Fear is How We Get to Love

Yes, writing that post about my young radical days got me upset...but I gained some needed insight of course. It was the photo of Hillary Clinton next to Kissinger that got to me the most this week. It led to an article about the politics of Vietnam and all of the rage and despair came back. That part was maybe missing from the last post. Rage. Then despair. Fear, rage, despair, an unending cycle that gets me at three in the morning once in awhile, like last night.

I don't think every generation has that happen when
they are in their twenties. Maybe it is just masked and drugged into compliance. I would guess someone graduating with a degree in massive debt accumulation feels it when they have to move back into Mom's house and work at Target. Still, we Americans are infused with hope and aspiration. We are sure that at some point we will get everything we have been taught to desire. We think it might even be easy, because most of us are sure we are privileged.

In light of the cultural appropriation discussions I thought about a spreadsheet of my privilege. I am, of course, in an oppressed minority, women, but I've been able to set that aside by creating my own job, building my own house, integrating myself with a supportive community. This has been relatively easy for me because I am white, smart and not unattractive by common standards, so those go in the privilege column. I'm poor, but that's by choice, to avoid contributing to the destructive war machine. I've gotten food stamps and food boxes in the deep past, when I really needed them, and I've always had my Mom to help me here and there. She paid for my braces in my thirties (privilege) and when I got stuck a few times she paid for plane tickets home or some bill or other. She paid for a lot of my therapy. All privilege. Not much oppression there, except if I wanted to compete in the "man's world" I would fail, and I am not equal in the eyes of the law or the economy and all women still suffer from the oppression built by men. It hasn't really gotten better, but it will. Powerful women are more powerful now than ever, and more respected. We've taken some ground.

As a hippie I have been oppressed, I'd say, but again, that was my choice as an identification. As a Saturday Market member I have been looked down upon, but not by anyone who really matters to me. As a boothperson at OCF, there are ways I'm oppressed,  for instance by the fee structure, but it's balanced by my success there and that I am a grandfathered booth rep with a prime space. That counts as mostly privilege. Now that I am a volunteer too, it's working as privilege, because my skills are gaining me respect and I am making a valuable contribution in several ways, so privilege, but earned. Somewhat limited. I don't get anything for free, not even a cup of coffee at Main Camp. But I know people, and I can get free coffee now and then. On balance, I'm entitled.

 As a traumatized person, I've been distanced-from and pushed aside, but as is typical in mental health oppression, I figured I deserved it in some perverse way, for not being in control of my emotions. I've been taken advantage of and manipulated, but not so much the victim of violence. Two break-ins when I lost some treasured items and some security, one legal situation that could have been so much worse, a few situations I'm not willing to think about when I made some choices that were probably caused by my lack of coping skills as a traumatized person. So I would count those in the oppressed column, and they seem huge sometimes, and not so bad other times. On the scale of mental health oppression, I am safe and warm and can get the help when I need it, so nowhere near the oppression many suffer, but not privilege, except for the compassion gain which I count as a gift.

As an old person, oppression. A teense of privilege from Medicare, though it isn't an easy system to navigate. The oppression works in a way because if I run up against something impossible, I sometimes get excused because elderly people aren't expected to be able to understand things. We sometimes get a pass on things younger people would not. Of course I an new to being old, only 65, so the marginalization has not really set in. I'm ignored, but I like that, generally. I don't want sexual attention and don't mind not being hustled. I'd just as soon go about my business without being observed. But the increased level of concern people have for me is oppressive. My neighbors interfere when I climb ladders and trees...out of their concern for my safety. I did make a mistake and broke my heel that time, so some of that is deserved. I do take physical risks sometimes to get my work done. I suppose it could be seen as privilege that my neighbors even care what I do. But on the whole, age is oppression, and I know that will get way worse the longer I live. I have some deep fear for how I will manage when I can't work and if serious physical illness develops. I do have some trusted caretakers, but soon they will all be retired so that's an issue. I'm tough, but age does not work as privilege for me.

As a single parent, oppressed, though I had the advantage of liking that I didn't have to negotiate with a dad-person. It would not have worked well for me. There were times I was oppressed by my teenager, but he gets excused for just trying to get his needs met. He was of a very oppressed class at the time, children and adolescents. He is still in the oppressed class I would say, as a young married person, in this economy. But he has his own spreadsheet and it probably balances toward privilege. He'd have to decide that.

So it's an interesting exercise to evaluate my own life. It's hard to shake that instilled privilege of the way I grew up, notwithstanding the status as child and traumatized child and person who thought they were poor. My privilege was all in place in many ways, and I've carried it with me. Lots of things were easy for me, and lots of things still are. I was not owning class, but not exactly working class. That's what middle class is, the aspiring working class that thinks it is owning class. Americans don't talk about class, but that doesn't mean it isn't operating.

So then the question turns to what do I do with my heritage of status. I've done a little, nothing to brag about. I'm helpful and dependable and I do a lot of volunteering for my organizations and groups, but those all involve some self-interest, and I always feel that I could do more. I've given, but could give more. I've listened, but could hear more and respond more. I've mostly been selfish about creating my own safety, seclusion, and space so that I can feel healthy in my bubble. That's doing everyone a favor, but it isn't nearly as helpful as my privilege would indicate that I could be.

Most of the times I have really tried to be generous with more oppressed people, it has ended badly. I'm thinking about some of my jobs at 4J, being a one-on-one with a child with disabilities, and working in the Community Resource Center. I was not really suited for those jobs, and made some huge (to my retrospect) mistakes. Before I had a child of my own I failed a few children who needed more. What can you do? You do the best with the tools you have, and try to maintain and improve your tools, or step aside and let someone else do the work. I stepped aside when it was obvious I was about to do harm. I let the bottomless pool of need be filled by others with more resources.

Politically, I'm still a hardcore radical and my cynicism sometimes lifts briefly so I can engage. I made a lot of political t-shirts at times, helping to spread my leftist thoughts. I still have a few hats that speak to this. I listened avidly to the GAs and all the coverage of the Occupy movement but it was way too hard for me to do it in person down on the Park Blocks. I was too afraid. I still am. I took my son to a few demonstrations, but he didn't like it, and when I cried my eyes out at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC he was embarrassed, probably deeply so. What teenager wants to see their Mom cry in public in front of a lot of strangers? He hasn't responded to my previous post, though I expect he reads my stuff and processes it in his own way. I am giving him all the space he wants when it comes to my self-exploration. He has had to put up with it his whole life as I dragged him to NVC presentations and went to RC classes and Market and always worked so much when he would have rather had me play with him. I probably told him way too much about things in which he had no interest. Like most kids there are probably things he admires about my life and ways he shakes his head in his own fear and despair. I hope he doesn't have much rage. I know I tried to give him a non-traumatic life and I think he got that. My creating of safety worked for him too.

This was meant to be ironic

I suppose he learned about my radicalism by my reactions to culture and my choices, like the getting rid of my clothes dryer (hated that) and my making him bike and walk places I didn't want to drive (pretty inconvenient and sometimes rather disastrous.) I didn't make it possible for him to go to MIT like I should have, though that wasn't really possible anyway. I should've sent him to Japan though. Oh hindsight, so useless and so rich. Let's just let him be in his own life now, doing his own exploration, calling his own dance. I'm trying to do that. Most parents probably have years of misgivings about not doing better until their kids let them know they are forgiven, which probably comes at about age 75 or so. If they should live so long!

I feel good about my life here, and the rage and despair episodes are brief. I am able to talk myself through them, with the evidence that I have been able to live all these decades quite joyfully with that still inside me. I know I won't fall off the cliff. I know I have what it takes to navigate the rest of my life with grace and style, and the strength to hold onto my compassion for my self and others.

I did even buy into the hopey changey thing and respect the Obamas terrifically for bringing our country to a better place, much better. But I read enough to know Obama sold us out in many ways because he had to. He probably listens to Kissinger too, because the ones who own our country have always owned it and will continue to own it. I will not be surprised if

Bernie fails to advance past a certain point. I love what he is saying and I love that people are energized and hopeful. I don't want to dampen that at all, but I can't quite get there. I'm even going to vote for Hillary if it comes down to that, because a democrat is better, so much better, even if they are a bought democrat. I would love to vote for a Sanders/Warren ticket and hope that is the result of all this crapola and obsession. If all that happens is that people read about history and analyze politics and culture and learn some useful lessons, I am down for it. I hope it isn't too painful for our young ones. We don't need more cynical, escapist citizens who won't participate, because there are, without a doubt, many, many caring and compassionate people inspired to do wonderful things in the outside world. The Obamas gave us a ton of that and put many people in powerful positions to make real change, at least at the levels where we will feel it, if not so much on the global stage. They got us our respect back, the respect that evaporates as soon as a Republican opens his or her mouth. That's super valuable, and the world is a magnitude better than it was eight years ago. Hope and change did a lot. I'm glad I went along with it as far as I did, and I will try to go along with it now. I will try to remember that cynicism does not protect me.

Fear, rage and despair are only countered by giant quantities of love and care. However we can find that, even if it has to take the form of chocolates and diamond rings, we really have to create that love. All the time. Every way we get the chance to. Listening to Bernie, even though it takes me through my memories in an unpleasant way, makes me love him and love this time and this life. I don't care if these young feminists are stepping all over all that hard work we did and leaving us in the sidelines. That is what we wanted, to make them powerful. We did all that we did for the children we didn't even have at the time, the children inside us and in everyone, the tender hearts that don't need more fear and despair. The rage built a more beautiful world. It is worth it. It is honest and true. That's all I was fighting for: the truth. Keep telling it like it really is, Bernie, our activists, our Kesey-savers, our kids, our writers and our cartoonists. The truth is indeed setting us free, free from our gilded chains. We have scars and bruises, but it is a beautiful day when we hear the ring of truth.