generational differences | 1eclecticwriter

Posts Tagged ‘generational differences’

Out of the Depths

April 22, 2017

I’ve come to realize there’s a subtle dynamic at work behind my long absences from posting. I first thought it was just a function of the many other demands on my time: an often 50 hour a week job, keeping house in a still new marriage, guaranteeing my own needed “down” time, assuring enough together time with my husband, and looking after our growing collection of animals. I’d thought I was, as I put it once, “too busy living to reflect on that living.” That may be true, but it is now apparent to me that it is not the whole truth. And in this age of alternate facts, blatant lies, and outright perjury, it is vital to me to be unflinchingly and unfailingly truthful.

I follow, very much enjoy, and not coincidentally frequently agree with, the blog Musings From a Tangled Mind. But I cannot conceive of myself ever following that pattern, with daily posts (sometimes twice daily) about anything and everything that arises in the tangle. I have the thoughts, I just can’t imagine myself sharing them.

It’s not just a generational issue, although I’m aware that the age groups beginning, some 20 years younger than I, do have a different ethic around filtering – or rather not filtering – their thoughts. There’s another more subtle dynamic at work that has become clear to me as I live with and beside my husband, and observe both of us in social settings or on the phone. He talks easily, especially in groups of his country mates, and I sit silently except when I have something to offer that puts a different slant on the discussion. He chats freely by phone with friends across the globe, whereas I prefer to text hellos to those not near at hand.

A couple evenings ago I spent over an hour on the phone with an acquaintance, answering her questions about my employer and the way my job is done, to help her decide if she wanted to apply for a similar position in her corner of our large state. My husband was amazed that I was on the phone for so long, commenting that there is only one person, a special quasi-daughter, with whom he has known me to talk on the phone at length. “You must have really wanted her to join the company” was his observation. I do think she’d enjoy the work, but I also want her to have a realistic picture of what it entails.

Back to my point – I have only just begun to peel off layers in order to get to the nub (in the onion, the sweetest part) of why I fall into long blogging silences. Outermost layer is the obvious outer, daily life demands on my time. Next down is what I perceive to be a reluctance to air matters I’ve not thought/felt my way through completely. Below that is recognition of a personal style of reticence somewhat at odds with the “spill your guts and let it all hang out” expectations of social media.

But there are more layers, and I’m aware I have not yet identified them all.

I used to write – usually letters to one special friend – in order to clarify my mind on a topic, or to help me sort out my feelings. What would stay roiled internally could be perceived clearly in the act of explicating it to someone else. Not infrequently those essays were adapted into blog posts as well. I’ve not written, not needed to write, such clarifying documents since having the benefit of a caring and able listening partner in the house with me.

I also used to write to create a sense of connection with others – reaching out from my quiet sideline position to drop comments into the broader stream of national conversation. Now my job puts me into close, often highly personal, interaction with a wide range of other types of people, plus I’m still learning the ways of a spouse from a radically different cultural background. I have all the “connection” anyone could want, and then some.

But I do miss my exchanges with those distant readers who had become friends through our process of commenting on, and knowing something about each other’s lives through, our posts.

Back to the onion… Letters to clarify thinking or feelings meant using writing as a means to better understand my mental and emotional states of being. As I have proceeded deeper into my spiritual life, it has become less salient to me to give attention to those states. I do need to recognize their antics in order to let them go, but I don’t need to dwell on them, seeking understanding. Staying focused on a more purely spiritual state of being allows me to function effectively in my daily life without wasted energy. Insights arise, are recognized and usually shared with my spouse, and then let go rather than enlarged upon in a blog post.

So what has now changed? Perhaps a sort of “coming out the other side” of introspection, to feel at least occasionally like sharing the insights for no other purpose than just to put them “out there”. They may not be profound, nor necessarily of broad interest, certainly they won’t be “well thought out and reasoned”, but I suspect it is nonetheless important to share them. Because whatever arises from Soul and spirit to make its way through our mental and emotional barriers has a deeper meaning for someone, somewhere.

I seem to have a knack, dealing with my clients at work, for reframing or restating their issues in a way that helps them see themselves or their problems differently and more productively or positively. It seems to me to be time to use that same skill in this blog, reframing my occasional insights to have broader-than-just-my-life potential. I’m not sure how it will go – but rely on my readers to let me know. Thank you in advance for your comments.

And to start the new process… I just encouraged my husband to choose a topic for his “argumentative essay” assignment in his English Composition 2 class, that is unique to his experience rather than one – like climate change – that has been widely discussed and reviewed. My reasons included that his proposed Africa-based topic would be more familiar to him and more easily argued, as well as having more accessible and concrete data points to use in constructing his argument. But I also admit to a mischievous interest in helping him demonstrate to his “new diploma clutched tightly in her hand” young teacher that there remains much in this world that she does not know. There is more to skilled writing than following a standard format, and there is vastly more to teaching than setting rigid standards and marking down for every small deviation from manuscript formatting.

Writing, whether an English class essay or a blog post, is communication and its import lies in communicating content: ideas, perspectives, insights, analyses or persuasive arguments.

So does that mean my long silences have indicated that I have nothing to communicate? No, I don’t think so. That I have not been willing to make the effort? Perhaps. That I’ve been resisting fulfilling my role as a channel for spirit? Probably.

If my resistence is the true core of the onion, I know just what to do now. Admit my stubbornness, give over the resistance and just get one with what’s expected from me. So be it. Amen. Baraka Bashad.

May these blessings be.

Tags:balance, communication, generational differences, lessons, My Life, personal style, spiritual development, writing challenges
Posted in life wisdom, the writing experience | 2 Comments »

A Way Forward

January 27, 2017

One of my followers, and fellow bloggers, recently inquired after my well-being, not having seen a post from me in quite some time. I appreciate the concern – am in general okay – but recognize that in subtle ways I have not been myself, or at least not the self who reflects and blogs.

Now that I’m coming out of the blank space, I can see that it was:
1) real (not an alternate fact),
2) somewhat akin to depression,
3) also at least partially rooted in a doctor-ordered change in thyroid treatment,
4) definitely influenced by political ugliness in both the U.S. and Cameroon,
5) full of flashbacks, or recognition of old patterns and feelings that no longer have a place in my current life, and
6) clearly an opportunity to process and release residual mental patterns that do me no good.

I know that some of the threads I pulled from the tangle included a deep anger that our society still values a sorry excuse for a man over an intelligent and accomplished woman – an anger that eased on January 21st.

Another thread was a profound fatigue, best reflected in one of the signs carried on January 21st by an older woman. “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit.” Really, do I have to do this all again, fifty years later?

Yet another thread was a vivid remembrance of my college years, in the infamous sixties, marching in protest against the war in Vietnam and in support of civil rights, dating an African fellow student and later marrying a Black American, living integration on a day to day basis at a time when that marriage was still considered illegal in several southern states. Today we have an Oscar nominee in a new movie about the legal case that ended miscegenation laws, but also an upsurge in attacks on mixed race couples and their children, legitimized by the new administration’s ugly rhetoric.

Yet another thread from the past woven into the present was my own feeling of limitation in what I could say or do to protest domination by values with which I profoundly disagreed. In my youth, that limitation resided in the fact that my father was an officer in the nation’s diplomatic corps and I was made to understand that my conduct could not undermine his position and responsibilities. He had written reports in the mid-1950s, warning of the quagmire into which the U.S. would fall if it followed the course of action then being dictated in southeast Asia. He was ignored, and then told to stick to economic reporting. He was back Stateside, and assigned to an academic setting, when I attended the very first march on Washington to protest the start of the Vietnam War. He warned me to be very careful where I went and what I said, just starting out on my working life, in order not to prematurely curtail my options – and also in order not to bring more censure down on him.

I was not then, and am still not now, a demonstrator in the public crowd sense. I tend rather to make my statement of values in the choices of how I live my daily life. I’ve become comfortable having friends from a variety of backgrounds, working in a helping profession (Care Coordinator for an MCO with Medicaid recipients as my caseload), married now to a Cameroonian studying here, and living in a “rural frontier” community in a state known for its multicultural heritage (Hispanic, Native America, Anglo and with a small but historically significant black population) that has also welcomed many Vietnamese and, lately, Tibetan and Middle Eastern immigrants.

I began to come out of my blank space when I read that my college Swarthmore, in Pennsylvania, has declared itself a sanctuary school. Santa Fe (NM), near my home, has declared itself committed to remaining a sanctuary city. I wear a safety pin on my outer garments ever since I learned of the act as a symbol that others, of whatever type, are safe with me. It seems that I’ve needed time to find my way into the acts that allow me to express my resistance to the present state of the nation. Because I am under constraints now, as I was all those decades ago. Again now, as then, people whom I care about can be harmed if I become too outspoken.

Am I truly having to go through this yet again? How could the nation have regressed so far, so fast?

I have not been writing, and therefore not posting, while I work through my response to what seems to be the undoing of everything I have cared about and supported my entire, many decades long, adult life. Living my values in my small corner of the state is necessary, but has not felt sufficient. I’m signing petitions, but ignoring the constant demand for cash contributions to fund more protests, because I don’t have the cash to donate (if I did, I wouldn’t still be working full time at long past retirement age). I’ve been seeking what would feel like an appropriate expression of my objections to the so-called swamp which, instead of being drained, has been broadened and deepened to cover the entire nation with greed and egotism and petulant childish tantrums and threats to our most fundamental Constitutional freedoms.

Today, when I heard that federal funds will be cut off to any entity that resists the government’s attack on immigrants, I remembered another piece of my past – tax resistance. As a Quaker, I refused to pay for war when I was young. Might I now refuse to pay for a wall, and a registry, and an immigration ban? Might I give my tax money directly to Santa Fe schools that will need it, instead of to the Federal government to spend on taking this country backward a century or more?

I don’t know how this idea will unfold, but it is clear to me that identifying a form of protest congruent with my life experience has been necessary to bring me the rest of the way out of my funk. Now let’s see if it also ends my silence.

Tags:Cameroon, freedom of speech, generational differences, lessons, My Life, New Mexico, Swarthmore College, Vietnam
Posted in Living and Learning | 5 Comments »

Time to Look Back

May 15, 2016

“Work should not be given priority over relationships.”

Quite a challenge for perfectionist, Type A workaholics but a very pertinent statement made by Pastor Katie at Las Vegas’ First Presbyterian Church in the course of her first sermon as the new leader of this congregation. She spoke movingly about the spiritual lessons that come through mundane daily events, such as those surrounding her recent transplant from Colorado to New Mexico.

One of these lessons was about the need we all have, to have persons to whom we can vent our toxic thoughts, persons who will listen and help us clear our spirits without judgement. I recognize this to be my primary role with some of my clients at work. Not as part of my formal job description, which only talks about assisting them to access the services and supports necessary for them to achieve and maintain the maximum of health and quality of life. We include mental health in the range of services we Care Coordinators support, and many of my clients do have counseling or psychotropic medications included in their service plans. They manage the scheduling of their services and their overall health maintenance with little input from me beyond completion of the mandatory assessments which enable them to become eligible for those services.

Some clients, however, cannot accomplish this self-management without an outsider to their daily lives to whom they can express their frustrations, fears, angers or constraints – and they have elected me to be the receptor of these toxic thoughts and feelings. I’m glad when I can provide this service, sometimes also having a suggestion or insight to offer that helps the client move past the blockage. In rare instances, I’ve been used as the means for two people, each with a need, to connect and jointly resolve their separate concerns. I know, when that happens, that I’ve been what I aspire always to be, a “clear channel” for the Divine to work through.

Why is it so much harder to be a similarly clear channel when the issues are not someone else’s but my own?

Why can I “speak truth to power” on behalf of a client but find it so difficult to speak up for myself appropriately in my own relationships and my daily interactions with the various manifestations of power, such as erroneous charges on a bill, or petty tyrants who take pleasure in making me wait unnecessarily before fulfilling their job duties providing service to me?

Is it because I’m female, of “a certain age” and therefore raised before feminism brought out the extent to which women have historically been taught to accept the denial of their right to dignity and respect?
Or is it just my own personality, resultant from an upbringing in a less-than-positive or supportive family?

Does the reason even matter?

I would like to be able to maintain a clarity and simplicity of day-to-day existence such that I can be aware of the spirit flowing through me in service of my own needs, in the same way that I’m able to let it flow through me to serve others. Instead, it seems that ego, or the rough edges of my personality, or both or neither but something else altogether, create blockages and I end up feeling drained and exhausted.

“Too much outflow without enough inflow” my MasterPath teacher would say. Or, as Pastor Katie also shared, not enough quiet time taken to process what is being left behind before new experiences are presented to be taken in. She recognized the need to grieve leaving behind a home where she’d raised her family, and planted iris given her by her mother-in-law.

We have in common that we have both worked in Hospice care, and understand the need to grieve losses, including ones less dire than loss of a loved one to death. A training program I attended for grief counselors emphasized that seemingly small losses can become the triggering event for previously unexpressed pain over the loss of a family member – the man who seems to handle the death of his wife but collapses a year later when the family pet dies, for example. One of the exercises in the workshop required that we attempt to catalogue all the losses we have experienced in our lifetime, to help us recognize things we should give ourselves permission to grieve. Also to help us hear what is implied but not clearly stated when a family member of a deceased client expresses extreme anger at a factually minor loss of respect or status on their job, six months after the death.

Moving from one community to another is a clear transition that will bring up for any sensitive soul – as it did for the pastor – the need to grieve what is being left behind. Other life changes should also be accompanied by time to grieve, but are less likely to be recognized as such. My own fairly extreme change in life pattern is one such, that I did not see as needing to include time for grief, until the pastor’s sermon brought it to my attention. I do appreciate that I am able to hear the suggestion and receive the input just when I need it. I think I’m not being unduly self-congratulatory when I accept that I must be in a fairly “clear” state to be gifted with just the right input at just the right time, even though I felt anything but clear. Indeed, before hearing the sermon, I was angry, feeling disrespected and as though there was no longer room for “me” in my daily life.

All because, as Pastor Katie instructed in her list of lessons learned during her move, work should not be given undue priority over relationships. Including one’s relationship with oneself. I have been so busy trying to meet, to a perfectionist’s standard, the many demands of my job, my clients, my marriage and my daily existence, that I’ve neglected my relationship with me and, more importantly, my relationship with the Divine.

I have been so engaged with my exciting, rewarding but very busy new life that I’ve also not left myself space to process the loss of the old (semi-retired, leisurely and thoughtful) life left behind two years ago. Nor have I been able to properly grieve the termination or the transformation of some relationships from that old life. Pastor Katie will always have the memory of her yard full of blooming iris, but she is no longer able to walk out of her house into that yard. I will always have my memories of frequent and satisfying visits with distant friends, but I can now see those friends only rarely and under different circumstances. The pastor and I each carry an aspect of the past with us into our new lives, but we each also know a sense of loss that deserves attention and time to be grieved.

So much emphasis is placed on the window that opens when a door closes, that people seem to feel guilty paying attention to what’s behind that closed door. We are urged to move on, look forward, appreciate what is being offered and let go of what is being left behind. Good advice, overall, but sometimes too hastily offered.

Moving forward without reviewing and properly saying goodbye to what is past can have the feeling of devaluing that past, and the consequence of leaving us feeling devalued ourselves.

Taking time to dig up a few flowers and bring them along to a new home helps assure that we give ourselves time to say good bye to the life behind that closing door. It is thus that we increase our ability to be clear, and present, with the new experiences coming in through the window, and – for me – it seems that taking time to properly grieve what has been lost is essential to clearing out the toxins that prevent me from achieving a level of clarity of spirit for myself that at least approaches the level which I try to offer to others.

Added benefits – improved health and easier maintenance of desired weight. But that’s a topic for another day.

Autumn Color

Tags:adages, balance, communication, customer service, feminism, generational differences, grief process, Happiness, Las Vegas First Presbyterian Church, lessons, MasterPath, My Life, parental conditioning, Philosophy, self-acceptance, spiritual development, spiritual service
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning | 2 Comments »

Making Friends

April 17, 2016

My husband’s current work schedule is such that I am alone on Friday evenings. I’ve been scheduling late client visits for my own work, or a massage or other self-care activity into those evenings, but this past week my appointment was cancelled at the last minute. I found myself, after shutting down work at 7 PM, in that odd state referred to as being at loose ends. Sort of wanting to get together with someone for conversation and perhaps a drink, sort of not wanting to be put to the effort of driving to town (twenty minutes). And I was made aware that I do not have much of a list of people to call to meet with at short notice. In the end I settled on the couch with a small drink and a good book and read the evening away. Enjoyable, relaxing – but not sociable.

Between chapters I guess I also thought about the nature of friendships, and socializing, and the fact that I’m one of those who has a few close friends (not necessarily close in proximity), and so many personally engaging work interactions that I usually want quiet and silence and solitude at the end of my work day/week. Spending long working hours helping people with their health needs seems to use up my quota of “people contact” tolerance, leaving little to devote to building friendships of the sort that can provide either planned or spontaneously arranged relaxation.

Or maybe it’s just my personal makeup?

Being an only child, raised by parents who preferred not to “be responsible for other people’s children” as my mother expressed it, and consequently not free to invite playmates to my home, I think I lost out on learning how to relate easily, happily, casually with others. I don’t “do” party chitchat, and never know the latest gossip.

It occurs to me that my strong preference for writing – as emails, letters or this blog – rather than talking on the phone comes from the same lack of learning to connect in that way as a young person. It must seem strange to those fully comfortable in the current “connected” environment, that I was in my early twenties before I lived in easy proximity to a telephone. There weren’t home phones in Saigon, and only very few in Paris where my father did have a phone in his study, but it was paid by and used only for his work.

To this day, I very rarely spend more than a few minutes on the phone in conversation. The exceptions are those special times when I talk with a dear friend who lives at some distance from me, Washington (the state, not D.C.), Minnesota, or Singapore for example. Our close personal connection is already established, I can “see” the person I’m speaking with, and am able to make myself ignore the discomfort of hanging onto a phone. (Don’t say to put the phone on speaker – my conversation is not for all to hear).

A preference for writing over talking should not be taken to mean I do not enjoy dialog. On the contrary, my close friends know that I take great delight in a lively discussion. One of my clients, an elderly gentleman living in a tiny hamlet in the rural “frontier” of New Mexico, saves up news tidbits from his TV watching, that he hopes will “get me going” on a social or political topic. He’s been known to be intentionally provoking, most often when he has also been shorted on good conversation. We agree more often than not, but both enjoy dissecting the broader implications of some current event. He is fighting cancer now – seemingly successfully – and during a recent celebration of a “cancer undetectable” medical report, he humbled me with his comment that he wasn’t ready yet to leave our debate dates.

One of the measures of self-acceptance is purported to be the ability to be comfortable with one’s one company. Achieving that status does not, apparently, confer freedom from self-questioning, at least at the “I wonder what/why/if” level. I’ve not just spent time alone, but have traveled, eaten in restaurants, gone to night clubs, to the theater, and camping with only myself for company, enjoying all those activities as readily as I have savored them while sharing them with others. My evening with a glass and a book was no less satisfying than it would have been in the company of a friend. I do wonder what would have to change, for me to have a circle of people whom I could have called to share the evening with me?

I’m not one to say it’s too late to change – especially not with the huge alterations to my personal life that have occurred in the past few years. I do question, in the specific case of my social interaction patterns, whether I’m sufficiently motivated to change. I’ve tried, at times in the past, to participate more readily in casual social events and achieved some modest success, measured not just by people coming out at my invitation but by receiving invitations to join them on short notice for coffee, or lunch, or to go to a party. Those periods didn’t last, largely I must admit, because I don’t fundamentally enjoy what feels to me to be superficial chitchat. And yes, I am aware that my lack of enjoyment is recognized.

“You’re too intense (substitute intelligent, intimidating, independent) for most people” is the feedback I get.

With Popeye, “I yam what I yam”, and it’s okay.

Which doesn’t prevent me from wondering at times what it would be like to be someone different, at least in the area of socializing. Perhaps I’ll find that out in my next lifetime? Meanwhile, I have a good book to get back to reading, a stack piled on the shelf waiting for me when this one is done, and an amazingly compatible partner due home in just a few minutes.

Tags:communication, generational differences, Happiness, My Life, parental conditioning, self-acceptance
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning | 6 Comments »

Returning to Reading

November 15, 2015

I’ve started reading again.
Or, more accurately, I’ve resumed reading for pleasure at what used to be my normal rate of 2-3 books a week. For most of the past two years, until a couple weeks ago, I haven’t achieved more than two books a month. Knowing the why of the drop off did not make the dearth of reading any more acceptable to my impatient mind. It’s certainly mind that is now celebrating evenings spent on the couch with a book as a return to “normal”.

Mind had best not get too comfortable with this normal, as it’s a new one, with frequent interruptions to discuss medical terminology questions with my husband and sister-in-law as they work on their respective anatomy and pharmacology studies. I had better not get too comfortable with this new normal either, since it derives primarily from a lessening of my work caseload, and I don’t trust that this easing will endure. It should – my client list is now, after two years of numbers circling ninety, reduced to where it is “supposed” to be, around sixty-five. That’s a full third reduction, bringing my work week down from 60 hours to 45 and freeing time to read for relaxation.

In this past week I’ve been with Rei Shimura back to Japan, and accompanying an itinerant weaver to solve a string of murders in a Shaker community. It’s pleasant to go traveling again, without the stress of packing, driving (I do so much of that for my daily work) and sleeping away from loved ones, in seldom fully comfortable and always unfamiliar beds.

Being markedly less engaged with books these past eighteen months has made me noticeably more sensitive to them now that I’ve returned my attention to reading. In particular, I’m aware of the too frequent typos, words missed out of sentences and similar flaws of production which seem to be a different type of new normal for print publications. Or is this perhaps the new normal for the comparatively inexpensive, remaindered reprints available from discount supply houses, where I frequently shop?

I wish I could afford the $25-30 per book of a bookstore hard cover, but I can’t. I feed my … I started to say addiction to reading, but maybe it’s no longer an addiction?… pleasant habit of reading with acquisitions from second hand stores, and from remaindered and discount house catalogs. Books from these catalogs, in particular, seem to contain frequent composition errors. Sloppy workmanship? Or the results of computer-based typesetting that doesn’t recognize when a word is missing, or a cognate replaces the word that should be in the sentence.

I don’t read e-books. I spend too much time already in front of a computer screen. So I don’t know if e-books are similarly flawed in composition and construction. And I’m not sure whether to hope they are, or that they are not. If they are, then an entire profession that once prided itself on accuracy has fallen into slackness and error. If e-books are error free, then it would seem that a serious disregard for paper books is being made manifest by compositors who used to be in competition for the most perfect, flawless output.

Is my cranky complainer side showing? Am I sounding like a stereotypical older person ranting that standards are falling and are so far from what they were in my younger days? That complaint has been with us at least as long as the works of Homer and Cicero, and probably longer. I choose not to generalize, merely to observe that in my resumption of reading I am encountering more proof-reader errors than I have noticed before.

I will try not to make my own such errors. Now that reading for pleasure is once again part of my days, perhaps writing posts will also pick up a former pace? Please do call my attention to any proof-reading errors you find. I want to keep my own standards high.

Tags:communication, generational differences, modeling, writing challenges
Posted in Living and Learning, technology, the writing experience | 1 Comment »

Not One Ding-a-ling

July 26, 2015

One of the blogs I follow, Musings from a Tangled Mind, is occasionally a rant against some stupidity of daily life – usually on a subject I agree deserves a tongue lashing. I’ve not seen, there, my target today.

I am rarely able to nap during the day, no matter how tired I feel. This afternoon, I succeeded to drop off – and scarcely half an hour later my phone rang with an automated call from Walgreen’s Pharmacy, a reminder about refilling a prescription that:
1) doesn’t have refills on it, and
2) I never signed up to have reminders about.

I grew up in an environment which functioned largely without telephones at all. My recollection is that we were on a multi-party line in Washington DC, before my father entered the Foreign Service and we decamped to Vietnam in 1956. There – and later in Paris – there was a phone in our home, but it was solely for my parents and for official use only. I did occasionally use the Paris phone to arrange to meet a friend, but tying up the line to chat was forbidden, the cost considered prohibitive.

Returned to the U.S. for college, I lived in a dorm with one phone for the entire floor, or pay phones in the lobby for calling home. Again no habit of phone conversation developed. By the time I was out of school, married and living in my own space, the telephone had become a tool for necessary contact and nothing more. Thus, when I moved to New Mexico and into an area with no phone lines available, I was not disconcerted. In the one instance when my parents urgently needed to get hold of me, they had me located by the State Police, who came out to my house to deliver the message that I needed to call back East.

With time, I moved to a more developed area and met phone lines in place. I was still on a system that was small enough for us to give out our numbers with only 5 digits (Santa Fe was either 982 or 983 prefix, so my phone number was 33474, although one had to dial the initial 98). By the time I moved to the Las Vegas area, Santa Fe had 988 and 471 also in place, but Las Vegas had only 425 or 454. Five digit numbers remained the norm until the late 1990s.

Over the past 15 years the entire state has “upgraded” its land lines and sprouted a plethora of different cell company connections. In order to have service in my “second” house (the land line only goes to the main dwelling) I’ve signed up for T-Mobile, upgraded to a “smart” phone and now get calls via WiFi.

None of which justifies Walgreen’s disrupting my nap with an automated call to alert me it is time to refill a prescription!

Especially when I did NOT ask for that service. In fact, I’ve opted out of it twice already. Apparently, each time I fill a new prescription, the refill reminder is set for thirty days out, no matter what the content of the prescription says – and each new prescription requires a new opt out.

Lesson learned – no new prescriptions will be filled at Walgreen’s unless/until their system allows me to put a block on unwanted calls.

Which brings me to the true topic of this rant – the presumption that we all want/need to be connected all the time, that if we miss a call we are expected to return it immediately, that it is okay to repeatedly troll for business even after being told not to call again and even when the number dialed is on a national do not call list. We have to opt out of everything we don’t want, rather than being invited in and allowed to not participate unless we request inclusion.

A similar presumption underlies online tracking of preferences, of sites visited, etc. so that “ads can be tailored to meet your needs.” Except that no ad ever meets my needs, because I’ve learned to ignore them. They are an intrusion into my time and space, or into my spam folder. I do not have TV reception and, though I do miss the occasional drama series and a few PBS programs, the amount of advertising I thus avoid more than balances the small amount of worthwhile content that I forgo.

At what point did we cease of be people with brains, worthy of respect and entitled to be asked our preferences? How did I miss the turning point where personal space, rights to solitude and to privacy disappeared from everyday interactions?

I am not so “old fashioned” as to devalue the benefits of having a cell phone. I do appreciate being able to text and to email and reach out to people more quickly and easily than when I had to walk from my home in Lamy to the train depot to make that call to my parents, using the only pay phone in the village. I am so old fashioned as to mind that, with the advent of easy connection, has come a culture of disregard of – nay disrespect for – those who are on the other end of the connection.

Yes I realize there were people, shortly after Mr. Bell made his revolutionary invention, who said then what I’m saying now. They had it right, to some extent. Cultural norms do need to be adapted to changes in technology but not to the point of eliminating basic respect for individuals’ privacy and control of their home environments.

Just because you want to contact me does not mean I am obliged to be available to you!

There is a time and a place for communication. During church service in the morning, and again when I am napping on a Sunday afternoon is neither the time nor the place for Walgreen’s to pester me about a prescription refill for which I am not even eligible!

What’s that old parting line after a job interview? Don’t call us, we’ll call you?

If I want information I’ll seek it out. If I need a refill I’ll ask for it. If I intend to purchase an item, I’ll find the stores or the online sites with the items I’m interested in. I know my own mind, what I want and when I want it.

If you want my business, show me the simple respect of allowing me to initiate the contact, and to choose what reminders or new information I desire.

Tags:communication, customer service, generational differences, internet connections, lessons, Musings from a Tangled Mind, My Life, New Mexico, technology, Walgreen's
Posted in humor, life wisdom, Living and Learning, technology | 3 Comments »

New Habits

March 19, 2015

A friend from a very long time ago recently got in touch with me (plus side of online social networks) and we’ve begun to “catch up” on what our life paths have been. She has an advantage over me (or is it the other way around?) in that she’s been following this blog and therefore knows a bit about what causes me to reflect – and to write. She has already given me a different view of my early self – or perhaps more accurately, she has given me an added perspective on that earlier self.

When we knew each other, we were each married – marriages that, for different reasons, did not last. Each of us carried that married name forward, I suspect also for quite different reasons. In my case, I have always said that I became the person I think of myself as being while I was in that marriage, and thanks to the qualities of care and understanding provided me by that husband. I honored those qualities by keeping his surname as my own. My friend has just shared that she experienced some of those same qualities in her friendship with my husband – so strongly that he has remained in her mind over all these years. He is no longer alive, but I’m certain that, wherever it is now, his Soul hears and enjoys her appreciation of him.

My present husband just had a reading assignment which he asked me to review, dealing with the relationship between mothers and daughters. The essay addressed the widely experienced stress that arises between teenage girls and their mothers, as each finds fault with the other. A photo in the paper to announce winning of an important career prize does not produce admiration; instead the mother comments that her daughter should have gotten a haircut before the award ceremony – her bangs are too long. “She never has anything positive to say about me” is the daughter’s criticism of her mother.

Both are correct and both are in error. As the essay suggests, often the motivation for the criticism is loving concern. Unfortunately, only the criticism is heard, not the motivation behind it. Sensitive to being flawed ourselves, we want those we love to be perfect, but in our efforts to perfect them, we accentuate their flaws. It takes an extraordinary sensitivity to resist this urge to perfect, and instead to accept people as they are. But to do so is a lesson well worth learning, not just for improved mother-daughter relationships, but for more rewarding friendships, and happier marriages also.

Looking at how challenging I’m finding it to accept doing less than what I consider to be an adequate performance at my job, I can trace my tendency to self-criticism directly back to my early teens, and my own deeply inculcated negative judgments arising from my mother’s (loving?) intention to perfect me. The fact that my supervisor is more than pleased with my performance does not enter into my self-analysis. Rather, I recognize that accepting others as they are is easier than accepting myself as I am. There remains a deeply embedded need to improve to the point that I will finally hear from a parent that I’ve done well, succeeded, met expectations. Not possible, given that both of my parents are long gone from this world, neither of them having ever said those soothing or supportive words.

I do know, in other ways, that my father was proud of me. And I understand, with an adult’s hindsight, that my mother was not emotionally healthy enough to be other than she was – fear driven to the point of psychosis. Knowing these truths helps – but knowing does not immediately translate to feeling whole, nor healed. The habit of self-criticism is deeply embedded. The habit of self-acceptance must be acquired by diligent, persistent effort.

Fortunately, friends old and new bring their perceptions and appreciation into my process of converting from the old habit to the new one. I may never feel fully at ease with what I do not complete in my 50-60 hour work weeks, but I am learning to set the undone aside without guilt. What needs to be done is getting done, and what needs my attention outside of work is receiving that attention in a timely manner. I do not ask more than that of others – now I’m learning to not ask more than that of myself.

Hmmm… What will I do with the freed-up energy that I have been throwing away on self-judgment?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that I have learned the patience to wait and see what the Divine has planned. I’m delighted that we do not have to have answers, only be open to asking questions which allow answers to present themselves.

Life is so much easier, lived that way.

Impartial Light

Tags:balance, generational differences, lessons, My Life, parental conditioning, self-acceptance, spiritual development
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning | 4 Comments »

There but for the Grace…

March 7, 2015

Several of the blogs I follow have focused of late on technology – whether changing TV viewing habits because of a change in connectivity or lamenting the lost memory of a lost phone. And then there’s my friend who told his story of being at the gathering following a family funeral, and wanting to talk to some of the younger generation he had not been able to know, only to observe them quite incapable of simple conversation. They instead spent their time with busy thumbs, texting.

Meanwhile, I’ve been helping my new sister-in-law in Cameroon with an on-line course she is taking, by summarizing some of the articles on technology in the classroom that are related to her thesis topic. One of them refers to the physical changes in brain development which can be observed when children engage in a lot of “screen” time (TV and computers). Another addresses psychological issues which arise for children who, already uncomfortable with social interactions, choose to spend their time on social media sites and substitute Net “friends” for real life ones. A third spoke of the addictive nature of our relationship with computers and technological tools.

My first thought regarding the brain changes was – aha, perhaps that’s why there appears to be so much more ADHD Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) in children these days. More on that later. My second thought was of the boys at the funeral dinner, unable to have a conversation with my friend. My third, albeit more reluctant, thought was of my own changes in behavior noted since I acquired a “smart” phone about six months ago. Also, I see that I am affected by the fact that I work from home and am much more reliant than ever before on email for communicating with my coworkers.

I remember sitting in my office working on projects, able to have a receptionist answer my calls and a “do not disturb” sign on my door. In theory I can do the same now, by letting the phone take messages and resolutely not checking email… but it is remarkably hard to do that. Something about the isolation of working from a home office makes being available and responsive by phone and email seem more critical. Do I think my supervisor or manager will doubt my commitment to work, if she cannot get to me promptly? I know with my rational faculty that that’s not the case… but what about my emotional mind?

Pre-smartphone, I checked personal email only at the end of the day. Now I check it in ‘down’ moments throughout the day, moments that used to be spent on…? Thinking, reflecting, just being still within myself. Now it takes a conscious act of will to not pull the phone out in those small gaps in my busy day. I’m aware that I’ve lost an important sense of pacing, of quiet time. I’ve already begun making a conscious effort to ignore the existence of the ever-connected-to-the-Net phone, even to turn it off on occasion.

Given that I grew up without even a land line phone, and that I’ve lived for periods of my adult life without one, I am vividly aware of how one’s perspective changes with changes in connectivity. Not having a means to know when a partner’s change of plans would mean he would be 2-3 or more hours later coming home than expected was, once, just part of my mind set. I would not start to worry unless the time delay became excessive – 5 hours or more. Contrast that with now, when I may find myself feeling irritated if my call to my husband goes to voice mail, even though he is very good about replying to the indication of a missed call. I don’t actually need (or want?) instant connectivity, but I do see how addictive the concept can be.

Which brings me back around to hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. If brains are altered by computer interaction, are they also altered by the immediacy of response inherent to those interactions? Might this alteration account for the impatience, the jumping of attention from item to item that are the descriptors of ADHD?
Meditation is known to slow heart rate, improve concentration and provide a number of other health benefits. Meditation is the polar opposite of the connectivity inherent in current technology. It is a wise and talented individual who can achieve a balance between these two diverse tendencies.

Pre-smartphone, I read in the evenings. Lately I’ve been playing Scrabble against the computer, or Free Cell instead. I was shocked to realize recently that a lifelong habit of consuming at least a novel a week had come to a near standstill, replaced by engagement with games. My Scrabble skills have certainly improved, as I consistently beat the computer even when it is set on advanced or hard mode. Do I want to so far outstrip my Scrabble playing friends, that I’m not longer fun to engage with?

Fortunately my regular spiritual practice involves contemplation, so that I’m not totally bereft of the quiet, the relaxed mind, the disengaged and soothing energies which not only heal but inform, infuse with love and acceptance, and enable me to function in my daily life. Not so fortunately, I recognize that even well-armed with knowledge of the addictiveness of technological connectivity, I can succumb to that addiction. With lots of good reasons justifying my behavior, of course.

Except that nothing justifies losing the sense of peace and flow, the ease and pleasure of the only connection necessary for all others to be fulfilled. So I am taking back my quiet moments in the day, setting a schedule for checking work emails, and turning off the phone when I want to read. And I am thanking my Master for the insight, the instruction and the rescue, which seems to have come barely in time to save me from the pain and physical repercussions of severe addiction. All things in their proper time and place. By His Grace.

Wisdom of my Teacher

Tags:ADHD, Cameroon, generational differences, internet connections, MasterPath, reading, Scrabble, smartphones, spiritual development
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning, technology | 3 Comments »

Forward, or Back?

November 9, 2014

A younger friend is in the planning stages of a surprise event for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. She asked me, since I am of an age with those parents, to mention some of the significant events of “the sixties.” Her intention is to link her parents’ years of marriage to marker events they would have lived through.

I’ve met her parents, and know them to be of a different world view than mine, more conservative and less traveled, but teachers and caring, engaged individuals. I tried to name events that might have personal meaning to them, not just the by-now-made-trite-by-media images of hippies, Woodstock, anti-war protests, long hair and drugs. Together, my friend and I came up with a list of singers, TV shows, commercial logos and slogans, hair and clothing trends, popular movie stars, and also specific political events of the sixties that have shaped the succeeding years.

One of the personal experiences I shared was of being made to turn in my credit cards, acquired as a single woman, when I married a man who did not have a credit record. I was not considered, legally, enough of a person in my own right to have a credit rating separate from that of my husband of the time. To this day, I have never again shopped in the stores that so denigrated me, nor held a credit card from the company that made me turn mine in. Looking back to that event, I would say society has progressed somewhat as regards the status of women.

Looking forward, since the election, to probable legislation and legal decisions affecting woman, I regretfully believe that we are a very short step away from a return to the non-person-hood of women reflected in my credit experience.

Eric Francis, of PlanetWaves, has just posted an amusing and pointed essay about laws requiring men to have permission from two doctors, attesting to the man’s intent to create life because he has access to a fertile egg, before that man may ejaculate (see his essay through Facebook or at http://members.planetwaves.net/arizona-legislature-passes-anti-onanism-law-requiring-medical-approval-for-ejacluation-men-outraged).

I did not begin this essay with the intent to rant on how close we have come to full circle, from the constraints on women in the early sixties, to those being imposed again now. I intended to write about the differences between people who tend to look forward to what comes next in their lives, and those who tend to look back at what used to exist in those lives. The forward lookers generally seem happier, more open, more accepting people. The backward lookers strike me most often as sad, missing what has passed, finding little or no pleasure in their daily experience – and urgently trying to drag everyone else down into their own depression and regret.

I work with people who are in pain, who are sick, who have lost much of their independence and freedom to choose to walk down the driveway to the mailbox, or to dress themselves without help, or to cook a meal. One woman has been on dialysis for ten years, and recently spent nine months in a nursing home after she fell and broke a hip. She is a forward looker: an artist, a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to carry on the family tradition of pottery-making, while she herself explores new forms in clay.

A few days ago, I met with a couple who are split – the husband is totally focused backward on all that, due to severe pain, he can no longer do. He won’t have someone come to build an entrance ramp to his house because “people will see that he, who worked construction all his life, is no longer capable of this project.” His wife also speaks mostly of how she raised six children and ran a household while holding down a job, of how limited she is now, and dependent on her youngest son to cook meals and clean the house.

Until her husband leaves the room.

Then she shares how much she enjoyed a five day visit to a grown daughter’s home, even though she had the same mobility limitations on vacation as she does at home. She would be a forward looker, were she not being dragged inexorably down into negativity and backward-looking regret by her husband.

It would be easy, just now, for me to lament the direction our government seems to be taking, and to look backward to even ten years ago, when we were celebrating new accomplishments by women and expecting ever more equity in the workplace. But looking backward means, to me, having little hope, few aspirations, no sense of adventure and no courage. It may not be pleasant looking toward what I expect to emerge from Congress and the Supreme Court over the next few years. It is nonetheless necessary to do so, and to do so with determination not to be overwhelmed.

I recommend the use of inner resources, inner resolve, and a conviction that there is merit to the saying that “it is always darkest before the dawn.” Given how unexpectedly a new love relationship, a new purpose and a new energy arrived in my own life, I must attest to a certainty that “anything is possible” if one remains focused on looking forward, open to possibilities, and expecting the best.

Expecting the best is one of the attitudes listed on the Alternatives to Violence Project mandala – a circle with Transforming Power at its center; caring for self and others, respect for self and others, seeking a peaceful solution and expecting the best in a surrounding ring; and an assortment of techniques to be used in an outer ring – techniques like humor, patience, courtesy, surprise and caring. That ring of techniques keeps expanding, as workshops held in prisons across the country, and in tension-filled countries around the world, teach people how to find non-violent solutions to conflicts. The techniques are equally effective for maintaining a positive focus in one’s own life, and for bringing one back into awareness of the strength of spirit we all possess.

The backward-lookers may have won some recent political elections – they will NOT run my life. Please don’t let them run yours!

Tags:adages, Alternatives to Violence Project, Astrologer Eric Francis, generational differences, My Life, PlanetWaves
Posted in life wisdom, Living and Learning | 2 Comments »

Koki

July 1, 2014

Back in the day, when I was attending Swarthmore College in the Philadelphia suburbs that “City of Brotherly Love” held an International Festival featuring informational displays from the 70 some countries of origin of the city’s population. On a lower level of the convention area, each of the countries also had a food booth. One could buy tickets at the entrance and then spend them purchasing a world’s worth of main dishes and “afters” treats, far more than any one person could sample in multiple sittings.

Together with two classmates, I visited the festival with an open mind and an empty stomach. Knowing we could not try everything, my friends and I settled on a category of food – “a filling with some sort of pastry wrapping” – and went from table to table dividing three ways our sampling of whatever each country offered that fit our definition. We found a food to fit the category at every table except the Russian one. There we had to accept a slice of an open-topped fish pie as the closest option to our category. The ladies serving us explained that they were unable to make perogi (if you’re Jewish you’d call them kreplach) properly in the limited cooking space, and so did not try to do it. We ate Mexican tamales, German meat dumplings, French beignets, Chinese eggrolls, Vietnamese vegetable rolls, Greek spanakopita and a host of other tasty treats, some sweet, many savory, all enhanced with a wide variety of spices.

I am certain, even many years later, that we did not encounter what my Cameroonians friends call koki (pronounced like the French coquilles but nothing whatsoever akin as a food). I’m certain, because I helped to prepare, and was taught how to make, koki yesterday. The French homophone is a seafood. The Cameroonian dish would fit within my Philadelphia definition.

Koki begins with an arduous process of rolling black eyed peas between the palms, to loosen and remove the skin holding together the two halves of the dry pea. The halves are then dropped into a basin of water, and allowed to soak overnight. Any flakes of remaining skin float to the top to be skimmed off. The soaked peas are blended together with a small amount of water, onion and habanero peppers making a thin paste. Meanwhile fresh taro leaves are cut into strips, and large plantain banana leaves are soaked to make them flexible. The taro strips are folded into the pea batter, and all of it is poured onto the banana leaves which have been shaped into a bowl. Red palm oil which has been heated, so it will pour easily, is stirred into the packet which is then tied up and placed into a tall pot to be boiled and steamed for at least an hour, long enough to assure that the taro leaves are cooked to softness.

The koki is usually served with boiled, ripe plantain so that the sweetness of the banana contrasts delightfully with the hot spicy taste of the koki. When I commented that koki has the texture of a tamale, I was told that it can be made, like tamales, with a corn-based meal instead of the pureed beans.

I shared with my co-cooks an account of my first experience making tamales – the group of 6 of us sitting around a table, picking up soaked corn husks, plastering them with masa (corn meal paste) on top of which we placed a scoop of pulled pork cooked down to softness in red chile, before rolling the husks and tying off both ends with a shred of corn husk. Over the course of a couple hours, the six of us made more than 10 dozen pork tamales and about half again as many that were filled with corn and squash which had been cooked with fresh green chile. All the tamales were then steamed, in batches, in a huge kettle.

Unlike koki, tamales tolerate being frozen for later use. Preparation of both foods by traditional methods is time-consuming, an opportunity for the cooks (almost always women) to socialize and catch up on family news or, in my case yesterday, to learn by doing in the time-honored way that traditions are passed down from generation to generation.

My experience yesterday was a sort of time reversal, since the woman teaching me – Flora – is much younger than I am. She commented that few of her friends still prepare the peas in the traditional way, and that she would not expect me to spend the necessary time doing so in future. She offered to provide me with peas ready to be ground for the koki. I deeply appreciate the offer, knowing just how much time is involved in peeling the peas. In a corner of my being, however, I feel that I’m betraying a tradition if I don’t complete the entire process, start to finish, as it has been taught over generations.

I have my own special recipes, passed down from grandparents, which I occasionally prepare for guests. None fit my Philadelphia definition – until now. Food often unites us. Think families around a supper table, neighbors gathering for a pot luck, or a community putting together a meal for thousands, as happens each year on Labor Day weekend, when the small village of Wagon Mound, NM celebrates Bean Day. With the addition of koki to my repertoire of traditionally prepared meals, I will be uniting western Africa with the Middle East, eastern Europe and the western United States, adding to and carrying on long-established culinary traditions.

What a delightful, tasty responsibility!

Tags:Cameroon, food traditions, generational differences, kreplach, multi-cultural foods, My Life, perogi, Philadelphia, tamales, women's work
Posted in Living and Learning | 2 Comments »

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