Tips from Pantone on Optimism and Strength: Success in Tunnel and Out

Did you know every year there is an official color? Indeed there is, and the announcement is met with some fanfare in the world of design. The Pantone Color Institute picks it and names it. This year’s color of the year is actually two colors, Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. That’s grey and yellow to you and me. The colors were chosen together because they create contrast and balance. Things being what they are, I guess even paint company employees are looking for answers to our current predicament. “The selection of two independent colors highlight how different elements come together to express a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting, conveying the idea that it’s not about one color or one person, it’s about more than one,” said Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, in a press release.*

Readers, I never thought I’d be passing on success tips from Pantone, but I find inspiration where I must. Optimism and strength are “two characteristics that are needed as we enter the new year,” according to the author, Nicoletta Richardson, of Pantone's colors.* Because things right now are very hard and dark. You know, we’re in it. The days have a ways to go to the shortest one, so we’re still tunneling down and we can’t expect that little upturn that means we’re going to make it out to sunlight again until then. The too short, too dark, too cloudy days. We know they’re going to get longer soon, though, and that does bolster the mood. However, as Kate McKinnon said on “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update” last weekend, it’s well and good to see the light at the end of the tunnel,“It’s just that the light at the end of the tunnel has shown us how stinky and bad the tunnel is.” What’s in my tunnel right now, aside from the wider world of politics and incomprehensibly stupid people, is the paterfamilias with COVID-19, alone in the hospital, in a city far away. Not that distance matters at the moment, because visitors aren’t allowed. 

On the side of Count Your Blessings is that he has a bed, he doesn’t need a ventilator, and he has enough energy to complain. On the side of Life is Infuriating, Hard, and Scary is the government’s murderous response to this pandemic means my 95 year old father is alone in the hospital with a disease he never needed to have. 

Okay, so what do we do? We gotta get through the tunnel. This blog is about success, at least putatively. Success is sometimes just plodding along. Indeed, often it is just taking that next step. How’re you doing, I would ask my stepmother, as she descended from sharp-witted lawyer to demented old woman. Oh, still putting one foot in front of the other, she would say. It’s what we have to do. 

But what can I do? Anne Lamott would say, do what we do: tend to the sick; feed the hungry; cheer the sad; practice self-care. My social work professors are big on self-care, too. What do you do for self-care, they all ask. Perhaps they know something. Perhaps we should listen. 

Of course, in times of stress, self-care gets de-prioritized. Okay, so here’s a tip. Don’t beat yourself up about that. Just promise to practice it more when things are better. That way, you’ll establish your practice, whatever it may be, and if it’s a habit, you might stick to it the next time a crisis rolls around. Or not. It’s not perfect. You’re not perfect. Meanwhile, whenever you remember to practice self-care, do so. 

Meanwhile, what to do about the outrage? That’s a good one. The answer, of course, is feel it if you feel it. Feel it if you feel it, and try not to get caught up in it. 

Because I’m only passing on wisdom, not generating it, at least not at this time, I offer this tidbit from Professor Bonnie Duran of the Schools of Social Work and Public Health at University of Washington, who offers a six word mantra to get you through a bad day: Not perfect, not permanent, not personal. (https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/bonnie-duran-300)

Let that sink in for a moment. You can apply it to many things, but if you’re one to get caught up in the political moment, or to get whipped into a frenzy by covid numbers, or to wring your hands because the reforms you want aren’t happening fast enough or in the right way, just take a breath and remember, nothing is perfect, it’s not personal, and it’s not permanent. 

These people who are so incomprehensible to me, they make sense to themselves. It’s not about you; for them it’s about them. It’s not personal. As far as perfect, nothing is perfect. So remember that your idea for fixing the world may be great, but it’s not perfect. Nor is the world perfect. So all solutions once we get out of the tunnel will be imperfect. It’s not personal that everyone else doesn’t immediately grasp your great idea as the best solution. It’s just inevitable. Machinery as klunky as the human cooperative society is never going to move smoothly in one direction. Move it does, however. Remember, it’s not permanent. Now the more Fred Flintstone feet we get moving in the same direction, the more definite the direction and the movement will be, but still, there will always be other feet walking at a different pace or in a different direction. Maybe it's going a direction you like, and maybe it's not. Either way, it’s not permanent. 

This brings me to the next point. We can’t give up. Just because life is hard, doesn’t mean we give up. When it comes time to give inspiration, I can’t turn to faith. Sure, humor, sure wisdom (sometimes), sure honesty—I can do those. Faith, though? Faith in humanity I have to some degree. I tend to skew towards faith that people overall are good, that most want to be good and do good.  

What I can put faith in is the power of purpose. I get that from Viktor Frankl. In Man’s Search For Meaning he drives home that to survive an existential crisis, a person must find a meaning and purpose to her life. Sometimes the purpose is simply to endure suffering. Bleak as it sounds, it is also a testament to hope. As Frankl worked himself nearly to death at Auschwitz, he told himself his job was to endure the suffering he confronted. We are close to the end of the tunnel, but we know that the light outside is pretty dim, and there’s a lot of scary stuff out there, too, with which we’re going to have to cope. Not perfect, not personal, not permanent helps with suffering, too. 

Maybe this post doesn’t seem that optimistic. Maybe there’s a paucity of Illuminating, or is it Ultimate Gray? I guess to that point I say this: it takes both strength and optimism to face the tunnel. “It is possible to practice the art of living, even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent,” says Viktor Frankl, and he should know. 

It takes strength and optimism to crawl forward in the dark and believe in the light at the end, and it takes strength and optimism to look at what’s in the tunnel, too. Here's Frankl once more, “…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Sometimes the most optimistic thing I can muster is the knowledge that I will feel it once again. 

It’s what I have, today, Readers. That’s it.

*https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/pantone-2021-color-of-the-year-36853569

Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. (1959).

Flattening the Pollyanna Curve--It's OKAY

Hello, Readers. What’s new? I know,  nothing much. Truly. Come to think of it, that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say. Nothing is new. We are still here. Still safe. Still healthy. Yes, it’s tedious, but also, isn’t it just a joy? Isn't it just wonderful? Isn't it just the silverest of silver lingings?

Too much? Too zesty? Too Pollyanna? Have you ever seen the movie about Pollyanna? I believe it is called “Pollyanna”and stars Hayley Mills. Boy, is she annoying in the film. I don’t recall all the details, but by golly if she doesn’t make the best of just about everything. Every shitty thing that happens to her. Her leg breaks? Bummer, but she’s got lots of time to read, now! And so on.

You know the type.

The other day, I was Zooming with some friends and we all agreed that whatever initiative and enthusiasm with which we had initially approached this stay home business had dissipated.

Dare I say has flattened? The curve of initiative?

You know, after the initial disbelief that this was really happening, then being floored, we all decided we were going to learn Spanish or clean out our closets or finish up our projects in a frenzy. We were going to empty those junk drawers and learn to subsist entirely on almost-expired foods in our pantries and be better for it. We were going to darn those socks and hem those pants and write those novels. We were going to work out like demons and emerge from quarantine as sleek as dolphins.

Well, it turns it, many of us are not. We are just existing. Sure, my friend A is working her way through her unfinished projects, but honestly, she was project-based all along. Another acquaintance is planning to finish all her unfinished quilts and is posting photos of them on Instagram. So we shall see. I believe they are the exceptions. A few days of over-filled trash and recycling bins followed by several exhortations from sanitation workers not to overwhelm the trash collectors, because they were just trying to stay safe themselves, were enough to convince me. I heeded such pleas. I put aside the idea of going through the closet with all the old pool noodles—no, I do not have a pool—and Ogosports sans balls and ten year old sidewalk chalk nubbins.  It was only my civic duty to leave the mess where it is for now.

This junk stays

Stay inefficient. Flatten the curve. The Pollyanna curve.

What I have done instead is I’ve been downloading TV apps with their free trials, knowing full well I’m never going to remember to cancel them when the free part ends. Since then, I have churned through season one of “Agatha Raisin” on Acorn TV. Life in a beautiful town in the Cotswolds with an amateur detective woman of a certain age with humorous sidekicks is just the thing, it turns out, to defray an anxiety attack.

Actually, what with all the fabulous free meditations and dharma talks the senior Buddhist teachers are giving every day, I am feeling pretty good, anxiety-wise.

In other news, I have responded to all of my students’ emails, but have not graded a single essay. I’m thinking of just giving everyone an A and flattening another curve. Partly, because I think they’re all shell-shocked and should be put on a pass/fail basis this semester, but their college disagrees, and partly because, as someone rough from the Cotswolds might say, I can’t be arsed.

Truly, I cannot be arsed.

Oh, and in other news, I scraped my thumb. (It happened two days after I cut the tip of my index finger with the chef’s knife. That was just a teensy cut, and we were having a tomato sauce that night anyway.) But then I scraped my thumb and it was just in the exact place to keep opening up and bleeding for the next thirty hours or so (But who’s counting?) and I have to say, this little injury, which was really minor, pretty much brought me to tears constantly. Tears of rage. Tears of self-pity. My water table is just that high. I mean, sure, those niggling minor injuries always cause a burst of fury, and they often prove so much more painful than they should be. However, this one caused such an extra response from me. I chalk it up to having a very low threshold for upset these days.Or an over-active trigger point. These things take energy, too, you know. Flatten the curve of upset.

Speaking of chalk, chalk was one of the the things in that spare closet that I was going to chuck. Decade-old sidewalk chalk stubs. Who needs ‘em? However, am I glad I have them still, because I can go out and chalk the driveway with a big ole S. O. S., so maybe a Scandinavian airliner flying overhead can send down a rescue basket and whisk us off to a better-run country than ours.

Too negative? Sorry, I should have said we can use the chalk to chalk a big ole rainbow on the driveway when the weather warms up. Solidarity and all that.

I am glad my kids are older now. They can take care of themselves. They can bake, I probably mentioned. And sometimes they can walk the dog or empty the dishwasher. As I told my beloved cousin L, I wish I could be the quirky fun mom and come up with great reasons to hang around me and stick together during this, but what I really want to do is flop on the couch and watch another episode of "Agatha Raisin". Sometimes they sit with me and scroll through their phones at the same time. That counts as togetherness and fun activities, don't you think?

Which reminds me, here’s another thing I’ve been doing.  I have been eating lots of delicious, homemade goodies. So there’s a curve I won’t be flattening, and it’s on me.

Sometimes success is about knowing how to let go.

Yup, that’s about it for me, Readers. How’s things with you?

Quarterly Check-In, Part Two. Goals, Again. And the Sphincter of Life.

The other day, when I wanted to write, I tried a computer program called Freedom that blocks access to the Internet. You set the amount of time you want to be free from it, and then a green screen pops up and says, “You Are Free.” I have to say that the moment that green screen popped up, I felt a little space open up in my chest. A little what? A space that relaxed? Like a hole? This reminds me of a sphincter. Sphincter is a word I like. It’s a great word. It’s such an evocative word, almost onomatopoetic.

Anyway, the sphincter in my chest relaxed. Yes, I am equating my heart with an asshole, because that is the sphincter that springs to mind when I see the word. There are other sphincters, but let’s be honest, they are not top of the list. Partly because butts are funny. Funny and gross. And because my sense of humor, another top quality, apparently, is on par with your average kindergartener’s. Also, because I don’t really know anatomy, so I don’t really know where those other sphincters are.

I just like writing that word. Sphincter.

Anyway, freedom from screendom with Freedom. When I sit down to write, or really any old time, I do spend too much time checking and scrolling and not writing. The phone affects me like a reflex. I just check and scroll, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email. email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You get it. You probably do it yourself. It’s a horror show. There is no space. No release. I was talking to another grown up person the other day—okay, it was my esthetician, Ruth, who is amazing, and everyone should have an esthetician and get facials. Just the facial massage is worth the time and money—anyway, we were talking about the way social media just squeezes your life. When we were growing up, we had freedom from peers that our children do not have, because they are always on social media. Back then, it was a relief to get away from the intensity and scrutiny of them by them. Sure, we had telephones. We were attached to these cords that were stuck to these things on the wall. and sometimes we didn’t even have those phones in our rooms. Maybe we could stretch the cord to the basement steps, or maybe there was an extension in the attic or whatever. But you could get away. There was a little space. A little relaxation. The sphincter of life released. Nowadays, it’s constant.

So then, later, I took a shower, and there was a fresh bar of soap in the soap dish. This gave me a new sense of release. And then guilt. And insight into my marriage and goal setting. Afterwords, I said to the husband, I hope you don’t get annoyed that you’re always the one who gets the new bar of soap for the shower. But the thing is, if I see a sliver of soap left, I am going to use it. Because I feel obligated to use every last bit of it.

Maybe my epigenetics were affected by my father growing up in the Depression, but whatever the reason, I am going to use up that last sliver of soap. So if the husband wants a fresh bar before the last sud is gone, he is going to have to get it.

And, secretly, I am relieved when he does, because it’s much nicer to soap up with a big bar of soap than a pebble sized one.

This is the way we complement one another. Or irritate the hell out of one another. Depends on the day.

I think I have to credit Gretchen Rubin with being my source for the research that shows that in couples, each partner usually overestimates the amount of work they contribute and underestimates the amount their partner contributes to the working of things.

So with that in mind, I let my guilt sphincter relax when there’s a new bar of soap in the shower, because I imagine the husband both resents me and also feels superior every time he gets a new bar. And then my guilt sphincter tightens right back up again, because that is the nature of a sphincter (and of me and guilt), because I suspect that while he might overestimate what he gives to the relationship, I know I must also do so, and therefore. Well. The point is that sometimes you have to work out stuff like this. By accepting that I am just not capable of giving myself (and thereby also) the husband a new bar of soap until the very last bit of the old one is gone. And there is a reason.

Here’s the thing about soap. It relates to goal-setting. According to Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, (HGH, Ph.D) author of Succeed: How We can Reach Our Goals, and whose work I have discussed several times, people approach goals with one of two orientations, prevention or promotion. The prevention oriented person is focused on stopping bad things from happening: being taken advantage of; wastefulness; loss of money. The promotion oriented person is focused on potential benefits: improved efficiency; what you have to gain.

Now, the husband, when he steps into the shower, is about taking a nice, hot, sudsy shower. So for him, a fresh bar of soap fulfills his goal. Whereas I am always—always—going to use that bar of soap down to the last sud. There is no way Dove is going to get me to throw away perfectly good soap splinters. Left to my own devices, I am going to, in fact, collect soap splinters in a soap dish, mash them all together into a sort of soap mound and thereby eke out every last sud. And take that, Unilever. Suck it.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.”

This is my favorite quotation from Hamlet. It’s about how quickly Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, shacked up with her husband’s brother after her husband’s demise. It’s a wonderful example of irony. I love to quote it, almost as much as I love to quote from “Auntie Mame.” And I use these words to point out that, thank goodness, I have the husband to get me a new bar of soap. Because let me assure you, it’s no fun to shower with a splinter. It’s a wonderful relief whenever I get in the shower and find a fresh bar of soap. That was not my decision, but I can benefit from it. Thank you, Husband. In this way, the sphincter of life releases a little.

But my point about goals is this. The tendency we have towards goals is one or the other of these.You guessed it, Clever Readers, these orientations are basically pessimistic and optimistic. This is good news and bad news, depending on the goal you have. Some goals lend themselves more to a prevention strategy, and some more to a promotion strategy. When you have a creative goal, for example, says HGH, Ph.D, you want to approach it with a promotion a goal—don’t worry about mistakes. However, when you need something to be perfect, say, a bridge you’re constructing, then you need to be prevention-focused. More good news is that we are not always either promotion or prevention focused, and we can adjust our thinking depending on the goal.

So, some goals are prevention goals. Some are promotion goals. Some can be looked at both ways. Like using soap. Or buying a car. Buying a car involves both promotion and prevention. The promotion part is getting a newer, more updated, more fun, prettier vehicle. The prevention part is getting a safer, more reliable, updated vehicle. And yes, the husband and I recently bought a new car. I was able to get over the loss of money in the bank, and the husband was able to achieve a new vehicle without having to test drive twelve different brands, as I intended, to make sure we had considered everything and weren’t being totally taken advantage of. Which I am sure we were, once we decided on a car we both liked. But now, we have it, and I can just enjoy it. Relief. Sphincter release.

Sadly, I am not the thoroughgoing optimist I would like to be. Because, honest and true, optimists have more fun, tend to see what they might gain from a situation, a goal, or a decision, rather than fester and fear what they might lose or miss, and get to enjoy a fresh bar of soap on the regular. On the other hand, they might overspend on a car and waste precious soap. They might possibly be cleaner than pessimists, thanks to all those suds, but I’ll take you to the mat on that one.

How to Podium - A Person Wants to Be Helpful

This week finds me more focused than last. Right at this moment I have something in my contact lens making my eye uncomfortable and I am irritated by it and am imaging removing it and replacing it with a new one. A new lens, not a new eye, I hasten to say. This will make me feel better, and see better, which is good because I have to pick up the 9th grader from her rehearsal in an hour. Being able to see when driving is good.

See how much of what I'm thinking about at this moment involves the future? Apparently, this is status normalus for humans. This is what I've learned from a recent article in the failing New York Times Sunday Review.*  I have a beef with the title of this article by Martin Seligman, big name in Positive Psychology, and science journalist John Tierney, "We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment". While the article is fascinating, and is, I suppose, a way of bringing a new field of psychology to the attention of the general public, the title is, frankly, misleading. I wouldn't go so far as to call it click bait, but it is annoying. However, I will get to that. I suppose it was meant to catch the attention, since living in the moment via mindfulness is all the rage these days.

But the meat of this piece is that Seligman believes, “What best distinguishes our species” is our ability to “contemplate the future.” Rather than obsess over the past, people more often think about what might happen, a.k.a., the future. According to Seligman, anxiety and depression spring from having “a bleak view of the future.” Not from past traumas nor how they feel about what is happening at present.

A study of about five hundred adult Chicagoans yielded a lot of information cited in this piece. Using some kind of device, mayhap a phone, the study “pinged” these people multiple times a day and asked them to “record their thoughts and moods.” Turned out that thoughts of the future were three times more common than thoughts of the past. Also, participants reported being happier and less stressed when they were making plans. While they did report concerns about what could go wrong, they were twice as likely to be thinking about what they hoped would happen.

So prospection is our thang. We should rename our species homo prospectus, says Seligman. Although we don't want to think too far in the future, apparently, because only one measly percent of thoughts of those Windy City residents were about death, and most of those were not about their own deaths, they were about other people dying....

Anyway, prospective psychology has ramifications for studying treatments for depression, memory, and emotions. Since anxiety and depression are linked to the tendency to “over-predict failure and rejection,” and become “paralyzed by exaggerated self-doubt,” new therapies are trying to train patients to envision positive outcomes and to look at future risks realistically.

Two other intriguing developments Seligman and Tierney mention are that in brain imaging, the areas of the brain that light up while subjects are remembering are the same areas that light up when they are imagining something. The takeaway is that memory is fluid, and one of the explanations is that memory helps us consider future scenarios. The second interesting conclusion is that emotions exist to help us do this more rapidly and successfully.

So, Readers, the question is, what does this have to do with me? And of course with you - of course. After all, the cornerstone of my blog is the assumption that if it has to do with me, it may well be something to which you can also relate, and therefore this blog is actually helpful in some way. Because a person wants to be helpful in some way, usually. A person likes that.

Although I hope you don’t relate as readily as I to the bits about over-predicting failure and rejection and exaggerated self-doubt.

To be helpful, let me point out that one major takeaway— a  word I’ve now used twice in this piece of writing, when one use of takeaway is perhaps too many — is positive thinking helps in planning and achieving goals. We already knew that, didn't we? But, and here Seligman and Tierney underscore good old Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, if you’re pessimistic, just envisioning getting something you want is not enough. I've touched on this topic before. What you need to do is be realistic about the negatives. Pessimists find this reassuring, since they’re not just being blindly Pollyanna-ish about the future. That, according to a pessimist, is akin to daring the Universe to just shit on you.

Pardon the crassness. My children dislike my crassness. And I apologize for it.

But my point is that a pessimist is just not going to be able to convince herself that she’s going to succeed at the thing she wants to succeed at by simply envisioning it. You know, just imagining herself “podiuming” at the next Olympics, as the snow boarders like to say, is not going to be sufficient for a pessimist. A pessimist is going to have to imagine the practical impediments, also known as obstacles, to her achievement. This will accomplish two things, one magical, and one not. First, it will convince her that she’s not taking the Universe for granted by imagining an easy triumph, thus inviting the Universe’s wrath. This is magical thinking and thus seems irrational, but makes perfect sense to some people, such as me. Second, and more important, this strategy leads to an understanding of the steps she needs to take towards this ultimate goal. The term for this is mental contrasting. It’s the opposite of magical thinking, but it does produce results.

Now, back to the title of this piece. I’m sure Seligman and Tierney didn’t pick it, so I’m not going to blame them. However, it is misleading. It seems to indicate that mindfulness is unhelpful, because focusing on the present is not what we are wired to do. Let me point out that the study that helped determine the conclusions described in this article involved something called “pinging”. I hope it wasn't painful, but I can't say. Okay, I can. I know exactly what pinging is, but I'm being quirky and humorous. Anyway, persons were pinged throughout their days, and then, when pinged, these persons noted what they were thinking and feeling at those moments when they were pinged. Those persons, therefore, were practicing mindfulness. They were taking a moment to notice what was happening in the present. Simple as that. That’s mindfulness. As Jon Kabat Zinn says, mindfulness is awareness, and awareness is a form of intelligence different than thought. It was their mindfulness that allowed these subjects to inform the researchers what was going on in their brains. And it would be mindfulness that would allow those anxious and depressed personages to break their bad thought patterns about the future. They have to recognize the negative thought and replace it with a positive one. That’s called, in Buddhism, setting an intention. Intentions are future-looking. They are seeds of possibility. And setting intentions is one of the elements of meditation.  We want to create a better future for ourselves, even the pessimists among us who are scared they can’t. So, living in the moment is actually one of the better things we can do for ourselves.

So, let’s set an intention. I’m gonna, Readers. My intention is to be generous and truthful. I’d love to know yours.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it. Your comments are also appreciated, because then I know you're reading my words and that is a nice feeling.  You can use the buttons at the bottom of the page to share, or copy the url at the top of your screen and paste it into an email or your social media platform of choice.


* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Annals of Successful Parenting & Life

"It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said - gently - that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at one, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born - and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."  - Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott

I’m reading Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. It’s part of my required reading for my book - reading other memoirs, or memoir-type books that might be kind of like mine. Of course we are all unique and different and individuals and all that jazz, but still, we are links in a chain. Maybe it’s odd to be a secular, mostly atheist Jew with Buddhist tendencies who relates to Anne Lamott. Anne Lamott is a born-again Christian with neurotic tendencies and a sense of humor. Well, then I’m odd. So there you go. She’s funny and honest and upfront about her shortcomings and in that way I think the Venn Diagram of our writing overlaps.

If that is not being too bold.

Which it is not, I hasten to add.

Although I don’t exactly believe my own words.

And so it goes. Welcome to the mind of moi, Hope Perlman.

So what I wanted to say was, Hello, Readers, I am just coming off the two week visit of our French “exchange” student. The visit involved so much more field tripping and spending time around other humans than I usually want that upon delivering her to the grotty and miserable bus station in Albany at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning - yes, the 4 a.m. that is before the crack of dawn; the four a.m. that is the time of infinite night terrors; the 4 a.m. of insomnia — and then finding that the bus had been overbooked, and then standing around with fifteen or was it twenty or was it two hundred other bleary and annoyed parents delivering other visiting French students, and also with our own children, who promptly passed the ensuing hour sitting on the filthy floor of the station and playing hand games with their friends and crying and hugging until the new bus arrived at 5:15 am - I promptly came down with a fever, aches, weird stomach pains and postnasal drip. I had so very much else to do that day of the 4 a.m. delivery that I didn’t really admit to illness until it was all done and night had come. One of the first things, by the way, that I did, was to instruct the 9th grader to deposit the clothes she had been wearing when sitting upon the station floor into the laundry. Then I was on to other fry.

But yesterday there was no denying the illness, and so I spent a day doing what my body needed. It was a wonderful relief, Readers. I recommend it.

One of the benefits of having our “exchange” student (please see previous post to understand why I use quotation marks) was that I finally had that coffee with a mom friend that we’d been planning for a long time. I hadn’t seen her since before the election, and in fact, I was kind of afraid to. Not because we are on different political sides, but because I was afraid the thin gauze of optimism I have managed to enshroud myself with would disintegrate with a good old political discussion. But we had more immediate things to discuss, like how in hell to entertain French teenagers in Albany for two weeks. So we met and brainstormed, and my mom friend, who is more pessimistic than I am, even though my thin gauze of optimism is so very thin and gauzy, and I came up with some good activities.

I felt a little like country mouse and city mouse with my mom friend, by the way, since she’s a leggy ectomorph who dresses entirely in fleece and hiking gear and, well, I am not. But anyway, that was fun. But one of the ways our conversation got a little sharp and threatening to my gauzy wrap was our discussion of incivility and how rampant it is and how awful the things we hear on the news are that people say about one another and the partisan divide and the gap between the blah and the blah. And so on. And it was distressing to go over it all. And it is distressing.

And so I was distressed when I left our coffee. But then later I thought about this incivility, and I thought about where I see it. On Facebook, on Twitter, on snippets of the news that I watch on Facebook and Twitter. Of course on comments in the failing New York Times, but everyone knows better than to read those. And then I thought about my regular life, and I thought about incivility there, and you know what? I didn’t find a lot. I found mostly people being nice. Even the ones that might have voted for You Know Who. Like the retired guy down the street who mows his not very big lawn on a riding mower in a sleeveless undershirt. Always been downright civil to me, obviously a liberal feminist with a fancy dog. He’s the guy who once suggested that I “get a couple a frozen meatballs, put ‘em in a dog bag, throw ‘em in the freezer. When you go for your walk, take the bag out of the freezer, and there you go. Cop sees you. You got a bag. Smells a lot better.” See what I mean? Civil. And probably votes for You Know Who.

And then there’s me. I mentioned this before, but it remains true. I still feel this gentle little careful spot inside me that I am tending. It’s me being nice to people I encounter. Nicer, I should say. And it’s a result of the hammering my guts took by the election. It’s an awareness there are a lot of angry, miserable people out there, and I might as well try to not increase their reasons for their anger and misery. I’m thinking if I feel that way, a lot of other people feel that way, too, because I’m not so special or different. I’m not particularly mean or kind. And so that makes a lot of us trying to be nicer to everyone, and therefore increasing civility.

Today I came across this little nugget in Anne Lamott’s book. According to a guy she met who worked for the Dalai Lama, the Buddhists - or maybe the Dalai Lama and his workers - believe that when lots of things are going wrong all around us, it’s to make room for something beautiful to be born.

You know, I really wanted to write something clever and amusing about my cyclamen plant. I got it

last year at the food co-op. It had beautiful flowers that kept dying and returning for months. Then the plant turned dry and dead looking. I was really sad. I searched the interwebs and discovered that cyclamen experience dormancy during the summer, and that I should put the plant in a cool, dark place until the fall. So I did. Then, about a month ago, I remembered it was there. I brought it back upstairs and put it on the windowsill. Well, it looked dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Anyway, I wanted to write about that, maybe make an nice analogy to something in my life. But national events – grand jury decisions and protests – intervened.

You know, I like to pretend I live in a certain kind of world: liberal, reasonable, open to all kinds of religions, sexual preferences, gender designations, career choices, and so on. That liberal elite. Yes, I am very comfortable there.

Following the news of the grand jury’s decisions in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner was news of the results of a two year study of police policy and procedures in Cleveland. Conclusion: police often act with excessive force resulting in damaged community relations, not to mention damaged lives. Was anyone surprised? Did anyone read that?

Anyone who read the Kerner Commission Report in 1967 wouldn’t have been, apparently. This commission was set up to examine the underlying causes of  the riots happening in various inner cities across the US at that time, in the olden days. I was three when the Kerner Commission Report came out, so I don’t remember this firsthand. According to my latest New Yorker, that report “is best known for its conclusion that the United States was ‘moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.’” 

I guess the Kerner Report was right.

For 5 years I lived at the intersection of those worlds, on the edge of East Harlem and the Upper East Side. My kids went to an elementary school in East Harlem where they were in the minority, color-wise. Also, and to a lesser degree, economically. East Harlem, in case you don’t know, used to be known as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio, and it’s one of those pockets of Manhattan that remains mostly ungentrified. The school day my children spent in East Harlem, but all of their extra-curricular activities met below 96^th Street, in the white part of town.

Those five years were an amazing education. I made some friends, first with some of the other white parents, but eventually with some of the non-white parents. That took longer. But I noticed that whatever color they were, my friends were similar to me in key ways, in education, in family’s education primarily, of life expectations for ourselves and our children. We were of the same economic class. The parents of those kids from El Barrio (East Harlem) and I – we didn’t really know each other. The elder daughter was friends with someone from the neighborhood, but her mother really seemed reluctant to let her come to our apartment  - and my daughter never entered the vestibule of her building. She was never asked.

Nevertheless, Hurricane Katrina was the first real shocker to me. Sure, in ed school I read about the underclass, and I read about de-facto segregation in public schools. Heck, I experienced that. But those images of the poor at the Superdome? My God, what country was that? That was so much more real. All those people, mostly poor, mostly poorly educated, basically abandoned. Horrible to contemplate. They were so unappealing looking, too. But I had to ask myself, what separated me from them? Luck, education, money. 

Ten years later, ten more years of government policies meant to destroy the social fabric, to eliminate the government’s responsibility to care for people. Ten more years of policies that elevate business values and dehumanize people, and we’ve got this defacto segregation more than ever. Horrible to contemplate. I read in Backlash by Susan Faludi that the Heritage Foundation, that conservative think-tank behind the Moral Majority, had at its founding, the explict goal of turning the clock back to 1954. Well. 1954 was the year of Brown v. Board of Education, that ruled that “Separate but Equal” was not constitutional and gave a lot of momentum to the civil rights movement. Jim Crow laws were still in effect. Abortion illegal. So on. Turning back all the civil rights gains, including women’s rights. People really wanted - want to do this. I cannot understand that. 

I cannot understand why people would want to do that, but I now understand that people do. So I conclude that I live in a different world than a lot of other people. And this is not ok.

Race, class, education. Those are the boundaries of my little world. I guess I thought it was bigger. I am awakened now.  

One of my friends wrote on Facebook that she has given up hope. She wrote that she wants a reason to feel some optimism, but she worries that the future will bring more of the same.

Well, there is my cyclamen. It looked dead. People who shall remain unidentified made fun of its deadness. Someone moved it off the windowsill, closer to the trash. But I watered it anyway. I noticed that the water didn’t gush out of the bottom of the pot. There were roots holding it in there, buried. And then, just this week, I saw a couple of green shoots. I had been right. I hadn’t given up.

And we can’t do it for our country, either. I’d say the good that comes of the bad here is that more people are educated to the reality of the racial and economic divide before us. Laws shaped this situation, and they can reshape it as well. Protests shape the protesters as much as, or more than, those against whom they protest. Those people shape the laws. And the laws shape justice. So, no, I don’t give up hope entirely. I feel that we – I – have been able to ignore the problem for a long time; but now that it’s out in the open, there’s a chance to do something about it.