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Category: Compassion

Connecting A Few Dots Through Reading

Disparate bits sometimes float through our lives, something we read here, an encounter there, and occasionally they bind together in unexpected ways.

Nearly a month ago I was in Chicago for a short, roughly 25-hour, jaunt. I went to my appointment, had dinner with a friend I had missed during my previous visit to Chicago, and slept for 10 hours; none of these events offered up a defining moment. And yet there was one, a brief feeling of disquiet, of unmooring, that I initially dismissed, but which has proven to have more significant repercussions, reverberating both through my understanding of myself, but also of the world around me.

As I walked through O'Hare, roughly mid-day on a Friday, I felt distinctly lost. I was not lost in any physical sense; I knew exactly where I was going, exactly how to get there. There was nothing unfamiliar in the scenario, and yet it felt unfamiliar. I had been reading a novel on the plane, and I was deeply engaged with the story and the characters. I wondered if I was simply still in that liminal space between story and reality. I also wondered if I was simply tired. I was tired. I dismissed my thoughts, got my bearings, and moved on.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across this abstract:

Among young adults, we show that refugees that enter the U.S. before age 14 graduate high school and enter college at the same rate as natives. Refugees that enter as older teenagers have lower attainment with much of the difference attributable to language barriers and because many in this group are not accompanied by a parent to the U.S. Among refugees that entered the U.S. at ages 18-45, we follow respondents’ outcomes over a 20-year period in a synthetic cohort. Refugees have much lower levels of education and poorer language skills than natives and outcomes are initially poor with low employment, high welfare use and low earnings. Outcomes improve considerably as refugees age. After 6 years in the country, these refugees work at higher rates than natives but they never attain the earning levels of U.S.-born respondents. Using the NBER TAXSIM program, we estimate that refugees pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S. ¹

The last two sentences are the ones that roil around in my brain. I can usually quote all kinds of statistics about how influx of immigrants into a community actually raises the standard of living and the job prospects of the native-born residents already in that community. It has also long been known that children under the age of 14 pick up language and social skills much more adeptly than older children and adults. But I am also aware that we are in a period of great unrest and that immigrants get more than their fair share of the attention, unfairly because the issues are really not about the immigrants, and they have not really done anything to warrant our attention or feelings of ill-will. The roots of the issues are different, but are deeply buried in places we aren't sure we want to go.  Immigrants make good scapegoats.¹

Despite this outburst, this is not really a political blog.  Yet, in my mind at least, these two things are related. They are related through the novel I was reading at the time of my trip to Chicago, Mr and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya, a novel I have actually been rereading as thoughts swirled around in my brain. The simple story is that the novel is about Job and Ifi, a Nigerian couple who have come to live in the United States. It is a complicated story about leaving one's culture, trying to fit into another, and never quite succeeding. It is a story based on lies, the lies the characters tell each other and the lies they tell themselves, a fiction based on fiction. And yet it is also a story about the way we all dance around the truth in order to protect ourselves and others, and the ways change and hope come in the ways one might least expect.

It is not the easiest book. At the times the plot seems to be only partially assembled, much like Job and Ifi's plans in America.  The primary characters are not particularly likeable by the standards of polite, educated, American Society, and the Americans they encounter are not, for the most part, the kind of Americans we are proud to call our own. And yet the characters are richly developed, and there is a sense that their story is told with love and empathy, an empathy that is fully available to the reader who is willing to push past initial discomforts and stereotypes.

Pulled into the story and the lives of the characters, I felt disoriented in O'Hare that day in early June. But the truth is that I am also perhaps more likely to feel that sense of disorientation, as this experience also made me realize how much I tend towards feelings of isolation in large crowds.  There are those who are agitated in large crowds, those who thrive on them, and I am sure that I am not the only person who feels increasingly cut off and out of touch in very large groups. The larger the crowd, the more isolated I feel, and I am sure that this is some variation on my basic introversion. And yet this character trait also helped me feel in microcosm, the smallest sense of what it could feel like to live in a world that is in many ways the antithesis of everything you believe to be true and right, to walk through the world, knowing where you are going and doing what you think is right, only to have the world swirl on around you in incomprehensible ways.

And how does that second quote apply? It may be obvious. Job came to this country as a college student but he flunked out of college; his entire life is built around a lie, a lie that he cannot admit, even to himself. Job is man who is, in many ways, quite simple. There is much he doesn't understand, doesn't seek to understand, and he can be oblivious to that which seems obvious to the world around him. But do not think that makes him any less complexly human. His simplicity, his confusion, and his complexity are all apparent in the opening pages of the novel, but the depth of Jobs own self deception, and the extent to which he has closed himself in on himself does not become apparent until much later. I'm not sure that he ever becomes more likeable, but the reader does become more sympathetic toward him. Job works two jobs, two jobs that barely allow him enough money to live in a slum. He works harder than the other residents of his housing unit in many ways, hence the above quote and yet in many ways they are better off than he; certainly no worse off. He, and all the Nigerians in this story, work hard, work very hard, and tell themselves stories to make their lives easier. The book revolves around Job and Ifi, although Ifi may be the more interestingly complex character. The book is their story, but it is not their story alone.

We are a nation of immigrants. In fact we are all immigrants. We are born immigrants, brought into a world of which we have no understanding. Often the world we are born into is not the world we end up in, and whether or not we adept depends on how open we are to change, whether or not we can empathize with others, whether or not we can find that part which is human, and is common to us all. Books can help with understanding in a way that sometimes one-on-one contact cannot, in that books allow us to reach outside ourselves in a safe environment, thereby opening our minds to future encounters.

This is a book about the American Dream. Or perhaps it is about the myth of the American Dream; about the myths people tell themselves about progress, about class and race, about sexism. It is about the way the world we dream about doesn't really exist, and the way, even when we struggle to escape one set of biases, we bring them with us, and encounter new walls as well, walls that may be built on our own false expectations. But it is also a story of hope, and of the knowledge that the future can be a better one, only not perhaps in the way we imagined it in our dreams.

1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23498#fromrss

June 27, 2017
Some Quiet Time

Over the past couple of weeks my time has felt fractured, with too many disparate things competing for attention. Somehow despite my best efforts at scheduling there has been no time for sustained work, or rest and it has taken its toll, and so I have granted myself a personal retreat, a time for respite, for allowing time for dreaming and deep breaths, a time for self-care and for deciding who and what will occupy my time.

Although there was a day where I pretty much lay about, sleeping, reading, watching, I did finish the prayer shawl pictured above. It is a simple pattern, done in a simple yarn. The colors caught my eye. The edges tended to roll, so I tried a technique I read about in a Rowan pattern, and I crocheted around all four sides of the shawl to finish it. I am slow at crochet. I can knit far faster, but it is a useful technique and it solved the problem. Then I added the fringe, then while catching up with a new television series, Bull, I cut the remaining yarn in segments and attached the fringe.

It is a lovely shawl, soft and snuggly, with a lovely drape. And I who used to hate knitting shawls and scarves, have found some peace and enjoyment in the process. I've therefore sorted through the remnant and odd ball stash and created a collection just to be used for a few future shawls. But first, I think the next project, as yet undetermined, will be something for myself.

October 15, 2016
One Family

I've been in Florida for the past week, although it is very likely that I will no longer be in Florida by the time you read this. It has been a great week with four generations of family and all the fun and complications that such a trip entails.

There was one day however, when nerves were perhaps a little on edge, where my head and my heart were tested, both by goings on in my immediate vicinity, and in the world at large. Even in a resort bubble, the complexity of human interactions can catch us unawares.

My thoughts were drawn to the way we self-identify and segregate ourselves into groups, groups which create distinctions which are in and of themselves a kind of discrimination based on nothing but a happenstance of birth. It doesn't matter what kind of group it is: nationality, race, skin color, hair color, eye color, religion, education, sexual orientation, handedness, Myers-Briggs type, whatever. When we identify ourselves by one small aspect of who we are, we automatically eliminate others and say, to some extent, that in uniting ourselves by this characteristic over another, we are superior to those who are different.

But in truth, we all exist on a spectrum of complexity. Nothing is as clear-cut as we'd like to pretend.

Below is an excerpt from my journal entry that day:

"until we can simply see ourselves as all brothers and sisters, equal in our humanity, and then simply as individuals, each unique and complex and nuanced and not so easily pigeonholed, until then we can never escape prejudice and we can never achieve peace".

July 1, 2016
Broken Windows

I remember reading once about the Broken Window Theory, and thinking it was an interesting idea, and one that I can actually see as being applicable in my own life. Basically the theory states that monitoring and maintaining an environment helps to prevent small crimes, such as vandalism, which in turn plays a role in preventing the encroachment of larger crimes. I interpreted this as meaning that a broken window shows a lack of care or concern, which encourages those who may already be predisposed to asocial behavior to assume that no one cares, and therefore to break in. One small break-in leads to great ter lawlessness.

I don't actually know anything about how effective this theory is in actual practice, at least in terms of large urban environments, but it makes sense to me as I can see it play out in my own small environments. People tell me I am organized. But I am organized only because the cost of disorganization is so high, and because it is easier to spend a few seconds putting something away than it is to spend hours cleaning up a larger mess. Perhaps this is simply because I am inclined, as my mom reminds me, to be lazy. I'm inclined to think that view is a bit simplistic.

Do you know the story of Mary and Martha? In the gospel of Luke, Mary sits at Jesus feet, listening to his words, while Martha hustles and bustles, serving everyone. Sometimes people think that, because I am organized, because I can get things done, I am a Martha. I am not. You who read this blog are privileged to see my Mary side. I am only as organized as I need to be, as organized as necessary to feed my own sense of balance and well-being, and indulge my Mary-ness. I have mostly learned that there is a level of disorganization, mess, and unruliness that increases my stress levels.  I suspect we all live on a spectrum of comfort with order/disorder and for most of us, there is some point where the disorder starts to engender stress and anxiety. I am only as organized as I need to be so that I do not have to be plagued by anxiety over what has not been done. I am only organized enough that I can sit back and enjoy. It is possible that I have a greater need for organization is than some others. It is also possible that my need to live without anxiety is also great I prefer stress to be a positive influence rather than a negative one. What is negative for me, may not be negative for someone else. I want to sit and listen. I love solving problems, but I want to solve the problem then sit back and enjoy the moment. I don't need to go looking for another problem to solve. I fully accept that are people, the Martha's, who more content to hustle and bustle. Both paths are valid and necessary. Both can be allowed to grow to extremes. Just as one can be disorganized to the point that it interferes with health and happiness, one can also be over-organized to the point that it interferes with health and happiness. Either path can be a crutch. Either path can be a tool.

I think my attitude toward organization, and life, is much like my attitude toward parties. I love having people over. I love feeding people. I love the anticipation, the process of planning, and preparing food and drink and preparing a setting. To me making food to feed people is an act of community, of love. It does not have to be perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. But that love of cooking points to what I really love, spending time with people, not necessarily doing something, but just being with them.  Once the doorbell rings, I take off my apron and start to enjoy my guests. I want to enjoy my own party, and for me, that means sitting back and relaxing in the moment, in the conversations.   I am all for getting everything pulled together and set up in advance, because I am no Martha. Once the guests start to arrive, most of the work needs to be done, because I'm going to be sitting on the floor listening. Yes, I'll get drinks, or bring food to a table, minor things, but the real work has already been done and the time has come to simply enjoy.

That doesn't mean that I don't misjudge, don't make mistakes, don't mess up. I do. Last weekend I had to spend quite a few hours on Saturday cleaning the garage. The job was bigger than it should have been because I let things get out of hand. But it started simply. Like the broken window theory, one small act of neglect led to another, and another, and soon the thought of tackling the whole project became a source of stress and anxiety, stress and anxiety that could have been prevented.

It started in the fall. I ordered too many bulbs. I got carried away with dreams of gardening and forgot that I had committed myself to a couple of big projects that would eat up large portions of my time, preventing me from planting bulbs.  The bulbs were not all planted before winter set in and it grew too cold. I was pretty annoyed with myself.

I had read that if I refrigerated the bulbs I could plant them in the spring and they would still grow and bloom, and since I had a small dorm-sized refrigerator in the garage that I had used as a beverage refrigerator, I decided to try it out. I put the beverages inside in the kitchen refrigerator, and used the dorm refrigerator to store bulbs. So far so good. Order was maintained. I didn't have a place to chill or store beverages, but in the winter the garage is cool, and I just left them on the garage floor near the shelving.

Spring arrived and once again I had over-committed myself. But now my stress level was higher. I had spring tasks to attend to in the garden. I had commitments to fulfill, and I had a couple of hundred tulip bulbs occupying my garage refrigerator that needed to be planted, that should have been planted the previous fall. The very presence of the tulips created an undue burden. The garage was getting warmer but I couldn't use the refrigerator. The bulbs should have been planted already but there they were, still sitting there. I didn't have enough time, but I carried a heavy burden of expectation, my own expectation mind you, but expectation nonetheless.

Yes, the tulips got planted. Yes they grew and bloomed. But the garage grew worse. The refrigerator was filled with dirt from the bulbs and needed to be washed. Cases of soda and water were still on the floor of the garage and needed to be moved before I could wash the refrigerator. Because there was already stuff piled up on the floor, I let tiredness rule. I would come home, and instead of climbing over the boxes to put something away in the proper place on the shelf, I would simply add it to the pile. It became difficult to reach the shelves, so more things piled up on the floor, or in the closet behind a closed door. Every time I walked through the garage, which was daily, my stress level rose. Every day when I walked through the garage, my despair at the thought of having to clean it all out rose. At this point my anxiety over the garage took on a life of its own. Because my anxiety was great, I would try to shove it into a corner, to ignore it. I would do other things instead, things that made me feel better, even though I knew that I really needed to clean the garage.

We all do this you know, whether it be garages or work or relationships, we all do this. It starts innocently enough with one small accommodation, often because we are tired, or simply distracted. But one thing always leads to another. We let something slide, and then our anxiety over it grows to the point that we can no longer face it. So we avoid it. Sometimes we engage in activity meant to make ourselves feel better, but which actually makes the situation worse. Sometimes our anxiety and our fear, our fear of failure, of having hurt someone, our fear of not being good enough, of not being able to face the consequences, overwhelms us. Sometimes we need help to face the problem and get through it.

I didn't need help to clean the garage. I just needed to start in one corner and do it. I needed the refrigerator. My working refrigerator was filled with beer and soda and water and kimchi. I needed that small refrigerator, but I was pushed over the line when I couldn't find a drill bit. Now I've needed to organize the drill bits, and the tools in general for years. That was George's territory when he could still do it. George's system was to stack everything in piles, or in boxes, on his workbench. Wrenches to the left, hammers on the right. In theory at least. What we had was a three foot high pile of tools and boxes of miscellaneous screws and nails and drill bits. We didn't move the entire pile here, but we still didn't have a system. And then we were no longer a we. I don't have the patience to sort through boxes of things to find just the right single item. But I still left that mess intact because I suppose I wasn't ready to claim the title of "Mistress of the Tools" . Perhaps the entire garage had to go to hell before I could claim ownership of something as simple as a box of screws, or a box of drill bits.

June 25, 2016
Books, Read and Unread

Remember how I said that I was increasing my activity with moderation in mind? Well, that was a lie. Not intentionally so, but once again I let my enthusiasm and stubbornness get ahead of my better judgement and I pushed a little too hard. Last week I paid the price for that, and it was a reminder that I relied on George rather than myself for control as his was the voice of reason and moderation, as opposed to my own inclination to overdo (even when doing nothing). I do in fact know when I am pushing too hard, but my innate stubbornness pushes that voice down as far as possible and it is long past time that I learned to listen to my own internal voice of reason and perhaps learn to seek my own internal balance.

Anyway, the result was pain, a new pair of sneakers, loss of sleep, and some light reading. It doesn't sound so bad does it? But I am still suffering from the residual loss of sleep, and a bit of overstimulation which I in no way regret. Hence the lack of posts last week. But, if moving into my 50's, and even my late 50's now, has taught me anything is that I no longer worry about justifying my activity or lack of it, and I am more willing to just acknowledge the ups and downs of my nature and move on. Part of this is just accepting that "only human" is not necessarily a flaw, but a gift, even when it means embracing all that it means to be "only human".

But onto the reading. Over the course of a couple of insomniac periods I entertained myself by reading Joanne Harris's Gentlemen and Players. The book had been on my stack quite a few years now I think, and had originally been recommended by my mom. I don't really know why I put off reading it when I would read other books she recommended, even though I tend to think of her choices as bubble-gum reading. Regardless, I am happy to have finally read it, and it was both better than I anticipated and not quite what I expected. I think the technique of telling the tale in alternating voices, from two viewpoints, is both difficult and well done, and there were some interesting twists in the story. Even though I figured out who the second voice actually was fairly early in the narrative there were still enough twists and detail to keep me interested. If revenge is a dish best savored slowly, the book was one that I could savor, could enjoy reading, but in the end, the conclusion was just that, an end, and a bit of a hollow victory. I had the sense that there was too much of a reliance on predictable stereotypes, and, although the author did manage to capture a sense of longing for something in each of her protagonists, the promise of fulfillment was never delivered. That probably was too much for me to expect. Although I did enjoy the book, it is not something that I see myself reading again.

And what is on my desk now, in process or waiting to be read?

First up is Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The first Three Thousand Years. This is the text for a class that started in September and will continue until May. I am reading a chapter a week, with a brief break in January for other reading. I must admit that I am happy to be back to this book, and happy to have the opportunity to read it slowly, as I absolutely love it. MacCulloch is an excellent writer, I had read his book on the Reformation some years back, and I have a couple of his other books sitting around waiting for my attention. I look forward to each week's reading, and then after class I am usually so pent up with excitement that I can't wait to read the next chapter. MacCulloch manages to make historical contretemps understandable in such a way as to provide insight to how some of these same issues and squabbles continue to plague human ventures. He also has a marvelous dry wit, and many times I will read a passage only to pause, think, and reevaluate.

I also have to admit that I had too many books on my plate at one time in January. I read all but one of them, and many others besides, but I also struggled with a rather uncomfortable level of distraction. My goal is to be a little more focused this month, if possible, even while accepting that there are benefits to a certain level of distraction in life.

The book I did not read, but am reading now, is Philip Wylie's The Disappearace. I read the first few pages in January, put it down, forgot it, and restarted it this past weekend. I am only a couple of chapters in, but am thoroughly enjoying it. Although the novel was initially published in 1951, and many things have changed in 60-plus years, I can already see that many of the underlying currents in this book are still relevant today. Undoubtedly I will have more to say later.

Also on my desk waiting to be read is the first volume of Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger, Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist. I tend to think Ferguson's insights can be brilliant, and sometimes terribly flawed, but then see above comment on "only human". It seems the book may actually provide an interesting point of balance and analysis that will go well with both the Wylie, and the ongoing theological and philosophical discussion that center around the class involving the MacCulloch. Perhaps not. But the timing seems good.

If I get through the Wylie and the Ferguson this month, and manage to keep up with everything else, I'll feel like I've managed well.

February 9, 2016
This Fragile Place

It has been a week and I have not written about Paris. Such is not out of character. I tend to avoid commenting on many things. But I see this is not necessarily possible. It is not that my sadness has not joined the world's sadness at this atrocity. And yet words have failed me, not just here and now but all week. I suppose I was trying to shape the words, trying to write something grand, not letting my heart say what it wanted to say, not letting the words be what they needed to be.

In a watershed moment, I reread Eve Ensler's play, Necessary Targets, which had been heavily on my mind as I contemplate both the sadness and loss and the complicated dance of anger, cries for retaliation, cries for peace, and various knee jerk reactions that have surged through the media. Some of these reactions upset me even more than the tragedy itself, as it is feeding our fear that leads into further darkness. Feeding our fear does not honor the dead; it objectifies them yet again, using them as a means to an end, and end that merely leads to more bloodshed and more death; feeding our fears means the terrorists have won, they have won the battle for our souls.

But what does a play about Bosnian Refugees have to do with bombings in Paris?  Absolutely nothing. Absolutely everything. I saw the play in the summer of 2000, before the terrorist attacks in New York, before so much it seems, but the play has remained with me. The book came out much later, but in reading the words of the play, I still hear the voices of those actresses from that summer long ago, I still feel that shock of recognition and compassion and awareness, the same shock that Paris brings: The compassion for the families, the shocked realization that these were people just like us, that we, too, are not safe, that this place in which we live our lives in relative peace and safety is such a fragile place, and we hold beauty and compassion far too lightly.

It is easier for us to distance ourselves from the horror of war, of tragedy, when we cannot relate it to ourselves, to our lives, to our actual experiences and the people and/or places we know. We could distance ourselves from the horror of Bosnia, mostly because most of us were not familiar with Bosnia before the war. We can distance ourselves from the hundreds of innocents who die in the Middle East because we do not think of them as innocents, as individuals, but as shell people, the other, with whom we are at war. We set up boundaries and distance ourselves, just as the two women who went to Bosnia in Ensler's play distance themselves from the women they are purportedly trying to help.

One of the powerful figures in this play, Zlata, was a pediatrician, formerly head of pediatrics at a major urban hospital, a woman who once led a civilized, urban life, a life we would recognize in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. As she spoke I could easily imagine her, stopping for coffee on the way to work, chatting with friends and colleagues, easy and comfortable in her life:

"You don't understand that this happened to us–to real people. We were just like you, we weren't ready for this–nothing in our experience prepared us–there were no signs–we weren't fighting for centuries–it didn't come out of our perverted lifestyle–you all want it to be logical–you want us to be different than you are so you can convince yourselves it wouldn't happen there, where you are. That's why you turn us into stories, into beasts, Communists, people who live in a strange country and speak a strange language–then you can feel safe"

Paris is different. Paris is not a war zone. Paris hits far too close to home. Paris shocks us out of our complacency. The people who died were people just like you and me. They had mothers, siblings, children of their own. The terrorists too had mothers, they too are more than just the other, more than just terrorists, because surely once they were people not so different from any of us. We do not know. Necessary Targets brought home to me how much we build walls around ourselves, thinking our safety, our boundaries, and our bubbles protect us, but they do not.

I mourn for the families of those who died in Paris. But those families are no different from all the other families of those who have died, some of them in war zones, some of them innocents, some of them killed by our own bullets and missiles. I mourn for those who have died because of poverty and neglect, those who have suffered because we are too good at distancing ourselves and setting boundaries, because we are too good at believing our boundaries protect us.

I mourn for the soldiers. I mourn for those who succumb to the power of fear, who think that revenge and retaliation is the answer when it is really just a path into further darkness. By striking back we give the terrorists what they want; we justify their holy war, we justify their actions, and the dead become sacrifices. I mourn for the mothers of those terrorists, for surely no mother wants such a fate for her babies. Who will hold the mothers and comfort them in their grief? Already we pull back, guilt by association.    We build walls and more walls and believe that our strength is in our walls. But it is not. Our strength is not in denying evil. Our strength is in learning to overcome it, learning to connect to each other and love each other despite its presence, because it is present in all of us. Our strength is in our compassion.

Zlata again:

"I used to think it was the leaders, that men really made this war because of their hunger for power. But now I really believe it's in all of us–this thing, this monster, waiting to be let out. It waits there looking for a reason, a master, an invitation. If we are not aware of it, it can conquer us."

I mourn for the children who may become terrorists, and through them for all of us, because how can we know what our children will become? We like to think it cannot happen to us, that we are protected, that our children our protected. But in fact we cannot know this, cannot know what our children see and know and hear and feel, not completely. We cannot know. Even at our very best, most loving, most careful, we cannot know. History tells us that we cannot even know what we may be become. Again and again we fall. There is no perfect mother. There is no perfect place. There is no perfect safety.

We fool ourselves when we believe that beauty and kindness and safety will protect us. We fool ourselves. We take our safety and our beauty for granted, and we do not recognize what we have.

"…..beauty. Bosnia. Bosnia was beautiful. The song of Bosnia, the world of Bosnia that flows cold clean in the stream and tastes of a full meal. Bosnia, the snowy mountains, the green green hurt heart of Bosnia, the kindness we shared, how we lived in each other's warm kitchens, in sunny cafés, …… It isn't the cruelty that broke my heart. Cruelty is easy. Cruelty, like stupidity, is quick, immediate …. Cruelty is generic. Cruelty is boring, boring into the center of the part of you that goes away. We are dead–all of us–to the suffering. There is too much of it — but remind us of the beauty, the beet fields in full bloom, the redness of the fields. Remind us how we once sang, how the voices echoed as one through the landscape of night and stars. Remind us how often we laughed , how safe we felt, how easy it was to be friends. All of us. I miss everything — Bosnia was paradise"

It is our compassion that saves us, that connects us to each other, that makes us whole. We will not win this war by blowing each other up. We may win the battle, but we will lose the war. We don't win by building higher and stronger walls. We don't win by reducing people to the other, by building better boundaries. We win through connection, by opening our hearts to each other. We win by making those small connections, by listening, by actually seeing the people we meet every day, by seeing and honoring them as people just like us, separated only by a happenstance of fate, as people with all their complexities and contradictions and fears and hurts. Only then, if we connect to others, and they in turn connect to those around them, can we hope to overcome pain and fear and the violence and yes, the evil that pain and fear build. Only by hurting can we overcome hurt.

In Ensler's play, the psychiatrist, J.D. learns to open her heart, and is slowly transformed from the cold, distant, analytical psychiatrist, into a different person, one who finds happiness despite pain. She finds that she is no different, and no better, than anyone else:

"Marching. Marching through people's brains. I don't murder people, well, I do, really. I kill them with all my boundaries and rules and perfect training"

Love one another. Listen to each other. Celebrate. Do not take beauty for granted. Do not let fear drive you, but embrace it and learn to laugh in its face and rise above it. Do not hold onto hurt, but let it go, use it to help someone else heal. Beauty and darkness, good and evil, only annihilate each other if we let them.

November 20, 2015