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? 

color blindness and rainbows

Arrogance is when you don’t know what you don’t know but think you know.  While that needs to be met with compassion, it has big consequences if you’re in a position of power or authority.  Charles Eisenstein wrote a brilliant new essay, The Banquet of Whiteness, in which he considers racism and other cultural beliefs under the broader umbrella of arrogant whiteism.  He unpeels our hubristic blind spot of perceived superiority and rightness we are literally not aware of because we come from a place of majority consensus and relative power (the term echo chamber has been used).  Hence the perpetuation of racism.  Hence the hunkering down on outmoded ways of looking at certain cultural patterns.  Hence our narrow way to think and do science. Hence the worldwide monoculturalization of Western beliefs with which we are suffocating the rest of the world (see an older related post - pizza every night?).

When diversity is still a calculated numbers game of including a specific minimum percentage of non-white students or employees in an organization, when we still belittle other cultures’ worldviews and how those inform the people who live with them, when we still favor the one Western medical model over alternative, traditional or indigenous therapies regardless of effectiveness, we are still ideologically blind and biased.

Before the recent anti-racism movement hit me in the face, I believed that if all lives mattered it was inclusive enough to mean that black lives mattered under that larger all lives umbrella.  But looking at racism that way belittles and denies the need for people of color to be heard, to be emotionally supported in their slight and plight, and for us white people to shift our attitude and do something about it.  I just saw a very helpful post on social media that illustrates the point.  If you share with me that your mother just died, and I reply that all our parents die, I pass right over your feelings of sadness and make them irrelevant. 

When we truly become more accepting and integrative in our thinking, when we truly become more tolerant and broad minded, when we truly use the scientific method of asking a query and neutrally exploring all potential answers (instead of working towards those results we foresee within our own belief paradigm), when we truly look at our culture and actually admit what works and what doesn’t (without primary regard for profit), if we truly look at people’s merits, talents and capabilities regardless of skin color or other attributes we might judge somehow, we may find that the earth is not flat but round, or that we revolve around the sun, and not the other way round.  Then, our world would be a rainbow of diversity and creative human expression, a joyfully imaginative jumble of humanness in all its wonderful and potential expressions.   

That will be a great leap forward for humanity. 

carrots, not sticks

Non-violent communication has taught for decades that compassion works so much better than judging, bullying, intimidating, and coercing.  The former is a we-based or win-win way of communicating, while the latter is me, self-interest and win-lose based.  

Charles Eisenstein just released a very short essay on why our approach to environmental protection and activism in general, and the Amazon forest decimation in particular, has not worked too well thus far.  Our present approach has been to threaten us with the dire consequences of our inactions, but people just don’t respond well to that.  Fear-based communication results in cowering in protection, anxiety, freezing into inaction because it’s all so overwhelming, and not understanding how an individual could even make a difference in the face of the immensity of our problems. 

Remember when your kids would jump around on your bed in sheer joy, and you’d say something like “Don’t do that” with a stern voice, and then would try again more insistently “Stop it immediately, or else!” Your kids probably kept happily jumping once you left the room.  Adults are no different.  We respond better when someone appeals to our cooperation with compassion.  Eisenstein writes, “Nobody can be scared into falling in love.”  

He makes a case for a shift to a life affirming vision of a beautiful healthy planet instead, one that is also service and community based.  There are many breathtaking nature documentaries out there (I like those without ominous narrative and music) that show our planet’s grandeur and sheer unending beauty, and which move my heart to tears and love for this amazing jewel in the universe we live on and are privileged to experience.  If you have travelled, you may even have been to such awesome places yourself.  That is the vision from which to heal our planet.  While it is something we need to envision and enact together, it needs to come from within each of our hearts.   Your heart.

When you begin to tread carefully to avoid stepping on a slug, not because someone said so but because it feels natural, when you begin to save all your trash for the trash can, when you are awed by an unfolding leaf or dew drop on the grass, when a waterfall’s scintillating magnificence makes you smile, when you can truly see how exquisite this planet is, your energy will shift to life affirming causes.  That’s home, that’s the place from which to start healing our planet and yourself.

wow!

When was the last time a bully motivated you to shift your attitude or behavior through threats or other aggressive measures?  I didn’t think so.

Dismantling the Minneapolis police department,  as their City Counsel vowed to do a few days ago?   I thought I didn’t hear right.  Even reducing police department funding, as many other large US cities are all of a sudden discussing, seems radical for here.  I would have said “interesting,” if I had heard something like that about Norway, which has, proportionately, one of the lowest prison populations in the world, because their approach to criminal justice is reformative, not punitive.  But here!  That is an amazing shift towards constructive social change.  

With one of the worst racial inequalities in the country, the idea to reform Minneapolis’s social fabric by shifting funding from police to community development is nothing short of radical, a nonviolent approach in nonviolent communication speak.  Granted, it’ll take time to develop the logistics (here an outline of what alternate policing might look like), and this idea will not sit well with many conservatives.

But the increasingly aggressive, authoritarian and weaponized approach to policing in this country has not made things better.  Authoritarian behavior results in anger, distrust, defiance, and ultimately resignation, a result of a punitive criminal justice system with its disproportionately large prison population compared to other Western countries.  “An eye for an eye” does not work, only a compassionate approach ultimately does because it builds people up instead of taking them down (see an earlier post, “drop the hammer,” on this).  It’s the difference between a glass half full or a glass half empty, or seeing the best in people instead of the worst.  

We are witnessing something big.  When the time is ripe things can get unstuck, and stuff beyond our wildest dreams is possible.  

inner beauty

A turkey vulture is not exactly a pretty animal.  Not all animals are, although each has a distinct purpose in nature’s processes, which is beautiful in itself.

Last weekend I noticed a turkey vulture sitting outside our kitchen window in the grass, a most unusual sight.  Big and impressive, dark and a bit ominous, somewhat threating and ugly, and so close.  It stayed there for a while, then it was gone. A bit later I found it elsewhere in the garden, seemingly at rest, then hopping to an adjacent rock, never flying.   Then it was gone again, but it had simply leapt out of sight, to a stone ledge below where I couldn’t see it.  Maybe it wanted to be at peace, left alone.

I became concerned that it had broken its wing and called the Audubon Society to find a wildlife rehabilitator.  I felt sorry for the large bird.  Its ugliness was no longer relevant, its beingness touched a soft spot in my heart.

Just before calling the raptor rehabilitator I looked around to see where it was, but the vulture had disappeared.  I looked all over the place.  Had I been mistaken? Was it ok after all?  Later that afternoon, I saw a vulture at the end of the property flying high up into a tree, and I thought, “Is this my vulture, is it ok?”  

Two days after the incident we were planting new seedlings in the woods and, lo and behold, we found a dead turkey vulture on the ground, under that tree.  I felt sad that I hadn’t been able to save him - once I connected, it became he.  I had felt a connection to this ugly bird.  I didn’t want him to suffer.  Beauty and the Beast, an old theme, inner beauty hidden under an ugly shell.  Repugnance had given way to compassion, and I no longer associated this raptor with carrion, just a being in need of empathy.  A shift (see a previous post on shifting).

from I to we - silver lining #13

You would like to go back to work and earn a living again.  You have elder relatives who may be at risk.  Perhaps your business must open again so you can make money and put food on your table.  You’d like to go back to normal.  You’d love to see your parents again, and your parents would love to see their grandchildren again.  You’d like to go on vacation.  You’d like to send your kids to camp over the summert. You’d like to feel secure out there again.  Or perhaps you’re on the frontlines and don’t feel that your work conditions are safe.  

We all want this virus gone, we all need to put food on our tables, we all want to see our friends in person and send our kids back to school and college.  Yet, our concerns express themselves in polarizing ways because we see different ways to get there.  Some are ok with social distancing, lockdowns, and mouthguards in public in order to help flatten the curve.  Others are urgently concerned about their financial situation and the curtailing of their freedom.  They are two sides of the same coin.  

What’s striking about this virus is that each one of us could unknowingly carry the virus for two weeks, or carry it without ever developing symptoms, and unintentionally infect dozens and even hundreds of others during that time.  That makes each one of us a crucial link in the effort to break the spread of the virus.  Each one of us on a worldwide basis is all of a sudden important in helping to prevent others from getting sick, to prevent the overwhelming of the healthcare system, the food system, the distribution networks.  We have already realized how dependent on foreign supply chains the world is - when too many people in China get sick, economies in many countries slow down.  When too many US meat plant workers get sick, Wendy’s runs out of hamburgers and the supermarkets have to ration meat purchases.  When the neighbor down the road parties, or heads to a crowded beach, her friends, her parents, the meat plant worker, or the supermarket cashier could get sick.

This pandemic is showing us the way from I to We.  No matter how you slice it or dice it, we’re in this together.

papaya thoughts

When I trained in Taekwondo, I learned how to deflect an attacker’s punch by simply being elsewhere when the strike hits.  Deflection at its best.  

Nonviolent communication is similar.  When we feel verbally attacked we are so conditioned to “punch” back, instead of deflecting or trying to understand what concern the attacker came from and turning the exchange around.  

Recently I posted a picture of papaya on Instagram.  A friend responded that she liked all fruit except papaya.  At first, I took the comment personally, silly me. Obviously, her dislike of papaya had nothing to do with me and everything with her.  So, then I turned the exchange around, away from me and responding to her observation, the nonviolent communication way.   Instead of reacting to her dislike of papaya, I asked about her favorite fruit, and we had a lovely exchange about favorite fruits, hers and mine.  

Turn it around.  Poof! Gone.  

the need to repersonalize

I have not yet switched to online banking and stop by the branch for many transactions instead of using the ATM.  Often, I get into a quick chat with one of the tellers, and leave smiling that this brief interaction was so worthwhile the extra time.  Yesterday, my husband, on the spur of the moment, stopped by a customer he hadn’t seen in person in a while.  A chat here, an exchange there, and lo and behold, he walked out with an unexpected order.

In business, we often hide behind our emails and wonder why some issues don’t get resolved, why misunderstandings arise, or why some things take an awful lot of emailing back-and-forth, with lag time in between.  Picking up the phone can resolve something in a heartbeat, and seeing someone face-to-face can move mountains and achieve so much.

In an effort to “save time,” our culture has moved relentlessly to remote, internet and email based business and communication.  However, not only does the human connection get lost, we also don’t get the full picture because the interaction is depersonalized.  So do we really save time? 

Hearing a person’s voice, reading their emotions and body language, and looking into their eyes, all provide a deeper level of communication that we seem to underestimate, and that is lacking in email correspondence.  Go to lunch with someone, pick up the phone, stop by and see your customer.  Repersonalize!

living with ease

Years ago, I learned in martial arts how to avoid a direct confrontation by redirecting the attacker’s punch and thereby neutralizing it.  Last week someone stopped short right in front of me in their car.  The right lane was open, I slalomed smoothly into it, avoiding the obstacle that came out of nowhere, and swiftly back into my original lane, elegantly, easily and in the blink of an eye.  

Learning to circumvent obstacles - potential problems or confrontations – with skill and flexibility, awareness, ease and spontaneity is an acquired life skill.  You need to be ready, always.  We learned that too in taekwondo, how to react quickly without knowing where and in what form a punch or attack would come from.  It requires a split-second reaction and good judgement, backed by years of training the mind.  

The many bullies out there who navigate life with confrontation, force, and muscle power expend a lot of energy and create negativity, frustration and resentment all around them along the way. The Tao Te Ching already stated that “A tree that is unbending is easily broken.”  Kindness, cooperation, flexibility, and good judgement garner respect and are skills for living life with ease and elegance - muscle power and force not required.

so powerful, so freeing

Wesley became paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a shooting seven years ago.  Yet, today he comes across as joyful, with a sense of purpose and a sparkle in his eyes, and he has founded two organizations to empower people with disabilities.  No grudges, no blaming his attacker.

You can watch his story on the Netflix series Queer Eye S4E2, where the high point comes when he actually meets the guy who shot him.  Not only do they both admit their role in the episode, they both forgive each other and are freed of the trauma that has accompanied them for seven years.  Moreover, and amazingly, Wesley thanks his attacker for turning his life around.  Wow! Now that is karmic redemption at its most profound.  

Sometimes your deepest trauma can also carry your biggest message of wisdom  – of forgiveness or otherwise.  Here a previous post on forgiveness.