Category Archives: mindfulness

Primed and Susceptible

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Text from a conservative relative:

I get it, you hated him 4 years ago and you still hate him now, I’ve seen a lot of hate thrown his way, but this guy is a consistent winner and an overachiever. That’s what the people who support him love about him Yes there have been some scandals, yes there have been some lies, and maybe a few times he’s twisted the truth to make him look better. He’s out there everyday proving those haters wrong time after time. Call it jealousy, call it envy, some people just can’t handle how successful he is and how much money he has, could even be jealous that he’s got a hot foreign model as his wife. You may not have wanted him in his role, but he’s there now and there is nothing that you or I can do about it. I know it’s possibly going to get worse over the next several days, but like him or not, Tom Brady is turning things around in Tampa.

I confess, I read this while stopped in traffic, so I may not have paid enough attention (ahem).  Also it’s not a text from my relative; it’s a friend’s Facebook post. 

It’s an exercise in attention, assumptions, priming, and susceptibility.  And man, was I duped.  I got to the end and thought, huh, that was a weird non sequitur–firmly stuck in my own narrative.  What hijacked me most was, “nothing [we] can do about it.”  I was not alone.

I wonder what myriad important perspectives, learnings, and connections I have missed, shuttered by my own biases?  How much fuller could my life be if I managed them all far better?

How much better for us all, if we all did?

Count Higher Than Two

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NaBloPoMo 2020 — Today’s Lesson

I’m starting to hear echoes of 2016, when a friend posted, “Well, now we know where the dumb people live.”  To some, if you voted this year to re-elect the president you are wholly and irrevocably:  stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynist, monstrous, evil—and more.  You are judged and defined solely by this one action.  Nothing else need be known about you; you are garbage. 

It’s us vs. them, good vs. evil, either/or, with us or against us.

This profound yet effortless oversimplification, this refusal to acknowledge, let alone explore, the inherent complexity of any given individual, poisons us all too easily.  It is the venomous root of polarization.  David Blankenhorn, co-founder of Braver Angels, describes it so well in his 2016 essay, “The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People”.  He asserts that “binary thinking—the tendency to divide everything into two mutually antagonistic categories”—is the most dangerous habit of polarization.

It’s to the point where I myself feel unsafe to raise any nonconforming perspective among liberals, lest I’m attacked for upholding the toxic patriarchy I profess to oppose. How ironic that the movement of tolerance and inclusion, that claims acceptance and diversity as core values, not only cannot tolerate but violently rejects even benign and earnest internal dissent.

Can we see our political opponents as more than a malevolent monolith?  Can we allow for complex experiences we don’t understand?  Can we withhold judgment long enough to recognize and honor our shared humanity, before we respectfully condemn each other’s wrong-headed ideas?

Can we ‘count higher than two’ in our attitudes and interactions?  Our mutual survival may depend on it, and I know so few people willing to try.

Our voting choice was binary.  Our thoughts, emotions, speech, actions, and relationships should not be.

Moving Through Distress

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Sometimes the storm you’ve seen coming all along still sneaks up on you. 

COVID essentially obliterated 2020.  My colleagues and I saw the signs in the spring.  We knew all summer that things would get worse again when folks started gathering indoors.  But I did not anticipate a surge until after Thanksgiving.  Wow.  I stand a little agape, but I shouldn’t.

Four years ago I knew it could go either way… in my rational brain.  But my limbic brain would not believe it.  So I was despondent.  I’ve done so much work since then, channeling rage and outrage into nascent activism.  I have hewn closer to my core values, strived hard to be my best self, walking the talk, as if that would make any outcome tonight easier to take.  All year we have known it would be a toss-up again.  And here I am, suffering something akin to PTSD.

My usual workouts and mind-body practices would not cut it.  This day I needed rhythm, music, and another kind of movement.  Some folks at work joined me on a video dance-along to the Kongos—thank you Kathy Varol!  I listened to my Spotify playlist instead of books or podcasts, and walked in time.  Daughter and I played piano for the first time in months—Pachelbel’s Canon and Clementi’s famous Sonatina.  Nice to know that muscle memory can persist 30+ years.

All of my coping skills are called forth now and for the foreseeable future.  At least I’m better today at hearing how my soul asks to be soothed.  That’s a win.