from the heart, not the head

Changes and shifts happen faster through the heart than the head.  Reading an academic treatise or an article on the need for more diversity, or mandated hiring or enrollment percentages for corporations or colleges, remain abstract and stilted. 

Previously, I wrote about the impact I believe the series Queer Eye has on softening prejudice when you just fall in love with the characters because they are so joyful, kind, compassionate, self-deprecating, and all around likeable, that potential underlying biases might just fade into the background. 

I found myself thinking about this again after watching Bridgerton, the massively successful Netflix series, and enjoying the diversity of the cast so thoroughly, the fabulous Queen Charlotte, the smashing Duke, the formidable Lady Danbury, and all of the many non-white extras who populate the reimagined Regency England.  How can you not admire them, enjoy their personalities, laugh and cry with them, and think that an integrated society is the most natural thing? 

Even though the reviews from the queer community of the Queer Eye series have not always been kind arguing that it’s a show for cis white people, the commentary on the diversity of the Bridgerton casting has been smashing.  When popular culture reflects more diversity and inclusivity without straining, it comes from within the culture and the heart, and is a sure sign of a cultural shift. 

being human?

From an emotional and psychological perspective the social isolation side effects of the pandemic guidelines and directives have become an existential conundrum.  This is not the place where I wish to discuss the pros and cons of such directives but rather what defines our humanness.  

Already before the pandemic much of our reading had shifted from paper to screen (granted, it saves trees); many of our financial transactions shifted from bills, coins and bank visits to online and cashless transactions (no loss there); and cinema has moved from movie theatres to the home screen (there are definite pros and cons here).  The pandemic has accelerated this development and we have to ask ourselves some urgent questions. Now, many job related activities, teaching, consulting, diagnosing, coaching, and meeting come to mind, even entire jobs, have moved online in just a few short months.  My daughter even does virtual dissection in one of her bio labs, a crutch to bridge the pandemic yes, here to stay I hope not.  Luckily, there are still many professions that cannot be accomplished virtually, such as sports, the visual arts, chefing, farming, surgeoning, nursing and many more.  The big question is what we give up and how we compromise our humanness when we move further and further into an online environment just because we can.

What does it mean to you to be human?  What experiences actually distinguish us as humans?  I think we hit the limits with virtual weddings, cocktail hours, Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.  Lack of in-person contact steeply increased depression during the pandemic, and it is incredibly sad to see nursing home residents isolated from friends and family withering away, mere shells of their former selves.  

In our human history we have always come to crossroads where we’ve had to decide what’s a good idea and what’s not.  Moving forward with nuclear, GMO and CRISPR technology in human reproduction is questionable and proves that just because we can doesn’t mean we must.  I drew the online line when faced with the option of shifting my talks and workshops to the screen a year ago.  It gives me no pleasure to speak to a screen and having to imagine my listeners, or interacting with a flat workshop audience on a screen in my kitchen.  And isn’t life all about the physical experience?  My definition of being human involves the senses. I want to experience the entire you, look you directly into the eyes, detect every minute facial expression, feel your hug and touch,  take in the three dimensionality of your outfit, smell your perfume or cologne, unwrap your beautiful present with you by my side,  hear people’s voices mingling and overlapping in joyful conversation, or popping in unexpectedly to hash something out in person.

Ask yourself to what extent you want to live in an increasingly virtual world going forward?  Where do you draw the line for yourself? 

we're all connected

A very recent Covid hobby is building my family tree, something my grandfather was already hugely into, tracing one of the family branches back to the 1600s in France long before the internet with its plethora of sources existed.

A family tree begins with you, the protagonist, and fans out from there.   Yet, the perspective changes as soon as you see the family tree from a relative’s perspective, where you slide into the supporting role, and she becomes the protagonist and with that the “center of the universe.”

Following any marriage or birth hint leads down a rabbit hole as you dig deeper and deeper into a particular family branch. The tree is never ending. The six-degrees-of separation theory already purported that we can connect with anyone on this planet through a succession of five contacts. That seems now totally plausible. One distant relative immigrated from Germany to the US in the early 20th century and now appears in at least twelve other US family trees.  With that the visceral realization pops up how interconnected and embedded in this massive web of life we truly are.  In effect you are the center of the universe, but so is everyone else, making for a holographic universe where every one aspect is an aspect of everything else.

Our DNA spreads in homeopathic doses all over the world, the same way the air we breathe in and out mingles with the air everyone else breathes in and out.  There is no separation, we’re all connected.  We are all at the center of the universe, and so is everyone else.

making magic tonight

How do you cook?  Mapping out, prepping and precooking on weekends and having a plan for what it’ll be on Tuesday or Thursday?  Shopping and cooking recipe specific, knowing you’ll eat eggplant parm sometime this coming week?  Buying what’s fresh and on sale without knowing what dishes will come of it?

My process is of the latter kind and I usually fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to making dinner, although I do keep a lot of basics, my meal building blocks, in pantry and freezer.  Whether it’s food coop or other bulk shopping, local CSA produce during the growing season, the magical Misfits Market box I customize according to our preferences, or spontaneous fill-in shopping when I stop by the supermarket for a few stray things, I always fill fridge, freezer and pantry with well priced and fresh building blocks, but no particular recipe in mind.  The only half-organized meal planning is removing fish or meat from the freezer ahead of time, or soaking and cooking beans and quinoa in bulk and freezing it in small portions to have on hand when inspiration strikes. 

Other than that dinner gets decided spontaneously based on what I find in the fridge, what’s perishable and needs to be used up, what ideas pop up (or not), and how late it is.  Around 6pm I’ll stick my head in the fridge to figure out what we’ll have for dinner.  If it’s early enough I might transform a pile of produce into several vegetable dishes in one night, creating enough leftovers to play with for dinners down the road.  For variety I work with international flavor combinations such as miso, dried mushrooms and tofu; coconut milk, curry, lime and cilantro; tomato and peanut butter; coconut oil, cumin, brown mustard seed, onions and garlic.  Can you guess the countries? Sometimes I’ll make individual quick “pizzas” on thin tortillas with leftover vegetables and other toppings (sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, whole egg, olives and capers, mushrooms, what have you) and whatever cheese I can find (feta, goat, other).  Friday nights we sometimes do no-dinner dinners, such as a cheese platter with dried or fresh fruit, some nuts, toasted tortilla or bread, and a glass of wine. Or perhaps a big nachos platter.  

As long as I have lots of meal building blocks the possibilities are endless. And always, always, always it’s quick, simple, flavorful and made from-scratch, using more plant based ingredients than animal protein.  If you think of cooking more like playing with ingredients and flavors it becomes a delicious game of “let’s explore what magic we can make tonight for dinner.”

your choice

Although it’s much easier to use a positive experience as inspiration – perhaps becoming a compassionate, kind and encouraging teacher because that is what you learned from your home environment -  any negative experience can become an inspiration as well.  

Take Malala Yousafzai, the young Afghani activist who the Taliban shot when she was 15 in an effort to nip her fierce advocacy for women’s education, which was threating their supremacy, in the bud.  She could have withered during her grueling recovery period but instead the experience propelled her onto the world stage. In 2014 she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient at age 17 and a louder and more passionate advocate for women’s empowerment through education than she could have ever been in her small village back home.  Or take the many sexually harassed and abused boys, girls and women who are speaking up publicly in ever greater numbers.  They are taking so much pushback from those who want to hide their vile actions that have been condoned for too long.  Nevertheless the #metoo and #metooincest movement has snowballed in such a short amount of time thanks to these courageous people who turned a negative experience around to spread awareness and prevent such behavior from being pushed under the cultural rug any longer.  

It really is about what you make of the experiences life throws you.  You can take a crushing experience high or low, you can wither or thrive, you can come out in the open or keep it all under the rug.  In the end it’s less about the experience itself than what you make of it. Up to you.  It’s a choice.

the need to nurture

What we do is an expression of who we are.  A sporty person explores the relationship between their body and its physical expression in terms of flexiblity or endurance, muscle development or movement; an artsy person establishes a relationship between their creativity and a particular medium, perhaps stone or flowers; a scientific researcher might explore the relationship between her keen intellect, her ability to see out-of-the-box connections, and a particular biological subject.

With diminished human connection and in-person interaction during the pandemic, many have had to satisfy their need to nurture and connect in a different way.  Pet adoption skyrocketed during the pandemic, and there is a boom in house plant hobbyists who collect exotic species, propagate plants, or simply enjoy a green and living thing at home that’s less emotionally involved than a pet.  Both, however, are rewarding for the reciprocal result of unconditional love when we nurture them. 

Just as a dog or cat takes half a year to acclimate to a new household, it takes a new plant as long to settle in when I bring it home.  Being a nurturing person - many women are, but men are getting there too - and needing to express that in what I do, I love to experiment together with my plants to find the perfect spot with the perfect light conditions, the perfect watering and fertilization ratio, the perfect soil medium, and the perfect pot for its size.   I am always awed anew at discovering tiny leaves emerge, grow and unfold, watching them slowly morph from light green to dark green, losing some yellow or browned leaves, discovering new air roots emerge, being disappointed when some plants sputter and die, and being happy when they eventually thrive.  

During my weekly weekend watering and care ritual which can take a few hours I commune and check in with my plants.  It’s meditative, intuitive, rewarding, and nurturing, a perfect antidote for surviving in an unsettled world.

how to thrive

Mike Dooley recently said in one of his inspirational talks that we have a “natural inclination to thrive.” It’s sort of what we mean when we say that all we want is to be happy. It’s self-realization, making yourself into what you came into the world for, finding your purpose.  Thriving encompasses the freedom to do what you enjoy doing and are good at, what comes to you easily, earning a good standard of living in a supportive work environment, having good emotional support from loved ones and friends, and being appreciated for who you are.

In a competitive and profit-oriented world this is often a struggle because monetization above all else, and winning at the detriment of someone else, is not usually or naturally what makes most of us tick, although many do seem to get high on winning, at least they think they do.

Suffering is an unnecessary aspect of the human experience.  It is not only unwise and uncomfortable, it’s also literally hazardous to your health because it causes so much stress.  But we baked it into our current worldview, first through religious beliefs of the inevitability of good and bad, and later on through the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest.  It stuck, we still believe it, and go through all sorts of mental contortions to justify this belief (Learning to be a good loser, rookie and freshmen initiation rituals, killing animals for food, the death penalty, are all such examples that we couldn’t possibly justify from our loving hearts, but try to reason from our “rational minds,” even though each of these involves some degree of cruely and pain).

“ ‘Feeling good’ is the soul’s way of shouting ‘This is who I am,’ writes Neale Donald Walsch.  Tune more often into what makes you feel good to create more of those experiences in your life, and tune out the mental babble of your supposed rational mind to justify doing what makes you stressed.  Easier said than done, granted, but a belief system changes with you.

on being political

A few years ago, a friend told us he wasn’t into politics.  Even Michelle Obama recounts in her recent biography Becoming how much she resisted her husband’s ever deeper involvement in politics because she wasn’t “into politics.”

“Being into politics” doesn’t exclusively mean being educated, interested and opinionated regarding the history and politics of your country.   You don’t have to run for office to “be political.”  

Simply becoming aware of the repercussions of your own lifestyle choices and the underlying beliefs they come from makes you a bit political.  Your and my lifestyle choices, bundled with those of millions of others, eventually express themselves in some legislation or absence thereof, some movement or absence thereof, some shift or absence thereof.  Choosing the digital version of your newspaper results in less logging and joins the sustainability movement towards better stewardship of our planet when millions do it (full disclosure: I am guilty of reading the paper paper).   Inspecting your own internal biases and becoming aware of America’s baked-in racism or voter suppression in all its forms, eventually expresses itself in political shifts when you, me and others no longer tolerate it.

You become political when, instead of throwing your arms up in frustration because you believe that one voice doesn’t make a difference, you actually make a change somewhere in your life.  You become political when you vote and encourage others to vote instead of simply complaining.  Being political means taking action instead of sitting back.  Kennedy said it so clearly: ”Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  When you turn your beliefs into actions, such as reducing animal abuse by refraining from buying a fur coat or purchasing solar panels or an electric car as a form of turning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energies, you are “political.” Inaction, on the other hand, maintains the status quo, in your own life and on a larger scale through all the others who don’t budge either.  Ultimately, that’s political too because things remain the way they are now.  Hence, it’s really difficult “not to be political.”

dialing back

Fancy foods, those that are expensive because exotic or rare, and thus considered valuable, wouldn’t be that if we had access to them all the time and weren’t pricy or difficult to obtain.  Those foods still mostly fall under the animal protein category – caviar, oysters, foie gras, expensive meat cuts or types, lobster and what have you.

Besides meat, sugar and spices were also among foods during medieval and Renaissance times that could only be enjoyed by the upper classes.  Mincemeat pie is one such strange dish, originally a mixture of lamb, dried fruit and spices, from which we have since removed the lamb to make it more palatable to our modern taste.   In the not so distant past, we prepared Sunday roasts and ate little or no meat during the week because meat was expensive.

Besides the now accepted health considerations of eating too much animal protein and too little vegetables and fiber, what we can’t afford every day becomes special, while what we eat all the time becomes routine.  

January is a perfect month to dial my holiday indulgences back as a reboot and to shift what may have become too much of a routine.  Dial the alcohol back, dial the meat back, dial the sugar back, dial quantities back, dial the weight gain back. Last open bottle of wine will be consumed tonight as January will be dry for me.  I will reduce my portion sizes starting tomorrow in order to lose those pandemic pounds, at least some of them, and swap the meat for greens and vegetables. I also promised myself to go for more walks to dial my energy up a notch and clear the Christmas cobwebs from my mind.  

What about you?

peace, pause, pensiveness

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a dud of a week.  Between eating, drinking, days off to celebrate, the year coming to an end, and work spirits on half mast, it makes for a good pregnant pause, a sort of mini hibernation while collecting our energy for a new start. 

It feels good to not do much of anything, pausing my usual high energy doingness and busyness, and sliding into that in between space before we start again.  This is a transition week between the old and the new, stale and fresh, cynicism and hope, lethargy and inspiration.

Once the new year starts, I usually can’t wait to put the Christmas decorations away, ready for a fresh outlook, new opportunities and ideas, leaving the old behind, a chance to reinvent myself a bit even though the traditional new year resolutions usually don’t stick as research has shown (here a previous post on that).

If time stretched forever in an endless stream, without our stellar calendar  subdivisions derived from the repetitive revolutions around our own axis, recurring trips around the sun, all while the moon spins around us, we might flounder at the sheer endlessness of time.

And so we need the ebbs and flows between ends and beginnings, between high mental and physical activity and a slowed pace.  This buffer week before the new year, before our life starts again with renewed vigor, is a good time for some pensiveness and rest, a time to pause and regroup.  This in between week is a time to slowly let go of this most unsettling of years so we can begin the new year with hope, imagination, creativity, inspiration, and energy.

Wishing you renewed optimism and courage, inner peace and inspiration for 2021!