Living the Dream

I remember when I was in the midst of congestive heart disease and the initial stay in the hospital.  The shock to my system when they put me on a no-salt, no taste, bland diet, I felt like I was being punished.  It was horrible:  plain rice, poached fish and eggs, plain vegetables with a dash of lemon ( maybe), no salt, no coffee.  “Oh,” they say, “you will learn to like it.”  “What kind of crap is that philosophy? ” I complained, “there is no quality to life at this point.”  See, I had spent my life on comfort foods.  They took away my comfort:  no popcorn, no sweet coffee first thing in the mornings, no pizza, no stroganoff, no homemade bread like mother used to make, and, omg, no dill pickles or dill pickle juice.  It was unfair, I tell you, unfair.  I do not drink, I do not do drugs, even pharmaceutical, we have to eat to survive, and I just have some things that I eat that comfort me.

The diet was intolerable, as are most diets.  They can be torture, truly.  My energy drops at even the thought of Diet.  Hungry, irritable, eating nasty stuff, only made me feel deprived.  And the diet-mongers make money hand over fist, and the bottled water people become wealthy on our stupidity, and diet supplements give me a headache, a stomach ache, insomnia, heart palpitations, and high blood pressure.  And, the exercise junkies run off their angst and I cannot walk very far, let alone, run, to get off excess pounds, and the television portrays scenes of posturing ultra-thin women who have a million dollars and exercise coaches and chefs and plastic surgeons as ‘normal’.

So, I have gone in search of something healthy to help me burn the excess.  I do diet, but my own kind of diet where I eat a little of what comforts me and more of the four food groups.  I refuse to deprive myself totally, and every few months I go out for pizza or Chinese buffet, or go to the lobster pound and get a lobster.  The sense of deprivation is what puts on weight I have decided.  The body knows feast or famine.  It began with it.  When my body recoils in horror because I have thought “Diet”, it starts hoarding things.  I try not to resent it, it has been gradual, and I do notice that inches go off before pounds.

There are fillers that are palatable.  I have learned to have a whole-whet pretzel stick…ummm, crunchy, as filler.  I love yogurt.  I love a granny smith green apple with a small amount of light cheese.  I can eat popcorn…the light kind.  I love Chai tea and herb teas and a cup of tea is so soothing.  I finally found a sugar substitute that is delicious - brown rice syrup for cooking and a small tablet for a teaspoon of sweetener.  I have learned to love diet Pepsi and diet Fresca and low calorie/low sodium sparkling juices.  I hate peanut butter, so I had to find another source that peanut butter fulfills.  Voila - peanut butter stuffed whole-wheat pretzel bites.  And home grown tomatoes and cucumbers in vinegar.

At times, my body rebels and I get a wicked stomach pain.  It hates to give up its comfort food.  It starts it sugar starvation throw-a-fit-and-punish so I will occasionally have a little sugar in my tea or a piece of candy…a piece….. or fool it with diet jello which is absolutely compacted with flavor and I add fruit because I really do not like the texture of jello by itself.  My body, once in a while, gets dry heaves at the thought of another boiled-danged-egg, fish of any kind, and I tell my body that deprivation is a big part of diet.  I have become determined but not fanatical.  And I refuse the sense of punishment for all my bad habits.  I did not get fat from over-eating.  I got fat from the steroids used when I had my heart problems and the inability to run the high school gym like I used to.  In fact, when my life got easier to live, and I was not burning up calories over worry and angst, I gained weight.  I used to be so proud that a little bit of stress could take off five pounds in a few days.  Well, that is no more.  I refuse to hate myself for it though.  I have put up with it but now, I am trying to find ways into fooling my body into losing some of this excess poundage.  If I do, great; if not, then I will live with it.  But, there has to be some kind of payback for depriving myself.

I have to get past the ‘weight = self worth” propaganda and just do it to feel better.  I got a bouncer.  It doesn’t seem to do anything but I bounce just the same.  It distracts me.  And, I refuse to see food as the enemy.  So, here I am, up at 3 am again, my stomach gurgling and I have no desire for a pretzel, tomatoes or cukes, or even popcorn.  I am simply awake because I wore out about five pm and had a little nap to shut my stomach up.  I am distracting myself with typing and know that tomorrow morning, I will wake up and go through it all again.  The bouncer is haunting me over there in the corner.  How do I shut that up?

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I watched a special on ‘Affluenza’.  Af-flu-en-za, is described as n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life. It was all about the high social and environmental greed in materialism and consumption.

I believe that this began with the movement of cultures out into the world, into areas that were already settled by first peoples.  The Americas are an excellent example of this ‘affluenza’.  At first, the newcomers to America wanted to conquer and acquire the goods and people they found settled here.  There were some that came, such as the Puritans and Quakers, who fled their homelands with  the idea that excess acquisition was a sin and that sharing one’s acquisitions was a spiritual commandment.  It was when this new land became the frontier of convoluted acquisition of what were luxuries to the next waves of strangers that came.  It has spun out of any control and we end up where we are today:  a people living in a life of our own making; one overly obsessed with greed, sex and violence.

The only way to stop all this is to follow an old New England proverb that I see small evidences of even today:  “Use it up, wear it out, and make it do, or do without.” - WWII American wartime slogan.  A simpler life must be found  - but not pride in poverty, which I find common, as well ~Simply keeping it as simple as you can.

I am a typical feminine consumer:  I counted how many different kinds of hair products and make-up, and lotions I have collected.  It is embarrassing when I actually realize how I have hoarded this stuff - for that is what it is ‘stuff’ that I have allowed myself to buy in to.  I do not even want to go into other stuff that is collecting in the storage-slash-arts-and-crafts room.  I try to excuse myself because I do, eventually, use the products and I do altered art (make new out of old).  But I am a wicked paper consumer - those poor dear trees I proclaim to love.  But there are ways I have curbed my consumerism and daily use of things.

I can make three meals out of a small roast.  I can make a healthy, filling, meal out of one steak for the two of us.  I recycle as much as possible and yet I know there are yet ways to reuse things.  I started a compost, I use old clothes fro quilt pieces and rags and even rug-making.  There are things I never buy and have been creative in reuse.  I also barter and go to flea markets, garage sales, Good Will and Salvation Army and do a great deal of alternate shopping at Dollar Stores and vegetable stands.  But I do not look, nor act like, a Bag Lady.  You’d never guess.  There is no sense of sacrifice.  There is a sense of pride when my partner is shocked at how far I can make things go, how I can reuse things and the pride I feel when I know I have been good at curbing my desire to acquire as an alternate to being happy, healthy and peaceful.

It was difficult for me to resist the hurry-worry life I had lived before I really ‘got it’!  I have learned to enjoy my surroundings, to tune in to nature and to listen to and understand all things that are connected to me.  I can not say I am ever bored.  My psyche is more soothed as I simply live in the present moment as much as possible.  (Thank you, Eckhart Tolle and The New Earth)  I no longer equate ‘having fun’ with ‘having a life’.  I have become creative in finding things to do that cost little or no money.  I have learned to nap and no longer equate it with laziness.  (I had to have several long talks to my ego about this.)

I do not need a new vehicle until this vehicle gasps its last.  I have a trailer that takes me to wonderful seaside shores for a few days throughout the summer.  I travel ‘home’ by train and love the extra few days of difference in isolation and the sense of ‘no rush’.  I take absolutely no medications for heart, nor hormone, nor high blood pressure; nothing!  I am 61 years old and grateful to say such. I am not idealistic to the point that I think that will not change.  I do have neuropathy in my feet, a hip like my mother’s, and arthritis in my hands, but have found natural herbs that really make a difference.  I order my books online as seconds or used.  I am far from a non-consumer, but I have learned to not be so desperate that I fill my life with material things.  I am not suffering, nor looking desperate.  I am simply finding new ways to do things my old life thought was important….rather than collect and buy just for buying or because I was filling another need, I now use it or lose it.

Consider your collection of STUFF.  We have to, for the division between the rich and the poor is widening.  There will always be those that have and those that have-not.  I am sensing a desperation, and not always quiet, as people are having to give up their acquisitions or their acquisitions are running thin.  Society would have us think other than being frugal and filthy rich, and conspicuously affluent, is normal.  For instance, have you noticed when they show the mid-west floods, the California fires, the hurricanes, that they focus on owner’s second homes, cottages, and ‘the owner was not living there at the time’ places?  I often wonder what the people are doing and what they have lost, that had one home, few possessions and what that cost them.

I am trying to break free of my affluenza.  Can you consider ways to do so, as well?  I’ll  trade bags with you.

Affluenza was hosted by National Public Radio’s engaging Scott Simon. It was produced by John de Graaf and Vivia Boe, the team who produced the critically acclaimed PBS special on another American epidemic, Running Out of Time. Affluenza is a production of KCTS/Seattle and Oregon Public Broadcasting and was made possible by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“Now that my house has burned down, I can see the sky” - Hiroshima survivor

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Resolving conflicts can get really ‘iffy’.  Everybody wants to be right, the rightest, the best, the smartest, the most….. adnausium.  I have found it so much easier to just walk away.  Walking away does not make the other person right, it simply means that I am tired of conflict.  Conflict is nothing but chaos-making.  Chaos-makers often like to get things going.  I used to rise to their bait but I am not going there anymore.  My right may not be another’s right.

I believe what I believe and if I truly believe it, I do not have to defend it.  I do not need to be spiritually smug, elitist, or truncate my own spiritual growth by choosing to remain comfortable by walking away.  I walk away because something is not worthy of a comment, or that I respect their right to have their opinion.  Being quiet may just simply be good manners.  How we surrender to not enmeshing ourselves in conflict can say volumes.  If we can simply do it with grace, there is personal integrity in it.

Feeling like we need to stand up and bandstand, or be the loudest and the smartest and the most correct does not mean you are.  We all carry different baggage.  Most people have old insecurities.  Most women menstruate.  Most men will find their nether parts sagging as much as women’s breasts.  We are in this for a lifetime and we can either have it chaotic and constant war, or we can learn to ‘zip-it’ and allow peace rather than defiance

or definitive one-up-manship.   You know what?  It doesn’t matter.  It really doesn’t matter.  You do not have to think what you are told to think.  You do not have to be so right that there is no peace.

We all have hidden agendas.  We all have personal intent.  We do not have to resolve everything.  Sometimes resolution is simply surrendering.  We can learn to be aware of how we communicate and can learn how to be conscious of ourselves and others at the same time.  You can be direct without being condescending.  You can explain yourself better if you find you are being misunderstood.   You can clarify, do a summation, repeat what you said and even ask the other person to summarize what they thought you said.  But, first and foremost….some of us have lost our ability to be empathic.

Lack of empathy starts out things that reside in the realm of “defensiveness”.  We do not know each other’s history.  Ask before making assumptions. Assumptions are not facts.

Lack of empathy is what makes people hit below the belt.  Sometimes we know each other well enough to know each other’s vulnerabilities.  To cross that line is pure evil as far as I am concerned.

If we find ourselves in conflict, invest some time in thinking how you can end the battle rather than intensify it.  Just know that some things can not be fixed.  You may have to live with it.  Stay with the ” I”  rather than start out with the “You”.  Never mind anyone else but yourself and the way you contributed to the problem.  Sometimes you will simply never be ones to see eye to eye.  Perhaps there is too much water under the bridge.

Racing around trying to buy your way back, connive your way back into a relationship, is never the answer.  That is manipulation.  The content then gets lost but the wounds do not and they will fester and break open again.  If validation means so much to you, you need to validate yourself.  Just because you wholeheartedly believe something does not mean that anyone else needs to.  It is yours.  You keep it if it bothers others.  Why sully what you hold dear by trying to force it on those who could care less?

If all else fails, as I have said, know when to let go and walk away.  Perhaps the friendship or relationship does not hold enough care and compassion and empathy from both parties.  Apparently not, or you would have felt validated and important enough for you both to be honest all along the way so that a straw could not have broken the camel’s back.  Stay conscious enough to know that you might have offended in some way, or that you have been offended.

“Out beyond right doing and wrong doing, there is a field; I’ll meet you there.” - Rumi  And, I might add, if you choose not to walk with me, I will not mind,  the flowers and trees  are such compassionate souls, they will understand me.  In fact, they tolerate me.

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Here we are in the next millennium and women are struggled against a prejudice again, this time the inherent prejudice is sister against sister.  Our sisters have bought into the masculine ideology that no longer respects and honors the divinity of women.

Some sisters have stiletto-heeled their way to stand above their male peers in high positions in government, business and society.  We watch Hillary Clinton knife her way to the forefront and then use the very sisters she backstabbed as cheerleaders for “Woman As President”.  I, for one, am grateful she is out of the race.  She does not represent the dignified grace of womanhood, in the way of sacred and purity and innocence and nurturing and healing.  Politics is one kind of power:  spirituality is another.  And this has nothing to do with religions.  Religions and women are another matter, while political and have curtailed the spiritual empowerment that women can hold and put forth, if they live the ways they were taught in the beginning.

We were once taught that both sexes were equal “two wings of the bird of humanity,” a prophet once said.  There were ancient celebrations for both gods and goddesses and now, as some sisters remember and listen to the call, are trying to restore the mother element to all things.  We have gone from religions that have portrayed women as enemy and as they defamed womanhood, they were, beneath the rancor, able to hide what else was going on.  One of the surest ways to obtain power is to translate Creator’s words to fit the political religious ploys that seem to work in our society.

It began a long time ago when male political figures, who were also religious figures, used their gifts of words and their physical prowess to dehumanize women.  Women were relegated to second class citizenry.  The women of biblical times were not educated and therefore their roles were diminished and carefully scripted in scripture.  It seems our societies through the ages have always had something against the feminine and their ability to give birth.  It was seen as power and it was totally gender-based.  Now, there are men having babies, or trying to.  There are men engaged in duplicating life in test tubes.  They are desperate to have what they were not given.   But, even with that, they will not ever have what women were given from first woman.  The men have their gifts.  The women have their gifts.  Those gifts were to be used together to become even bigger and better gifts.

Once men had to preen and earn the right to mate with a woman.  Now, the roles have reversed.  (Think about how silly woman can be to woe men that are not the best, not the strongest, not the hardiest, not the best qualifier for reproduction.  Pregnancy is seen by many as either an inconvenience or a mistake.  The progeny is either a problem or a bother, and stuck in front of a television, a toy, or with babysitters so life can go on as conveniently as possible in today’s society.

I was no more or no less guilty of some than any others.  It seems life made us need more time.  It was too difficult to carry our babies on our backs or under our cloaks.  And heaven knows, you had to promise not to get pregnant to get a job, never take a child to work, and never miss work because you had children.  In some cases, children become commodities.  The more children you get, the more perks you get.  The less educated use it as income.  And then we wonder why our children have become such hurting little souls, why our teenagers are so angry, why our young adults carry on as if there were no tomorrow.  We speak of what residential schools have done to our native generations that followed.  I see the same problems even in children of parents who were not taken away.  What do they blame?  Deadbeat dads are old hat.  Now there are deadbeat moms.  There is a world of hurt out there.  And, now, we turn on each other like rabid dogs.

The women who once ruled the house, ruled their kitchen, want to gain precedence over their sisters in any way possible.  The enemy is within.  We no longer gather in loving familial groups for quilting bees, in service of each other, in compassion for each other.  We wage war with ways to one-up each other.  We relegate other sisters to roles that liken servants and serfdom.  We say we want to live forever and in the end, we will be found to be strange mounds in deep graves.

The medical academia found ways to extend men’s virility.  Now they are trying to balance that with drugs to sustain women’s sexuality.  Not for procreation as sexuality was given as a gift from Creator, but to use sexuality as power and control.  And we compete, hardily….forgive the pun.  We seek our youth because we realize we have not planned for the future.  We have no present because we a slugging around in our past issues or have avoided our present by focusing on how to get more and more and more for the future.  The more that we have is a sickened society that runs in packs or isolates themselves in quiet desperation because they can no longer compete.  (See elders and the Peaceful pill blog).  Livelihood is too easy to get and lose now.  Rather than green fields we are concerned about greenbacks.  We can’t share because to share means someone might have more than we do then.  In the end of it, we have become mad dogs chasing our tails and looking for easy prey.

How do we ever get back to balance?  How do we find the divine balance and equality in this mess?  Laura Kipnis , in her book, “That Female Thing” wrote that regardless of how feminist a woman may believe herself to be, she is always in a constant state of battle between being feminist and being feminine.  Somehow we have to go from being obsessed with food and love and religion and exercise and medications and diets and all the things we are addicted to, all the things that replace what it is our soul really wants, and different stages of depression and the projects of such, and find that peaceful place.

I believe that we have to learn to love each other, my sisters and I.  We need to gather in circles of every kind for the good of the world, and heaven and Mother Earth and Creator.

Somehow we have to be honorable women who respect themselves and their femininity… that great gift of purity and soulfulness of sacred sharing.  When we ground ourselves back to the way it was when we were created, we have the opportunity to realign ourselves so our relationships with all things do not wobble so.  We can share the medicine that women share.  We can relearn how to be grace and gratitude.  We can relearn how to truly honor and worship each other.  It is a case of, ‘we-HAVE-to if we are to fulfill our role as the peacemakers and healers of Mother Earth.  We are divine and we need to act like it.

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An old woman was living with her daughter and her family. Her daughter was always complaining about her life and she was bitter and angsty. The old woman was grateful to be able to live with her daughter, but was tired of the complaining. She knew she was a burden, but that is part of some old women’s lives.

On morning, her daughter came sighing into her room and the old woman asked her daughter to get her some salt and a glass of water. With a bigger sigh, the daughter went to get some salt and water for her mother. She loved her but she was feeling resentful at all she had to do on top of caring for her mother.

When the daughter returned, her mother told her to put the salt in the water and take a sip. The daughter complied; perhaps just to mollify her mother and cause no problems.

Immediately the daughter coughed and spit out the sip of salty water.

“How did that taste?” asked the mother. Gulping, the daughter cried, “Bitter!”

“Let us walk to the lake. Bring the salt.” The daughter protested and had all sorts of excuses but the mother was adamant they have just a moment of time at the lake.

When they reached the lakeshore, the mother told the daughter to take a handful of salt and put it in the lake. The daughter took a fistful and swirled it in the water.

The mother then told her daughter to cup her hand and take a sip of the lake water. The daughter did so; hoping this strangeness would end soon and she could go about her busy-ness. She took a cupped palmful of water.

“How does it taste? asked the mother. “Fresh,” said her daughter.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the mother. “No,” said the daughter.

Lovingly, the mother took her daughter into her arms and whispered, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain is the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness it has depends on what container we put the pain in. When you are in pain, enlarge the container, your sense of it. Stop being the glass and become the lake.”

I have often prayed I would never become a bitter old woman. I have lived life as if it were an adventure. I followed the dictum: Live it or lose it!” I know what my genetic history is: Living to an old age and living with Alzheimer’s in the end. Now, I can bear living to an old age as long as I am healthy and able to find things I can do at whatever stage. And you better believe there a re a few things I would not mind forgetting.

I remember talking to a writer-friend about old age. I have told her she will be sitting in a chair, forgetful of everything, but she will be editing and critiquing old newspapers and magazines people put in front of her. She will be happy as a lark. Then, I realized, all I was going to need was some crayons and blank paper. How simple is that a request? Imagine the joy with nothing else but that in front of you…to draw in colors I wish to color with and not another care in the world.

Let’s face it. The world is not suddenly going to recognize us something of worth and respect. If we have hidden behind reality with our ‘little obsessions, we are apt to be very bitter indeed. I am practicing things I can do. I am practicing smiling and being grateful. I am practicing living every moment to its fullest…maybe not its deepest and its full length, but moment by moment. How can I feel disappointed or bitter if I do not put forth my expectations into my future? I want to be loving and kind so that I evoke loving kindness. Grace: that which draws others to you: Humility, the evocation of Grace. Yes, that’s it! Let me be grateful and humble for anything I can do now, so I will be grateful when I can do less.

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