This is not Moran.  Moran wants us to take back the word.  She wants us to stand on chairs in bars, slightly tipsy, and shout, I AM A FEMINIST.  And not just us ladies, the menfolk too.  See, the problem is most people (that actually take the time to think about this) are walking around under the impression that feminism is a "female" issue, which is ridiculous.  Feminism is a female issue as much as civil rights are a "black" issue.  The right for one gender to be treated equally to another is a HUMAN issue.  Just like the right for one race to be treated equally to another is a HUMAN issue.  Feminism is a human right.  And men have as much to benefit from it as women, which is why we should all be standing on chairs right now shouting, "I am a FEMINIST" while wielding our furry muffs and spending our hard-earned paychecks on tequila shots.  Well, that's Moran's take on it anyway, but I'm pretty sure she'd be just as thrilled if you stood on a chair at the hairdresser and shouted while getting your eyebrows waxed.  The thing is ladies; no one is going to just give us rights and freedom, unfortunately.  The whole sad history of human affairs does not bode well for oppressed peoples being granted liberation from the money-hungry power mongers just because, well, the raging tyrants stopped raping and pillaging for a moment to say, "Hmmm....maybe we should share our wealth and power and get along!" 

My two grandmothers never learned to drive.  Not only were they not "allowed" to by their husbands, they didn't have the means to purchase and maintain an automobile or the freedom to use it.  And this isn't a story from 1688.  I'm not THAT old.  We're talking a few decades ago.  We're talking NOW.  These were my role models growing up.  That's why I get so bitchy and angry when I watch yet another movie/video game/advertisement/music video where the woman's role (sometimes we get lucky and there is two or three women!) is that of aggressive seductress or passive damsel in distress.  That's it.  That's what we are reduced to.  That's what all the little girls growing up have as role models.  Grotesque surgically-mutilated clowns teetering around in stilettos or else trembling ingénues waiting for a big strong man to protect them from the world and keep them safe.  Seriously?  Because that’s fucked.  Because that is not a single woman I know in real life.  And I doubt very strongly that’s a thinking-man’s idea of a solid life-partner.  A quick wank, maybe.  Real women are strong and courageous and tender and vulnerable and loving and sometimes horrible.  We are so much bigger and more complicated that society wants us to be.  And that’s what is so great about Moran’s book.  She wants us to celebrate the fact that we are bigger and more complicated than some puny, pathetic stereotypes.  As Meg Jay says, we need to get some identity capital: http://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20.html

We need to get off the poles, get into office, throw on our big-girl granny panties and get on with getting shit done.  If that means we need to put our kids in daycare or have abortions or stop spending money on “investment bags” or get a divorce or piss off a lot of people, then so be it.  We need to let go of the boring, heterosexual get-a-man-and-have-a-baby-and-everything-will-be-perfect dream we have been sold because it isn’t a dream at all, it is a nightmare.  Everything is not perfect just because you are married with kid(s).  Sometimes those husbands leave, or die, or hate you, or leave their damn shit all over the place and expect some magic fairy (you) to pick it up for them.  Sometimes your kids get sick, or die, or hate you, or leave their damn shit all over the place and expect some magic fairy (you) to pick it up for them.  Sometimes you stare in the mirror at three am with baby-vomit on your nightgown and think, “THIS is what I was waiting for?”  All those nights at the club grinding my pelvis against some over-cologned idiot hoping he was “the one” lead to THIS?  I could have been in Paris eating truffles!  I could have painted a masterpiece!  I could have slept for more than three hours in a row for the last ten years!  I’m not discounting the joy and delight there is to be had during the coupling of two people leading to reproduction and parenthood.  I’m just saying it isn’t necessarily the pinnacle of your existence.  We need woman doing other things.  Like men.  Because men can seem to have babies and wives AND also invent shit and lead revolutions and make art and get things done.  Because they aren’t usually the ones up at three am cleaning baby vomit off their nightgowns.  They are sleeping blissfully in their cozy beds with their hand down the front of their boxers dreaming of their next merger or the blonde next door.

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled, or ruined, because all around them society was still wrong.  Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc- and you’ll also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.  Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool.  Few girls would choose to be right – right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely. (p.10)

Just imagine how much other shit you could get done if, instead of worrying what your boyfriend thinks about how your butt looks in your new jeans, you just GOT ON WITH IT.  What if you took all that money you spent painfully and tearfully ripping downy little hairs off your beautiful body and went to Paris?  With or without said boyfriend.  Moran claims there are four things a modern grown woman needs, “a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff.  A big hairy minge”(p.45).  This big fluffy muff is not only a political statement, but it is also a subliminal message to yourself that you have better things to do than spend time and money making your front door look like a cold, itchy, child’s vagina.  Your vagina is worth more than that.  You are not going to hurt it any longer.  It has been hurt enough.  If a man takes one look at your lovely mess of curls and gags, well, let him.  I’m sure he’s no prize himself.  Maybe he’ll asphyxiate on his own vomit.  Any man who spends more than ten seconds tending to his own love triangle is a deranged sheep.  Leave him to the fold.  His vanity is his own affair.  If this narcissism also leads him to bake like a potato in tanning beds and hog the bathroom mirror during those crucial minutes you have to get ready when the kids are actually occupying themselves: RUN.  He is not a man.  He is a plastic Ken doll.  Spooning a pillow would be more emotionally fulfilling.

Even though Moran makes a thorough argument for all the ways she has been repressed or discriminated against during the long road to adulthood she never becomes morose or despondent, but instead encourages us to embrace the future with new hope that women will, one day, earn as much as men for the same work.  The future is bright; not because everything is just so much better, but because WE are getting so much better at standing up for ourselves.  Louder, more visible, angry, motivated, and banding together.  We now live in a world where Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris, and Caitlin Moran make a living BEING FUNNY.  Not being cookie-cutter sexy.  Not being rescued.  Being smart and witty and powerful and hilarious.  And there is pleasure to be had here girls.  Pleasure in making it on your own.  A deep, satisfying, post-orgasm “ahhh” in knowing you paid your own damn way and did it on your own terms.  And it doesn’t have to be lonely.  We’re all in it together.  And believe it or not there are men out there who don’t give one lick whether or not you have hairy legs.  Find them.  Don’t settle for less.

I’ll leave you with this from Moran:

Lying in a hammock, gently finger-combing your Wookiee while staring up at the sky is one of the greatest pleasures of adulthood.  By the end of a grooming session, your little minge-fro should be even and bouffy – you can gently bounce the palm of your hand off it, as if it were a tiny hair trampoline. 

Walking around a room, undressed, in front of appreciative eyes, the reflection in the mirror shows the right thing: a handful of darkness between your legs, something you refuse to hurt.  Half animal, half secret -  something to be approached with a measure of reverence, rather than just made to lie there, while cocks are chucked at it like the penultimate game on Wipeout.

And on proper spa days, you can pop a bit of conditioner on it and enjoy the subsequent cashmere softness, safe in the knowledge that you have not only reclaimed a stretch of feminism that had gotten lost under the roiling Sea of Bullshit, but will also, over your lifetime, save enough money from not waxing to bugger off to Finland and watch the aurora borealis from a five-star hotel while shit-faced on vintage brandy.

So yeah.  Keep it trimmed, keep it neat, but keep it what it’s supposed to be: an old-skool, born to rule, hot, right grown woman’s muff. (p.49)

Anger and the Rocking Chair

I have an ongoing interest in psychology, specifically evolutionary and developmental psychology, with a particular focus on children’s issues.  I work with children that have behavioral, emotional and developmental problems, both as a yoga therapist and as an intervention worker.  I’m also a single parent.  I don’t do this work because I am a particularly patient or empathetic person, in fact my loved ones probably would out me as short on temper, long on moralizing.  But rather, being in the presence of children, especially those deemed as “impossible” or “lost causes,” puts me acutely in touch with the NOW, with BEING.  Children’s emotions and needs are usually on the surface of their existence, forcing us to be present while they are vulnerable.   I respect that vulnerability.  I see it in myself.

Janet Lederman was an elementary school teacher who practiced Gestalt awareness in her inner-city “special needs” classroom.  Although written in 1969, and a bit controversial (she’s okay with spanking), the principles of Frederic Perls’ theory applied in a classroom setting are still very applicable today (if teachers would be given the trust and opportunity to use them).  Rewards are given for showing strength, courage, honesty, respect.  Negative attention seeking is channeled into more appropriate means.  For example, in one scene two “delinquent” boys are trying to get a rise out of Lederman by singing:

 “I have a girl from Culver City,

She’s got meat balls on her titties.

She’s got ham and eggs

Between her legs…”

Rather than sending them to the office to be punished by the administration or getting upset, she says, “I like the way you boys sing.  Come over to the tape recorder.”

They proceed to sing their little ditty (more sheepishly now) into the recorder.  They are afraid she will show it to the principal.  She reiterates that she likes the way they sing and that they can erase it when they are done.  They begin to sing and start critiquing their voices.  They laugh.  They try singing a different song.  She did not fulfill their expectations of shock, anger, or punishment.  But they still received the attention they so desperately required and it become an experience about SINGING, not punishment and rejection.

In another scene Lederman discusses the reality of the “messiness” of childhood, an ongoing issue in my house, and probably yours as well.  To the children of her class she says, “I am not here to take care of the tools you use, or the games you enjoy.  If I ‘pick up’ after you, you will not experience the frustration of missing parts and broken toys.  If I take care of your things you will have no way of discovering how to care for your equipment.  I will do nothing for you that you are capable of doing for yourself.”

As parents and teachers it is so very difficult to live the experience of that last line, but it is essential to raising healthy, independent, responsible, self-motivated children.  We must choose to let go of our need for total control, our insistence that it be done “our way,” in “our time,” because we are “the boss.”  Instead, we must teach children how to be their own bosses, and they can only learn that, safely and painfully, through experience.  This causes us great discomfort while we helplessly watch our children flounder and complain, and it is terribly tempting to feel resentful and the next thing you know, “Argh! I’ll just do it myself…” is tumbling like acid out of your mouth.  And what does the child hear?  “You are not fast enough.  Smart enough.  Old enough.  Good enough.”  And the truly dangerous road of learned-helplessness begins.