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Every wants it. And everyone wants it now. The quick fix. The fast sale. The get-rich quick scheme. The lose weight by some miraculous drug. What ever happened to hard work? Patience? Paying dues? Why is everyone is such a rush to “be” the future when the present is being completely ignored? Every day when I open social media, I am bombarded with something. I feel like I’m living in Brave New World. The pill that will cheer me up. The drink that will make me skinny overnight. The scheme that will really sell my books. Ads upon ads upon ads. And it’s eating us alive until we are dead shells. The pressure. The noise. The friends grabbing the gold rings really made of straw. We want to be the best. We want to look good. We want to succeed. But let’s work for it.  Sweat. Grab the yoga mat and get to the gym. Put on some sneakers and hike. Eat what we wish to be. Grab an apple. Put color in your diet, green especially. Work hard. Get up with work ethic. Set goals. Write them down if you have to. Check them off as you go. And don’t cut down people or corners. Feed your mental health with reading and writing and healthy habits. Surround yourself with friends who are there and stop worrying about those who always go absent. Be alone too. And learn to like it. Breathe.  There is no such thing as a quick fix. Not unless you want the huge crash afterwards. It won’t last. Angela Duckworth’s noteworthy book and philosophy GRIT lays out what really fosters success. And it’s not the most intelligent. “Grit is the perseverance and passion to achieve long–term goals” and “is a strong predictor of success and ability to reach one's goals.” In fact, “When comparing two people who are the same age but have different levels of education, grit (and not intelligence) more accurately predicts which one will be better educated” (https://jamesclear.com/grit). Grit isn’t talent. Grit isn’t luck. Grit isn’t how intensely, for the moment, you want something.
I recommend the book if you’re finding yourself in a constant downward spiral of chasing the quick fix. We are becoming, no HAVE BECOME, a nation of laziness. That is what’s killing our spirit. And I refuse to live that way.
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 Okay. Deep breath. Politics. No one wants to talk about it and everyone is. No one wants to get into debate, because we don’t know how. Everyone is always right and nobody is, because NO ONE is everyone, and no one can put themselves into anyone else’s shoes the way Atticus Finch wishes we could. We say we do. We say we don’t judge. We say one thing but do another. That’s the problem. Reversing Roe v. Wade is catastrophic. Period. (NYTimes article if you’ve been living in a cave https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/abortion-law-alabama.html). But before I give my opinion, and that is what my blogs are, so move right past this one if you don’t want to roll your sleeves up and get a little dirty, I want to point out a couple points of fact.
Are you making the connections? The topic of abortion is never an easy one. No one advocates excitedly, spiritedly and with great glee and happiness for such a thing. No one is excited about abortion. No one cheers for it. NO ONE. It’s messy. It’s ugly. It’s leveled with nuances and grey spots and circumstances and a myriad of factors, and nothing about it is black or white. Can we not agree on that? What we differ on is what constitutes life. The embryo, the fetus, a baby…all that is debatable, but science has pretty much proven that too. So let me point out something else. Non-Christian faiths make up only 1% of Alabama by every consensus out there. Making another connection? I hope so. No religion should guide political or human rights decisions. That is yet another fact.  The biggest thing I want people to think about today is that what comes with these facts I’ve outlined above. If you say ‘they’ have no voice in the womb and we must protect them, then the flip of that is true as well once they are actually a living, breathing person. Children being born into these circumstances is ALSO of no will of their own, and their chances are not great--possible, of course, I will concede--but shall I list the facts regarding unwanted children, overflow of adoption clinics, and how poverty and lack of education ranks into these chances?
Let’s put it more succinctly then: They have no voice against child abuse. They have no voice against poverty. They have no voice against hunger. They have no voice against racism. They have no voice against poor education. They have no voice against health. They have no voice against violence. They have no voice against homelessness. They have no voice to be unwanted or loved. They. Have. No. Voice. You tell me which is worse? Let’s THINK about that.  Lately, I hear a lot people use the word “narcissist” to describe someone. It’s particularly common in the writing community. At times, it seems to be used loosely, when someone in a person’s life doesn’t behave in a way that makes any true sense. They are basically assholes and then narcissistic seems to be the only explanation. Do you believe this term is losing its meaning? Are we all basically narcissists in ways but on a sliding scale? So many of the traits seem embedded in so many people these days. Kindness is overlooked and a trend of entitlement and self-aggrandizing seems to be an accepted norm. So when does it become apparent that a person with strong tendencies for narcissism is really just a toxic person in your life? And when do you stop trying to change them? You can’t. You can NOT change them. And they won’t EVER see it. So is it time to simply expunge these types of people from your life? To the non-narcissistic person, it’s very hard to swallow that this person won’t “see the light” at some point, if we just try a little harder to “talk” to them, especially when they have moments of warmth and seeming compassion.  The only treatment for this disorder is therapy—but can a narcissist be open to therapy? Seems counter-intuitive. Here are some traits I’m sure you’re aware of. You’re probably going to read them and say: Who in this whole world doesn’t have some of these traits and then ask the obvious: Am I a narcissist?? As listed from the Mayo Clinic:
Seems like some of these contradict each other, huh? Maybe that is why it’s so hard to determine if a person causing you angst has this personality disorder or not. I am not psychologist or doctor, (I just play one in my blogs 😉 ) but I am human. And I think that if a person exhibits these qualities over and over to the point of YOUR mental health, guess what? Who cares if they are or aren’t “narcissists.” We have choices. And we do not need to surround ourselves with people who make us feel, frankly, like shit. We owe them nothing. But we do owe ourselves something: To be the best possible version of ourselves as possible. Maybe that’s narcissistic to say. So be it. Sometimes entitlement is simple happiness. And we can’t have it, if we allow someone to constantly take it away from us. Because even as I write this I remember: “You cannot make someone feel inferior without their consent.” So stop accepting inferiority and do put your feelings first. We’re the only person we need to answer to as adults.   When I saw pollen floating down from the sky today outside the window in this ethereal way like tiny feathers, I couldn’t help but think of wishes. And then I remembered the scene I recently watched in the Michael Fassbender version of Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth, played by Marion Cotillard, is sitting to perform her “madness” scene, and at first, I thought it a little dull, except that she is magnificent. Her facial expressions, alone, tell everything. But the floating dust, the pollen, those feather-like things we often think of when blowing a dandelion not yet mature to make a wish, said something in this scene. It wasn’t a distraction as one might think at first, but an enhancement. And I think it led to the symbolism of the moment, the symbolism of how we lead our lives. Maybe I’m thinking too deeply about it. Maybe it was purely accidental, and the director marveled: "Oh wow. How fortunate." Maybe they did it on purpose to create a dream-like sequence, a sort of ghostly allusion, specters in the air, omens. Maybe they, themselves, didn’t even notice. It might make sense if you really stop to think about it. We make wishes. We certainly did as children, running freely, playing in fields, picking up the flowers and blowing them into the wind as we wished for silly things like later bedtimes or ice cream cones or beach days and sunny days or to be kissed for the first time. But wishes are what we make them, aren’t they? And sometimes, perhaps, what we wish for can become a regret. “Be careful what you wish for.” It certainly became that way for Lady Macbeth.  Oftentimes, when we wish, it’s because we WANT something. We want fame or love or more money or…just plain--more. The adage less is more seems appropriate in this light. It seems the moment our wishes come true, we begin to think of the next wish, a bigger wish, a better wish, a wish that gets us what we want all over again. When we get it, sometimes these wishes can come at big costs. Can you think of a time this was so in your life? I wish I had—or I wish to be—or I wish he would—But at what cost? Are we not living but instead wishing away moments?
Perhaps the wish should be just this. Just now. To just live in the right-now moments we are almost always missing, wishing, wishing away, because we’re not recognizing any present moments fully. Maybe the flowers truly know more than us. By blowing them away and wishing, we are spreading their seeds all around, some would even say to make more weeds, rather than letting them be what they could be by staying. Still. In their moment to blossom naturally. Just as we will, in our due time. We have much we can learn from nature. Let’s be still. And listen. In one of my classes yesterday, we discussed the idea of UBI-Universal Basic Income. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a philosophical proposal one of the US presidential candidates is proposing, Andrew Yang: “Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement. Every Universal Basic Income plan can be different in terms of amount or design. Andrew Yang is running for President as Democrat in 2020 on the platform of Universal Basic Income. The UBI he is proposing for the United States is a set of guaranteed payments of $1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year, to all U.S. citizens over the age of 18. Yes, that means you and everyone you know would get another $1,000/month every month from the U.S. government, no questions asked.” I am no expert on this. And I don’t pretend to be. I’m a writer. A poet. A teacher. But I am human first. And I am a thinker. I’m trying to learn more about it. Do some research. Read.  The debate ran the gamut in the classroom. It was split pretty 50/50. What was most startling, however, were the responses to Yang’s slogan: “Humanity first.” Many, though not outright stating it, basically said: No. Me first. Is that the type of society we’re living in? Is that what capitalism really is? Do people really care about humanity? About the welfare of others? Do most just blame and say: Not my problem? Does it come down to what economic class you may fall into? I, myself, work hard. Every day. But I don’t pretend I didn’t have a lot of help to get where I am financially. I had good parents. I had parents who worked hard their whole lives just so I could have a head start. I went to private college and I came out with little loans. I know I’m fortunate and lucky. My cards were dealt with lots of kings and queens. But I see daily that so many are not fortunate that way, even those working day in and day out--hard. And though they are trying, they are way behind the 8 ball to make it. If it comes down to feeding themselves or their children or going to college, they don’t have the resources to choose the latter. Decisions, opportunities—they aren’t plentiful for many. I’m not sure how I feel about Yang yet. Of course, theoretically, his proposal seems wonderfully human. And my god do we need to remember that! It’s that outside-of-the-box thinking I admire and respect. What I do know for sure is this. We have people who live paycheck to paycheck. We have people who can’t find their next meals. We have people homeless. We have children in dire conditions due to poverty of no choice of their own. And at the same time, we have people with private jets and more money than any one person could possibly ever need in 10 lifetimes. If you don’t see a problem with that disparity, you probably won’t give UBI a second look.  But I know I do my best when I can actually feel my shoulders untucking from my ears, when the strain of just simply breathing becomes less labored, how simple love from another human being can actually DO things. Imagine having some stress alleviated to be the best we can be. To follow some dreams. To foster our talents. Now exhale and get started. 😊
You can read more here to understand how it might be funded, how it might replace our current welfare system, and so on. Knowledge is power. https://www.yang2020.com/meet-andrew/ |
I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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