2014 - Happy New Year!

I can't say I'm sad about seeing the end of 2013. For one, how was a year that ended in 13 ever going to be a good one for anybody? So we were all on the back foot right from the start. Talk about a year with an original sin of its own. I never even liked the look of it - 2013. It looks clumsy. 2014 looks kind of sparkly. Please don't ask me to explain that.

Recently the reality of my mortality has rudely thrust itself into my every waking moment. Help, Help! Stop the roller-coaster! has been my mantra lately. But a few days ago I decided to let that old roller coaster whip along at top speed for two and half more days without any resistance from me. Whooeee, what a feeling of freedom! A niggly thought flickered in my brain for a minute - what if I only have two and half days left and I've just wished them away? Then I thought, so what? I'd spend the next two and half days letting go.

Ever the optimist. On a more serious note, as 2014 approaches I’ve been thinking of what I want to carry forward with me as I launch with the rest of the world into a new year.

Be accountable for what’s in my heart. Respect me first before I think of trying to respect anybody else. Without the former the latter isn’t real. Charity begins at home. Rescuing people at cost to myself isn’t charity, it’s control and it’s not going to get me into heaven. It isn’t going to get them into heaven either. 

Know that I count just as much as the next person. My inner authority belongs to me, not to anybody else. I’m the one who can and must decide how important I am. If I wait for people to give me permission to be important, or to speak, or to be noticed I’ll never get it because the kind of people who require me to ask for their permission are the ones who have no intention of giving it. Duh.

On that note, if for some reason – which no doubt will reveal itself in hindsight to be sheer madness - I’m hanging out with people who have me low on their priority list, focus on me instead of them, and think long and hard about what I’m doing there in the first place. If I love them, staying silent and hurt and resentful will drive me crazy, so it’s better to tell them. They may dismiss me or judge me, and that’s going to hurt like hell, but at least I will have tried, and given us a chance and I'll know the reality. Which is better than not trying, and living with the doubt for the rest of my life, or living on a fantasy. Better to get real!

I educate people how to treat me. If I don’t notice myself they don’t notice me either. If they mistreat or dismiss me, yes it’s because that’s what they do and it’s revolting, but it’s also because I let them, and therefore it's what I do to myself. So I can stop letting them. Nine times out of ten they don't have a gun to my head. I hold that gun. Weird, uncomfortable to face. But true.

Use my judgement all the time. Pay attention to my gut. These are very cool organic tools for navigating life. It doesn’t take energy to keep them active; it takes energy to put them to sleep.

It’s okay to say sorry if I’ve done something to somebody that I know wasn’t okay, no matter how long ago it was. It’s not such a good idea to hang out with people who refuse to say sorry when they’ve done something to me that wasn’t okay. And also, it’s a good idea to watch out for a part of me that wants to say sorry when I’ve stood up for myself and they’ve got mad, and I’m scared of getting punished. If I buckle I entrench my powerlessness in my mind and in theirs. Then I’m a goner.
People are allowed to be who they are and where they are in their lives. If who they are and where they are means that I don’t get the really important core stuff I need in a relationship, it’s okay to let them be and give myself permission to seek it elsewhere.

Gotta claim my turf. I’m allowed to claim my turf. It’s mine, it’s got my name on it. I hold the title deed.

It's okay to speak up if I want to, to say my truth. It doesn’t matter if I don’t articulate it perfectly because it’s not necessarily the content of what I say that matters, it’s that I value myself enough to know that I count and that if I need to express, I can, I have the right. I may say it clumsily; people might laugh at me or shout me down, which may hurt, but it doesn’t hurt as much as never opening my mouth.

Why give respect to people who have proved they don’t deserve it? I don’t have to let myself be bullied. And if I am being pushed around, I must reach out for friends who’ll rally behind me and with me and help me stand up to those bullies.

Finally, it’s a good thing to somehow find a way to let the wisdom of life filter in and also give myself permission to not be perfect; to just be, and make big mistakes, really screw up sometimes. To want nice, totally material things, to have fun, to love and sometimes hate, to laugh and cry, to be scared, to be held, to stretch my wings in every which way. No need to live in a nunnery.

Happy 2014! May it bring many things you want and not just the things you should want!

12 Year-old Commits Suicide Because of Cyber Bullying

Look on the picture above and weep. 12 year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick, after being viciously targeted by cyberbullies for over a year, climbed over a high fence with barbed wire on top, then made her way to the top of a platform at an abandoned cement plant and jumped to her death.

Twelve years old.

It’s easy to want to blame somebody but that won’t bring Rebecca back, or change anything for the next child who gets victimized. Is being victimized right now and contemplating suicide because he or she doesn’t know where to turn, doesn’t believe there’s any safe haven. Can’t really talk to their parents, doesn’t get any support from school. Can’t say anything to friends for fear of being laughed at. Or doesn’t have any friends.

It’s hard enough for adults to understand that when somebody trashes you it’s not a reflection of you; it doesn’t say anything about you at all but it does say a whole lot about them, and none of it is pretty. If adults can’t get their head around that, how on earth can children?

They can’t and they don’t. Rebecca’s mother did everything she could. She knew about the bullying, she was very concerned about it, she closed down Rebecca’s Facebook account, complained to the school where Rebecca was being real-world bullied as well, took away her cellphone for a while.

The school promised to give Rebecca an escort between classes but they never came through. 

Rebecca’s mother moved her to another school. For a while it seemed to work. Relieved from the bullying, she became happier, more relaxed, more like her old self before the bullying started.

But the bullying started again. The day before she killed herself she told her mother she wanted to hurt herself really badly. The next day she changed her ID on a cyber app to That Dead Girl and left her mobile and her books at home. Instead of going to school she went to that abandoned cement plant. Climbed the platform and jumped. And found peace that nobody could take away from her.

Rest in peace, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, beautiful child.

Boiled Frogs and Original Sin

Is it an urban myth/metaphor or a reality? That if you stick a frog in a pot of water and heat the water gradually the frog’s capacity to adapt will be its downfall. Not realizing it’s in danger, it will be boiled to death. Leaving aside the gruesome possibility of this ever having been a real life experiment, it’s not a bad metaphor for adult behaviour. We get stuck in a comfort zone that starts out looking and feeling just fine, and keeps us materially provided for. It requires a whole lot of compromises but they seem small at first and perfectly manageable.  

Some part of us is in protest but we don't hear it. Or if we do, there’s always the future. I’ll just do this for a while then I’ll change and do something really worthwhile. 

The days, weeks, months and years pass. At some level the compromises become increasingly painful and unbearable but instead of listening to the pain and taking it seriously, we say things like It’s not so bad. I shouldn’t complain. I can’t complain. I should be grateful. Don’t worry be happy. Be positive. We feel quite heroic when we do that. Responsible. Accountable. Unselfish. Healthy members of society. 

Healthy? I'm not so sure. Afraid, maybe. Still so controlled by an atavistic fear of having no food and shelter that we can't embrace that our survival requires more than that now. It requires nurturing the heart and soul.  

Growing up Catholic, I rebelled strongly against the idea of original sin. Nobody could explain in any way that sounded remotely intelligent to me. I've come to see that probably our capacity to not listen to the most important part of us is what it's about if you strip it of the moralism. Sin is an archery term, meaning to miss the mark. Original sin is our capacity to miss the mark – which is pretty much what languishing in a comfort zone that doesn’t feed your heart and soul and mind in a balanced way is. Alongside judging those who are least trying to not die the slow crucifying death.

I can’t imagine that boiling frogs was ever a real experiment. Even if some psychopath did decide it would further the understanding of human nature, they would have had to slow-boil hundreds of thousands of frogs to be able to reach any kind of significant conclusion, since one frog doesn’t equal every frog. Just as in a tank of fish the majority will swim round and round in the same direction but a few will swim in the opposite direction, it’s probable that most frogs would boil to death but some would leap out as soon as the water started getting warm.

I doubt there’s a human being who wouldn’t look at those few and believe they were at the forefront of frog-evolution. But when people behave in the same ways as those clever, evolved frogs would if the experiment really happened, our reactions aren’t so simple. 

Some humans are a whole lot more finely tuned than others. They feel what’s happening within themselves, they see what’s happening in others. They register emotions and discomfort far more quickly than many others do. A whole world is visible to them that others are oblivious to. The kind of compromise that others will feel comfortable with for a while - and regret most horribly later on - is like torture to them immediately. They instinctively understand the danger. They make different choices in life which we often see as risky. But that’s only if we don’t see what they’re protecting. If we don’t see that they’re like those frogs that jump when the water is just getting warm. We don’t even consider whether in fact they’re taking less of a risk than we are. 

If they find a way to be materially safe in the world and even materially wealthy, we make heroes out of them. We look up to them as leading the way, following their heart, inspiring us. We write books and make movies about them; we make them our role models and aspire to be just like them. Or we tell ourselves we’d like to. We hold on at least to the fact that it is a humanly possible thing to follow your heart and succeed. We hold onto that light in our darkest hour.

What if they don’t do so well? Do we still recognize that at least they’re following their heart, or trying to? Do we look to them for inspiration?

It’s a rhetorical question. We’re more likely to criticize them for being irresponsible, selfish, freeloaders. We turn our backs on them; judge them for not being more like us, for not being willing to make the sacrifices we make. We do it especially if we’re slowly boiling away in boiling frogland. Even more especially if we don’t have the courage and honesty to acknowledge it.  

Or else if we help them we do it believing ourselves to be the heroes. We seldom let them forget how magnanimous we are and how much they're in our debt. Whatever we do with it, we hold onto the idea that we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys. We're at the forefront of evolution and they're trailing behind us. Even though our choices are eroding our lives faster than the speed of light. Yet imagine if we recognized that in many ways they’re ahead of us. Imagine if we embraced them, not from the perspective of how much we can do for them, but of how much we can learn from them about how not to slow-boil yourself to death. Imagine that.

The Brazilian Revolution - Quality of Life Trumps Football

In an era of mass communication it’s surprisingly easy to know very little about a country’s people. My assumption about Brazil was that everybody was crazy about football and up until protests erupted recently I presumed everybody was excited about the Confederations Cup and the Olympics. Clearly I was wrong. What started out as a righteous objection to the price hike of transport was just the tinder catching fire. That something so sacred as football is being sacrificed to a greater need says a lot about how far Brazilians have been pushed.  

Now it’s practically a full-blown revolution as the middle class riots against corruption, poor services and government mis-spending, which includes the inordinate cost of hosting the World Cup and the Olympics. More than a million people demonstrated on Thursday in 80 cities around the country. Compare this to 100 people protesting lasting year about the hike in bus prices.  

It’s starting to look a bit like Egypt. With one major difference; President Dilma Rousseff paid attention and praised Brazilians for their courage in speaking out peacefully. As the protests got violent she didn’t support the violence, but she hasn’t used it as an excuse to shut the door.  

Perhaps that’s because she was radical student herself and can identify with the protestors – many of whom are young and demonstrating for the first time in their lives. Or maybe it’s because she’s taken note of history, and power hasn’t intoxicated and blinded her as it has many activists who led revolutions only to become harsh dictators. Whatever the reasons, partly at Rousseff’s command, bus prices were restored to what they were in quite a few cities, and on Friday she called an emergency meeting with various relevant ministers.  

Some of the demonstrators’ placards have read “Halt evictions”, “Come to the street. It’s the only place we don’t pay taxes”, “Stop corruption. Change Brazil”, "We don't need money for World Cup, we need money for hospitals" and “Government failure to understand education will lead to revolution”. The message is clear. The middle class is awake, alive, articulate and courageous. Not willing any more to take abuse. 

It’s happening all round the world. Call me a radical but I think it’s a good thing. It signals the coming to an end of an era that’s been great for a few but miserable for millions. The world has gone from having two classes, upper and lower with no hope of the lower rising, to three where the middle class enjoyed prosperity. And if you were born with nothing you could make a fortune.  

But the dynamics have been slipping back dangerously close to a 2 class world as the middle class has lost its footing. I guess in a way that's because it still had the mentality of boss and servant. It was a thing of pride to give all your loyalty to a company. Until giving your loyalty was abused and became sacrificing your life and your lifestyle. That’s when the middle class started splitting into two. Bosses and entrepreneurs rose, and workers sank. Bosses became greedier, workers became demoralized until the boundary between the two began solidifying again. In today’s world if you’re born with nothing or you lose what you had and you land in the gutter it’s incredibly difficult to get back up again.  

But all the time the middle class has looked to be losing its power it’s been gathering a different kind of momentum: awareness that it has rights, that people can protest and make a difference. That the masses actually have the power. 

This is always how consciousness grows. When you don't know your worth you get kicked around, you give yourself away to people who abuse your trust. You get angry. You protest. You realise you can drop the boss/servant mentality. You can take your power back. It usually happens when you have nothing left to lose.

The beauty about today's world is that some leaders understand this dynamic and are either actively promoting the middle class or at least recognizing that they have to work with it. I think that’s a beautiful thing. So I'm all in favor of protest and demonstration. I hate violence but I can understand how a person can get to the point of being so constantly dismissed, disrespected and made to pay for others’ inhumanity, corruption and lousy management that they blow a fuse. 

May Brazil have as peaceful revolution as possible; may Rousseff find a way to help the people succeed in their quest for a better run government and a better quality of life. They deserve it.

Humanity Getting its Ducks in a Row

When I was a child my grandmother marvelled at how when she was a child she travelled by ox wagon and now we were sending people to the moon. I wondered then how the world could change in such a way that I'd be marvelling when I was her age. If I ever reached it. It was hard to believe that I ever would, she seemed so ancient. I'm not there yet, but that marvelling time has come already for me. 

There wasn't any internet when I was a kid. Distance communication was by phone, letter or telegram. Arriving by noon train stop pick me up stop don't forget stop I love you stop.

Letters were written by hand, music was played with vinyl, radios were a piece of furniture. I spent 90% of my waking leisure hours outside. We didn't even have a TV. When it came and we finally got a set, we were only allowed to watch one evening a week. And then we could have a coke as well. Bread and milk were delivered to the door. Ice cream cost two pennies, the cost of everything stayed the same from year to year and people stayed in the same job.  

On the surface of things, it was a simple life and a good one. But heaven help you if you were a schizophrenic or depressed or a girl with a sexual appetite, or one who didn't know how to say no. There wasn't a place for you. Where you could feel valuable, that is. There was a place alright; society's garbage bin. Not that it was openly acknowledged. Racism, slavery, abuse of women and children were rampant, but nobody spoke about it. The have-nots were hidden from the pleasant surface of society's fabric. Ah, the good old days.

Now nobody writes anything by hand, radios are either streamed or ugly little boomboxy things. Vinyl isn't dead but mostly it's music by download, books by download. TV on your laptop. 

Conversation happens by tweet or text. Impersonal, no risk, no real connection. Fast, though. Ice cream costs anything from R5 to R20 and the price of everything rises every day. Employees are nomads scrabbling to find work in broken economies. The world is at war; so much of mankind a well-oiled killing machine. Polar ice-caps are melting whilst people still debate if humans are destroying the environment. Women get stoned to death for wearing the wrong clothes and wanting to be educated. Child pornography and the slave trade still flourish around the world. 

Sure we've sent men to the moon and found cures for all sorts of diseases but 'experts' can't explain the outbreak of violence amongst seemingly peaceful communities. And we still don't have anywhere close to an understanding of schizophrenia and depression. Children and adults commit suicide and everybody says 'I had no idea they were depressed'. 

Very few say 'if I'd been a better friend, a better parent, a better sibling, I would have noticed because nobody gets to that final moment of despair without there being plenty of signposts along the way.' 

Has the human race really progressed much since my grandmother was a child? The way it expresses itself has changed, that’s obvious. But the percentages of different types of people are probably still the same. What also hasn’t changed is the human capacity to find joy and pleasure within, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s a good thing. That’s a remarkable thing. 

And we've identified concepts like entitlement and self esteem. We know - or some of us do - that if those two aspects are fragmented it doesn't matter how talented a person is, they'll never make any progress. If they don't get help. And help is available. We know that we can learn to say no. That we're allowed to pay attention to what we need. That what others think of us matters a whole lot less than what we think of ourselves. That if we want others to treat us with respect we have to treat ourselves with respect. We know a lot more. We haven't necessarily learned how to put it into practise, but that will come.

An even bigger difference between when I was a child and now is that the underbelly has been exposed, that's clear. We haven't been able to keep that lovely smooth surface unruffled by the reality of society's inequalities and injustices. It’s uncomfortable to see but uncomfortable isn't necessarily all bad.

The good thing about it is that the have-nots have finally found their voice. And that makes me marvel as much as my grandmother did. Just learning to get our ducks in a row.