Mining Nuggets

I would rather be awake

Why would you prefer to sleep through this?

I would rather be awake. Awake - vital - with all my faculties. Even with discomforts and especially the pain. For I have learned buckets of wondrous things through experiencing pain. I have to say my life has been enhanced by the lessons learned from my mistakes. It has made me more accepting, patient, understanding, and, even at times, at peace. I have learned to love all sorts of people, animals and nature, and life has become bigger, wider, and global. I have broadened my perspective and my mind has expanded.

So why would I prefer to sleep through all of this?

For that's what the Republican party and its candidates promise me now, today, and tonight at their first primary debate. They are fighting being "woke." They say it over and over again. Indeed, they have openly declared war on "woke." They are in terror for their lives - for their white privilege. They are running scared, screaming white supremacy at me whenever they get the chance. They have closed down their minds and prefer to sleep through it all. They are afraid of expanding their horizons, perspectives and of anything, anyone who is other than them.

Why?

What has happened to millions of people in this country that make them prefer this state of mind? 

So: "Wake up!" I respond to their tirades. We are slip-sliding into the deepest despair and darkest period of our lifetimes. Our time is right now to embrace all humankind and lead us to the light. I beseech you. Have the strength and courage to face your deepest, unconscious fears, and confront your discomfort. Search within for your capacity for compassion and the audacity to hope. Let's do this together.

Wake up! Wake up to being woke. As woke and as awake as we can be. 

Writing

Writing: ten minutes: go ...

I write to express myself. I write to understand what I'm feeling. I write to describe my life to me and others. The more I write the more I understand about writing. Sometimes I get writer's block. Quite often these days. I start to think of something I want to write about and when I sit down to write nothing comes out of my brain or my fingers if I'm typing. I love writing by hand because I feel like the feelings and ideas flow more easily. Somehow writing by hand conjures up memories that surprise me. I remember that when I was young I would play out my dreams and feelings with small dolls that I had collected along the way. And then when I was about fifteen and sixteen I started to write down fanciful and fantastical stories usually about me being some kind of heroine. Once I wrote about how I parachuted into Germany during the second world war and saved a whole bunch of Jews from perishing in gas chambers. I always admired Joan of Arc and Mother Theresa. I wanted to be someone who was completely courageous and not afraid to sacrifice herself in the service of others. I have always admired people who do brave and challenging social justice work, and wished I had much more courage. When I was a young adult I yearned to become a nun even though I grew up in a Jewish household where all the adults were atheists. There was something courageous about being a woman who did not need to find a man to save her and take care of her. Just to be self sufficient and know what she wanted. I wanted to be like that. But that never happened. When I write I feel powerful and sometimes worry that I say too much of everything that I feel. My truth seems to have hurt others in the past. My truth I define as validating my feelings around experiences I was involved in. We all experience a similar incident in different ways because of our different life experiences growing up. Ten minutes is a long time to be writing about writing. I realize as I do this exercise that I kind of need to write each day even for just 10 minutes at a time and see where my thoughts, feelings and memories take me. I have often found that after I write about something that is challenging emotionally, at the end of it I discover I am hoarse - almost as if I have been talking for a long time - or perhaps it is because I feel that when I say what I'm feeling, I experience it as making too much noise, taking up too much space, equivalent to shouting. I used to get hoarse after singing with my guitar in a coffee house or around the fire at camp when I was young. Self expression apparently is dangerous for me in some way. I know that my mother really did not like it when I was self expressive about my needs or desires, hurt feelings or simply my opinion. She would become enraged and deeply hurt by me and tell me I was destroying her. That scared me to the core. Most especially because I could not seem to say sorry enough to heal the hurt I had allegedly caused her. When I was a child I would leave notes lying around the house apologizing for what I had done. She did not acknowledge them and I felt at such a loss - such a failure - like such a bad person for hurting her so badly.

This hurts. And thankfully I hear the timer beeping.

10 minutes are up and I have written about writing.