tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-295416722024-03-12T20:21:50.470-06:00Fathers From the BeginningA father's musings about his children, relationships, the world and beyondMartin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-54360040161462001512017-10-16T21:30:00.001-06:002017-10-16T21:30:32.202-06:00FearWe have a poster in our house, a copy of a painting my parents sent to me 30 years ago. They had seen this painting during a gallery visit near Hamburg, felt intrigued by it and sent it to me.<br />
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It's a quite strange image: A man seemingly holding, if not swinging a cow over his head. The caption in translation runs something like "Death can no longer harass me." </div>
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What does this mean? </div>
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I have been aware of my fears ever since I was a small child. I was afraid that my parents would die, I was afraid of war (of the nuclear kind), I was afraid to cross busy streets, I was afraid of having no money. Most of the stunts my peers were capable of (and often performed) were things I would not do. I attribute to fear the fact that I have never used drugs or have had unprotected sex. The opportunities for both were there. In one case I asked my friend Tom, a regular cannabis user, if he and I could smoke together. He gave me a long look and then said : Martin, you're not the type. One could almost believe I haven't lived much without taking any of these or similar risks. But I am content and sure I'm not missing out. </div>
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Recently, I had an opportunity to think about fear. Fear has interested me for a while as I believe it is one of the two roots of anger (the other being sadness). Both fear and sadness at their most intense level probably cause an escape reflex, anger. Anger is a last-ditch attempt to get away from what scares us so and/or from what makes us so sad. Anger protects us from the vulnerability of fear and sadness. </div>
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It is obvious that fear and sadness are not feelings we could permanently protect ourselves from. They will make appearances in our life many times. So, what can it possibly mean to say that the ultimate fear/sadness--death--can no longer harass me? And if this ultimate fear can no longer harass me, what about the many other fears that come up daily? Are those fears even related to the ultimate fear? </div>
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This all has me wonder what fear is really about. The fear a child has to speak to his parents, the fear an employee has to speak to her boss, the fear a professor has before an important lecture, the fear we have of natural catastrophe, of war . . . What, if anything, do these fears have in common? </div>
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Primally fear seems to come down to survival. Fear protects us and does its part in insuring our survival. it protects us from needless risk-taking, it makes us aware of enemies. Fear helps us live longer before, ultimately, we will be diminished, reduced to nothing but cells and molecules that will become part of another organism. </div>
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In human beings fear is no longer simply about physical survival. Our complex mental systems have adopted fear also to protect us from shame, dishonor, guilt, another's anger, etc. All of these are, metaphorically speaking, forms of death. They diminish us, make us small and, often, makes us want to vanish. </div>
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To say that death can no longer harass me is another way of saying I have conquered fear. Fear of all sorts. It is also saying "I have found courage." Death can no longer diminish me. </div>
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But what is courage? What does it mean to be brave? </div>
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The Lion King's Mufasa comes to mind. His son, Simba, says to him "Dad, I want to be brave like you!" Mufasa responds "Simba, I'm only brave when I have to be." Mufasa's words seem to suggest that courage is is hardly the heroic, voluntary act we often think it is. Rather it is a forced act, coming perhaps from another fear. Mufasa is saying he is overcoming fear out of fear (viz. the fear that his son will be killed by the hyenas). Courage <i>is</i> fear. Therefore, it is probably wrong to think that not being harassed by death is about a kind of courage. </div>
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It turns out that fearlessness is an impossible state to achieve. No longer being harassed by death, however, is. While the former poses the absence of fear, the latter simply states that while fear is present it no longer has the power to harass. Fear cannot diminish me. My fear of being diminished is greater than a fear that could diminish me. It can not force me into silence, shame, guilt, etc. It cannot force me into death-like mental states. Not because I won't die, but rather because I know that I will. </div>
Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-33312502351847202562017-08-30T13:36:00.001-06:002017-08-30T13:36:54.207-06:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are so many things I would like to write about; so many things that are going through my mind. Some keep bobbing up, resurfacing with some insistence, as if to say "start writing us down, Martin." we're not going to wait forever. I keep expecting that the flow of my days will bring me to it. But it seems that without a bit of force, a bit of determination, the writing will not come on its own. Perhaps it's the reasons that I used to have to write that are no longer convincing. Writing was for me a kind of reflection on something that I didn't have an opportunity to dialogue about with another person. When I say "opportunity" I mean an immediate way to express and move deeply into whatever the subject matter is. In the last four and a half years such opportunities have been arising with daily steadiness between my wife and I. The deep pleasure and intimacy of conversations bring us together and sustains us as a couple and in our individual endeavors.<br />
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Conversation is a deeply meaningful way of communing with others. It is simultaneously stating of opinion(s), listening, convergence, conversion . . . conversation reveals inversion, not just conversions, it clarifies aversions and controversies . . . but more than anything it reveals the infinitely deep layers/versions of ourselves. And as conversation reaches for the other it also brings us close tot he transverse effects that our social brains long for so much.<br />
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A good conversation is never a mapped out trip. It is a journey that occurs in the moment and can last for an unspecified amount of time. Having a "topic, " a "time-frame," a "list of goals" or "talking-points" often stops the conversation before it could really begin. This is why conversations mostly happen when people are present to each other. And this is also why many conversations never occur because many of us don't spend enough time with each other. When that is the case our potential for conversation turns into mere communication; its goal is nothing but the passing on of information.<br />
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The British psychoanalyst Neville Symmington points out that our thinking remains "inchoate" unless and until it is expressed to another. That is, it remains in its incipient, embryonic, germination form without ever further unfolding. How many thoughts do you have that remain "inchoate?" One would think the naturally inchoate state would lead us into many conversations. One would think that along with such natural state might come a natural urge to explore in us what lies dormant. But it seems that such urge does not exist or at least can get lost. Instead of having and pursuing conversations many of us seem content communicating messages to the world. These could come via text, e-mail, Facebook, but they also include logos and themes on our t-shirts, mugs, bumper-stickers, etc. Or, rather than being the cause, might these just be symptomatic of our decreasing likelihood to have and seek out conversations?<br />
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We are increasingly bound to letting the "written" take over the "spoken." This also means that we are, mostly likely, not present to the exchange we're having. Rather we're in a different country, room or other space, away from the person we're talking to. More and more communications are mediated by "absence" not presence. This, it seems to me, is the biggest blow to conversation. The lack of physical presence in so many of our daily interactions. Our incarnate, bodily presence increases our chances of having a conversation with another person even if those two people are not speaking but writing to each other on a note-pad, computer or phone.<br />
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What's strange to me is that many of us, I include myself, experience this move from present to absent, from conversation to communication, as a relief. We seem to experience presence as a burden, something we'd rather avoid, if possible. And so, in spite of our socially wired brains, we tend to choose non-present ways of communicating over conversations. Or, again, is this simply a symptom of something else that's going on with us?<br />
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I wonder if the demands of our industrial/post-industrial world have isolated us from each other so much that all that all we're left with to satisfy our social urges is to e-mail, text, Skype, FaceTime. Work as it is, the work that most of us have to do for the vast majority of years we're alive--from pre-school to retirement--is isolating. Even when it is "group-work" most of us will ultimately not see the group but the individuals in the group and their roles/contributions.<br />
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Here is another way to look at it: When we say "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" we do mean that there is a qualitative difference between those two states. Simply adding up the parts will not help us understand the Whole. John, Paul, George and Ringo are not the same as The Beatles. That is to say the equation John + Paul + George + Ringo = The Beatles is indeed qualitatively false while quantitatively correct. I remember tripping over this problem in fifth grade when we were introduced to the ideas of Set Theory. "Commutative property," "associative property," "symmetry," "distributive property," "transitive property," . . . I kept misunderstanding the underlying assumptions of "Mengenlehre" (lit. Science of Quantities) this new math-curriculum at the time: These equations had nothing to do with qualities, only quantities. So, in that world it didn't matter whether you said (Martin + Stephan) + Calle or Martin + (Stephan + Calle). And yet, in the world of friendships, conversations, closeness, trust those parentheses as well as the position of the names made a huge difference (and over the time of my friendship with these two boys the position of the parentheses changed several times).<br />
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The example of the Beatles is not meant to distract us toward wondering about outward success. Rather it is meant to help us get closer to the main-trait of being (a) Whole: work that feels intrinsically playful and therefore gives us happiness, even when it's hard. This, interestingly, seems to be the main reason of why video-gamers can become so deeply immersed in their play. Gaming is hard work, often frustrating, but it also remains playful. Conversations are such wholesome, wholistic, whole-based work. They can be frustrating yet revealing, playful yet serious. Conversations are never just shallow (though they may use "shallowness" to reveal depth). They're never boring (though they may purposely induce "boredom" as a way of inducing curiosity).<br />
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I often shy away from using the term "work." It is used far too often to emphasize to our children, ourselves, our friends how important it is to accept the "down-side" of life: we all have to work. It also is a way of saying "I'm good" because good people work, hard. Still, here I would like to suggest a different understanding of "work" one that gets at the potential for wholesomeness in work. In English and German this word can describe the tedium and monotony of our daily/school/professional lives, but it can also, as a noun, be used to describe our creative and artistic efforts. It is in this latter sense that I favor the word "work." And it is that understanding of "work" I also apply to what I believe a conversation is about: a conversation is work; it is a work of art. But, different from a written work of art--a poem, novel or short-story--this work is an installation, i.e., a temporary work of art only briefly visible or audible before it re-immerses itself in the maelstrom of thought and feeling, of life.<br />
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So, what is it that I want to write about? I don't know. What I do know is that I am blessed to be part of many conversations every day. Every conversation triggers more ideas and reflections. Like hungry baby birds in their nest, these ideas are begging for food (i.e., a conversation). They themselves will re-produce and beget more conversations.<br />
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And what about quiet times?Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-58449066611420030842017-01-08T22:05:00.002-06:002017-01-08T22:05:30.000-06:00ConfusionsOne of the most difficult developments about fathering from the beginning is the threat that it may pose to your marriage. I have found this to be true in my own relationship which has, off an on, gone through dark times in which either I or my spouse felt we were being undermined, competed with or the object of jealousy by the other. I have to continually remind myself that this is not so, that the purpose of father involvment is not and will never be to put a mother out of her job. It is pretty clear from the available research, about the mental health of our off-spring, that growing up healthy means that both mother and father stay involved throughout their children's growing up period. Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-37527850447330545782016-10-17T10:24:00.002-06:002016-10-17T10:24:14.651-06:00What are the chances . . .. . . I wonder, that one of my sons would be enthusiastic enough about a man like Donald Trump to actually cast his vote for him? It would be easy, I think, to look back at the many conversations we have had about the world, the people living in the world, about stereotypes, about love, grief, hunger, acceptance. . . you name it . . . it would be easy to look at all of them and say "i'm confident my sons would <i>not</i> cast such a vote. But how can I be sure? The fact that 40% of the voting population in the US is ready and willing to cast their vote for a man who is quite obviously mentally ill does not mean that all of those 40% are mentally ill as well. Adolf Hitler was clearly mentally ill. But that was not the problem. The problem is that he, a greatly delusional man with a grandiosity and inferiority complex and a virtually absent lack of empathy could capture the imagination of so many Germans. Hitler, it turns out, was the drug Germans needed when he appeared on the scene. Mr. Trump apparently is the drug Americans need today.<br />
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So what should I tell my sons about their home-country where a man is attempting to rise to power who, in many ways, resembles Adolf Hitler?<br />
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What are the potent ingredients of this drug? "Potent" actually is the right word as it is a derivative of the Latin word for "power"--potentia. Mr. Trump promises power to US citizens, greatness even. He underscores this with rhetorical strategies and examples of brazenness from his own life--some delivered intentionally (like his comments about his daughter's body) some delivered unintentionally (like the recently aired video tapes of his conversation with Billy Bush). Other examples about financial coups, tax evasion, etc. all speak of the same: When I want something I get it, no matter what the cost for others. Don't we all want to be strong like that? Listen carefully inside before you say "no."<br />
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So what should I say to my sons about their home-country where everyone is a drug-addict of sorts? </div>
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It is quite unfortunate that US citizens tend to get caught up in questions about character, often related to revelations of a sexual nature. Whether it was Clarence Thomas' issue with someone's "pubic hair" or Bill Clinton's affairs or, now, Mr. Trump's repeated statements about women--we are "disgusted" or "enticed." What we never seem to be able to do is move away from either disgust or voyeuristic enticement and see that these examples (and so many others) are always about <i>power</i>. In them we hear the words "I can . . . because I'm in power". This, of course, echoes in quite uncanny ways, Mr. Obama's slogan from his initial run for office "Yes, we can!" It is so very hard not to be carried away by the trance of power once we believe we have it.<br />
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So what should I say to my sons about their home-country where everyone is claiming to be powerful and nobody is willing to admit they're weak?<br />
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And speaking of sex and things sexual: It is unfortunate how riddled this country is with guilt and shame about sex, and how, at the same time, it is bursting its seams with sexual-erotic energy. How will we ever not end up paralyzed between these so diametrically opposed ways of looking at sex. And, to be sure, both sides live in all of us.<br />
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So what should I say to my sons about their home-country where being a sexual person can never be said without also feeling and expressing shame and guilt; a country where the mentioning of a pubic hair or the sexual satisfaction that stems from a vasectomy (Kenneth Bone) would make it very unlikely a person could ever be considered for political office? What should I say to them?<br />
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But what would it be like to move away from these statements, prurient revelations about our politicians' sex-lives and to focus strictly on politics. What would (have) happen(ed), I wonder, if Mrs. Clinton simply said let's forget about all the offensive things Mr. Trump has said (and will be saying) and focus instead on politics, real politics. Let's debate questions like "What should we do about global warming, how should we address the racial crisis in our country, how should we deal with the growing hunger-crisis in the US and the world, what role should we play in the crises of other nations, how about moving away from fossil-fuels, etc.?" We are surrounded by complex and difficult issues. There is so much to discuss, to lay out and understand every candidate's position. But unfortunately, we don't do it. Worse even, if Mrs. Clinton said something to dismiss Mr. Trump's comments, she would likely lose many of her female supporters. To whom is not clear, but she would lose them.<br />
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So what should I say to my sons about their home-country in which a disciplined and substantive discussion of political issues is virtually impossible and where their fellow-citizens continue to make "character and sex" the central topic of every debate?<br />
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I intentionally choose to say "Americans" rather than continue with "40% of Americans." It is unhelpful, I believe, for someone like myself (who in his first federal election since becoming a US citizen will not vote for Mr. Trump) to make this into and 'I-and-you' or 'Us-and-Them' issue. Thankfully, with Bernie Sanders, we were able to witness a second mass-appeal phenomenon appear on the political stage. Mr. Sanders, not unlike Mr. Trump, also gave voice to the largely unheard or marginalized voices of so many US citizens. Taken together the Trump and Sanders camps make up a rather large part of the US voting population. The difference between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders is obvious--aside from their political differences--Mr. Sanders, unlike Mr. Trump, is not hungry for power. Mr. Sanders is not mentally ill.<br />
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It is easy to be angry at Mr. Trump. Such anger fuels his impulsive, often crude and aggressive remarks. What Mr. Trump needs is our compassion. It's a compassion that recognizes that all of us want power, want to be able to respond as quickly (and unthinkingly) to challenges as he does. It's a compassion with someone who has a pathological need to be seen and heard because we all share in this need. It's a a compassion for a man who can only think of one way to appeal to women, through coercion and demonstrations of power (through money and big words with no content). Because all straight men fear not being seen by a beautiful woman and think of quick ways to get their attention. It's compassion for a man whose fear of strangers is so great he can only think of building a wall to keep them out. Being afraid of people whose culture and language we don't know is residually present in all of us, no matter how enlightened we are. It's compassion for a man whose greed is familiar to all of us.<br />
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So, in a way, what I want to say to my sons is that Donald Trump is a person like all persons, a man like all men. Mr. Trump is like us. Except he is ill. And it is his illness that makes him lose all filters, all modesty, all respect for those who disagree with him. And without those filters he becomes dangerous, predatory even. I would direct my sons to this web-page, part of the Mayo-Clinic web-site:<br />
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<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/.../narcissistic-personality-disorder/.../con-20025568">www.mayoclinic.org/.../narcissistic-personality-disorder/.../con-20025568</a><br />
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I would encourage my sons to be open about both their rejection and attraction to Mr. Trump. Only such openness and honesty can bring about the healing criticism that will keep us on a path away from the kind of disaster Germany experienced in the first half of the 20th century.<br />
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I would explain to my sons that narcissism is a healthy and normal aspect of a person's ego-structure. But it can get out of hand. It has for Mr. Trump.<br />
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I would remind my sons that Mr. Trump, like all of us, once was a baby, a newborn. What, I would ask them, might have turned this baby into a man who can no longer truly love? When did it happen? When he was a toddler, a boy, pre-teen . . .?<br />
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And for those of you who wonder why I chose to write about politics in this blog, a blog that is devoted to fathering and raising children, I want to say to you that I thought about it for a long time. But the evidence that even pre-school and K/1 children are already affected by what's going on in this country comes to my home every day. We cannot turn that around. We do have to figure and discuss the way(s) in which we want to address these things with our children. No matter what their age is.<br />
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Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-941548397633063762016-09-14T22:11:00.002-06:002016-09-14T22:11:36.519-06:00Pokemon Go . . . Away: Engaging with World Oblivion<div>
Playing Frisbee in the park is not that different from playing Pokemon Go in the park. </div>
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I admit that this statement hits a very raw nerve in me. I really don't want to accept what I still think is likely true: playing Pokemon Go (the first of its kind, I believe) does not move us any further away from the park, from nature, from interacting with others than does a frisbee. My observation is that the people, often groups, who are playing this game are quite engaged both in the game and with each other. Pokemon Go is far from being a solitary game. My observation also is that people who use the park for other recreational amusement--like frisbee, soccer, etc.--are no more engaged with each other or with the natural setting of the park than their Pokemon Go equivalents. In fact the former seem to play their sport often with clear disregard for nature, stepping on young trees, running through prairie sections, etc. And is a frisbee really any less of a virtual object than is a pokemon figure that suddenly shows up behind a tree. Is catching the frisbee any different from "zapping" such pokemon by hitting a button on a phone? I do understand that this last question will be puzzling to some. In our materially oriented world an object that can be touched (and that may hurt us when it hits us in the head) is more real than is a figure that shows up on a screen. But for 18th and 19th century philosophers that precisely was a matter of much thought and questioning. How do we know that the world around is not just completely virtual? And what does it mean to have a virtual game in an already virtual "reality?"<br />
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One issue, often an inter-generational one, seems to be the different conceptions of what constitutes play and what work. Obviously we consider a soccer-tournament like the world-cup work. We pay inordinate sums of money to the players who work for us. While we do not yet play pokemon-go players for their play, companies have begun to pay money to people who are especially talented at playing certain first-person shooter games (FSG). Is the soccer world cup really less of a virtual activity than is and FSG? In fact, if money is what makes the decisive difference between work and play and, therefore, the difference between actual and virtual, we have long lost any solid ground to stand on when drawing distinctions.<br />
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And while we cheer on our children when they begin to play a sport--soccer, baseball, basketball . . . you name it--possibly because we believe that being committed to a sport will also help them be committed to work, we do not cheer our children on when they play video-games, inside or outside, because we somehow believe that that kind of play is less about work. Rather, we think it's a waste of time.<br />
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Not all work is like the work of being a professional athlete though. In other words, not all work is play. The work of a construction worker, miner, teacher, doctor, landscaper . . . you name it . . . is not play. Some may find enjoyment in what they do, but some also don't. None of them is likely to call their work "play." Furthermore, most of them would be insulted or at least disagree, if we called their work "virtual."<br />
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Let's assume, for now, that work and play can each be both: virtual and actual. Let's further assume that from a certain perspective much work could be called virtual while much play could be called actual. If I take these assumptions to be true and ask myself "What is it I don't like about virtual games like Pokemon Go?," I come up with only one idea: I don't like to play! It's not the fact that this game is a virtual reality game that puts me off, it is that it is "play." And what annoys me about this kind of "play" is that it fosters a special kind of oblivion, not dissimilar from when the whole world turns into the Olympics, the World Cup, the Super Bowl. This, in other words, is a kind of oblivion that could happen to us in many different circumstances; not just while playing Pokemon Go or another video-game.<br />
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To the extent that Pokemon Go encourages a kind of "oblivion of the world" (which apparently it shares with many other activities both of the virtual and the actual kind) I find it to be problematic. Such activities erase differences and different behaviors we normally adopt for different environments. They make us see only one thing. So, players of this game storm around the dunes of Lake Michigan with no regard to the erosion they cause, they invade the Smithsonian as if it is just another stage for their game, etc. It is those places and institutions that have to petition to be PokemonGo free zone. As if PokemonGo owns the world.<br />
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But, of course, the same kind of "world-oblivion" can happen when we build a pipeline from South Dakota to Illinois. We forget about the world(s) it traverses, we forget how it cuts right through them, we only see one thing: the pipeline and what it carries.<br />
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I believe we are increasingly seduced into such world-oblivion. Perhaps it is just too hard to think about the world with all its nuances, differences . . . problems and joys. This "seduction" can happen in many different ways. But to the extent we see it happening today it is possible only because of virtual media. Whether it's the news, a new movie or a virtual reality game . . . the world is brought to us by removing us from it.<br />
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This doesn't mean that all virtual activity is problematic. The work I'm doing right now, the work of pursuing and thinking through ideas, is mostly virtual (with the exception of my fingers moving across the key-board). It is the oblivion, the process by which we <i>forget </i>the world that exists out there, that becomes problematic and harder to tolerate. Can't we engage in the "play" of serious conversations, serious encounters with persons from places we don't yet know? Can't we engage in the "play" of travel and immersions that actually expose us to the world directly? And can't we engage with these things/people in such a way that our engagement stays open to the world at all times?<br />
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Perhaps the only difference between a group of PokemonGo players and a group of Frisbee players is that there is a tad more of a chance that I (or anyone else for that matter) could join the latter while the former seems more closed off to that possibility.<br />
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I suspect that my main objection to Pokemon Go and similar games and activities comes from a place of powerlessness to comprehend. The virtual world is closed off to me. I see it and compare it, but it remains a riddle both in its importance to younger people as well as in its functioning.<br />
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Yet, I have a suspicion that younger people play these games, learn how to play them, because the skills that it takes to play them will be increasingly useful in a world that I won't recognize anymore.<br />
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Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-62294663395614896072016-04-11T21:51:00.000-06:002016-04-11T21:51:10.494-06:00Peace Among MenMost men I know, friends and those I have seen in my practice, struggle with touch. They struggle with the meaning of touch, with whether they want to be touched (or rather not), with whether it's okay to be touched by a man and/or a woman, what it means to touch another person, what it means to touch a child/be touched by a child, whether touch reaches their hearts or just their skin . . . Yes, and in a punning kind of way it would be correct to say that most men are quite "touchy"; highly sensitive that is, easily confused by touch in all its variations. Saying that it might be easier for a man to punch another man hard rather than touch him gently will usually elicit only a weak smile of recognition--it's a recognition of a truth that we all seem to know. Saying that it is easier for a man to engage in sexual touch rather than gentle erotic touch is similarly recognized. If this is indeed the state of affairs regarding the topic of touch and men, it is devastating. What it means is that touch can mean only one of two things: either the person who is touching me is an enemy or he/she is making sexual advances. In this way men miss out on the beautiful unfolding of touch as love <i>between</i> the extremes of aggression and reproduction.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Aggression _______________________________________________________Reproduction</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"> |</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"> |</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"> \ /</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Aggression____________________Unfolding as love_____________________Reproduction</span><br />
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But men struggle with touch not only because of the pin-ball existence they may lead between the extremes of aggressive and reproductive touch. They also struggle with it because of their hunger for touch. This hunger, too, will often lead them to either seek out fighting or sexual contact. This hunger itself can drive a man crazy. It can make him restless, irritable, and depressed. When a man is hungry for touch he often is hard to live with and may find it hard to live with himself.<br />
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A particularly insidious aspect of this struggle with touch presents itself for men who identify as "straight". The label "straight" is far more than a label. Once applied it actually turns into a kind of imperative that really no longer indicates an essence ("I <i>am</i> straight). Rather it turns into an imperative: I shall be straight, must be straight, must not deviate from straightness evermore. It sometimes almost attains the status of a kind of promise or vow that a man makes in order to belong to the Society of Straight Men (SoSM).I suspect that a similar code of honor exists for the Society of Gay Men (SoGM) although it may not be quite as harsh as it is for a member of the SoSM.<br />
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We tend to blame cultural forces for why boys and men feel so strongly about this imperative to be straight. This is true even for most gay males who can only distance themselves from this imperative after they've come out; which means after they have done a significant amount of work coming to terms with their sexual orientation/identity. There is no doubt that culture is a very strong force. But culture could only be so strong because it falls on fertile grounds in us; deeply rooted fertile biological grounds. This biological ground is survival.<br />
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Survival seems to be at the root of much of male behavior. Even extreme risk taking seems to be driven by the need to survive . . . as the fittest, strongest, most daring, etc. Only in and shortly after such extreme risk situations is touch among males really "permitted." Touch and physical affection among males has to be "deserved" to remain un-suspicious. And even when it is deserved, full-body hugs are rare among men, even under the most extreme circumstances men will let it suffice with friendly punches, high and low fives, pats on shoulders, butts, etc. Men generally stay away from comforting each other physically, gentle hugs, holding another man's hand, touching their cheeks or hair.<br />
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As a father of three sons I have had much opportunity to learn, reflect and talk about touch. Perhaps the most important learning for me has been that all three have liked to be touched by me. The other most important learning is how much I have liked to touch them. I would say all four of us have learned through touch how much tenderness lives in us. This is a tenderness not just for each other but also for others, for the world at large. My hope is that this will be one step, one part, in helping them find ways to sow peace among men. One step away from violence and the need to dominate another man, another person. I hope that each of them can show the world not just verbally, but also physically, that they are coming in peace.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-23137904560880364642016-01-31T21:54:00.001-06:002016-01-31T21:54:29.364-06:00Parenting and Creativity: A Parallel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Among so many things to which this blog has, over the years, testified is the slow but steady increase of reflections that have only little to do with being a father. Or so it seems. No doubt, my fathering duties and responsibilities have changed. Yes, I would even say they have decreased. It is not only that two of my sons are virtually out of the house and living independently. In other words, it is not only that they have crossed that visible and material threshold of "leaving home." It is also my own unique idea about independence and ownership of one's own life that has been facilitating this material independence since long before they actually moved out. While they still are financially dependent, and likely will remain so for a number of years, I have always encouraged them to make decisions based on their own intuitions and insights about a given situation. One of the best and most rewarding outcomes of this way of fathering them has been to watch, time and again, how they can find maturity and strong ethical decision-making in themselves. This does by no means mean that their decisions will always look like mine. Why would they? After all they're my children, not my clones. Rather what I see is how life reinvents itself in my sons in this beautiful kaleidoscopic way in a new combination, and infinite landscape, of all its aspects. Bodyful and mindful aspects are coming together to form yet another instance of a body-mindful being, a person. I see or sense how they move and how they speak, how they play and how they work, how they love and how they ignore, how they socialize and how they seek solitude…Parenting for me has, above everything else, always been about being present to my children's unfolding. Only in situations of immediate danger or risk do I find myself in what one might call a more traditional parenting role, setting limits, giving advice, laying down the law.<span id="goog_1477673647"></span><br />
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I recognize that, seen in this light, being a parent, for me, is nothing but an extension of a more general way of being in the world: I am present to my partner, my friends, my clients, the people who enter and leave my world every day, I am present to the world itself..in all its beauty. But more importantly, I am also present to myself. Some may say that I made it easy for myself as a parent. Perhaps. Mostly what I hear from traditional parents is that they would find it very hard to "just be present" to their children. From this I conclude that their traditional ways are what's "easy" to them. And really I don't argue with "easy." This word connotates simply what's natural to me, what is congruent with my flow. "Natural" does not mean, though, that being present does not take up energy. It does. Lots of it. Our finite bodies and minds only give us a finite amount of energy and space to be present. And while we may experience the rush of infinity in being present, we will always also feel the exhaustion of the effort afterwards. And, so, here is the upshot of this long preamble: With two children out of the house much of the energy of being present to them is freed up, now waiting to be directed at new or old things. There is space to play, I am present to myself…and as wonderful as that sounds I have to get used to it.<br />
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I look at my guitar, my books, my bicycle, my garden, my house, my work . . . all of them offering me opportunities to play and be present to myself. All of them, at one time or another and sometimes for a prolonged period of my life, could provide me with space to be present to myself. They all had their moments in my unfolding, my development. But none of them really offer a return to them as as way of being present to myself, the way I was when I first engaged with them in the past.<br />
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I am bored. Bored not in a superficial and shallow way, but in a deep developmental way. It's the boredom that feels like emptiness, like space, like perhaps the emptiness that is meant in the book of Genesis. It's the emptiness out of which God creates the world. What a concept: God created the world, because God was bored! But then, in a rush of imagination, intuition, insight and joy God put the world together. And the best part of God's creative effort was and is that the creativity that made the world was also infused in it; so that the world itself is not a static and limited thing. Rather the world is open-ended process--all around. It bursts into its own newness again and again.<br />
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On a smaller scale this is what we feel when we're creative. We literally feel the bursting of such newness, at an almost unpredictable pace and scope. When we begin to create we enter a zone of unselfconsciousness. It's a zone in which our normal GPS-like ways of being in the world--planning and following the plan, making a list and following the list--makes way for an uncharted journey into a space we didn't even know was there. This journey must involve our minds as much as it involves our bodies.<br />
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This latter thought is what is so troubling about how we are learning to approach creativity. We're led to believe that creativity is, first and foremost, an act of the brain. We believe that creativity is about insight, intuition, imagination, mindfulness, etc. We keep looking at catscans and MRIs to see what parts of the brain "light up" in a vain effort to "see ourselves" as we are being creative. And yet, every time we look creativity stops. Creativity is utterly non-narcissistic, it is utterly unselfconscious. When the creative "I" tries to "see" itself creativity is lost.<br />
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The problem is, however, as long as we understand creativity mainly as a brain-function, it will remain narcissistic and self-conscious, because the brain is also where the "I", the ego, resides. But creativity is as much a function of our bodies as it is one of our brains. And, the part of us that can really, truly move us out of a narcissistic hyper focus on the brain is our body. This means that we need to learn to how to trust and surrender to our bodies. I don't mean to say the body should go it on it's own. Our bodies can be narcissistic in their own ways. Mind and body need to go together. But the mind needs to be careful not to overdo it, not to restrain the body, not to shame the body. Similarly the body needs to be still when the mind creates. It must not interfere with restlessness or other needs. What creativity requires is what I described above as the superior role of parenting. Being creative requires that our mind and body can be present to each other. It requires that body and mind can be parent/present to each other.<br />
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Perhaps the greatest loss of a parent when his/her children move out is the loss of the mutuality of being present to each other. Parents and children are mutually engaged in a highly creative process. In this process they're present to each other. In it, parents are both mind to their children's bodies and bodies to their children's minds. Interestingly though, children also are both mind their parents' bodies and bodies to their parents' minds.<br />
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I often caution parents who use the phrase "I am proud of my son/daughter." Your son is not your work, I say. I stand by that. But it is an interesting idea to think that children and parents are each other's work. What a commitment it would be for a new father or mother to acknowledge this and to say to the child: I am ready for you to work on me. I am ready for your presence.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-83525136788569679612016-01-18T15:22:00.001-06:002016-01-18T15:22:16.799-06:00Why I Am Against Universal Gun Ownership<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Guns and firearms are on my mind. Given the seemingly relentless news about African-Americans being shot by Caucasian police officers, given the seemingly relentless news about terrorist attacks and the equally relentless news about "crazy" people storming into businesses, schools or other places simply to vent their rage by shooting people, given the "accidents" that happen with guns (this morning I read that a father accidentally shot and killed his 14 year old son because he mistook him for an intruder)…given that this kind of firearms-related violence just doesn't happen in any other country in the Western world, I can't help wonder: What is going on in America, what's going on with America and its citizens (I am now one of them too) to be blind to the writing on the wall: our relationship with guns is psychologically problematic.<br />
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I am a conscientious objector. At the military court hearing where I had to make my case I said I would never pick up a gun, let alone shoot at anyone. Many doubts were raised, questions asked. Manipulative questions, designed to drive my thinking to the kind of extremes that "might make" me shoot anyway. I have not been in any of those situations, and I have never held or shot a gun. In spite of a childhood rich in fantasy-play involving cowboys, indians and, of course, guns, my interest in the real thing is zero. The thing I had that came closest to a weapon was a very small pocket-knife with the picture of an Indian on it. And it was with that thing in hand that, at night, when my parents weren't home, I would quietly walk from room to room, check behind every door, ready to stab whoever might be there hiding. Yes, that knife gave me a sense of power that, without it, I would not have had. But what if I had encountered an intruder, what if I had had a gun in my hand, what if that intruder had been my grandmother…or mother or father?<br />
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As a man and as a father I know rage. I know the blindness and concomitant sense of righteousness that can result from it. I wish nothing more for myself and my sons than that we will always be as far away as possible from a weapon when such feelings come up.<br />
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Every time I have had a weapon in my hand--be that a tiny pocket knife, my play bow and arrow, a toy gun--I felt a surge of power, often bordering on grandiosity. Isn't that the meaning of the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssee? The power of the club in the hand of the humanoid!<br />
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The majority of people in this country seems to believe that guns are not a problem at all. They believe we have a constitutional right to bear arms, period. However, even the minority who believes that not everybody should have that right seems to be lost in a kind of bias, a kind of misunderstanding of what firearms really are. This latter group believes that we need stricter laws governing the sales and purchases of guns. They say we need even better background checks. They would like to have even more in-depth psychological assessments of a person who wants to buy a gun. All this to make sure that<br />
a future gun-owner will not turn<br />
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into a terrorist,<br />
or into a jealous husband or father,<br />
or into a disgruntled employee,<br />
or into a fighter for some religion or ideology he/she has become convinced needs to be spread to all<br />
or into a resentful student<br />
or into a lonely hateful person,<br />
etc.<br />
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You see, all of us have the potential to become those things. We all could turn into those people. I will stay away from going through a list of examples and ask you to go through the options I listed. Ask yourself "Under what circumstances might I be likely to shoot another person?"<br />
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The problem is that as human beings we're more likely to give in to the impulse to kill another person than any other animal in the world. And the more power we have the more likely it becomes that we kill another.<br />
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This is the essential problem with all measures to control fire-arms: it misses the essential fact about guns. It is not about the possibility of crazy people having easy access to guns. Rather it is about guns having easy access to us, especially to our minds. Guns distort our minds into thinking we have a chance at "getting back at" whoever we feel we need to get back at. And perhaps guns actually do give us that chance. Except I believe this to be a chance we need to avoid, at all cost. For it is this very idea--that we deserve a kind of revenge, that we should be able to get back at someone who's hurt us-- that makes us so very susceptible to the powers of guns.<br />
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Guns are toxic. They manipulate our already only minimally instinctually regulated minds into fantasies of power and survival. We would be better off, safer, if we limited access to guns to three groups of people: law-enforcement, military, professional hunters.<br />
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This is not to say the latter groups are safe compared to the rest of us. No, the only difference this would make is that guns would be in the hands of a finite minority.This simple step would reduce gun violence to a minimum. 30,000 persons in the US were victims of deadly gun-violence last year. Police shootings amounted to about 1,000 of those 30,000. No doubt, that's still too much and much needs to be done to educate the police in the responsible use of their fire-power. If you're interested in reading up on police shootings in the US compared to other western countries go to this link:<br />
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries<br />
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Military use of weapons is a different issue altogether. There certainly is much to discuss there as well. Professional hunters exist in other Western countries. Probably the greatest risk there is that of poaching, not so much that of killing other humans.<br />
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Valuing human life means becoming aware of the toxic potential that resides in guns and fire-arms. Their power is seductive and misleading. It means that we humbly approach our own susceptibility to the deceptiveness of their power--and stay away from them.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-37652826580242474582015-10-30T09:48:00.000-06:002015-10-30T09:48:00.553-06:00Face To Face With Father And MotherIt is clearly an obvious thing to say. But, lately, it has been on my mind a lot. Being a father does not end. It will continue until I die...and then some. While the content is changing the form that this takes always remains the same: it is a kind of leadership that is defined mainly by being the older one, the one who was here first, the one who has more life-experience(s) (simply because I have seen more). I'm not saying these things to empower myself. No, they're nothing but descriptive. Just like I still look to my father for information about life, etc. my sons also look to me. Even when we don't look we're looking. Even when we don't want to look, we're looking!<br />
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And while I'm not wanting to empower myself it is important for a father to recognize that this being looked at and looked for gives us a kind power. It's a power of which many fathers are not so aware. It's a power we don't necessarily intend. It is subtle and yet our children often experience it as direct and in their face. It is a power they want and need to overcome and, yet, in some ways they never will. Our children will be independent, but they will never be free . . . with the possible exception of a kind of freedom that occurs when fathers die. But will the voice of the father die?<br />
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And, really, would I want this freedom; the freedom of fatherlessness? Is the hole, the complete absence and the wound that comes from it, worth the freedom of fatherlessness.<br />
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And what about motherlessness? As a culture we seem to have a better understanding of the consequences of motherlessness. However, we may also be afraid of naming them for fear that we might fall into stereotypical and essentializing ways of speaking about mothers and fathers. I am wondering often what might happen if, instead of attempting to explain it more, we would instead fall silent before the mystery of such important things. Might we intuit their importance more clearly, more deeply that way?<br />
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I know a young man, almost 19 now, who does not know anything about his father. His fatherlessness is as deep as it can get. The only thing he knows about him is deduced from his own existence: My father must exist/have existed, otherwise I wouldn't. His hallmark personality trait has been silence. Utter silence. He is free of a father. There is no father whom he can experience as "in his face." And yet, it seems as if it is just in the lack of this experience of "a father in his face" may lie a key to his silence.<br />
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The French-Jewish philosopher and rabbi Emmanuel Levinas defined the ethical relationship as our relationship with the other. We meet this other face-to-face, panim-al-panim in Hebrew. (This expression first occurs in the Hebrew scriptures when Moses asks God to let him see God "panim-al-panim. God denies the request and, instead, lets Moses see God's backside (which has been cause for much laughter in some parts of the rabbinic community)). Levinas, of course, knew this and pointed out that the ethical relationship should not be with God anyway. Rather it should be with other human beings. God, in other words, was saying to Moses "Don't look for my face (it would kill you anyway)! Look at your fellow human beings." It is in this relationship that we're really called into moral existence.<br />
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Levinas' ideas about this kind of relationship are far-reaching. However, he never intimated that this relationship could possibly have its origin in a double face-to-face relationship, a relationship with two parents. He also never mentioned that this double face-to-face relationship might by biological necessity have to be with a mother and a father.<br />
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These are difficult thoughts at a time when we tout our freedom to form families of any kind. Single parent families, families with two parents of the same sex, families with more than two parents, etc. Not to speak even of those families in which mental health, addiction and others issues prevent healthy dual-face-to-face relationships between parents and children. These are difficult questions and it would be sheer arrogance to want to respond to them by way of a legal process. But could we allow ourselves to be more thoughtful about this than we currently seem to be?<br />
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The psychoanalyst Carl Jung seemed to think that our psyche is made up of both male and female aspects. He called them animus and anima. This, it seems, is culturally accepted by many. But what if these aspects are not simply there but need to grow. And what if that growth is also impacted by the necessary connection with both a mother and a father? How do we get to a place where we can be mindful of these things without legislating them?<br />
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The only way I can imagine this is by thinking that we make a concerted effort to put a face, both to mother and father. Fatherhood in particular is in need of this. The faces of fathers as well as the face of fatherhood are still largely missing from our awareness. We're not seeing them and, perhaps, they don't want to be seen? And while we might find ourselves insisting on the importance of the biological relationship between father-mother-and child, we must also begin to understand the importance of father/mother figures, i.e., other adults who can enter face-to-face relationships with children and adolescents.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-64153208829470595352015-10-29T09:08:00.001-06:002015-10-29T09:08:46.012-06:00Attachment And the Fragility of Parenting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"And so," a reader of my blog entry Prodigal Parenting said to me, "parents also don't owe anything to their kids."<br />
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My first impulse was to agree...for the sake of symmetry, to keep the peace, for equality, to avoid any talk about responsibility...you name it.<br />
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The truth is: I don't agree with that statement. In fact, I would like to emphasize my belief that all responsibility is on the parents' and none on the children. I would also like to emphasize that, of course, a large part of the social function of parenting is to instill in our children the need for and joys of responsibility. A joyful responsibility that, perhaps, even extends to us, their parents. However, it must never be something they <i>owe</i> to us. And, likewise, it must never be something they owe to <i>us</i>.<br />
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I would like to ensure that whatever I do and will do for my parents in the future will most definitely come from a place of love not a place of owing. This I consider to be a direct result of my parents' overall attempt to make sure I did not feel <i>I </i>owed <i>them</i> anything.<br />
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In the most naturalistic sense parents owe their children protection, nurturance, clothing, education. This really is not a true "owing" rather it is a kind of "forcing" that takes place. Nature forces parents to take care of their off-spring. At least this holds true for most mammals and birds. Everything a young animal cannot instinctually take care of by herself nature forces the parent to take care of. The fewer instincts a young mammal is equipped with the more nature forces the parent to protect, etc. Human babies happen to be part of the group of mammals with the least amount of strong healthy instincts. This means that the amount of care-taking, responsibility and protection that falls to the parents is immense.<br />
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Of course, the trouble is that the instinct to parent is itself one that is highly fragile. For most animal species the instinct to parent ends when the parent is in danger. Nature observes quite strict rules about whose survival is more important: that of the parent or that of the child/young animal. Often the vote goes in favor of the parent who will likely be able to reproduce again soon (while a young animal would take longer to do the same).<br />
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Since many survival instincts in human babies (and children) are so few and since parenting instincts are so fragile many societies and cultures have developed quite complex systems rituals and rules to supplement the weak instinct structure with which humans are naturally equipped. The goal of these systems is simply to ensure the survival of our off-spring and, in so doing, to stabilize the ground-work for a culture to survive and grow.<br />
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At this point a person might ask "But what about love?" The implication of this question likely is that all this talk about instincts and nature overlooks the most essential element in human parenting: love.<br />
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It is true, love can be a powerful and almost unconquerable element in human parent-child interactions. The trouble with it is, though, while nature has a process to move us toward love, i.e., to get us hormonally ready for being parents (and children), this process is often not completed (or hardly begun). We loosely refer to this process as attachment and bonding. When it works (when there is room for it to take place and it is not seriously disrupted) its results often are overwhelmingly positive for the parent, the child and, later, society. But attachment itself is a vulnerable process. Many things can disrupt, interrupt or end it. One way to summarize those many things is to call them by the label "exaggerated stress." When exaggerated stress interferes with the attachment process, this could be stress for either parent or child (or both), love either doesn't take hold at all or it pops up here and there in glimpses of itself, without ever forming the solid love foundation on which a child can grow (up) and on which a parent can parent. In other words, love is vulnerable.<br />
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This means: Much depends on how well we are able to protect the process of attachment--our own and that of other parents and their children.<br />
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Because the instinctual system of human parent-child attachment is so vulnerable human beings have for centuries used rituals, traditions and laws to further ensure and regulate the safety of the parent-child relationship. Especially in the 20th and 21st century an overwhelming majority of this body of cultural agreements on parent-child responsibility focuses on the responsibility of the parent toward the child <i>not</i> the child's responsibility toward the parent. Moreover, while they likely ensure a certain amount of family stability, these laws ultimately cannot generate love in the strong attachment sense discussed above. They are, in other words, a weak substitute for what could be, if we were able and inclined to protect the attachment process.<br />
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So, do parents "owe" anything to their children? I am inclined to say that, after this long reflection on responsibility and attachment, "owing" is not the correct term to describe the parents' role. Parenting is a responsibility, A kind of response in other words to the growing existence of a child in their lives. This response is partially guided by natural factors, instincts, behavioral patterns, etc. as much as cultural patterns of child-rearing. However, this response is also quite susceptible to disruptions. Such disruptions may lead to the withering away of any responsiveness to the existence of children in a person's life. My sense is that the use of the term "owing" has much to do with just that susceptibility to disruptions. "owing" establishes a moral responsibility over a natural one. "Owing" is meant to summon us to the task of parenting when our natural instincts have gone out.<br />
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It is interesting to reflect for a moment on the difference between "owing" and "owning." What would it be like to understand that owing is simply a poor substitute for owning? Could we begin to see that parenting is "owning" the task of parenting rather than "owing" it? Of course, if we own parenting all feelings of "owing" something would dissipate. Neither society at large nor our children specifically would be turned into our creditors (to whom we owe something). Owning means we do it for ourselves. This is not a turn towards selfish parenting. Rather it is a turn toward sustained motivated (not ambitious) parenting. Parenting that comes from a deeply felt urge to procreate, nurture and protect.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-90230657407724412972015-10-05T21:04:00.001-06:002015-10-05T21:04:48.031-06:00On Being HatedIt has recently occurred to me that, contrary to what I have believed for a very long time, there have been people in my life who did not like me. I must sound rather naive saying this. But really, some people, perhaps, might even hate me. It's a strange realization and I am assuming that for most people this realization comes earlier than it did for me.<br />
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I am not sure how this realization came about. But most likely it is connected to a text I received from a person whose feelings, I know, I have hurt. And although I believe strongly that getting our feelings hurt also has to do with <i>allowing</i> ourselves to have our feelings hurt, I would not want to take the absurd stance that another cannot hurt me at all. Of course, they can. And so can I.<br />
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This particular text stated clearly and without leaving room for interpretation "I hate you!"<br />
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Now, I have always taught my children to be careful with the phrase "I hate..." As well as with the phrase "I love..." Too many times do we use these phrases in vain. And to me this is much more problematic if not disastrous than using the name of God in vain. "Hate" to me means to wish that person's or thing's non-existence. It is to wish a person dead. (This is why it is silly to say "I hate broccoli" unless the speaker is prepared to argue their death-wish for broccoli!)<br />
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So, to hear "I hate you!" for me means "I wish you dead!"<br />
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I am not superstitious and thus not susceptible to any ruminating about whether this sentence is actually a kind of curse. It may be intended in that way. But it doesn't reach me in that way. What it does do, however, is trigger a kind of introvertive journey: I wonder: have I wished someone's death (or serious illness) in the past? The answer is "yes." I have. The only thing I have to say in my defense about this is that that wish didn't really seem to come from a place of hate as much as it came from a place of fear.<br />
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I remember thinking, as a fifth-grader, what if that math-teacher who was bringing back the quiz which I was sure I had failed, what if that math-teacher was killed in a car-accident? I also imagined that the students who bullied me from second through 7th grade might get killed in a house-fire or get hit by a car.<br />
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So fear certainly makes for very fertile soil on which hate can grow. The story of Cain and Abel tells us in unmistakable ways that Cain was jealous or envious of Abel. He feared that Abel's sacrifice--a lamb--was better than his--fruits of the field. He hated Abel for that and killed him. I found similar reasons to be behind the hatred many Germans had and (unfortunately) have for Jews. And what drives the hatred in radical Muslim groups such as ISIS and Taliban, if not fear? The worst part about fear-driven hatred (i.e., all hate) is that it entices us--yes, seduces us--to hate back by instilling fear in us.<br />
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As a father I have always been quite intentional about not instilling fear in my children.. because I didn't want for that fear to be transformed into hate later on in their life. Overall, I think, this has worked. I have to say too, though, that I have never been afraid of my children. Their mouthiness, resistance to things, obnoxious behavioral patterns have never intimidated me or made me fear for their future. Nor did these things make me second-guess my parenting. What we call "inappropriate behavior" in our children is, actually part of the deal when we decide to parent. So, such behavior is actually "appropriate" behavior for someone whose goal and task is to be independent, separate.<br />
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But there is another layer of how hatred by others can become part of a person's experience. In my case there were, of course, the bullies. Why did they bully me? I certainly wasn't aware of instilling any fear in them? Or my geography and German teacher in 5th and 6th grade who, I knew, disliked me thoroughly. But I was never aware of having done anything to him. Another experience was about a young man who, like me, was a conscientious objector and whom I liked quite a bit, hated me (he said this in a group counseling session which I will never forget). One of the pastors in my home church in Hamburg called me "entitled" when I asked him for a conversation about how condescendingly he had treated his co-pastor. He hated me without saying the words. His face spoke volumes to me.<br />
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It is one thing to be disliked or hated for having been mean and/or thoughtless. It's an entirely different thing to be hated for no apparent reason at all.<br />
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Here we're getting into deeper psychological issues. As it turns out, it is possible to hate a person because they have something we wish we had or, alternatively, because the person exhibits something we are suppressing in ourselves. For example, it is possible to hate a person because he/she has more money. It is also possible to hate a person because he/she seems to feel more at ease showing their emotions. Hate, in other words, is an attempt at "othering." It is an attempt to say "you're not me!" And yet, even in the grammatical structure, the real thrust of hate reveals itself: "not-me" is still "me" just that it is "not"-me.<br />
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Can we stop ourselves from hating? I think we can. But in order to do so we have to take a major step into a direction that's difficult, if not intolerable, for most of us: We have to accept that what we hate, no matter what it is, is actually a part of us. This means for me that the person who told me they hate me actually has to accept that I'm part of them. And I, in turn, have to accept that this person's hate has a resonance in how I feel about them.<br />
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This has potential to be a spiral of hate, if left unchecked. The solution is not to hate back when we're hated. But it is also not to pretend that being hated does "nothing" to us. It does. And what it does requires an immediate intervention to quell the impulse to "hate back"<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-25158242695416187012015-09-24T07:57:00.001-06:002015-09-24T07:57:02.439-06:00Prodigal Parenting<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IYlWrsx0T7M/VgQA6ZN0zKI/AAAAAAAAASk/QDGL11S9LEg/s1600/Ginkgo_biloba_fall_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IYlWrsx0T7M/VgQA6ZN0zKI/AAAAAAAAASk/QDGL11S9LEg/s320/Ginkgo_biloba_fall_detail.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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I've come to a very heart-felt but, my inner critic tells me, close to indefensible thought. A thought that, in my mind, right now, almost takes the place of an axiom, i.e., a statement whose truth is taken for granted, not questioned or analyzed. Here it is:<br />
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<b> Children Do Not Owe Anything To Their Parents And Teachers And Mentors</b><br />
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I've been moving this around in my heart for a while now. Perhaps it started when I witnessed a brief conversation between my youngest son and his second grade teacher. She was reviewing his weekly homework and then told him "you owe me two daily math sheets." He was quiet. I was quiet--inside I was furious. Yes, furious, it happened that quickly.<br />
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"He owes <i>you</i> nothing," I wanted to say.<br />
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"Do you believe," I wanted to say, "do you believe he will actually learn to understand that his work is for <i>him, </i>if you tell him that he actually owes it to <i>you</i>?"<br />
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"And besides," I wanted to say, "besides, what really is <i>his</i> daily math sheet to <i>you</i>?"<br />
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"Do you realize," I wanted to say, "that, with one sentence, you have turned learning and schooling into a banking transaction?"<br />
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"And if it is a banking transaction," I wanted to say, "did you make sure he knew that by accepting the math sheet from you, he had entered into an investment/credit agreement with you?"<br />
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"And if so," I wanted to say, "could he have refused to enter said agreement simply by saying 'I'd rather now owe you something, Mrs. X?"<br />
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So, perhaps it started there. But as is the case with so many things, it likely started a lot earlier. First exchanges with money come to mind. And, maybe even more strongly, a sense of responsibility for my younger sister. I felt I owed my parents responsibility as a principal way of approaching the world. This was a responsibility for her and, of course, for myself.<br />
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It is difficult for me not to see such statements of "owing"--whether they come in a teaching, parenting, or mentoring context, as a person's narcissistic strategies to be reassured that <i>they</i> are doing a good job as parents, teachers, mentors. And even, if his teacher had said: "Gabe, it makes me sad when you don't turn in your homework, because it makes me worry about you." I would have balked. Because, whether we parents, educators, mentors use anger or sadness to make this point, we are still being narcissistic. We're still diverting the child's/student's growing sense of responsibility for himself to be a responsibility towards us.<br />
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The narcissistic responsibility we put on our children to make and keep us, their parents, happy is immense. As parents our sense of pride, self-confidence, accomplishments, etc. all depends on how our children perform. As a culture we're quick to blame parents for their children's lack-luster approach to school, criminal engagement, drug involvement and much more.<br />
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I wonder how to place this phenomenon historically. Have my parents simply copied their parents' ways of parenting? In other words, has parenting always been about the parents' happiness with their children's performance? I wonder, if this was much more a class issue, i.e., middle-class families worried about status among many things and how their children would live up to that status.<br />
I do not know the answer to these questions and do not want to speculate about them either. One thing I can say with relative certainty is that families often seem to struggle with their children's independence and wish to move into the world. This struggle is often accompanied by a great deal of shame and shaming on both sides.<br />
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The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden comes to mind here. So, they ate from the tree. And they are ashamed, not just of their mutual nakedness, but also before God. It is worth saying, though, that God does not shame them. There is no statement that suggests God may have said "Shame on you, Adam and Eve, you owed it to me not to eat of the tree." The only thing that happens is there are consequences. I like to imagine a God who is not mad or sad, but can say without much superfluous emotion "I see, you two, you made your choice." Was God secretly waiting for <i>a</i> choice, not <i>the right choice, simply a choice?</i><br />
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And, by the way, we also don't owe God anything. That we would owe God anything, though reinforced by theologians throughout the last twenty centuries, is faulty logic. If god is creator of the world and everything in it, including us, then it may be possible for that creation to sing God's praises, but such praise most certainly is not something creation <i>owes</i> to God. And if God created us such that we would feel we owe something to God...well, then, I'd be done with God anyway.<br />
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And, God was proud of God's work! "It was good!" Does that mean it was no longer good when Adam and Eve began to make their own decisions? Does it mean that creation was only good as long as Adam and Eve were clinging to God rather than going into the world independently?<br />
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Parents often talk about being "proud of their children" as a goal of their parenting efforts. The trouble with this is that parents tend to have quite limited ideas of what their children should do and how they should go about doing it to make them proud.<br />
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Such limitations are inevitable. But against them comes the powerful developmental push from our children: "Let me be!" The bible suggests a truly important concept which we might want to implement when it comes to the ideas we have about who our children are:<br />
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When Moses asked God to tell him God's name. God said "I am who I am." There are many ways to interpret this. One of them may be "Buzz off, Moses!" Another may be the claiming of God's radical uniqueness. What would parenting be like, if we, the parents, would heed those two things more often and more kindly<br />
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Our children are not only a surplus of ancient genetic material (meaning what genes come to fruition is a crab-shoot) they're also constantly bathed in a surplus of ideas and influences to which we, the parents, are only marginally exposed (and even if we were, we wouldn't absorb them anyway).<br />
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My hope is that our children will be proud of themselves, not that we will be proud of them. My hope for us is that we will always find ways to tap into our capacity to respect our children.<br />
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Marx and Engels pointed out something that <br />
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they thought of as one of the greatest short-comings of industrial labor: a worker might never see or enjoy the end-product of his/her labor. All they could do was install a certain mirror on a car, for example, before the car was moved on to the next person who would install a bumper; and so on. And, of course, the worker would never make enough money to actually buy said car.<br />
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When I was 16 I very much wanted to go to the US for a year. My parents said no. And to this day I remember the reason: this is the time when we can "enjoy the product of our labor." "The product" that was me. Their "labor" that was parenting. It made all the sense in the world to me at the time. Now, it's quite hard for me to sympathize with it. It feels almost equivalent to the idea that the eldest son must stay and continue the family farm.<br />
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That, of course, is the choice made by one of the two brothers in the story of the Prodigal Son. He stays. While his younger brother leaves.<br />
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The story is one of my favorites. Can parenting work in this way? I ask myself. Can we let go of our children because we recognize their freedom. Can we say "of course" to their wish to leave, because we value independence? And can we celebrate their return after the first defeats without glee and a moralizing "should have stayed home?" The parent's unconditional love in that story is overwhelming (which is, of course, why we believe the parent is God and not a human being).<br />
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But what if parenting could take its cues from that story?<br />
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I often finish my retelling of this story by adding a few lines:<br />
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And after a month of staying on the farm, of spending some lovely times in conversation with his father and brother, the son said: I must leave again. And the father says: of course, you must. You have my blessing."<br />
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Because, son, you don't owe me anything! You must be <i>prodigal</i> in order to become prodigious!<br />
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In this also lies the story of human growth. In nature humans are the only beings who are actuallly growing, from one generation to the next. Other beings, animals and plants, are cloning themselves, but they really are not growing. Yes, there are mutations, there is evolution, there is change on a horizontal level. But there is no growth compared to how human beings have grown over the last 2000-5000 years.<br />
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Attachment <i>and</i> separation between parents and children is key to this growth. Such growth can take place only, if children can detach enough. And yet, without proper attachment such separation/detachment could never happen in a way that really sustains growth. Father and son, in the story of the prodigal son are well-attached I would argue. He can leave the farm the way he does, because he trusts his father not to balk. And there is no curfew, no demand made to come home after a certain time. There is simply trust that, either way, the son will grow, will learn, will find himself in and through his independence.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-26930338096942757612015-04-22T22:05:00.000-06:002015-04-22T22:05:58.379-06:00The Many Layers of Family Story Telling<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;">The telling of stories, especially the telling of family stories to family members as well as to friends and even to strangers is a complex multi-layered experience. As such it strikes me as a thoroughly sacred act. It is a ritual movement, a dance of some kind, in which we continuously determine our coordinates within the context of our family, circle of friends and the world at large. The act of story telling is deeply embedded in who we are as human beings. Stories provide a compass for us in a way few other things do. Stories fill the place of instincts (of which we have some, but only in remnant form). Animals don't need stories. We do. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">But stories do more than just substitute as </span></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">instincts. Instincts are firm, unshakable behavioral patterns. They don't change much, even over the course of a few hundred years. Stories do change. Every telling renders them differently, every time someone else tells the "same" story, it actually is not the same. New meaning, new growth shows itself with every instance of telling a story.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Stories invite us to see the world flexibly. They welcome us into a context of meaning that never stops changing. And yet, stories--and family stories especially--extend our roots deeply into the past. They secure us, balance us, settled us. From there we experience a kind of nurturing that does not compare or hold up to any piece of information we may receive through twitter, Facebook, the news, etc. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As a child I loved listening to the stories my mother and father and other relatives told me--about the war, about their childhoods, stories of fear, joy, loss, pain and searching. These were stories about their friends, their parents, their siblings. And I soaked them up. Imagining my parents and grandparents as little children, just like myself, was both incredibly pleasurable and incredibly mysterious: Could it really have been true? </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As a father I tell family stories, stories about aunts, uncles, grandparents, mother, father, cousins, because I want to let my children experience where they belong, I want to renew my own sense of belonging and I want to let those about whom I am writing know that they also belong. I grew up with the stories I was told by my mother, father, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles. I loved hearing them! Imagining the places they referenced as they may have looked long before my time. Recognizing similarities and differences . . .</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As I tell stories I am confronted with a strange paradox: these are my stories and, yet, they are also about others. To the extent that it is I who is telling these stories, the characters in them are mine; they are part of my imagination. However, the sentence "Any likeness or similarity with living persons is purely accidental"--that sentence is not true for my stories. The likenesses are intentional. I am writing about people I know. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">For some reading these stories may feel awkward, like looking into the private sphere of another person, family, couple. And, yes, you are looking into that sphere. And what I'm writing about often is private. Private but not secret. In a community, a world community, where individuals and groups are becoming increasingly isolated from each other, privacy becomes an additional wall hindering us in really getting to know each other. In order to understand each other we need to take the risk of being vulnerable with each other. When I write about my family I make myself vulnerable. And, yes, I make them vulnerable too. But more than anything I present them as human beings as real as possible. But never without a keen eye for each of their individual human nobleness. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I am writing these stories because my family makes me think and reflect. It is a hermeneutic for me, a lens through which I understand life. As such the lives and experiences of every single one of my family members informs my thinking. Writing stories about my family is like looking at my family tree, beholding and admiring its growth, its quirky forms, its blossoms and roots, but also it's deadened branches, leafless areas and </span></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">weak spots. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As a father I wish to help my sons see how their freedom to be who they want to be is intimately tied to how they're connected to their family, paternal and maternal. This is a strange concept. Many would disagree and only see the contradiction between being free and being tied to something. I don't believe in that contradiction. Really, I believe we're most unfree and still paralyzingly tethered to our families precisely when we don't (know to) tell family stories. Not knowing family stories is a form of primal impoverishment.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As parents we have to accept that our children will tell stories about us. It is their right and certainly chance to frame family experiences precisely from their perspective, without permission. While that may sound extreme and radical we may also consider this: </span></span><span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;">Telling stories is healing. It's a healing that is not only about conflict. It is also about healing separation, distance, death. Healing never means "making it go away." Rather it means integration. It's a binding together of many elements. When I tell stories about my family I am also binding us together, bringing together the family members who are separated by thousands of miles and a large ocean. I don't know that they read every blog I write, but often they do. Next to telephone, e-mail, FaceTime, Skype, texting and other ways of communicating with each other these stories also are a kind of communication: I'm thinking about you, you're on my mind. Writing stories about my family is making them present to myself and my children and others. It's about my longing for them and it is about expressing that longing, fearlessly. </span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span>Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-14972038099332780702015-03-07T09:20:00.000-06:002015-03-07T09:20:09.901-06:00Picture Of My Mom With CigaretteI've recently started to think about the difference between "ambition" and "motivation." Then, today, my father sent this picture of my mother to myself and my sister:<br />
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This is a picture of my mom, sitting on their back porch, seen through the full glass door of my parents' living room.<br />
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My mom is an intensely ambitious person.<br />
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The word "ambitious" actually comes from the Latin verb "ambire" which means "going around." It was especially used in the context of "going around for votes, flattery, courting, desire for honor." That is, it was directed at an external source of satisfaction.<br />
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The word "ambition" in German is "ehrgeizig." A quite strange word which, literally, means "stingy with honor." Being stingy with honor, self-honor that is, also means that an ambitious person is frequently searching for honor from an external source.We can learn, then, that ambition is not only a desire or search for honor, it also is a stinginess with self-honor, and therefore implies a strong dependence on being honored, seen, appreciated by others.<br />
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That search is the yoke under which my mom lives and operates.<br />
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"Search" also is the root word for the German word "Sucht" (addiction). An addict is someone who is searching, forever and in vain. Addicts often are intensely ambitious people. But the restlessness of their search, its never-complete nature had become so painful that the pain needed to be quelled…with cigarettes, with alcohol, with drugs. A place, a substance, a person where this pain will go away. It's a place where the pain of the search, which is the separation between seeker and sought for thing, is sublated, gone. It's a place of union and boundarilessness.<br />
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I love seeing this picture of her, because here for a quiet moment (one cigarette length) she is not ambitious, only motivated. Smoking has always had this function for my mother: It broke up her ambitious day into periods of rest, periods of motivation. A few times she tried to quit smoking and the result always was the same: she became confused. The rhythm of hard, focused work interrupted by the steady beat of these smoking-reflecting breaks was gone and my mom had lost her footing.<br />
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From the perspective of the son these cigarette breaks were the moments when I had my mom, when she was present to me in a non-ambitious way. Buying her cigarettes, quickly running to the store and getting a pack (or, in the evenings when everything was closed, being sent to the machine to "draw" a pack) also meant that I was helping her find that rest. And that meant I was helping me.<br />
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This is why sitting with my mom while she smokes has hardly bothered me, because it has always meant sitting with a different, quieter person. And that is why, when I cycle by a certain bus-stop in our town, behind a certain hospital where many hospital workers stand and smoke, I am reminded of my mother; smelling the cigarettes…and I inhale deeply as I pass.<br />
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But what do I mean by "motivation?" I have in mind motivation as our inner stimulus, an internal voice, that can--undisturbed by outside judgment--act to guide us, lead us into areas of self-exploration and self-knowledge to which ambition never gets us. Motivation comes from the Latin verb "movere" the source of the English verb "to move." "Motus" is the past participle of that verb. A motivated person is a person who is motivated internally, not externally.<br />
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Is saying "I am ambitious" the same as saying "I am motivated?" Is one, perhaps, included in the other: to say I'm ambitious also means I'm motivated; or to say I'm motivated also means I'm ambitious?<br />
I don't think so. The difference between ambition and motivation is the difference between being pulled and being moved.<br />
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When I see my mom as she is in this picture I know that, with the help of cigarettes, she is moved--deeply reflective, with herself, undistracted by external judgment. It moves <i>me</i> to see her like this. So deeply rested in herself.<br />
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I don't think my mother always was ambitious and driven the way she is now. I know that my mom is a deeply creative being. Her drawings and paintings, from the time when she was an adolescent, speak volumes about this. Her flower-arrangements, wreathes she makes... all speak of how she is/can be moved. My mom wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. That's what she felt moved to do. But her parents disallowed it.<br />
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I have to believe that, for her, ambition set in with the experience of having her motivation dismissed, suffocated even. As the internal goal of making art, of teaching, moved farther and farther away from her, she became ambitious. She wanted to be seen, complimented. And so the pleasure of making and doing simply in response to that internal impulse, because she felt moved to do it, had to make way for the risky and always fleeting pleasure of responding to an external cue.<br />
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It would be hard to measure how much I wish my mom could find that <i>internal</i> source of being moved again. Finding it would be like finding and staying with that unceasing source of unconditional love for self. Finding it would mean, too, that the burden of reassuring her would finally be lifted of us, her children and grandchildren. We could now, finally, love her without needing to praise her.<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-33813724730498790932015-02-24T15:47:00.001-06:002015-02-24T15:47:47.185-06:00Lessons Learned from Parenthood Applied to TerrorismSince I wrote the blog on being a conscientious objector I have been struggling; almost as if I had said something mean, but also something that cannot be taken back! The truth is: I'm not sure if I can really stand behind what I said. Perhaps the most important reason being that I do not see a way to successfully draw a line between "benign" and negative acts (like say, when someone is yelling at me) to which an instinctual response (i.e., yelling back) does not seem warranted, from an act that is "non-benign" (i.e., an act that crosses an invisible line into a realm where an "instinctual" response, like the one I outline in my previous blog, is warranted).<br />
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I keep coming back to the one basic fact: that all anger, aggression, violence, maliciousness and similar thoughts and acts are rooted in fear. They are, in essence, an extreme form of self-defense. Can we not prevent such acts of self-defense by understanding better what the fear behind acts such as the murders of Paris is all about?<br />
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When I say "understanding" I really mean "under"-standing, I don't mean "over"-standing. I mean, in other words, a kind of comprehension that is humble, that stands under, not over, that which it wishes to comprehend. Understanding, seen in this way, is an act of humble approach, of curiosity, of asking questions…it is an act of joining…rather than an act of superiority, of competition and, ultimately, of war. Too many attempts to "understand" are really attempts to "over"stand, thus resulting in arguments and fighting.<br />
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This is the way I would like for us to work out anger: through acts of mutual "under" standing. Immense is the courage it takes to work it this way! We might think that it is courageous to fight back when we're threatened, to send troops, to issue warnings, etc. But most of these acts are far from being courageous. This is precisely the case because they're not considered "acts." Rather they're re-act-ionary, reflexive instinctual responses, dictated by our limbic system not our neo-cortex. Courage is a deliberate circumvention of our instinctual responses to danger. It is courageous to climb El Capitan in Yosemite Park (especially without gear as more and more climbers are prone to doing), it is courageous to stand up, alone, to a tank, as that young man did in Tianamen Square, two and a half decades ago. Simply to react by yelling, hitting or other ways of attacking does not take courage (for the most part; cp. however, my blog-post from …)<br />
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I keep coming back to what I consider an essential factor in learning "courage." Because learned it is. We do not get to be courageous without considerable energies invested into the transformation of reactionary, instinctive responses into thoughtful and curious acts of under-standing. This we learn from our parents, teachers, therapists and other people we trust.<br />
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Recently, my son Noah and I had a run-in with each other regarding cleaning the kitchen and dishes he had used. Noah has for the most part come home from college every weekend. It's a pleasure to have him here with us. Interestingly, he uses much of his time home to cook! He cooks all kinds of fancy things for himself. Much of it he packs up and takes back to college with him. We are much in favor and supportive of this. The only hitch is that Noah's post-cooking cleaning skills are not as fancy as we would wish. Though on the surface he cleans uncounted are the later encounters with dishes and spoons in the dishwasher that did not get cleaned because food was literally sautered to it before he put it in the washer. Potts and pans in the drying rack are cleaned on the inside but not the outside where sauces spilled and oil splattered, the floor reflects clear proof of recipes and ingredients Noah used for his latest cooking idea, and so on. So I could call him up and say "clean the kitchen (again)." The problem is that I don't immediately see everything that is not cleaned. Normally, when I pull out a spoon that is still uncleaned I would much rather clean it myself than call him back to clean one spoon. However, if one thing after another turns up dirty and I end up spending 30 min. cleaning after him, just by "finding" things that are not usable I get frustrated.<br />
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It takes courage to speak to Noah about these kinds of things. His reactions to being criticized or called on something have usually been quite intense. In my case, the re-act-ion was not so much an intense yelling back at him, punishing him, etc. Rather it was silence and, more often than necessary, a decision <i>not</i> to hold him accountable for something. Learning courage, in my case, meant to respond with clarity and calm, even in the face of his intense, often angry responses to me. It helped me greatly to know and then remember that anger is a symptom emotion, stemming from fear.<br />
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In the case of the dishes Noah's response was quite intense again when I told him about my cleaning Odyssee, following the trail's he had left. But as it turned out the fear he had had to do with something he called "manipulation."At first I didn't get it. What could be wrong with telling him all the things he had failed to clean and left for me to clean after him. But as he explained it (by now I was sitting on the floor in his room and he was sitting on his bed, leaning against the wall; we were comfortable in other words) the light went on for me. In a nutshell Noah told me not to clean up after him and then criticize him. Rather, he said, call me and let know what needs to be done; I will do it. Let me fix my own mistakes, he was saying.<br />
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Even though this wasn't the end of the story (because I did have a response and he did understand it) I want to stop here for a moment and acknowledge the simple truth in Noah's words. Let <i>me</i> fix it, he had said. In other words, rather than getting angry twice--once about finding the dirty dishes and then again for having to clean them--be angry only once and let me know, he told me. I let him know that I had actually never considered things in this particular light.<br />
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However, I said, there is a problem. I didn't find all the dirty items at once. Rather for about 30 min. I kept finding more things that hadn't been cleaned, thinking every time that this will be the last and then everything should be fine (and I wouldn't have to hold him accountable, i.e., be courageous). Now it was up to him to understand. And under-stand he did. We both had a good laugh about the silliness of me finding more and more traces of Noah's activities in the kitchen. But of course this didn't solve my problem. How could we deal with this?<br />
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I made an unusual proposal: How about we <i>teach</i> you about cleaning the kitchen? (Mind you, this is an 18 year old young man! How would he respond to such a suggestion?) I was floored when he simply said "that's a great idea." We have since had "the meeting in the kitchen." The newly taught behaviors haven't put to the test yet. But I can testify to Noah's willingness to listen, ask questions, and under-stand.<br />
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And I want to emphasize this again: it took courage for me to go through this with Noah, my very own son! It takes courage to do things differently, yes, but it takes special courage to act instead of re-act. And this brings me back to my initial question. It is probably not fair to apply a lesson learned from parenthood to terrorism and warfare. Perhaps the rules simply are different and, therefore, what is a re-act-tion in a parenting context is an action during times of war? Perhaps. But a small voice of skepticism remains in my head: have we really had the courage to under-stand our so-called "enemies," the nations that form what G.W. Bush so infamously called the "axis of evil?"Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-55039257419182010412015-01-20T16:44:00.003-06:002015-01-20T16:44:38.380-06:00Aging and LovingOne of the most amazing mysteries of the mind is how it can hold, at the same time, a knowing of its finiteness and a sense of an infinite; in it the finite relates to the infinite. How can it be that something that is finite--our mind--can be aware of the mysterious depth of infinity? Theologians and philosophers in the past and present have explained this as God's finger-print on our existence. They have attempted to say that our ability to perceive the infinite in these tangential (never direct ways) must be a sign that God exists and that we are predestined to know God in this way. But who says? How do we even know God's infinite? Perhaps God is not! Perhaps what we call God is an endless (not infinite) chain of finite events, some recurring some unique. Perhaps the depth of the infinite really doesn't have a bottom, not even at the bottom of God--a Godtom.<br />
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And yet, we sense something. Just like Kierkegaard's dancer who upon leaping high up into the air experiences a moment of weightless infinity before tumbling down again, before gravity reclaims her. Is a stone we throw up in the air flying? Not according to my youngest son Gabriel. "That's plummeting," he said, "not flying."<br />
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How do we experience the infinite throughout a life-time? Is it in moments from which we "plummet" back to earth, to the finite? Is it with effort? Or do we happen into that sphere without working on it?<br />
One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me is that aging is, among many other things, about an ever concretizing sense of my own finiteness. Alongside this experience is a growing awareness of those moments of infinity. It is the contrast, the differential, that really alerts me to it.<br />
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Perhaps the greatest problem of aging is fear. Fear of pain, fear of increasing disability, fear of loneliness.We're often compelled to quell that fear by investing our feelings and resources in the possibility of a longer life, perhaps an infinite one. But what does that really do for us? Can we get in touch with the infinite by living longer? Likely not. How do we find that infinite? How and where do we encounter it?<br />
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My interest in philosophy was never analytical but rather about the mysterious things in the world. I have wondered for a long time, for example, how the minute hand of a clock can actually make it from one number to the next. How it can overcome any distance at all, because the space between two points is infinite. I have wondered how a major 7 chord can sound so open to yearning for completion and how it can be continued by moving on a step up or down to another major 7 chord. I have wondered where the longing comes from that I feel when I hear wind blow through pine-trees…The infinite is everywhere. It even seems to hang around in moments of utter destruction and devastation . . . an echo of a spirit that seems to hover over battle-fields, the abandoned town of Tchernobyl, the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.<br />
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I imagine this infinite--that shows itself in and through the finite events of our human history as well as the finite acts of nature--as an aura of love, a shroud of kindness. It wraps itself around us, reminding us--again and again--not to ask "why." "Why" the word that makes us go deeper and deeper into the nature of things, of the universe, and yet also the word that leaves us not knowing anything.<br />
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This infinite, I believe, encourages us to use our senses--our ears, eyes, noses, skin--to feel what cannot be known. We cannot "know" the infinite. But we sure can feel it. Loving is using our senses, not our minds. Loving is being "sensual." Loving is going into the micro-moments of connection and positivity resonance (Barbara Frederickson) through our senses.<br />
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Do you know people who say this: "Don't get me wrong, I love my "blank" . . . but…? More often than not the person doesn't mean "love" when they assert it. In fact, more often than not they have not experienced the person they're referring to in a sensual way in a long time, if ever. Rather, their sense of love is controlled by what they believe is acceptable, expected. Can we allow ourselves to love without saying it in those words? And/or can we allow that love is first and foremost a sensual experience of the eyes, the mouth, the ears, the nose and the skin?<br />
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Allowing ourselves to go there is to give permission to love the way babies and children do, i.e., in and through real-time physical presence. Without such presence there is no love. When such presence is the case we "know" because our senses tell the story. Goose-bumps, yearning, longing, etc. all send us information about what's going on. Every goose-bumps moment is an infinite one. Yes, they end, the bumps go away and we're back down in finite reality. We yearn for repetition. And if we're lucky, it will come.<br />
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Getting older for me means being wrapped into this shroud of the infinite, allowing it to happen, renewing my wish and intent to experience the way sensually before I attempt to understand it intellectually. It means living with open eyes, open ears, open skin and an open heart, even in the face of anger, cruelty and sadness. It means also that I can show myself fearlessly to others so they can take me in sensually and with openness.Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-24831975808538031092015-01-19T21:25:00.001-06:002015-01-19T21:25:07.854-06:00Conscientious Objections Can No Longer Be Made in Good ConscienceMany of you know that I am a conscientious objector. My parents, especially my mother, from a very early age on, told me she was hoping I would never choose to become a soldier. As I was growing up her view, and that of my father, only made sense to me. Both are children of WWII. My father's father, my grandfather Bruno Srajek, died in Russia (likely after a terrible gunshot wound had torn off his leg and he bled to death). My mother's father, my grandfather Erich Rauch, returned from the war after barely escaping becoming a prisoner of war. However, before he could return home he had sent a letter to my grandmother essentially bidding her and his three children (my mother and her two younger siblings) farewell. My mom, to this day, becomes fear-strikken, when she hears the monthly siren-tests go off, as one of them also is for the possibility of air-raids.<br />
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When I was eighteen I had to appear in front of a council made up of both civilians and military personnel as well as one military judge. Prior to this I had submitted a twenty-page hand-written essay explaining my reasons for refusing "den Dienst an der Waffe" (armed service). It was a grueling meeting. Again and again the participants of this "court" probed deeply into my reasons for not wanting to carry a weapon, for refusing to acknowledge that, sometimes, it may be better to kill a person than to keep them alive, etc. After two and a half hours I was finally told that I had "passed" this investigation. I was free to meet my 18 months service requirement in the civil sector. My placement ended up being in a residential facility for physically disabled children where I worked from December of 1980 until April 1982.<br />
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My pacifist convictions stayed with me without change. The first time I experienced doubts about this was during the ethnic cleansing phase in former Yugoslavia. The ruthless strategies of the Serbian majority against the Croats and Muslims during this time seemed to prove immune to any interventions that came from a pacifist position. At the time I didn't further pursue my own thinking about it. Thoughts about starting my own family, professional changes, etc. kept my attention elsewhere.<br />
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It wasn't until recently that I had to confront another wave of doubt in myself about the effectiveness of pacifism. It was on a walk around a local park, considering love and empathy, that I began to ask myself how I would "love" or empathize with the people who were letting themselves be filmed while be-heading another person. My feelings and struggle during this walk were intense. As I usually do when someone has committed a crime, especially an act of cruelty, I went back to questions about such a person's childhood. This person was a baby once. He was inside a woman's womb, was born, held, nursed . . . he was a toddler, a little boy . . . what in the world happened to him? When and where and how did he begin to feel that "sacrificing" an other, a fellow human being, could be in the name of anything good? Could a man who has shed another's blood in this way ever "return" to anything like the sweetness of a little boy?<br />
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A horrible realization began to grow in me: while I was quite aware of the likely human failures that may have led this boy to grow into a man who sacrifices others, I was also becoming convinced of the impossibility of ever rehabilitating such a person back into a culture of acceptance and mutual understanding. If captured, yes, it is possible for someone like this to be kept in prison for life. But, really, the only plausible option seems to be that such a person would have to be killed. Perhaps "destroyed" is a better word than "killed." It's the word I just read in a short article about a pit-bull that destroyed after it had attacked a police-officer. The rationale being that an animal that's attacked a human being once will never again shy away from doing so. Therefore, for as long as it is alive it presents an unacceptable risk to society. The only option, other than putting the pit-bull in a kennel for life, is to exterminate it. Swiftly and efficiently.<br />
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What has happened to me? There was a time, when my eldest, Noah (then 10 years old), had an opinion regarding the death-penalty published in our local paper. "No human should kill another, he said, such things should be left to God." Noah, by the way, tells me now that he was only saying what he had been told by others (not least of all, perhaps, me?). He strongly believes now that there are good reasons to kill another human being and that neither the choice to kill or not to kill have anything to do with God. He is eighteen, i.e., exactly the same age I was when I was standing in front of the military council to prove my truly pacifist convictions. He would, by the way, never become a soldier either. There is a clear difference for him between saying that it makes sense to kill another person under certain circumstances and to join a general war effort. The latter can never be free of the danger of becoming part of another person's or government's political agenda. Noah would not allow himself to fall into something like that.<br />
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But still, what has happened to me? Does with age come fear? Am I simply resisting the more Asian spiritual insights about change and movement? Have I, without really noticing it, become a dualistic person, believing in good and evil? Or am I even starting to be convinced that the old biblical principle of retaliation should be heeded: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?<br />
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I don't think any of these ring true for me. I worry about them, to be sure, but worrying about them takes my own thoughts about this to an unnecessarily moral level. This is a level, however, where I precisely do not want to settle with this. The need to kill or destroy such a person has its origin in neither moral nor religious considerations. Rather it is an instinctual response. It is the response one individual or a group may have in response to an external or internal threat to its very existence.<br />
The instinctual response to the kind of violence we're witnessing lately is violence, nothing more and nothing less. It is entirely unnecessary, in my eyes, to defend a violent response to such violence as "self-defense," a "defense of freedom." or even just revenge (although the latter may come closest to the instinctual violence response I have in mind).<br />
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An instinctual response, like the one I have in mind, is not unlike our strategies to fight cancer: we zero in on the cancer cells and we destroy them, with chemical and nuclear means. Talking to them does not work. Of course, there is a problem with the cancer analogy. Many people, myself included, think of cancer while a highly problematic health issue for human beings, also as nature's way of experimenting with its very own materials. Human beings happen to be part of the materials nature experiments on. If we're serious about evolution we should probably consider different cancers as an evolutionary force rather than saying from now on we humans decide what evolution is. And cancer is not it! In other words, just because cancer kills many of us does not mean that it is not good for the world!<br />
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So, the cancer analogy could lead us to think that Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and other similar groups are "cancers" that literally change the ways in which our cultural societal systems have worked. Should we resist them? Cancer survivors are divided on this issue. Both sides are in agreement that to be a survivor, the cancer has to be in remission for at least three years. But the two sides are almost diametrically opposing each other in their accounts for the reasons of their survival. Some swear that had they resisted their cancer they would likely be dead right now. Others affirm just the opposite saying they would not have survived without aggressive and well-targeted treatment.<br />
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What then would terrorism survivors say? Should we resist or should we let the cancer of terrorism do its work? It seems that the idea of letting cancer cells or terrorists do their work is itself unnatural. Every animal, every sentient being would, if attacked, attempt to fight back and protect itself. It may be desperate, it may be useless, but that is what the will to live really forces us to do. The idea that we would patiently wait for the "cancer" to eat us alive or hollow us out seems absurd.<br />
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This, of course, puts us on the same level as the terrorists themselves. They, too, are simply refusing to be hollowed out by the encroaching cancer of western culture. And so, this is where we are. There is no entitlement, no moral high-ground to defending ourselves. It is nothing but one culture pitted against another in a war whose common denominator is an equally strong conviction that in order to permanently win this conflict the other must be destroyed.<br />
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This is the logic, actually, that was applied to post-war Germany and the remaining Nazis. National Socialism cannot be tolerated, not even in a political system that supports free speech, because it parasitically hollows out the very system that allows it to exist. Ergo, National Socialism had to be destroyed. Every national socialist cell that develops has to be destroyed as well. Once the cancer of Nazidom had rooted itself it will continue to metastasize for decades, if not centuries to come. The same, of course, can be said about the extreme and totalitarian forms of Islam supported by Al Qaeda et al. This bastardized version of Islam will have to be recognized and fought as soon as it develops.<br />
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As I am writing this I grieve. Letting go of the idea that a world is possible where this kind of instinctual response is no longer necessary, letting go of a world that could be safe for us, for our children, really hurts. I thought I could raise my children in a political climate that made pacifism definitely the most rational choice. But, as it turns out, that may have been easier to choose while my parents raised us ("Nie wieder Krieg" was the slogan that united many in post-war Germany). I remember a moment on the subway in Hamburg talking to my friend Katrin. It was the time of nuclear build-up in Europe and many of us were afraid of an escalation.<br />
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"If we really want to stop this," I said to her, "we will have to become something altogether different. Human beings can't but be threatened and threaten back."<br />
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This idea of being "different" still has not taken shape. How could it, really? The idea that we are "homo sapiens" (wise man) is really a stretch. Wisdom continues to elude us and instead we keep embracing totalitarian and absolutist ideas. They will not bring us peace or safety.<br />
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Berthold Brecht is credited with the dictum: "Stell Dir vor es ist Krieg und keiner geht hin." (Imagine it's war and nobody shows up for it.) Our time seems different. It's no longer about a war that we could "attend" or show up for. Rather it is about stopping to run away from a merciless persecutor and saying "no."Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-68204336117458534192014-11-18T22:11:00.001-06:002014-11-18T22:11:05.185-06:00When--Always<h4>
We often ask "when?"<br /> ... Impatience hinders answers!<br />Feel "always" in "when?"</h4>
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The word "when" sometimes trips me. Or should I say the feeling that leads to the word "when" trips me? When attempts to set a point in the future, it attempts to force, gently perhaps, a kind of commitment to the future, to an act, a certainty, etc. "When" signals me and the other person that I feel anxious and not trusting.<br />
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When will you come home?<br />
When will you do the dishes?<br />
When will you sleep with me?<br />
When will you leave me alone?<br />
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Sometimes "when" is a more rhetorical figure:<br />
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When will you understand me?<br />
When will they ever learn?<br />
When will you stop cracking those stupid jokes?<br />
When is enough enough?<br />
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And sometimes "when" denotes a moment:<br />
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When you smile I get goosebumps!<br />
When I heard about the news I started to cry!<br />
When you were born the world came to celebrate!<br />
When you arrive we will all be here!<br />
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"When" implies or points to an "always." In the question "when will you come home?" I am implying the "always" of a home (i.e., a place) and the "always" of a you (i.e., a person). Also implied is a second person, always there, but questioning. Uncertain. "I want to know, when you will come home."<br />
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How would it be, if we could live with certainty? How would it be, if, instead of asking "when will you come home?" we could say with certainty (but not imperatively) "you will come home!"? It seems that by me asking you the question of when you will come home I am infusing a certain kind of uncertainty into your existence. Definitely into how you exist for me and, possibly, also into how you exist for yourself.<br />
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Legitimate as they might seem, when-questions, just like their cousins why-questions, can do us a disfavor. Perhaps it is because they're close-ended? Can we still the need to know "when"; can we still the need to know "why?" Can we instead, live in the always now, and can we replace the cycle of why and because with the certainty of "yes?"<br />
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I wonder: Is there a sub-reality where all the question-pronouns do no longer make sense and are put to rest? A place where when, where, why, how, who are seen for what they are, viz. a fragmenting disintegrating force that cannot, in spite of its very best efforts and commitment to wholeness, do just that: establish and sustain wholeness.<br />
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As a therapist who often sits with anxious and depressed people I know that none of these questions instill the direly needed sense of peace an anxious person is yearning for. They do the opposite: they agitate, increase a strong sense of incongruousness of self (which is what brings so many people first into therapy anyway).<br />
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What an anxious person needs--and, really, what we all need--is acceptance. The Latin root of this word reminds us that its literal meaning is "taking to me." When I accept I take to me the thing/person I accept…like a small child we take to us and hold close to our heart to help it calm down, feel safe and relax.<br />
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I believe that there is so much we can do in the way of acceptance that has absolutely nothing to do with asking questions. Our eyes, our smiles, our tone of voice can signal acceptance in big ways. Often it is a good idea to let those come before we even ask any questions. The safe and solid base those signals can establish goes far beyond anything a question could ever achieve.Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-60923291975852831902014-11-17T18:45:00.001-06:002014-11-17T18:45:42.946-06:00All Things Beautiful<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">― </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17212.Marcus_Aurelius" style="background-color: white; color: #666600; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Marcus Aurelius</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/31010" style="color: #666600; text-decoration: none;">Meditations</a></i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">― </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15321.Confucius" style="background-color: white; color: #666600; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Confucius</a><br />
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In a recent conversation with a client she remarked on my frequent use of the word "beautiful." Before I talk more about this word and what it means to me today a short story may be a good way to warm up.<br />
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When I was in fifth grade I was one of a small group of children in my class who had already started learning English two years earlier, in grade three. Everyone else had started just a few months earlier. Our homework assignment was to answer questions about a story we had read in chapter two of our book. i was bored with the questions and skipped on to the story in chapter three. I remember it to this day, the word "beautiful," how it stuck out of the first line of words (which I don't remember) and how I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know it's meaning, I didn't know how to pronounce it, I didn't know, didn't expect that a word with this combination of letters could exist--"e-a-u"…who had ever seen three vowels so close together? I turned to my father for help. Of course, he knew the word and taught me how to say it: bee-u-tee-ful. But what about the "a" I asked. I learned that the "a" is a silent vowel, that it rests there between the "e" and the "u" simply to remind us of the origin of the word in Old French, but more so to remind us of <i>itself</i>, its beauty. And if we pronounce the vowels slowly, one after the other, we might realize something else, something I noticed immediately after my father told me: saying the word and its vowels out loud and slowly opens our mouths in a particular way as if to ready us for beauty herself. Still some hesitation in the "e" but then followed by a surrender to open more in the "a" and then the powerful "u"pursing our lips as if in surprise, as if to <i>inhale</i> beauty itself. </div>
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I was full of joy about this newfound word and all it stirred in me. And there was a kind of pride about my discovery. I couldn't wait to tell my English teacher, Herrn Boehmer, about it. When, the next day, he walked from table to table to check our homework Herr Boehmer found my homework done quite sloppily. I didn't have an excuse, I knew this, but I told him about my discovery. Perhaps he thought I wanted to distract him from what I had not done. His response remains stuck in my head as one of the things we hear that create a particular kind of wound. A wound that doesn't heal but, over time, itself becomes beautiful:<br />
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"Martin, it would be better for you, I think, to concentrate on your homework rather than jumping ahead."<br />
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I was hurt. I was ashamed. There was very little left in me that could say "but the word 'beautiful' is still beautiful!" Could Herr Boehmer really not hear how that word is singing of itself, of beauty?<br />
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I am not sure, if I really had the same sense of beauty being everywhere then as I have now. Of course, the German "schoen" also just doesn't sound as good as does "beautiful." Although "schoen" with its central o-umlaut does approximate the sound of a moan or sigh, i.e., a visceral exclamation, much more closer than does "beautiful." Beautiful, viz. that something is full of beauty, points towards an almost mysterious kind of layered richness and depth. And I see it everywhere. It gives me pause, it gives me peace, it gives me energy. Beauty is no longer just a superficial aesthetic. Rather it goes deep, towards the very core of things--of people, objects, music and art, nature and technology, science and religion, philosophy and psychology. Every time I encounter it I have an immediate sense of boundaries falling away; I am now connected to the very source of all being--without ever knowing what and where and who that source might be.<br />
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Seeing beauty is less an ability than it is a choice. It is a way of opening my senses, staying open, to the world as it comes to me, into me. Sometimes shockwave after shockwave of beauty comes through, accompanied only by silence or, sometimes, tears.<br />
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Can ugly things even exist next to all this beauty? Well, perhaps temporarily, for the time that I'm not really looking, not really perceiving. When I really begin to look and perceive ugliness seems to fall away. Yes, it is true, there really is no room in this way of looking at the world for anything like evil. Evil is a "useful" category when we feel afraid, embattled or otherwise threatened. But arguably the notion of "evil" has never really helped anyone to feel less afraid, embattled or threatened. If anything I'd say it increases it.<br />
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Seeing beauty, even when we feel afraid, being fearless in the face of what we're told is ugly, is what can really help us live. And connect. And commune. And accept death.<br />
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Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-70541737098070832992014-11-13T06:13:00.001-06:002014-11-13T06:13:33.532-06:00Challenging Geriatric Behaviors<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">Since our society equates </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">happiness with youth, we </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">often assume that sorrow,</a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">quiet desperation, and hopelessness </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">go hand in hand with getting older. </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">They don't. Emotional pain or </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">numbness are symptoms of living </a></span><br />
<span class="bqQuoteLink" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 26px;"><a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marthabeck655230.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="view quote">the wrong life, not a long life.</a> (Martha Beck)</span><br />
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Challenging geriatric behaviors? Yes, that is the title of a workshop for which I recently received an invitation. It must be my brain, playing geria-tricks on me, that made me burst out laughing when I read it. Images of a "Lincoln's Challenge" for old folks came to mind (accidentally, but aptly, a teenage client of mine recently called it "Lincoln's Last Chance"): a bunch of elderly people, being shouted at: stop shuffling, stand straight, you're drooling again? Wipe that spittle from your chin…Lincoln's Last Chance…a place where problematic old people, who simply don't want to act young, get one more opportunity before they're shipped off to a nursing home.<br />
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I want to make sure you know that I'm not about to make fun of the elderly. Rather I want to talk about changes in me. Changes that are somehow causing me to be more aware of older people, aging, and especially my own aging process. I know for a fact that my recent divorce, after 22 years of marriage, has a lot to do with this. But other life-changes also are doing their part. My oldest son is now in college. And while he is only an hour away and often comes to visit for part of the weekend, seeing him arrive and leave certainly feels like a new stage in his and our life. His younger brother is in Germany and will be there until at least the end of high-school (2016). And who knows what will happen afterwards. He might just stay in Germany and, in that way, reverse the journey I started 30 years ago in 1984. Only my youngest is still at home. Nine more years before he will go to college.<br />
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What I'm most aware of other than these coming of age things are changes in my body. I see the skin on my arms and notice that it is no longer taut. Thousands of tiniest wrinkles have suddenly appeared and act like they're only going to multiply. No amount of lotion will make them go away. Not even to mention the increasing amount of seborrheic keratosis spots. There are the occasional aches in my joints (esp. my left knee, my hip and the ball joint in my thumb). For years already I have been aware of changes in my vision. And, just to make this very clear, bifocals do not fix the problem and they create a slightly embarrassing issue: When I look at someone's face while skyping with them I now have to tilt my head slightly upwards to ensure that I see the person on the other side as clearly as possible. Meanwhile that person seems mostly the underside of my chin, just a bit of my eyes as they peer through the bottom-most half of my glasses. It gets even funnier when both parties are wearing bifocals (as in a recent face-time conversation with my brother-in-law, Michael).<br />
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While I always knew that life is finite, that we'll have to let go and die some day, now the piece of life that might be left for me seems even more finite than before. And--time seems to go even faster than before. There is sadness in that. It is undeniable. And I don't <i>want</i> to deny it. I want to embrace it, hold on to it, because somehow this sadness (a feeling I find captured in the Largo of Dvorak's New World Symphony or in YoYo Ma playing Daniel's Oboe from "The Mission") seems like a most precious part of life. This morning I woke up from a dream that had ended with me crying. I woke to the feeling and sound of myself sobbing. It felt like strange territory to be in, but it felt right at the same time. I know that my soul is re-minding me…of life…of letting go…of death.<br />
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What I have a much harder time yet embracing is the thought of my children in their old age. Particularly the thought that I won't be around for them anymore (I know it's obvious and, perhaps, my dwelling on this is borne of a kind of I-thought-I-will-live-forever grandiosity),. That they will have to do without their father, feels overwhelming. Of course, I can tell myself that they are strong and will manage. But that doesn't quite capture what I feel. Perhaps it is the inevitable thought that, sooner or later, their lives will end as well…that there simply is no stopping that damned finiteness!<br />
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Perhaps this is somewhat similar to what my parents might be feeling about me right now. They're both alive and going strong as far as I know (and as far as they will tell me). But at the same time while they're still interested in my life, partaking in it to some degree, I can also feel a growing sense of distance, a letting go or differentiation that is taking place. Taking in the fullness of their children's lives is simply too much. It can't be done! No parent can do it! And so, we have to let go. Not only our lives are finite, our minds are too. Too small to really comprehend how another person's life really works. Even if it is that of our own children.<br />
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And yet . . .<br />
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As small and finite as our minds are when it comes to <i>comprehending</i> the fullness of another's life, I strongly feel that we have in our hearts an infinite capacity to love others, in spite of our failure to comprehend them. In fact, it might well be that it is our failure to comprehend another person first opens our hearts to loving them. I further believe that this infinite capacity has room for as many people as we encounter in our life-time.<br />
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As I have crossed over into my fifties I have been amazed to notice how this infinite capacity makes itself known within me. I experience it as a deep sense of gratitude for the presence of others. Not just friends, relatives and acquaintances but also strangers, or even people I have never met or seen. I am not alone in this world. That is a fundamentally important thought to me:<br />
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I am not alone, even though I love solitude.<br />
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In my finiteness as a human being on this earth I am equipped with an infinite capacity to love and connect. Through a gesture, the tone of my voice, a direct look into someone else's eyes, or a sincere question love and regard for the other person comes through. When I open myself to this way of connecting to others the energy that comes out of me feels strong and powerfully stable.<br />
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One of the most challenging "geriatric behaviors" I know is that older people get stingy, with money, but especially also with time. We feel strongly that there is not enough time to love. Is it our growing sense of the finiteness of our life that makes us stingy? We often joked about my maternal grandfather, Erich Rauch, that "the last shirt does not have pockets" (i.e., that he would not be able to take his money with him. But perhaps it would be good for us to realize that the last shirt also does not have "time-pockets." We cannot save time to take with us. All we can do, as we live, is to spend time generously. Spending time generously when we know that our resources are finite! That is the true challenge to geriatric behavior. For the time we don't spend with our loved ones--spouses, children, grandchildren, friends, and even strangers--that time that wasn't invested is lost. Those we leave behind when we die cannot inherit the time we didn't spend (with them).<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-16399360895480627022014-10-13T23:05:00.000-06:002014-10-13T23:05:29.129-06:00How Humor Came Into My Life and What It Makes Me Remember: A Requiem For my Step-GrandfatherTo this day I like cartoons and comic-strips. Not all of them, of course. But whether it's Gary Larson, Bill Waterson, or Matt Groening--whether it's the new comic WUMO, Pickles, Non-Sequitur, Zits or Dustin--I love them. <br />
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One of my morning and breakfast rituals is to tear the comic page out of the paper and hand it over to my son, Gabriel. Before him I would do the same for his older brother Jacob who is in Germany now. And before he even takes the first bite from his piece of Nutella toast Gabriel will already have "digested" the first two or three comics of the day. WUMO ist witzig (WUMO is funny) he told me today. I do not read them before he has. It would feel like spoiling his laughter and joy at reading and understanding the joke or punch-line. I like for him to tell me what he thinks is funny; and I like for me to be surprised at what he picks.<br />
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The person who introduced me to comics was my step-grandfather, Kurt Kutscher. He was the man who joined my father's mother, shortly after the war. They never married and the story is that he simply left his family in Hitzacker, a small town not so far from Hamburg. My father never really liked "Kutscher" as he was called by him and his brother, Jens (their mother called him (Kuuuaard"). I knew him as "Opa Jens"--not to be confused with "Opa Volkswagen" my mother's father. My father's brother, Jens, on the other hand seemed to get along beautifully with Kutscher.<br />
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Opa Jens was a short often short-tempered and brash man. He was an unlearned helper at construction sites and had picked up quite a few construction skills over the years. No, he was not very educated, but he provided for my grandmother and her two sons, she had just become a war-widow, and became an indispensable part of the family.<br />
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Opa Jens was a simple man. He always wore the same type of clothes: long-sleeved underwear, a flannel shirt, and a type of thick corduroy pants that were held up with suspenders. He was quite bow-legged and stiff in the knees. In my recollection he moved quite like one would imagine a sailor to move, stiff legs, shuffling a bit, shifting his body from side to side.<br />
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Opa Jens often would take us to the little shop next door, Eckmann's, where he would buy us ice-cream and candy, treats we would rarely get from our parents. And while I often felt that he didn't quite know how to handle me (likely because I cried often), he looked out for me and would frequently introduce me to others as his "Enkelsohn" "Grandson."<br />
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Opa Jens had a shed that was a room in the old animal stall on the property. We all called it "Opas Schuppen." It was the room that years before had housed the chickens. In the back of this room there was a door to another smaller room and then yet another door to an even smaller one. In my mind the mystery of his Schuppen and the building itself got greater with every door through which one could go. What treasures may lie all the way in the back? Opa Jens had built a few work-benches into the biggest room. They were filled with tools and little screw/bolt/nut organizers. On the walls hung his saws, scythes of many shapes and sizes and even the blades for his circular table saw (an instrument of extreme power and noise which he knew how to use perfectly: pushing wood across it only millimeters away from the powerfully spinning blade). He was a man who knew how to use tools!<br />
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Opa Jens had only a few routines. One of them was a weekly trip to the tobacco shop around the corner where he would pick up the weekly stash of cigarettes for him and my grandmother (Ernte 23 for him, Juno ohne Filter for her). On this trip he also would pick up the latest editions of a few weekly comics he liked. Sometimes I would accompany him on these trips. The comics were laid out across the counter, along with other weekly magazines. I remember to this day the peculiar smell that came from the mix of fresh ink and paper with various tobaccos from cigarettes and cigars. Brightly colored comic books they were with names like Bessy (about a young farmer's boy and his collie), Silberpfeil (about a Kiowa chief and his white friend; a very popular coupling in the German imagination), Reno Kid (about a lone cowboy seeking justice but only finding injustice), Lucky Luke (with a permanent cigarette in the corner of his mouth) and Wastl (an unlikely super-hero in a bright yellow suit who looked like a cross between pop-eye, captain Ahab, and Superman).<br />
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Once he had purchased them and we had returned home. He would toss them on the table and begin reading while smoking. I could not touch them until he was done with the first book. And while he began poring over the next one, I got to read the one he had just finished. I could never tell, if he really read them or just looked at the pictures, puzzling together the stories in that way. One thing he never did, but I couldn't wait to do was turn to the back of every comic book where there usually was a small compilation of drawn and written jokes. These jokes were my first introduction to humor. Some of the jokes I remember to this day and some of the punch-lines have even made it into parenting moments with my boys. All three will remember the one were the street sales person calls out "Heisse Wuerstchen, heisse Wuerstchen" (hot sausages) and a passerby stops shakes the sales person's hand says "angenehm, heisse Meyer" (my pleasure, my name is Meyer). It just so happens that the word for "hot" can, in some syntactical constellations, sound like the conjugated form of the German word for "my name is." The joke, of course, being that while the second person's last name is Meyer the first person's last name seems to be "Wuerstchen" (tiny sausage).<br />
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The majority of these comics, by the way, was drawn and written realistically, only Wastl and Lucky Luke were not. So, there was not much humor inside the comic-books themselves. And although I often quite liked the stories I savored the jokes on the back. I would force myself to read through the whole comic-book before I allowed myself to read the jokes.<br />
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When my grandfather was done with the comic-books he would hand them to me to keep. My small three-shelf bookshelf at the time soon carried mostly comic-books. I would often look through them to look for jokes I had forgotten or even over-looked.<br />
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One day, however, I decided that I didn't want the comic-books anymore. To this day I don't know, if I really didn't want them anymore or if I had somehow, somewhere picked up the notion that "at my age" (9-10) one should not read comic-books anymore but rather focus on real books. I just don't remember. I decided to get rid of them and threw them in the garbage.<br />
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A day later Opa Jens found them in the garbage can, confronted first me, then my mother. He was deeply hurt and angry with me. For him seeing those books in the garbage was a slap in the face. And even though I had not for a moment considered this when I threw them out, I understood it immediately when I saw his anger. My mother defended me with a good logical, but shallow, argument: Opa Jens had given them to me; I should be free to do with them as I please. But I could never feel quite good about that argument. And, what was even worse, I missed them! I missed those comic-books! I knew, partly by Opa Jens' anger, that I had made the wrong decision when I threw them out.<br />
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Opa Jens said he would never let me have a comic-book again. I mourned the loss of trust. But slowly his hurt healed. At first I could not read them at all, but after a few months he would let me "borrow" them and later he said I could keep them after all. <br />
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I have to believe that Opa Jens somehow "knew" that the act of throwing out those books as not about him. He "knew" that I had done it perhaps to please others, to appeal to another person(s), to become "older" and more "mature." But like he must often have felt in this life, my decision to dispose of the books had felt to him like I had disposed of him. He had had a hard life, the comic-books were the riches he had bestowed on me (none of which I could have known at that time, but I do now), finding them in the garbage must have struck a chord of worthlessness in him, more powerful than one can imagine.<br />
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But he and I overcame the pain. As I grew and became stronger he often would rely on me to help with manual tasks: lawn-mowing, raking, moving heavy items and later driving him and my grandmother. He never spoke to me about his other family, but I have to believe that his care for my sister and me was his attempt at making up for the hurt he likely created in the family he left behind.Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-13819481686459566602014-10-08T07:34:00.002-06:002014-10-08T07:34:45.125-06:00It's Only The Pain That Hurts . . . Or Is It? On Impulse, Meditation and Discipline<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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"Es ist nur der Schmerz, der wehtut," (it's only the pain that hurts) my mother often said to us. Part joke, part consolation, part teasing this was her strategy to distract us from the real pain we felt after hurting ourselves.<br />
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It is not just the pain that hurts. What often hurts right along with the pain are questions such as why did that happen to me, how could I be so stupid, will I get hurt again, etc? Shame, searching for reasons, fear and many other feelings are brought up by pain. They exacerbate it, they make it stronger, longer lasting, perhaps, and, in many situations, they cause a certain kind of impulse re-action to the source or perceived source of the pain. Often that re-action is a variation of anger. It's impulsively defensive. Our vulnerability scares us and we feel a strong need to protect us from any additional unwanted attacks.<br />
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Impulsive defensiveness can be a problem. It can have us act destructively towards others, objects, and, sometimes, even towards ourselves. To the extent that meditation teaches us to notice our feelings, but not act on them, to sit with the itch, but not scratch, it is also teaching us to be mindful of our impulses, especially the destructive ones. Meditation teaches us a kind of suspicion (lit., looking under) of those impulses. It is saying or recommending that we not follow the impulse.<br />
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But can we really afford living without our impulses? Is it wise to use meditation to reduce our impulsiveness? And if I use meditation to reduce my impulse towards anger, how will it affect my impulse towards love? Is the impulse to wolf down food really a lesser experience than it is to eat mindfully? What would love-making look like without impulses? And I wonder how such an attitude of impulse-suspicion might affect my relationship with another person--a friend, my partner, my children. Can I really dispense with the immediacy of my impulses without jeopardizing the growth of intimacy in my relationships with others? In a recent conversation my somewhat impulsive response to that question was that, pushed to the extreme, meditation would contradict the very idea and materiality of the relationship itself.<br />
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If I need reassurance that the world is real, that the person in front of me really exists I will follow my impulses. My anger, my pain, my love, my laughter--all impulses, i.e., reactions to something--tell me with an amazing mix of speed and depth that the world is truly and materially there. And with the same amazing mix of speed and depth the world also forces its material reality on me. I cannot help feeling it, knowing it.<br />
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If meditation helps me see and gauge my own reactions and feelings towards another person, if, in fact, meditation changes my thought and feeling processes from re-acting to noticing, then it will--to the extend that it succeeds in this--distance me from the world.<br />
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Perhaps meditation helps me see that my feelings and impulses, especially the strong ones, are merely <i>my </i>response to the other person and not what <i>really</i> is. In that view my feelings and impulses could even be seen as mere projections of my own shadow on to the other person…then how do I decide, better even, how do I <i>know</i> that not everything I feel about another isn't simply what I believe and feel about them? How do I know the other really exists? Where does this business about meditation that simultaneously wants to distance me from my impulses toward others and that, perhaps, explains my reactions to others as mere projections…where does meditation leave room for the actual other? Isn't this an almost unethical withdrawal from the other person into the self--unethical because it ultimately denies the reality of the other. It ignores the very existence of the other as other. It is self-absorbed!<br />
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A few examples might help shed light on this: When I was a young boy and teenager getting hurt, being confronted with unexpected pain, could drive me into a rage. I remember the lightning-flash-like rage that coursed through me upon hitting my head on the corner of a cupboard or stooping my toe somewhere. I felt like tearing down, destroying the object that had caused this pain in me. Clearly, that kind of reaction would not be helpful! A more meditative attitude could help me (and did help me, long before I knew anything about meditation) to see that this is not the cupboards fault. As an object it just exists and the problem of pain is just my response to it. I could see that the suddenness of the pain combined with a sense of <i>not having paid attention enough to avoid this pain</i> had caused me to feel ashamed. An attribution error followed. I "concluded" that the object had in fact shamed me! And I was going to destroy it for its impudence! --It's not difficult to see that this is not a helpful way to look at the world. The shame came from inside of me and I needed to learn how to deal with it more constructively. And I did grow out of this impulsive projection of shame onto something/someone else.<br />
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Strangely though, in spite of all that learning, the pain itself that I felt when I hit my head was still there. When I hit my head, there is pain. This pain tells me two things: I exist and so does the cupboard. On top of that the pain functions as a judgment: Something is wrong. Two realities--the reality of my head and the reality of the cupboard--just collided. And I am vulnerable, always vulnerable, to such a collision! And, even though the shame response is not helpful, some kind of response, some kind of impulse is necessary. Perhaps such a response would look like my mom's actual response to her own pain: she would hold her head, dance around from one foot to the other, perhaps jump up a few times and go "arrrghh."<br />
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So, to attribute these reactions to shame only seems to be reductive at the same time that it can be helpful. Reductive because if I pushed it too far it would deny the reality of the other as well as my vulnerability and replace it with a kind of solipsistic experience in which, by way of shame, I cause my own pain, in which I am vulnerable simply because of my own judgments.<br />
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If I replace the cupboard with a person who said something upsetting and painful to me the situation might be different. Of course, there too, shame and feeling shamed could be the cause of my upset, not the other person. If I get upset at what the other is saying it might very well be simply a result of the shame I feel. But does this take into consideration that the other person is real and that he/she might very well have said something, inadvertently or not, that upset me? In that case my very vulnerability becomes a sign for me, a sign that the other is truly there in his or her full existence. In a relationship this vulnerability needs to be expressed frequently. If that doesn't happen the relationship will wither and die. But it doesn't make sense to think that we can express it simply by saying "you know, I am always vulnerable." Even the oft-used phrase "that really hurt my feelings" remains too aloof. While that might be true it is also way too abstract a statement. It is, in a strange way, no longer vulnerable. We express vulnerability in spontaneous and often reactive ways to the other person. The impulse is to say "ouch." Taking such an expression of vulnerability on a course of self-examination first, before we express it to the other person, would make my relationship with the other person artificial and stale. The impulse to say "fuck you" is no less important than is the impulse to say "I love you."<br />
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Perhaps the answer to these questions and reflections can be found in the nature of human beings themselves. As much as might strive to life a non-impulsive life we will never quite get there. Our body and nervous system are set up reactively/impulsively. No discipline in the world will completely circumvent that. Similarly, however, we may strive to life a truly impulsive life and completely follow the flow of our feelings and reactions to the world. Yet, here too, we will soon realize the impossibility of such a "discipline." Our mind is set up in such a way that we will observe the impulse, notice it and, therefore, have already lost the meaning of what it is to be truly impulsive.<br />
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Working on both disciplines--non-impulsive discipline and impulsive discipline--may be worth our while still.<br />
<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-56181896426050039082014-09-10T09:39:00.000-06:002014-10-08T07:49:31.158-06:00What Does Meditation Solve Anyway?<img src="webkit-fake-url://67AB6847-4E12-4DD1-8E14-B00761106E4F/application.pdf" /><br />
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<img src="webkit-fake-url://42A563C5-BCDC-45CF-B707-1515C536AF9F/application.pdf" />About three years ago I learned to meditate. My friend and colleague, John, an experienced meditation and yoga teacher had invited a small group of friends to learn about mindfulness meditation. This type of meditation, briefly summarized, focuses on breathing--the flow of exhaling and inhaling--as a way of concentrating the mind. As the meditating person focuses on their breathing thoughts will come up and present "distractions" from the focus on breathing. The process of emerging thoughts and distractions is often referred to as "monkey-mind" (invoking a monkey jumping from one tree to another without being able to rest). Meditation, i.e., focus on breathing, is meant to help the practitioner notice the thoughts, but not engage with them. As one becomes more experienced with this kind of practice thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. are perceived more like clouds that move across the sky (without the practitioner interfering with them). So far, so good.<br />
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My experience with this kind of practice is overwhelmingly positive. It works! And, I find it relatively easy to sit and engage in this process of concentrating, being distracted and re-concentrating. Sometimes concentration lasts longer, sometimes it seems hardly possible at all. Sometimes my back hurts, or my legs fall asleep, or I have to cough…but the overall experience of meditating is positive. It always calms me, makes me feel "rested" and open. I look forward to doing it, just how I would look forward to going for a walk or a bike-ride or even sitting on our deck. In all these cases I am noticing a flow of things, impressions, etc. I don't engage with them. And, strangely, I'm also not aware of my breathing, or my pace. I'm just walking, just sitting, just pedaling . . . being aware of a full emptiness--or perhaps an empty fullness--in me.<br />
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The big question is what can meditation do for us? More and more research is devoted to this question. Brain scans seem to indicate that meditation changes the way we think and feel (not just when we meditate but also outside of the time we set aside to do so). Meditation seems to help with concentration, sleep, work, love, sex, parenting . . . everything, really, we do as humans on a daily basis. This is no surprise, because all those things are also areas in which we could be distracted. Learning how to concentrate and, especially, learning how to redirect ourselves when we are <i>getting</i> distracted, apparently proves helpful across the board. However, the problem with all these "uses" of meditation is that they turn into something that in the end supports a deeply embedded guilt so pervasive in the American psyche: The guilt about not working enough or not working efficiently enough. Meditation is supposed to make us better workers, students, employees, etc.<br />
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(I am tempted to state the radical opposite: when meditation "works" it will precisely stop of from even paying attention to work and work efficiency.)<br />
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A question that came up yesterday after our monthly group meditation was, if meditation can increase our capacity for compassion. More exactly: How does meditation affect our tendency to distinguish between "good and bad?" And what is the meaning of "neutrality" in this? One thing we all seemed to agree on is that meditation is a "response" to certain states of mind, not, perhaps, so much a preemptive readying of the mind. Although the latter may be a result of the former it is likely more accurate to say that meditation can be a response to emotional states such as anger, grief, sadness than that it would "prevent" such emotional states. As such a response meditation can help the practitioner gain some distance from the direct impact of his emotions and judgments. Experienced meditation practitioners may say that emotions are closely connected to "ego-states" (i.e., they are about <i>my</i> survival, my prevailing in any given situation). Ergo, when we learn how to detach from them, we open ourselves to more than just our own experience. One could say that, in this way, meditation renders the practitioner intrinsically altruistic. This is not the altruism that comes from a rule or commandment. It is an altruism that simply comes from the fact that the meditation practitioner sees and perceives more comprehensively the world in its totality. As this process is going on previous judgments such as "good" and "bad" seem shallow, without depth. Rather than being able to distinguish them sharply the larger view of the world seems to meld them together. We become aware of how much good is underneath something that is bad and vice versa. We may also see how much bad can come out of something good, etc. Good and bad are no longer clearly delineated, they fuse and grow together, and, in the end become "one."<br />
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Assuming that the meditation practitioner really is able to see the world more comprehensively in the way described, how will such a view impact his ability, willingness, desire to act in the world? Can we still love one person and not another? Can we punish one but not the other? What happens, if we find that both should be loved or punished? Are there really victims and victimizers, dominators and those who are dominated? It seems clear to me that, the more we push ourselves in this direction, i.e., the direction of seeing and understanding the world more comprehensively, the less we will feel inclined and able to act in either one or the other direction. What we will see instead is that the pulse of the world is such that good and bad no longer apply. "Bad" and "good" as they occur do so randomly without rhyme or reason. And even though we can always ascertain the "cause" of an event we can also run down that line of causes infinitely without ever reaching an original cause. This means that taking meditation's challenge to open ourselves up to the world will mean, finally, that we must sit still, behold the world and let it do it's thing (which, by the way, it will do anyway, whether we attempt to intervene or not).<br />
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Meditation, in other words, does not <i>solve anything</i>. Rather it <i>dis-solves everything</i>. Even the idea of "seeing the world more comprehensively" still implies a seeing (and therefore a subject (an ego) that sees). Seeing implies perspective. Meditation's effects will dissolve that as well. <br />
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The big question that remains is this: Given that meditation aims at this kind of dissolution of perspectives, given also that the possibility of reaching such a mental state of dissolution is just as faint as the moment itself is fleeting, what will have changed about the way I am in the world upon my return to it, after I have meditated? If the world forces me into perspectives, opinions, ideas, concepts, dynamics, systems and constellations--all the products of ego-activity--how will the experience, if only momentary, of an ego-less state affect my relationship to the infinite multitude of ego-constructs (also known as "the world")?<br />
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The only half-way satisfying answer I can come up with is "compassionate skepticism." In the world (of ego-constructs; which <i>is</i> the "world") meditation holds the practitioner apart from all opinion and perspective while allowing him/her full comprehension of the emotional world that underlies all opinions and perspectives. It is a full comprehension of something that is infinitely complex. Knowing it implies a simultaneous inability to articulate it. Such compassionate skepticism does not <i>not </i>take sides because it wills itself so. Rather it does <i>not</i> take sides because it can do no different. It is unable to inhabit opinion and perspective!<br />
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Looking at meditation as compassionate skepticism also helps us see why it really does not meet the criteria of what we think of as neutrality. One could say that, in a paradoxical way, compassionate skepticism carries within itself an extreme emotional bias--towards everything. While this bias towards everything is certainly not neutrality it is so strong that it "dis-solves" and tears apart. We may therefore have a better understanding of the Buddhist monk who sets himself on fire publicly: it is not an act of "pro-test" as much as it is a way of demonstrating dis-solution, the dissolution of the embodied ego. In quite the same way Jesus' death on the cross, mostly referred to by Christians as his "sacrifice," is really not a sacrifice, i.e., an intentional willful act. Rather it is the dissolution of a body-mind-soul who understands the world comprehensively, compassionately and skeptically. It is the last act at the outer limit of action. No more action is possible.<br />
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Meditation doesn't solve anything. Rather it dis-solves everything. It can afford us a glance into, a taste of this state of dissolution, of what is is like to experience our ego-structures melting away.Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-73451153058349878412014-09-10T09:32:00.002-06:002014-09-10T09:33:33.382-06:00Culture ClashFor a while now I have been considering writing a post about pedestrian crossings--Zebra Stripes as they're referred to in Germany. Perhaps the first thing I knew about traffic rules growing up in Germany was that I had to cross the street only at a place where there "a Zebra Stripe." This is where cars would stop, had to stop. Ergo, this is where, even as a five or six-year old I could safely cross the street. There was a procedure too. The pedestrian had to step up to the stripes, but not into the street, stretch out his right or left arm to indicate their desire to cross. At this point, cars approaching from both sides had to stop at a special white line in front of the stripes. They had to. There was no other way. It was almost as if by magic, then, that I would just step up to the stripes lift my hand (not unlike Moses lifting his arm to part the waters of the Red Sea) and then cross over to the safety of the other side of the street. This was, for the six-year old I was, of course, a wonderful feeling of power. But it was also a beautiful feeling of safety. Seen from the perspective of my height at that time traffic was confusing, anxiety producing and relentless. <br />
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All Zebra Stripes were well-marked and easy to discern for drivers approaching. Usually, two large rectangular signs, a white triangle on a marine-blue background showing a black figure crossing black stripes.<br />
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One sign was usually posted on pole or post right by the stripes. The other was hanging from an arching pole at about the middle of the crossing.<br />
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<img alt="Zebrastreifen Adolf-Scheidt-Platz" border="0" src="http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/verkehr/politik_planung/fussgaenger/sicherheit/pix/zebrastreifen_470.jpg" height="314" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;" width="470" /><br />
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To add to the sense of safety schools positioned crossing guards both at the beginning and end of school. Those guards were indeed guarding the crossing. Equipped with reflective clothing, a cap and a reflective spoon-like tool they would hold this tool out in from of them, stop cars approaching, step into the street and safeguard our passage across.<br />
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Over the years most crossings were outfitted with lit signs, same color. And the rules changed in that, now, approaching cars were supposed to look and slow down for pedestrians approaching the crossing, in order to be ready to stop. Just <i>in case</i> the pedestrian wanted to cross. Some crossings were converted to traffic lights altogether, but a lot of the original crossings remained.<br />
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Along with these rules and laws came something that was almost intuitive: the weakest traffic participant has the right of way. This means that right-of-way comes in this order: Pedestrians-bicycles-motorcycles-cars-trucks. A second almost intuitive understanding: people would correct each other, if someone crossed at a place where there was no Zebra Stripes or no pedestrian traffic light.<br />
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When I turned 18 and started taking driving lessons navigating pedestrian crossings as well as looking out for and being aware of the well-being of pedestrians and cyclists in general were central teaching tenets. In a big city like Hamburg where I grew up this was no small task. Stories circulated about friends who did not pass their driving exam because they had failed to slow down and stop for a pedestrian approaching a crossing.<br />
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Yes, you're right to think that learning this almost seems like a kind of drill, a call to discipline reinforced at many different age-levels, developmental stages, levels of government even. Imagine, then, my surprise and dismay when upon coming to the US, now 30 years ago, I found that Zebra Stripes carry none of the significance they do in Germany (and most of Europe).<br />
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First of all, approaching or even standing and waiting at a pedestrian crossing will not usually cause any driver to stop and let you cross. Sec. 11-1002 b) of the Illinois Vehicle Code seems to address this issue saying<br />
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"No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a moving vehicle which is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard."<br />
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True! But what about the idea of drivers actually looking out for pedestrians who are either waiting or approaching the crossing? Really, what we are teaching drivers with this kind of regulation is that they should pay attention only to what is happening with the parameters of the road itself, not what's happening to either side of the road. And this is, indeed, the impression I get when I stand at a crossing waiting: Most drivers simply do not <i>see</i>! What's worse they also don't "see" the phosphorous yellow signs that mark the crossing, not even to speak of the zebra stripes that mark the path of the crossing.<br />
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Even if we leave out the fact that this means a pedestrian has to wait until there is no traffic in sight before crossing (at times this could be minutes), are we aware of children and older folks who a) are less likely to determine with certainty if crossing the road is actually safe and b) who often are slower or more distracted and therefore are more likely to get hit while crossing the street? Have you ever noticed people wanting to cross, stepping into the street, then returning to the curb, being uncertain, anxious, worried? Or pedestrians who wave drivers to keep going because they feel unsafe crossing when cars actually stop for them? The lack of regard for these weakest traffic participants is infuriating to me. It tells a story about America's underbelly where the beautiful and powerful, the fast and famous, the rich and pompous ones are always the winners, the ones who can go first. I am more likely to be asked why I'm riding my bike on a busy street or suspected of being some kind of weirdo for walking than I would be asked why I don't walk or ride to my office, or at least take public transportation instead of a big SUV. It is still "survival of the fittest" on America's streets; with one paradoxical disclaimer, however: the folks in cars tend to be the least fittest while the walkers and riders, the ones in danger, are the fittest.<br />
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If now we look at part a) of the same section we find that a driver is mandated to stop only when the pedestrian is already half-way across the street! So, if I'm only a third of the way across the car can still pass? What if I am four/sixth (4/6) across? Will the car stop? What about pedestrians like children and elderly who frequently SPEED UP when they're half-way across because they're either scared or really just want to get to the other side?<br />
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Part a) of Sec. 11-1003 telling us that pedestrians always need to give the right of way when they're crossing the street outside the boundary of a crossing is really only stating a mute point. As a pedestrian in America we're always in danger of getting hit. Within or outside of a marked crossing.<br />
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(I have attached both sections of the Illinois Vehicle Code at the end of this post.)<br />
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"Fremde Laender, fremde Sitten." (Foreign Countries, foreign customs) While I have over the past three decades adjusted to these foreign customs (I mostly succeed in noticing but not engaging with my anger/fear when I approach a pedestrian crossing) I am wondering, if we--we as the communities of the USA--need to rethink how we deal with this issue. More and more people are walking, riding their bikes--deciding to leave their car at home (or not even own one). Will the quantity, I wonder, of people changing their transportation habits make a difference in how we treat them. That, too, of course, would be very American: A change takes place because of quantifiable evidence, not because of qualitative insight.<br />
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But what if, instead of responding to this issue when enough people have been killed while walking across a pedestrian crossing, we would pro-actively go about changing this? What if we decided that traffic safety for everyone is important enough as a fundamental principle, a principle we should not stop exploring and refining? Would more people walk, if we actually made it safe? Would more people ride their bikes, if we created a viable network of connected bike-paths, bike-racks, etc.?<br />
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Is it possible, or is it just wishful thinking, that reason could spread in this way? I keep hoping it is.<br />
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Here is the complete wording of the IL. Veh. Code:<br />
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The right of way at crosswalks, extracted from the Illinois Vehicle Code, <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=062500050HCh.+11+Art.+X&ActID=1815&ChapterID=49&SeqStart=115600000&SeqEnd=117200000">Rules of the Road, 625 ILCS 5/11-1002</a><br />
<b>Sec. 11-1002.</b><br />
<b>Pedestrians' right-of-way at crosswalks.</b><br />
<b>(a)</b> When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.<br />
<b>(b)</b> No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a moving vehicle which is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.<br />
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Crossing at other than crosswalks, extracted from the Illinois Vehicle Code, <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=062500050HCh%2E+11+Art%2E+X&ActID=1815&ChapAct=625%A0ILCS%A05%2F&ChapterID=49&ChapterName=VEHICLES&SectionID=59679&SeqStart=107700&SeqEnd=107800&ActName=Illinois+Vehicle+Code%2E">Rules of the Road, 625 ILCS 5/11-1003</a><br />
<b>Sec. 11-1003.</b><br />
<b>Crossing at other than crosswalks.</b><br />
<b>(a)</b> Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.<br />
<b>(b)</b> Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing has been provided shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.<br />
<b>(c)</b> Between adjacent intersections at which traffic-control signals are in operation pedestrians shall not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk.<br />
<b>(d)</b> No pedestrian shall cross a roadway intersection diagonally unless authorized by official traffic-control devices; and, when authorized to cross diagonally, pedestrians shall cross only in accordance with the official traffic-control devices pertaining to such crossing movements.<br />
<b>(e)</b> Pedestrians with disabilities may cross a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk where the intersection is physically inaccessible to them but they shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.<br />
(Source: P.A. 88-685, eff. 1-24-95.)<br />
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<br />Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29541672.post-36895264620441228362014-08-13T09:52:00.000-06:002014-08-13T09:52:03.165-06:00ChangesThis month is a month of two very important changes for me. My eldest son, Noah, will be starting college in just a eight days and my middle son, Jacob, will return to Germany in two days to begin the last segment of high-school (Oberstufe) there. He will graduate in 2016 and then . . ., well, who knows what might happen then.<br />
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People have asked me and I have asked myself "how do you feel about these changes, Martin?" I have to admit I still feel a bit surprised by even the question. Is there something special going on here, something extraordinary that I'm missing? If there is, I am not really feeling it, I think.<br />
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I rationalize:<br />
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Noah's independence has been a long time coming. Throughout high-school he's become increasingly self-sufficient. Never during this time have I checked his school-work or pushed him to study, etc. He has been buying his own clothes, taking care of hair-cutting appointments and, increasingly, in the last two years, cooking for himself and, sometimes, a friend. For a little over a year he's had his own car and while I continue to pay for insurance, registration and major repairs this car has been his responsibility and it has increased his ability to be independent.<br />
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Jacob is going <i>back</i> to Germany. This is his second of three years there and his presence there and absence here has become something I am used to. I mention it casually in conversations with others. His happiness there makes me happy and sometimes even exuberant. While Jacob lives with his grandparents, my parents, meaning with fewer chances to be independent like his older brother, Jacob still aspires to being independent in just the same way. <br />
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It occurs to me that my children's independence makes me happy beyond measure; that it might be something that I have intended and wanted, possibly since the moment they were born. I do not see it as threat to our relationship with each other. Perhaps this is because conversation and dialoguing, rather than rules and obedience, have been such an essential part of how we have spent time together. I suspect that many parents experience this time as so difficult because their children are moving away and out of their sphere of influence and responsibility. More often than not this sphere of influence is made up of rules, chores, curfews, expectations, values, etc. My own experience is that the only viable and lasting sphere of influence between parents and their children is that of dialogue and conversation. This includes, when it's done right, a deep respect for the authority of the child as the dialogue partner of an adult.<br />
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"The authority of the child" . . . What I mean by that is that a child, at any age, has a full sense of him/herself as a complete self. The child may not always have the verbal means to express this, but he /she does have a sense of self, i.e., authority (authos Greek of "self") that, as adults, we should consider inviolable. For many adults this is much harder to comprehend and actualize than one would think. Knowingly or not we look down on children, we think of their emotions as unformed, their concerns and remarks as lacking in experience. Many others confuse the idea of "respect for the authority of the child" with the idea that such respect demands the child always act responsibly (which, of course, means in a way the adult would condone). We forget that being a complete self also includes not always following rules or doing what is expected or reasonable. <br />
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Yes, this way of thinking about our children is fraught with fear and anxiety for many parents. It could come from a culturally induced sense that when our children fail we're responsible, or a more narcissistic view that our children "should" act like we do. So, when our children move out and on into their own lives that fear for many parents turns into something close to panic. We simply don't see how they could survive without us. But they can and most of them will. <br />
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One of my favorite scenes from the tv-show The Simpsons is when Lisa's favorite teacher moves away. She is heart-broken and bids him farewell at the train-station. As he is leaving he gives her a tiny envelope or jar. When Lisa opens it after he's gone she finds in it a note with a single simple sentence written on it: "You are Lisa Simpson." What else could one say about authority, identity and self?<br />
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So, in that vein, want to say to my three sons (and especially to my two eldest sons):<br />
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You are Noah Srajek . . .<br />
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You are Jacob Srajek. . .<br />
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You are Gabriel Srajek . . .Martin Srajekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14812608656986434390noreply@blogger.com0