Why I’m Obessed with Documentaries

What I love about documentaries is that you never know what someone will learn from the life and experiences of other people; that everyone will take away something different from the story that you’re telling.

Tonight I learned something from an unlikely place…a cooking show or, what I thought was a cooking show when I pressed play on Netflix.

Last week I shared my uncertainty about committing myself to a career path that would lead me to working for the ACLU. For all the soul-searching I’ve done and all the advice that I sought, I ended up finding the answer on Chef’s Table.

In the second episode of Chef’s Table, Dan Barber quoted Wes Jackson, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

So, for all the questions I had about the ACLU as a career path, I get it now.

At the same time, I got some advice from a Facebook friend who helped me to see that, not all of life has to happen right now. There will be other chapters. Chapters in which my role as mommy will slowly diminish as my child grows up.

By the time I started watching Chef’s Table I had already pretty much decided that right now wasn’t the time for me to take up activism but, with that one quote, I finally understood how people take on the kind of work done by the ACLU. Just having that rudimentary understanding would have saved me a lot of heartache several weeks ago.

The good news is I’ve figured out what I can’t do right now. The bad news is, I still have to figure out what I want to do next.

I struggle with finding direction because I have written exactly three non-academic pieces since I went to school to learn how to write. In my feature writing course that I was so excited for, I found myself trudging through the writing. I got an ‘A’ but I never really felt settled into the pieces.

When I do write now, I don’t get the feedback that I used to when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing; when my writing didn’t follow any rules because, I didn’t know there were any rules.

In fact, I get pretty much nothing back from it or out of it.

That’s been something I haven’t wanted to put words to because, what a waste it all was, right?

Then, on a show about people’s passion for cooking, comes the answer to that too. Chef Francis Mallmann talks about losing himself at the beginning of his career in the pursuit of status, prestige and accolades.

He says, “I wasn’t doing the right thing, I was just trying to copy exactly everything I had learned. And I think that happens in every craft in life.

You’re young, you have a master, you want to emulate him, do what he does. But at some point in life you have to turn around and say, ‘I have to find my own way, my own language’.”

What a relief!!! It’s normal!

He goes on to say, “You don’t grow on a secure path. In order to grow and improve, you have to be there a bit, at the edge of uncertainty.”

And so, I’m letting go. I shall stand here at the edge of uncertainty allowing life to happen to me but, in a different way than I did before. I won’t be a passive bystander hoping to go unnoticed, hoping the people in charge will allow me to have a say in the life that I wish to have.

Instead, I’ll stand here, at the edge, ready to jump when I see the opportunity.

Adventures in Self-Doubt and Self-Discovery

Examining your life’s purpose standing on the edge of 40.

Two years ago I returned to college pursuing a Bachelors of Communications with a professional writing concentration. This week marks the end of my being a full-time student. I only have one course remaining next semester and I’m looking forward to graduating in May.

As I get closer to planning my next steps, I alternate back and forth between setting the lifetime achievement goal of working for the ACLU or, allowing myself to wander down the path of least resistance.

I go to Twitter where like-minded company abounds and I feel empowered and motivated to fight the good fight, to exhaust all of my energy on the uphill battles, to one day be able to say that I raised my voice, my gifts and talents to speak for those who could not speak for themselves.

Then I go to Facebook where I am largely connected to my polar opposites. Opposites who either offer their silent compliance or outspoken and often mean-spirited agreement to the degradation and discrimination of our day, showing a complete lack of empathy or tolerance for anyone who doesn’t look, act or think like them – and I am disheartened.

And I wonder. I wonder what difference it would all make. I wonder how people like Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative or the lawyers and activists with the ACLU get out of bed every morning when they know that much of what they say will fall on deaf ears and cold hearts.

I want to work for the ACLU, I’m just not sure that I can. For nearly a year now I alternate between deciding I have what it takes to do that kind of work, and deciding I’m foolish for thinking I have the courage, faith or optimism to pursue that path.

Then today, as some of the last reading I will ever do in the pursuit of my bachelor’s degree, I read an essay by Andrea Ayvazian, titled “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change.”

In that essay, she provides some insight to the questions that I have about myself and about my goals.

She says, “Two additional points about us in our role as allies: First, we don’t always see the results of our efforts. Sometimes we do, but often we touch and even change lives without ever knowing it. Consequently, we cannot measure our success in quantitative terms. Like waves upon the shore, we are altering the landscape – but exactly how, may be hard to discern.

Doubts inevitably creep up about our effectiveness, about our approach, about the positions we assume or the actions we take. But we move forward, along with the doubts, the uncertainty, and often the lack of visible results.

And so we do our best: taking risks, being smart, making errors, feeling foolish, doing what we believe is right, based on our best judgment at the time. We are imperfect, but we are steady.”

Steady. That is the virtue I need to work on, that is the element of my character that I need to evaluate in order to decide which path to pursue. Do I have what it takes to apply steady pressure to the moral arc of the universe, never really being sure if the effort exhausted is bending that arc in the right direction?

At the end of my life, will I be satisfied having done the kind of work whose impact I didn’t get to see? Will I be satisfied if I didn’t do the work at all?

Ayvazian continues, “These issues are too complex, too painful, and too pervasive for us to achieve a state of clarity and closure once and for all.

The best we can hope for is to strive each day to be our strongest and clearest selves, transforming the world one individual at a time, one family at a time, one community at a time.

May we summon the wisdom to be devoted allies today. May we walk the walk, living as though equity, justice and freedom for all have already arrived.”

Can I do it? Can I do the work that is too vast and too deep to ever have an end? Can I walk the walk down the infinite path of equality, justice and freedom for all?

Today, the answer is no. Tomorrow will likely be a different story. Where is my Magic 8-Ball when I need it most?

Countering Radicalization with Reconciliation

Global Unites founder and President Prashan DeVisser defines radicalization as the process by which a person is lured to hold extreme principles, demonize certain communities and embrace violence. Born into a bloody civil war, DeVisser spent his youth teetering on the brink of radicalization. Today he and his global organization mentor at-risk youth to pull them back from the clutches of extremists.

With social media having extended the reach of extremist organizations, DeVisser believes that our global society must begin to address the root causes of youth radicalization. “Today’s terrorist, today’s extremist, is yesterday’s young person looking for acceptance, looking for identity, looking for an opportunity,” said DeVisser.

Emerging research suggests young people are more susceptible to extremist ideologies when they feel unwelcome or rejected from the mainstream. “As a result of that,” DeVisser says, “they are lured slowly into the arms of extremists who are waiting to capture them and use them.”

DeVisser was born in Sri Lanka in the midst of a violent civil war that gripped the country for nearly 30 years. For DeVisser, suicide bombings were part of daily life. Whenever a terror attack happened, the anger within him towards an entire ethnic group grew. “It was just a bunch of terrorists who did this but we had animosity against the entire people, and we were filled with hate.”

Growing up DeVisser often found himself overwhelmed by emotions which had no outlet. It was in this precarious state that he was exposed to radicals who filled his head with extremist ideals, convincing him that an entire ethnic group was the source of his suffering.

DeVisser could have easily been recruited into an extremist organization if not for two factors. The first being vigilant adults, in his case, his parents who constantly questioned his increasing hatred. “These questions seared through my hate and protected me from embracing extremism,” said DeVisser.

The second factor DeVisser credits with preventing his radicalization was exposure to people outside of his ethnic and religious groups. “They constantly broadened my world.” DeVisser said, “They gave me a capacity to think in a bigger way.” DeVisser came to realize that there was a formula for true and lasting resistance against violent extremism.

He formed the mentoring organization Global Unites that works to expose young people to other ethnic groups and alternative narratives. “We created a movement for young people that would say no to violence, that will provide young people the opportunity to have a broader world view by interactions across ethnic lines,” said DeVisser. “We will give them the opportunity to be mentored by people who will love them and care for them. That will provide a resistance that extremists can’t break through.”

Global Unites aspires to have a team in every country across the global wherever there is conflict. “Wherever an extremist tries to go radicalize a young person, we are also there to provide the counter narrative – you say something, we have the alternative,” said DeVisser. “Too many young people today do not hear the alternative.”

Today Global Unites has organized movements in Sri Lanka, Congo, and Kenya with 27,000 members, and plans for movements in Uganda, Afghanistan and Myanmar. DeVisser wants us, the global moderate citizen, to know that we play a pivotal role in countering radicalization.

Prashan DeVisser’s experience, wisdom and mission is not a call to action reserved for those in the center of war-torn nations. Wherever there is tension, wherever the rights and dignity of marginalized communities are threatened, he encourages us to reach out across political, religious and racial lines to embrace those whom we have been taught to fear.  “What if we could prove that [extremist] narrative wrong and say we do care, we want to accept you in, you are one of us?” asks DeVisser. “These marginalized communities want your acceptance, and that will create an amazing resistance against extremist perspectives.”

Building the Path

Reflections after the Dallas Police ambush

I noticed a trend on my Facebook feed today.  It appears that those of us who are parents are at a loss for what to do now.  I even had one friend who has yet to have children question if she should have them at all for the uncertainty of the kind of world she would be bringing them into.  These are legitimate fears and I think all of us, in all stages of life, are asking ourselves – what now?

Just two nights ago I asked my husband if he ever felt as though he was on the precipice of something; like the universe was telling him there was someone he was supposed to be or something he was supposed to do but he just couldn’t see the way to get there?  I know who I want to be and what I want to do but, the path to getting there…I’m blind to it.

Much in this same way, many parents are now left knowing that we have to change the direction of the world we will leave our children but, we are blind to the path we must take to get us there.

Maybe that’s because the path simply isn’t there yet.  Perhaps it is our children – the ones that are in our homes right now, the ones that run and play without any idea of what is happening to the world they will inherit – that are the path.  Too often we look to politicians, to the lawmakers to fix things, to change things, when the real change sits right under our noses playing with baby dolls and little cars.

What if we can’t see the path because it is we who are to be the builders of it?  And brick by brick, child by child we build the path to a better tomorrow.  My imaginary best friend Dr. Phil says that children are a blank slate and every word that we speak and action that we take towards them and in front of them writes on the slate of who they are.

If he is right, then it’s time to change the tone of the dialog that we are writing upon those blank slates.  I heard it said several times today that if you cannot mourn for both the police and for the victims of police shootings, then you are part of the problem.  Yesterday, I was part of the problem.  Today, I choose to be part of the solution.

Today is the day for us, as stewards of the next generation, to learn from our transgressions, to forget the prejudices of our parents, to teach our children tolerance instead of polarization.  If we can teach our children that love is love, that the opposite of love is indifference, that only the light can drive out the darkness and that we are called to leave this world better than we found it, then have done our job as parents and as builders.

If Terrorism Doesn’t Get in the Way

My thoughts and fears after the Brussels airport bombing.

 

Just last night I told my husband that I wanted to postpone next summer’s big vacation. I told him I wanted to wait until “they” got a better grip on the terrorist situation. I explained how I believe that the missing Malaysian and Egyptian airliners are practice runs for something bigger, something that will be brought here, to the United States.

It took a couple of days for me to work up the nerve to tell him what I was thinking. You see, I work at an educational institution and have been paranoid about an active shooter for years; every so often standing in the middle of my office surveying my options if the shooter came from this direction or that one.

Last night, I also told my husband that I thought it best to remove our three year old from the shopping cart when we’re standing in line at places like Target or the grocery store because if a shooter intending mass causality walks in the front door, the checkouts are optimum targets. If our child is seated in the cart, in order to shield him, we would first have to lift him up to get him out.

Last night, for the first time in 14 years of marriage my husband did not laugh at my paranoid rantings nor did he call me a crazy person or tell me that we weren’t going to act like that. Last night, he agreed.

I was afraid to tell him what I was thinking partly because I was afraid to admit to myself that I was going to allow fear to affect the way in which we lived our lives. While I’ve surveyed my office for escape routes, in the back of mind, I always thought I was being just a little ridiculous.

Up until the last few weeks, the paranoia didn’t actually affect me, my family, or my coworkers in any real way. The knowledge of potential risk didn’t cause me to change my life. That’s because I know that if we change our plans or don’t do things that we would enjoy out of mortal fear for ourselves or our loved ones then we are truly terrorized.

But then there was today. A CNN breaking news alert beeps on my cell phone. Another airport bombing because, as only twisted maniacal minds can do, they figured out that they don’t even need the airplane anymore. They only need the crowded, unsecured ticket counters and baggage claims.

One of the first images I saw was of a man carrying the broken, bloodied body of what looked to be a boy no older than six years old, and I thought about my son and about the decisions my husband and I had made last night and I realize that the decision was simply calculating risk because this is the world we live in now.

I am no longer a paranoid freak but a parent raising a child in a world gripped in the clutches of terrorism. In the world we live in today making the choice not to fly, not be caught in an airport and to be aware of what it will take to protect my child in a department store is no longer paranoia, it is instead choosing my level of risk.

We choose our levels of risk everyday — in the cars we buy based on safety rating, in the medications we take when we weigh benefits against side effects, when we choose to let our toddlers run around with a topless marker because we’re too tired to get up and chase after them.

Today, I am not terrorized. I am merely calculating the risk. I choose not to take the risk of flying but I do choose to take the risk of going to the store as usual. The way I see it, if we stand an equal chance of being shot at on the ground or falling out of the sky, I choose the ground.

Should I be forced to parent my child through his death, I want it to be as peaceful as possible and I think that can be better accomplished snuggled tight, flat as pancakes on a cold linoleum floor smiling at him telling him that whatever happens, we will be alright and we will be together, as opposed to 20,000 feet in the air as we’re thrown about an airplane in free-fall.

That, my friends, is parenting — calculating the risk and deciding how to proceed. And this, is parenting in today’s violent, hostile, tumultuous, terrorized world.

I was reading an article the other day, and I can’t for the life of me remember what or where it was but it said something to the effect that today’s, and even more so tomorrow’s, marketplace belongs to the thinkers.

The article said that the future now belongs to a very different kind of mind. It belongs to the creators, the empathizers and the meaning makers. It said that artists, inventors, storytellers and big-picture thinkers will reap society’s richest rewards and share it’s greatest joys.

The article went on to say that all of this is possible because of the way in which we are creating a globally-linked network that “if politics and terrorism do not get in the way” will usher in an amazing era of innovation and collaboration by companies and individuals alike. I can put quotations around that one phrase because it gave me pause. I know for certain that was its exact wording because I went back and reread that phrase over and over.

It was out of nowhere and not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the article and I remember thinking — ‘if terrorism doesn’t get in the way?’ what an odd thing to say. I sat there and thought about it for a minute and then, I don’t know, I’m sure my kid threw pudding at the dog or something. I never finished the article and I never thought about it again until today. Today I see what it means “if terrorism doesn’t get in the way.”

The Ghosts of our Future

The recent death of my beloved Aunt Mary made me see the world differently.  I’ve struggled for a while now to put words to what it is I’m feeling and even now as I sit down to write it, I’m still not sure that the words I have are the right ones.

I guess for me, it signaled a shift.  Her death is what actually made me feel like a grown up.  It changed my position in life.  When I look back on my childhood and tie it to my present, my Aunt Mary’s death means that I am now the adult.

I know that sounds strange because having a child should have made me feel that way but it didn’t, not in the way her passing did.  I know it also sounds strange because my mother is still here but that relationship is out of balance and has been for many years now.

I love my mother and I know that she loves me and I know she did the very best that she could but she’s always been the one to want taking care of.  She was not a mother to me the way my aunts were mothers to their children.  She didn’t teach me how to cook, how to clean, how to do laundry, or how to sew.  My grandmother did all of those things for me and I learned by watching her.

Everything I know about folding a towel or cleaning a house came from my grandmother or from my Aunt Mary.  My mother quit parenting me when I was 18 years old.  The moment I moved out of her house she became consumed with who was going to take care of her and she has always wanted that job to fall to me, even at an age where I was still learning how to take care of myself.

She has never been particularly mother-ish.  She usually comes to me with a problem and not the other way around.  Anyway, the point is, of the adults whom I perceived to do my raising, the ones I felt most secure with, my Aunt Mary was the last one.

The small universe that made up my childhood now exists only in my memory and for my son, the people who at one time made up my whole world – my Grandmother, my Aunt Tommie, my Uncle Pancho, and my Aunt Mary – will be nothing more than pictures in a photo album, shadows of a former life that both existed and extinguished long before his memory or even his existence.

I remember being a child seeing pictures of a great-grandfather I never met and hearing stories about great-great-grandparents that I never knew and feeling no connection to those people whatsoever.  I don’t have the words to tell you how it shatters my heart that my son will feel the same way about my aunts.

Then there’s the matter of what her death means for my relationship with the rest of the family.  Without her to draw me back home, I know it means there are many people that I will probably  only see once or twice in the rest of our lifetimes.

My cousins, who I always felt very close to growing up, I struggle to find a way to make a connection with now.  We don’t know each other and I’m not sure that’s anyone’s fault.  I think part of it is the age difference and part of it is that I stayed away from our hometown for a lot of years because it was easier not to go back to the ruin that remained.

I finally told myself a few years ago that making time for one another is something you do for siblings and I am no one’s sibling.  I can’t seem to find the time to make the 2 hour drive home to see them anymore than they can find the time to rearrange their schedules to have a meal with me when I’m in their cities.

That’s just how it is when, although you’re family, you’re still strangers.  Though I had mostly accepted the nature of things with my remaining family, a part of me always wondered why it was this way and what I wasn’t seeing that was the key to changing it.  That is until I was at my Aunt Mary’s funeral and, out of nowhere, the answer was handed to me.  With just a few words from a woman I hardly remembered, I suddenly felt a peace about my relationship with my cousins that I hadn’t felt before.

One of my mother’s friends didn’t recognize me.  Through her tears, she asked my mom where I was.  When my mother motioned to me standing behind her, the lady flew at me.  She hugged me and through her sobs she asked, “We had some good times, didn’t we?” She spoke to me as though I was one of them, the older adults who hung out together back in the day.

And before she had even let go of me I realized that was why things are the way they are between me and my cousins.  I didn’t spend my time with the kids, the older ones or the younger ones. I spent my time with the adults.

My mom always had me with her, I never had the option to stay home and, most of the time, I wouldn’t have wanted to anyway.  I spent the evenings of my youth with my mom and her sisters and they talked about grown up things around me and they laughed and they fought and they never treated me like a child.  I guess in many ways my mom has always treated me more like a sister than a daughter.  I guess it was the only relationship that she knew being that her own relationship with her mother was a complicated one.

Whatever the reason, the outcome is that I forged my relationships with the grownups and because the universe just doesn’t play fair sometimes, those grownups, with the exception of my mother, are now all gone from my life.

So all that’s left to do now is to accept the reality of where I stand.  Those whose gravity was strong enough to pull me in, have passed beyond this life.  Now, I take my place at the front of the line and accept what will be my position in my son’s memory.

In the movie Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey’s character says, “Now we’re just here to be memories for our kids.  Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.”  I guess if this is true – if all of the grownups from my childhood are now only just a memory for me – then by that measure, they did their jobs well.