A crisis of crises; stories for shifting change

"Let’s chat y’all: do you bring up systemic racism when speaking of black people being disproportionately affected by COVID-19? Do y’all speak on the fact that some living in poverty don’t have access to things such as clean water or affordable healthcare? Do we consider that there are some black people who just CAN’T afford to stay home, and so they go to their essential jobs (who aren’t doing what they can to protect their employees)? Or are we just looking at the groups of people who are caught outside and say “Dang! Black people can’t do anything right 🙄🙄!”?

I genuinely would like to know. " -T

.....

Preaching among far more qualified preachers here but yes. Was on a association of public health professionals +national academy of medicine call yesterday and a lot of the solutions the docs are trying to lean on won't fly in most despotic Afrikan communities given the legacy and betrayal of trust committed by the medical system and US government.

The pandemic is a crisis that highlights the ongoing crises that so many communities were already facing.

The fact that the food system, thread workers, all the minimum/below minimum wage jobs happen to have essential roles says so much about the legacy of slavery and what our country still relies upon for making itself seem functional.

People still pick tomatoes for 50 cents per the crate, and most of them are brown migrant workers who have limited to no legal rights in the US.

Mask makers who have the privilege pf volunteering to create low for the public and maybe some hospitals would be paid 5 cents per hem in the LA sweatshops where my grandmother and aunts worked during the 90s, and about 10 or 15 cents per garment if they worked for American Apparel in 2015.

They're literally subsidizing the externalized cost of incompetence, negligence, and greed among hospital administrators and the Federal government who prop "free market" economic opportunity for exploitation of profit amid crisis over people. Even the mask shortage is an economic reason rather than because of a public health priority.

...

There's a powerful opportunity with a moderately open window to sway folks in say, a suburban setting, to understand and empathize with what it's like to navigate fear and crisis. From this end, the biggest challenge is mustering a gentle heart and emotional presence to guide those fears while handling what's typically more than one's fair share of fragility around race and other iterations of inequity.

.....

There's a professor who shared a really useful framework I think often about for advocacy that informs what kind of skills and information are needed to be effective when speaking to poverty.

Poverty can be looked at in three ways:

1) personal stories --what it's like to experience poverty

2) as a measurement/index/bureaucratic definition for policy

i.e. average median income; academic concepts; government/legal definitions

3) the systems that tend to create the stories

I choose to look at it as a triangle or three-legged stool: you need all three in order to create cohesive systemic change.

We need patience and support to cultivate emotional solidarity and labor to empathize and connect with people.

We need patience, a lot of resources and a certain kind of keen language aptitude to wade into numbers and rules plus advocate without getting sucked into the system's red tape and political favors without losing your ability to step out.

We need patience to identify patterns and see things from small to big picture both as it is plus what the likely trajectory might be, and how to dance with changing or facilitating things that are far bigger than what one person, organization, or even community might usually want to move with ease.

And for most of us, that's something that we have and can practice to grow.

Fo[u]r people digging deep

Four people I tend to think about and why when it’s time to dig deep or regroup with sadness or overwhelm before moving forward again:

1. Mum – “you always have three choices you can make, even to the moment before death.”

And her refugee immigration story for getting to the U.S. reminds me that we made it this far, she went through a lot to get here, most of the nonsense we face isn’t quite like witnessing tanks roll into your city and having to escape with part of your family from political persecution by boat.

2. Jake Turbett – when I was in middle school and sometimes even high school I knew he’d be willing to make space at a lunch table for me to sit down even though I didn’t know much about him otherwise. We’d probably have very different views, and straight out of high school he joined the U.S. Marine Corps genuinely believing in defense of the country before getting killed in action a few years later while in Kandahar.

3. Marie Colvin – war correspondent focused on telling the story of everyday people impacted by war and was credited with preventing the massacre of 1000 Indonesians during a civil war by refusing to leave when all media agencies departed in anticipation of a military operation; she was later killed while reporting on the Assad regime’s decimation of Homs in Syria. She exemplified the fact that some people are willing to risk death for the sake of simply telling the truth about people’s suffering.

4. Charity Hicks – Detroit advocate whose memory is often expressed with the phrase to “wage love.”

While I might have crossed paths with her, I certainly didn’t share a conversation in depth but that expression tells me that it’s equally important and always possible to show up with a tender heart while doing the work that's needed.

Create, stand up, speak out, live with the courage to care even when it's hard to find and feel. All of it matters even if it's to one person.


Thanks to Jewel Kawataki for inspiring this reflection.

An Origami frog folded for a friend in Washington D.C.-- Omakaki, Ojibwemowen for frog with roots that can also mean "growth in the dark"; Kaeru in Japanese which can also, if my shallow gleaning from a beer company has any bearing, mean a return to prosperity.

Screening Your Resolution for Effective Outcomes

​Screening for Persuasive Resolutions

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion. [1]
But that doesn't mean a resolution must be achieved by yourself alone.

With a quiet turn of the New Year, and now being able to say with some degree of confidence that I survived three full decades on earth, I'm starting to realize celebrations (many of which I barely partook in) also exist as a form of persuasion. And celebrations can be significant even away from other people, though never far or completely independent from others.

Just as important, the way we form our resolutions--setting intentions can be done in a way to remind us why we're committed to taking action toward something we want rather than discourage us from not reaching our goals.

Effective resolutions come from one's capacity for effective self-persuasion. What if, instead of mandating a specific future and living under the tyranny that comes with limiting one future for yourself, that people entertained the opportunities of their lifetime with questions to keep them moving forward? Like how scientists might create a hypothesis before diving into experimentation.

I often champion the worth of thoughtful questions because they allow you (or organizations [2]) to find and create new answers in multiple situations, time and time again. From a scientific point of view, the value of a hypothesis is that it lets us move closer to the truth by discerning whether a specific influence will have an effect on an anticipated outcome--and just as important, we can potentially let others replicate the results too. And my friend Onyx is often quick to warn people that "committing to only *a* future can be a dangerous false choice."

Life is a creative endeavor, why must our aspirations terminate into a specific sentence or outcome like "losing weight" when you can commit to experimenting with specific and intentionally chosen actions that will always contribute to manifesting multiple goals?

"How might I consistently improve my health?" or better yet, "How might *we* improve our health?"

"How might I enjoy more activities that contributes to my physical fitness?"

"What does eating well look like?"

"What does taking care of myself, or loving myself look like?"

When we engage in long-term efforts to create systemic change that require more than what an individual or group can explicitly control, and it's the same kind of thinking that's probably necessary for people to make meaningful change as individuals who live in a world filled with plenty of people and experiences that go well beyond their own selves.

Does it change the fact that we still need goals and milestones? No, what matters is the *resolution* our goals are framed with--and yes, that's a play on words. Think about resolution in terms of digital screen definition -- how granular is your goal?
If it's too specific, it warps your reality in unfavorable ways--watching a youtube video in high definition on a clunky old computer sometimes brings the entire computer to a halt. Watching it at a 180pixel resolution might not overburden your graphics card, but it might not do service to the viewer in showing the details of an event or a picture of a map that might be important to remember in the near future. How can you take more effective steps toward making a good resolution? Look to the trajectory of your past experiences and the ingredients playing into their circumstances. If none of it has changed and you're setting sights on lofty goals for your New Year's (or any other time of year) resolution, you might need to create more persuasive ways to reach that goal.

If eating healthily isn't easy because healthy food is rarely if ever available, maybe it's to find ways to increase your chances with being in places that offer healthy food--deepen your friendship with a local gardener, work toward a new job or promotion that provides better mobility for taking care of your basic needs. These are roundabout but important steps to your bigger priorities, and it's important that you honor the challenges even when it didn't seem like part of the bigger picture you envisioned when looking from the cusp of a new year.

        .       .       .

One of the many gifts genuine interpersonal connection brings us is that a friend, a sincere coworker, or even kind strangers can help "screen" out unnecessary information and put part of the reality you live with in check -- though it goes without saying to engage wisely as some don't know where you want to go, and bad relationships can have powerful negative repercussions. So another person's agency and ability to check in on you can count as a system, just like making commitments to yourself for exercising with goals or milestones with your rest, eating, and emotional health habits too.

In other words, friends can boost your ability to achieve what you set out to do that becomes a form of persuasion that better futures are possible--and you can do the same for them too!

Last year international life coach Bere and I put together an event called "Party Like it's 2019!!!" [3], where the value of the activity comes from being able to experiment with iterations of who you are, and set up systems that help keep you on track with what you aspire to do along the way. One of Bere's biggest points of emphasis in her coaching came from being able to break down big endeavors with specific and achievable goals.

In the world of organizational and systemic change (complex systems) I studied and worked with during and after University, the same concept's about recognizing how the things you have direct control over plus tangible reminders can create structure to influence your paradigms about the world [4].

It's how gratitude exercises often succeed by letting people realize visceral past experiences and outcomes can present them with reasons to be happy (or satisfied, or hopeful) because they show us a different trajectory of choices available that we didn't see before.

That's the magic of empowerment too--that you can suddenly generate 300% more with 100% of the ingredients you already had with a simple shift in perspective.

Confidence at its essence is about trust--trust in oneself, trust in others, or trust in an endeavor--including the promises or resolutions we make. Often when we're overwhelmed, we lose track of what we've done before and what we remain capable of doing.

My friend Marnese Jackson and I would also check in with each other on a weekly basis as we worked through unstable housing, irregular transportation, living with kids, family challenges, and professional priorities that also extend into community and civic impacts. Sometimes the best thing that came from it was the ability to unpack our overwhelm and remember what we've done or sought out to do.

And as strategists, futurists, and science fiction writers might all agree: good strategy is the practice of good science fiction. When we create believable futures, they're often rooted with discernable, plausible, and replicable truths that allow us to leap beyond the ingredients we know into new places.

Since the future becomes the present with every moment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to find a persuasive resolution. Hopefully you're finding something for moving together forward now.

[1] https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2019/01/persuasive-resolutions.html

[2] http://ismotion.co/2013/12/purpose-in-questions/

[3] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/refreshing-your-vision-party-like-its-2019-tickets-43259414072# 

[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/how-turning-your-goals-into-systems-can-change-your-life.html

Possibly related and useful--for setting more feasible systemic goals; one of my biggest challenges was the feasibility side of goal setting, a lot of visioning processes and goal setting processes are admittedly very time and effort intensive to the point of feeling overwhelming--I have some ways for dealing with it but I'm certain there are better and curious to see how the following turns out:
https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/3-simple-steps-for-setting-your-next-business-goals.html

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash
I don't know who this woman is but she's definitely looking at a screen and reaching
with what could be described as resolve. By the way, staring at
blue light from screens can degrade your eyes
so try to look out to the real world instead.

Jose, Maria, y Jesus

"A word on perspective: for this image, I chose very, very wide vanishing points. The result is what I occasionally call “middle-class white people perspective.” Rather than feeling immersed in the scene, the viewer is looking at it as if from across the street or from the warmth and safety of his or her passing car. I have a small hope that this Christmas image will come to mind when we see other “down and out” people huddling outside of gas stations, reminding us that our Savior’s parents (and indeed, Jesus himself) were at one time similarly troubled."

-Everett Patterson, illustrator of Jose y Maria

Worth considering again: would Jose and mother Maria find a place to stay for baby Jesus (pronounced here as Hey-Zeus for those who prefer to "speak American" only) this past Christmas Eve/Day?

Or would the town offer thoughts and prayers (and maybe send profits) to build a wall to keep them out so shop owners and employees can go home for the night without troubling themselves with someone else's problems?

Some people insist on celebrating Christmas while pushing to turn away refugees who seek a safe place to find a home for their children who are getting separated from them when they arrive at the border--despite the fact that coming to the U.S. border is a necessary step for seeking political asylum.

While there's relatively little most of us can do when a nation's population suffers from war, understanding the causes and developing ways for aiding the displaced with dignified hospitality is among the most visceral ways to take responsibility as someone who's part of the bigger world that more of us would like to create. A place where people do the right thing and can take confidence in finding shelter, knowing there are places that care for their children, a place where they safely find work and contribute to a society that once carried a reputation for bringing together cultures from around the world.

Domestically, a liquor store clerk or owner isn't in business to tell people where to find a place to stay, and probably isn't interested in letting a tired couple from out of town stay in the store for the night even if it's open 24/7. But one's job isn't the same as one's responsibility to others in the world. Profit isn't the same as prosperity, and true wealth can be found in our collective health.

We now have the benefit of lots of perspective to learn from: from retrospective allegory to lived and learned history -- all on our side in a way that at least gives us an opportunity to make better choices when national policy works against us.

As a son of South Vietnamese refugees from the Vietnam War, we would be wise to heed refugee stories and understand how delicate calling a nation the place of one's home can be. Knowing and witnessing refugees firsthand from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, many of the unfolding stories in current and recent events echo the experiences I hear in my parents circles too.

Witnessing firsthand how gaps in payments from government shut downs or employer shortcomings can lead to missed payments, foreclosures, and evictions, the line between homelessness and someone who suddenly seeks help from people with different privileges becomes just as delicate and thin.

Having lived amid domestic abuse during the holidays, we also would benefit from knowing why people would choose to stay out of the house rather than come home to their family -- it's often the same reason a family would try to leave their neighborhood or country when gang violence gets so bad and look for help from others who seem to be doing okay. It's the same reason families will try to flee or--if they can afford it--fight when corruption and war sets upon their homeland and country.

People tend to shy away from issues like homelessness because the causes for the problem normally carry a bundle of nuanced root causes that are bigger than what one person or organization can carry and solve. It calls us to create and steward a cohesive community that's more committed to care than the stigmas that are associated with the problems.

It takes empathetic moral and ethical imagination to consider what the right thing to do and follow through. It takes courage for people who are insecure about trying to address more than what they're accustomed to dealing with to find assurance in learning how to navigate the consequences of their action or inaction.

But I imagine that when we don't learn from those consequences as individuals, as a community--or if we're really fortunate as a culture, there's a good chance others will meet an unnecessary suffering that one decision could have spared.

Or maybe we can just ask "what is the courageous choice?" before doing our best with whatever answer we may find along with our responsibility to the consequences that arise.

I'm not providing all the answers here, for most of us, this week is an opportunity to celebrate and reflect with loving moments away from our usual work pattern and that's important too. Heck, maybe it'll take a few people who actually read this the whole week to get through all this text I've written.

Yet the meaningful work and opportunities for change will continue exist beyond Christmas day just like any other incident that's notable enough to stir up "thoughts and prayers" for some group of people and merit sustained action.

But if the business you work for doesn't account for ways to care for the community it operates in beyond a bottom line and its usual budgeted priorities, it may be time to envision what the difference between profit and prosperity means and take steps to demonstrate it.

Meanwhile, there are many people and causes worthy of effort in Detroit and certainly around the world. You can help Dior Gabrielle and others with Operation Care Kit Detroit--which will continue to operate long after the holiday season closes and into the most critical winter months for survival that a homeless person will often face without sufficient aid.

You can read more about the picture used in this post and what went into the illustrator's story behind creating it here:

http://www.everettpatterson.com/?p=1835

Coping with various degrees of agency

One thing I was reminded about myself last year: when unmet with care, mental health challenges can link closely to abuse, it's actually more subtle and prevalent than the public (even most people I know) make it out to be, and most people are less competent at intervening with detrimental behavior than they'd like to acknowledge—even when it’s their own behavior.

It's sometimes upsetting, but it’s somewhat comforting to know overwhelming suffering isn’t the same as unbearable suffering. You’re cognizant of overwhelming suffering—frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, apathy—you can observe it come and go. If you're at the brink, it's a good time to call anyone for help.

When something's overwhelming yet bearable, the line between what we're able to withstand versus what we're willing to tolerate blurs. At that point one compromises their own quality of life, and in a terribly negative feedback loop, it also takes down others', which tends to make their situation worse.

The guide linked below's helpful for roughly recognizing and coping with some behaviors, but it's missing some nuance and 40% of it feels condemning still--maybe because it focuses on what behaviors fail to fit with a "normal" or "healthy" individual rather than how those behaviors might be exercised to an advantage, and acknowledge that choosing to work through mental health issues is a healthier choice. In October I concluded (but in some part refuse to accept) that some things don't ever really heal, we just get better at managing circumstance and how we respond to suffering until we reach the end of our line. Failures and suffering are inevitable, but you can make them necessary to your life's path and fail forward—fail in a direction aligned with your most genuine aspirations.

The best tweaks for reactively handling stress I can share tend to be (listed from simplest/smallest and most desperate starting point to most significant):

1) Find presence/regain clarity of mind and attention by doing simple things that engage your senses (touch/motion, sound, smell, etc.)

e.g. feel pain (a safe alternative to harming oneself: eat a lot of hot sauce, quickly), try to hold something/someone tightly, cook, garden/farm, do dishes by hand, create music

2) Find your "flow states" and do what's needed to get there--things that immerse and engage your attention in ways that you lose sense of effort, time, and self (aka, get "into the zone" athlete/musician/artist/dancer/physicist etc.)—create the environment or circumstances necessary for you to get engaged to re-stabilize.

3) To alleviate anxiety and nerves and increase your capacity to cope with stress, push yourself through intense if not stressful situations (especially exercise and intensive work) earlier in the day, and devote time to de-escalate from them (intentional breathing/meditate, read a paper book, hike slowly outdoors, etc.)

4) Find and let yourself fail safely in the presence of caring (actually, if possible loving--in the sense they're willing to help you be at your best or celebrate you as you are if you're already living as yourself at your fullest) people (or animals) to talk it/feel it through with, or at least knowing that they're present, so it can help you re-examine the parameters and mechanisms of your own mental threshold.

"Courage cannot be taught, but when it’s scaffolded, it’s encouraged."

5) Redirect your own awareness of anger/anxiety/sadness/apathy toward preventing recognizable circumstances that contribute to other peoples' or your own unnecessary suffering

http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Programs/Family_to_Family/PTSD_Module_Pevised_Feb_2011.pdf

Note: The five points are also listed for starting in situations where one might have little agency for leaving their surroundings (e.g. isolated.stuck) to situations that allow more time, attention, and space with various privileges or luxuries assumed (e.g. if you're fortunate to have people you can trust). #4's particularly rare and most challenging to find for me--I'm basically resorting to #5 in hopes of creating #4.

Healthier notes

Top left: "When at cusp of ambiguous commitment to action, meaning and zeal will be found by leaning into the ambiguity and ensuring that you choose to commit to those actions in alignment with your greater sense of purpose/intention."  e.g. not sure how you feel about something you claimed you'd do/losing sense of purpose about doing it. Assumes clarity one's own intention/purpose already established/underway or at least nascent outside of the particular situation.

Midsection: distinguishing kinds of discomfort in ambiguous situations. Side note lower left corner on ambiguity/uncertain risk references this guide to embracing complex systems with risk governance.

For examples with context, note post on desperation. Summing them here:
Intrinsic discomfort: am I willing to forsake something good enough most people try to rely on--though evidence and experience points to it not working--and believe that a better way for living exists?
 
Circumstantial discomfort: if desperation constitutes the core subject for laughter and ridicule in the film among viewers, and an individual actually lives under the same stresses created by those circumstances--is it better to stay in hopes of learning something new or leave to preserve peace of mind?
For both the guiding question might be "what is the courageous choice?"


Upper right: A=Anxiety D=Depression S=Shame
All three link into a negative self-sustaining loop. All three have near-term
potential tactics for intervention.The note on "Healthy forgiveness" references this particular interpretation of forgiveness.

You can click on the images to read in full size.

Desperation, "American Beauty"

I saw American Beauty for the first time this weekend at a house screening as a friend's guest. The person who chose the film explained it was "a classic", and another mentioned it was a "dramedy"--humor to be found in the absurdity of emotional extremes.

Desperation was a key theme to a lot of the behaviors that drew most of the snickers and laughter. If willing, conscientious choice is fundamental to dignity desperation then serves as its converse.

Example: an insecure suburban WASP mom archetype forces a smile and recites capitalistic mantras for success as her work in real estate continues to fail.

For those who rely on one belief or another as a way for finding self-worth and meaning in life, ridiculing desperation quickly skirts the line toward becoming a demeaning and disempowering act. It's mean-spirited if not cynical humor shrouded in the laurels of being an iconic film for mainstream U.S. Cinema.

It's also a negative feedback loop [here's a place better suited for diagrams than text]:
A desperate individual's chosen actions for self-preservation are demeaned when subject to ridicule (bullying). If it's vicious enough, giving up on the practice out of fear becomes a probable outcome, further reducing their choices for a willing existence.

Also, what happens when the topics and subjects of laughter are current and real for members of the audience?

For the sake of self-preservation, the characters are constructed to have little to no choice--they operate from a default stance of desperation--and as a result, little room for realizing dignity. The few who embody a glimpse of dignity are killed or kicked out from families unable to cope with the way their perception of the world unfolds around them.

It's not far from me either: what difference does it make if someone like me ascribes to outdated religious and moral codes like Bushido, or draw from Buddhism's principles, or Christianity's in the hopes that ancestors and family knew what how to cope with their reality in resilient grace?

The answer comes from asking another question I've overheard Cesar Gonzalez emphatically ask: What is the courageous choice?

The courageous choice doesn't involve choosing a particular religion for the sake of having to believe in--unless you have to. If one recognizes holes in any of the religious and spiritual frameworks above, it is courageous to forgo holding onto an ineffective and rigid belief for the sake of faith in oneself and one's capacity to engage the future by embracing the present.

As easy it is to write, that's a tall task for one, myself included, to instantaneously take to heart and keep.

Similarly, is it better to leave a familiar source of suffering for peace of mind or choose to endure it for the sake of seeking meaningful actions out of repetitious exposure?

Side note:
Circa 2011/2012 I adapted Hamilton's Rule from evolutionary biology:
(Relatedness * Benefits)-Costs >1 for altruistic behavior to be likely
as a way to roughly rank experiences with a film:
(Relevance x Benefits) - Costs > or = to 1 for a good film

If it's really relevant, and it benefits you in some way which outweighs the costs of cognitive/emotional/time/physical load, it's a good film.

Definition: good? I'll reference Aldo Leopold's characterization of good:
A thing tends to be good when it preserves the integrity and beauty of the human and biotic community.

American Beauty, at least on first impression, does almost the exact opposite. We find glimmers of hope in one or two individuals, not the community.

Originally I adopted the rule out of anger at Pan's Labyrinth--which takes viewers through a fantastical and terribly oppressive world, and the end reward for the audience is a glimpse of the protaganist entering eternal life as she leaves the rest of the real world behind to carry on in dystopic chaos. It was a disproportionate benefit and the movie left a bad taste...

Just as Pan's Labyrinth, American Beauty was a relatively disempowering film. Yes, grace in American Beauty could be found in the protagonist's moment of transcendent acceptance (to paraphrase: "there's so much beauty in the world, you just have to let it flow through you"), and two teenagers deciding to leave abusive households. However, the overwhelming chain of events in the film lead to negative and destructive fragmentation of many relationships and some resulting in killing. The reality depicted in the film echoes much of what we already see in the world or grow up with. The emotional impact calculus burdens the viewer with more vivid problems than they can engage or resolve, and the "one to many" nature of communicating content in film and television to large audiences more often than not makes it an isolating endeavor.

Honesty without humanity is brutality, to paraphrase...

Forgiving

"I agree that you will be happier if you are able to forgive. You are not condoning or accepting her behavior if you forgive her. Instead you are making a choice not to allow hurts from the past to steal your joy in the present and in the future." -Mara (in comments about emotional abuse in childhood from here)
I've gone through a lot of statements about forgiveness, most of them tend to be glib and life-coachy in the sense that they're removed from practical focus.

The above characterization by Mara reminds me of mercy and subtle forms of courage.

"Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward."

Two quotes burning in my mind today:

"Choose to take care of yourself, or else you won't have a choice." ~paraphrasing Minda Zetlin
(I'm overcoming some health challenges at the moment too)

"Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward." -a grandmother

This quote stuck with me today as it captures how I used to, and likely still look at a lot of social and environmental justice issues. It's why I don't see much productive in protests on their own aside from its fleeting public presence and media attention, nor do I share news that's devoid of or taxes my ability to find actionable next steps to change what's going on around us. I'd call that attitude proactivism: make the solutions that don't yet exist. Yes, if you need to talk it out to process what's going on, that's fine and important to heed stories too, just don't get stuck.

It normally isn't an issue or something I think too much about. Today's a bit different, here's how it knocked me in the gut:
I heard it from--here come the labels--a black female entrepreneur who cited her grandmother's advice for resilience. Hard wisdom from the oppressed. I say oppressed because the quote says a lot about a status quo that denies the dignity of choice to a certain degree.

I think it resonated so much because I realized that's where my perspective comes from--a lot of us are still on the ground or digging ourselves out of a hole of problems made by someone else's legacy of hatred, apathy, neglect, or unknowing. A core part of my worldview still comes from reacting to what's a painful reality for a lot of people in the world.

This evening, in the same day, I sat down for soup a restaurant in "America's most educated city" where a woman asked me where I was from. When I answered "Michigan" she tried correcting by saying "no, where is your family from"--this line of questioning normally entails that a person thinks I'm from another country, usually China, sometimes Korea. Today, she thought I was Chinese and then Korean. When I got up to pay my bill, my waitress cashed me out and asked if I was a professor and then with certainty claimed I was an engineer "because I looked like one".

To be clear, I don't view being Chinese, or Korean, or an Engineer as wrong, or bad--I have friends who truly are of those nationalities, one of them is among the most brilliant people I know. For many people, their nationality isn't an item of choice. As a profession, engineers tend to strive to create and improve things.

The issue is this: Starting a conversation with "where are you from" creates a narrow set of assumptions when asking that to a person who looks like they come from a different ethnic background. The assumption being that their identity can be simplified--even stigmatized--into a specific set of characteristics, values, and behaviors. It's a question set up to impose an identity and denies the person being asked an opportunity to represent or fully create the reality of who they are.

Choice is fundamental to dignity. Your choices become very limited when you're asked to represent something you had little to no control over choosing.

By the way, I honored the first woman's curiosity by answering the question. After I ate and was willing to put up with conversation, I politely shared that some people can find that question offensive and culturally insensitive.

Sometimes the only solution to oblivion and apathy is empathy.

Empathy and patience for education take a lot of energy to educate someone who could have cared less about what they do or say. It's an odd paradox--more work for the people who need to be heard and heeded than the people who make the problem.

Yet it's your responsibility to tell them else it keeps happening.

This quote didn't cross my mind today until I started writing, but since the arc of the universe needs some bending, and since the content's just as timely and topical, I figured I'd throw this picture off Martin Niemoeller's quote from the Boston Holocaust Memorial.

Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward. Hopefully, you're quick enough to create it as an option for others before choking on your own soup.

Fairness isn't an option in your life. Eliminate it as an option and you can adjust faster, hope to create it for others.

Fairness isn't an option in your life. Eliminate it from your expectations and you can move forward faster.

It hurts a bit to realize the insight comes from a place of oppression. It's good to know it was embraced by personal choice and from a creative stance. There's a subtle and equally important difference between being told to accept a reality versus choosing one for yourself.

Fairness is an option in our lives. Embody it in our intentions as we move forward. Will you choose that?

A Devil's advocacy and simple actions

Yesterday morning I had a dream that I was at work and a lab user told me a story about "the devil's advocate".  Normally, the expression "Devil's advocate" refers to someone who offers insightful reason for a contradictory if not controversial position in a debate.  But in this story, the person spoke about immense hope and changing the world--and before anything conclusive about what the first step to take toward making a better world might be, he added another condition and new story.  It was endless.

His advocacy led to nothing.

In that case, the Devil's advocate advocates to move us emotionally, while hacking emotional sensation and rapid dependency on the next detailed caveat. In lulling our being into the next caveat, the Devil's advocate shifts our attention from any prospect of moving forward to look for the next caution and item to fear. We're smitten by grandiose prospect, while simultaneously disempowered by its monolithic complexity and our loss of self-agency when relying on someone to create a vision and path for us to follow.

Conversely (and in waking life), I spoke with another person about mantras and music as both means and ends to sensing spirit and confidence yesterday.  I think it ties in really well with the same practice of self-empowerment by scaling down big initiatives into something you can act on. There was a lot of great insight from the discussion I'll share another time, but for now I'll send some links.

Converting grand intentions (like new years resolutions) into habits that are tangible and actionable:
http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-new-years-resolutions-why-88-fail-and-how-to-make-them-work

http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-the-research-on-habit-formation-reveals-about-willpower-and-overall-well-being

The academic research it's based on:
http://psyserv06.psy.sbg.ac.at:5916/fetch/PDF/10978569.pdf