A desk in SV

BLOGS


8/15/08

To live heroically is its own compensation in which all can share. In every person there is a slumbering hero.
—Henry Neumann


That's what I want to do! I want to be my own personal hero. I want to feel great about myself and that's about it.

So, how do I get in touch with the part of me that wants to live and be productive? I do have to admit that I am often sad. I wouldn't say that I'm depressed, not physically so, at least. I have a normal appetite, except when I don't! Hence the WeightWatchers. I do love to exercise and I feel great when I do. In fact I will go out of run this morning. But, I'm feeling like this is my life and it's not really what I expected or hoped for. I thought I would have it more together by now. I thought my butt would be smaller, my house cleaner, my finances more settled.... But, the things that are truly important a good marriage, well adjusted, happy children, love and joy in my heart everyday, a feeling of gratitude with a beautiful sunset, those are on track. So, maybe it's OK that there's too much fat, clutter and debt? Maybe since everything is going in the right direction I can be OK with myself?

But, what does that mean? What does it mean to be OK with one's self? It's like the guy that goes to the retreat and he finds out that he's OK, you're OK, but he's still an asshole! It's got to be more than self-acceptance and high self-esteem. But, I guess if the only problem you have is that you mentally beat yourself up all day long and then watch Oprah and eat popcorn to drown out the nagging feeling that you should be doing SOMETHING with your life! Then that's a problem.

But, what is there to do? Save the world? The world is going to pot! Bush is out to kill the environment. He killed the endangered species act.... In one stroke of the pen he's set us back to the dark ages. He's taken away our civil liberties. I am an US citizen. I've lived here in California since my family immigrated here when I was one. I was born in the suburbs of Paris. Yes, I was born a poor, white, French child from aristocratic decent on my father's side and pure heartland, rich farmers on my Mom side. My parents just wanted to be together and they still are, going on fifty years now. How do you do that? It looks like you do it one day at a time.

Is there an activist in all of us? I love this country. I love the people. I am one of the people. I love the optimism that is in all of us.

No where else in the world do we all believe that each and everyone of us can really be someone amazing. We truly believe that it is only our lack of vision that keeps us from being Oprah or that Phelps guy that keeps winning the gold metals.

And, maybe that's not true. Maybe an immigrant like me has no chance of doing anything other than volunteering at my children elementary school, being the person at work that you go to when you can't print or read your email, being the wife that loves her husband and thinks of making love to him during the day, who has the most beautiful clever children that ever walked the earth? And, maybe that's enough? Maybe, me and WeightWatchers will still be working on my emotional eating when I'm eighty.

Maybe we'll never get the sprinklers right or the kitchen remodeled and is that OK?

Maybe it is?

But, then again maybe there's more that needs to come out!

I've got “stuff” to say!

The way this country is going is not right. The US is like the beautiful prom queen that starts doing coke and screwing the busboy for a line. This is a beautiful nation and we need to wake up and smell the corruption and the loss of our civil rights.

Where's the country that created the Peace Corps? Waterboarding? You've got to be kidding me?

OK, you say that this shit has been happening in every country since the dawn of ages. We are barbaric people and that we are just now a public mass waking up to reality. If you think that Clinton was the first one to get blow jobs in the oval office you are delusional! But... I think it's just like when you know your kids are smoking and drinking, but you don't say “Oh, well! They are smoking and drinking! Let's let them do it home where it's safe.” You continue to tell them that it's NOT OK. You continue to give them that line to rebel against and then they wake up one morning and say this is not the way I was raised. This is not who I want to be.

If as a nation we say, well torturing has always been the way that we get hard to get information and we should just accept that of ourselves, we are as a nation forgetting our morality. Our line that should never be crossed has just been erased. It's been erased by the lowly standard of saying that it's always happened so it must be OK. It's not OK.

My Dad and I were discussing immigration. He's an immigrant, obviously, like me. He had very strong views that illegal immigration was wrong. Why should he have had to wait for a year for a visa in low income housing (HLM) after they gave away all their stuff (We're moving to California! You can have all of our pots and pans!)? Why should he have to work so hard to then have Reagan say, “Do-over! All of you that are here get to stay!” In my father's mind you were invalidating his hard work, his adherence to the law, by telling others that it's OK to break it!

My view is that immigration is like a garden. You obviously setup your boundaries and you pluck the weeds out of the ground. But, you cannot keep every vine or bush on your side of the property without killing every vine or bush. To make it perfect, to keep only the people that are “supposed” to be here in and the ones that “aren't supposed to be here” out you'd have to have a full police state. You can't do it. It 's the law of diminishing returns. To get it perfect you'd have to work so hard, that not only is it not worth it, but you'll destroy what you are trying to perfect in the first place.

So, as a nation we need to say that torturing is bad. That getting blow jobs in the oval office is bad. Bombing countries for political agendas is bad. Lying is bad! People without homes is bad. People without health insurance is bad. People living without hope is bad. People without access to a grocery store and bank is bad. We have things right now in this country that are completely unacceptable. We need to wake up now and make a difference. This is not an Obama ad. But, it is the ideology that I hope he will win by.

We know because we are not children that shit happens. We know that nothing is perfect and that we'll never pull out the last weed in our garden. And, we know that we don't want to poison the ground so that nothing grows. We know. But, that doesn't make it all OK. We need to be able to protest in front of the people we are protesting against. We cannot be relegated to “freedom zones”. We need to stand up for our endangered species and our coast lines! We need our children to be well educated, well fed and have health insurance. Wake up! Our beautiful prom queen of a country is being is selling herself.