It's Only A Paper Rose

After some wrangling, we (and by "we" I mean "technically the condo board, but effectively me") have managed to secure a contractor to come rebuild the leaking parapet. It's messy and inconvenient, in the way of construction work; there was a worrisome moment this morning, when the crew came to scope out the site, that there wouldn't be a place for them to put the lift. (The buildings on our street are jammed pretty close together, and our building in particular has no parking area—the little clear space around it is almost entirely parking for the neighboring buildings, and I have no idea who to begin talking to to negotiate using it.) Luckily the gangway beneath our decks is open to the sky, and there was just enough room for them to set it up there.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned crowded conditions have meant there's nowhere for the crew to park their truck other than in the alley, outside the gangway door; being a work truck, it takes up most of the alley width. Obviously this isn't ideal, as it's blocking traffic through the alley as well as blocking a few of the neighboring cars in, but I genuinely have no ideas on how it could work differently—they have to load up the demolished brick and bring in new materials/supplies, and if they parked on the street they'd literally have to walk a good quarter-mile around and back with each load. (The few narrow passageways between buildings are all closed off with gates.) So far I haven't had any complaints or heard any incipient shouting matches, but it's only day 1 and they're going to be working through Saturday. I'm genuinely unsure if they'll need the truck there the whole time (I'm hoping that, once they're done with the demolition work, they'll be able to unload everything and park it out of the way), but I'm not a masoner so I genuinely don't know.

It's a little funny, really; I've more than once come across a work truck blocking the alley (usually a cable or phone worker, though occasionally a contractor too) and just thought to myself "well, that's not ideal, but it's not like there's anywhere else for them to go" and gone around. But now that it's my responsibility I'm incredibly anxious about it. It's suddenly a different ballgame when You're The Asshole, even when there's literally no way around it. But often, that's really the only way we can coexist in a high-density space like a city—we all take turns being the asshole and hogging shared resources, and everyone else (hopefully) cuts us some slack because they know they'll probably need to do so at some point too.

I wonder if this is tied to the consistent finding that people who live in cities tend to be more tolerant than people in the suburbs or the countryside...I would imagine it's much easier to feel self-righteous about your place in the world when you don't have to constantly negotiate for shared space, even just on a mental "oh hey, I should move out of the entrance to the subway tunnel so people can get past me" level.

How I found the queer Christian experience in Good Omens

Aziraphale’s position looks very familiar to those of us clinging to non-affirming churches. He represses and is reluctant to act upon desires that he believes to be inconsistent with his identity as one of the ‘good ones’ {...} But he wants to think the best of a heaven that doesn’t really understand or accept him, because surely, by definition, they are in the right? He wants to keep his hands clean and fit in, he can’t allow himself to whole-heartedly pursue a relationship he feels is forbidden to him {...} Crowley’s story, on the other hand, speaks to those of us who fall away from the church entirely — he falls not so much out of wanting to, but because it was the only way to be honestly himself. Forced out of a heaven that didn’t like him questioning things, he ends up hanging out with the crowd hostile towards it simply by default, and is expected to agree that nothing he left behind was worth keeping. {...} And yet he still feels a profound connection to his pre-Fall past...

It’s been a long time since I identified as Christian, but this speaks strongly to my experience in large groups/organizations. I tend to carefully think through assumptions and rules and ethics, which makes me a bad candidate to join any group, because I’m unlikely to just sit and accept whatever tenets create the group identity (whether explicit or implicit)—I’m the one who always pokes at things and asks uncomfortable questions.

It's a useful skill, but it makes me feel more than a little guilty sometimes, because people tend to be quite welcoming in these groups, and I always feel like I’m accepting their hospitality under false pretenses—like, hi, my name is Ambrosia and I’m almost certainly going to openly disagree with you at some point, I hope it doesn’t end up being over something that means we can’t be friends anymore?

And when I do leave a group, especially one that’s been a big part of my life, I still carry a huge chunk of their values with me. Often, I miss the sense of clarity and purpose that membership in that group brings.

I wonder if this is something everyone goes through.

Given that it's been somewhat in the spotlight of late, it's maybe not surprising that I tend to ruminate a lot on research on how much of human behavior is shaped by our environment. This is far from a new question, as the nature vs. nurture debate is recorded all the way back to ancient Greece and likely goes back even further than that, but it's particularly interesting in American culture specifically because we have so much investment in the cultural myth of rugged individualism. Like most cultural myths, this has both positive connotations ("You can achieve anything with hard work and persistence!") and negative ones ("...so if you're poor it must be because you're lazy and refuse to work, it can't possibly be because the system's stacked against you in some way"); either way, neither are quite true, and there's an increasing amount of research lately on how human behavior en masse is far more influenced by systematic incentives than we like to admit.

To zoom in from the bigger picture for a moment, this has been playing out in my own life in an interesting way the past few months. Y'all might remember that I was particularly proud last summer of how much I'd been traveling by bicycle, including a ten-plus-mile roundtrip commute a couple of times a week. Not only was it healthier for me than driving as well as cheaper and more convenient than transit, it was also more eco-friendly, all variables that I care about significantly. As winter rolled around, there were definitely times I was more likely to drive (through some trial and error I've discovered that below-freezing temperatures just aren't worth it to bike through, even if the roads are clear), though sometimes I would take transit instead as a convenient middle ground.

Then, a couple of months ago, Brian and I had our bikes stolen. This sucked, especially as the police do very little other than file the report when you call it in; they've got bigger fish to fry. Luckily, we had insurance and documentation; I filed a claim for the bikes and equipment and they paid out with very little trouble. However, since they no longer make the models Brian and I had before, purchasing a new bike involves some effort in terms of traveling to shops and test-riding different models; due to our somewhat crazy schedules and the time of year, it's been difficult to find time where we're not busy and the weather is cycling-friendly.

Unsurprisingly, this has changed my incentive calculus significantly. Technically I still have a bike, but in addition to needing maintenance, my old beater is too small for me and gives me knee pain, making it distinctly unfun to ride long distances. And since we were riding our bikes so much last summer, I canceled Brian's and my monthly transit passes, saving us $200 a month but also creating an additional disincentive to use transit rather than drive—transit is already less convenient due to the time involved and potential delays, and now that it costs $5 extra for each round trip I'm more likely to just use the car I'm already paying for (unless we're going somewhere like downtown where parking is difficult). Needless to say, I've been driving a lot more over the past couple of months...something I'm not terribly pleased about, but given that transit is more expensive, more annoying, and sometimes unavailable for my commutes, it's the least worst answer personally. The most damning part of it all: it's also the worst possible outcome for the greatest number of people (since I'm contributing much more carbon to the atmosphere), but the surrounding culture is structured in such a way that it's easy to rationalize.

It's situations like this that make me wonder if we're even going to be able to tackle systemic issues like overcrowding and climate change in the future—if we're already this invested in infrastructure for one system, how can we transition to a different one? One friend of mine, an anti-car Nazi (his description), proposes radical structural changes like banning cars from city centers or removing their privileged status on roads, thus slowing traffic and incentivizing the construction of transit, but I doubt such top-down measures are likely to find consensus when they'd greatly inconvenience so many people in the interim. How do we get to the point where the incentives change when we can't be bothered to deal with a little personal inconvenience?

Posting slightly early because tomorrow is slated to be mega-busy - breakfast, massage, yoga, lunch, volunteering, teaching. Also it's my first shift tutoring kids at the library and I haven't worked with kids in years and it's Valentine's Day so they're all going to be hopped up on candy and YOU GUYS I MAY BE LITERALLY INSANE. Yeah, I'm slightly terrified. But it's a good and useful thing I can do to try and make the world a little better...so I'm going to give it my best shot. At least I'm joining up mid-year; if it turns out I just hate it, I can get away with quitting when school's out in June without being a jerk. But it'd be nice if I actually enjoyed it.

What I just finished reading

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I admit that a good part of why I read this now was sheer spite—the VRBO we stayed in last week had an entire bookshelf with a particular political bent, so I bought this specifically with the intent of reading it before we left and leaving it on said shelf. As for the book itself, I could go on for pages about my reactions to it, but for the sake of brevity I'll stick to the biggest revelation: Coates' framing of the fear African-American people live with every day not as fear for their liberty or their property, but specifically for their bodies. It's one of those concepts that's obvious in retrospect but which I'd never seen articulated; it's probably more comfortable for white folks (like me) to debate airy principles like "civil liberties" when, in fact, what black people are afraid of is being deprived of their bodily autonomy and their lives, often by agents of the same state they're expected to swear allegiance to and depend upon for protection. Speaking as someone who's spent a fair amount of time mulling over what I would do if I no longer felt safe in the country of my birth, and debating the benefits and difficulties of the homeless expatriate versus the persecuted minority, it was a bit of a shock to realize there's a whole community of people already living that question right here in my country. (In retrospect, I'm a little ashamed to admit that this shocked me so much—it's not like I haven't been following the news—but somehow I'd never made the connection.) Interestingly, it also intersected with my experiences in the massage field: I'd noticed for quite some time that the African-American people I've worked with tend to have bodies that are stiffer, with fascia that's adhered in patterns you see when people are often in fight-or-flight mode. I had figured it made sense, what with literally having to fight the system everywhere you go to be recognized as a human being, but again, I hadn't quite realized precisely how corporeal that fear was.

What I'm currently reading

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King. I got this from Audible some time ago, and with all the driving we were doing visiting friends in AZ, Brian and I broke it out to listen to. The narrator is competent enough, if a little limited in her range, which mirror's the writer's ability level as well - there are more than a few parts where I can't tell if she's rehashing intentionally in reference to the original Holmes stories or if she just needed another pass by the editor. But Mary Russell is an engaging enough protagonist, and the mysteries themselves (once we get past the somewhat slow beginning) quite well constructed. Holmes and Russell are up against the Big Villain of the piece now, and I have some pretty solid suspicions of who it might be, though I'll keep them to myself to avoid potential spoilers. I also am very much enjoying the not-always-comfortable evolution of Holmes' and Russell's relationship from master-apprentice to partners; I'm at times slightly concerned King is angling for a future romance, which argh no unnecessary and also way creepy between a twentyish woman and a sixtyish man? But so far the tension's been subtle enough that it could be chalked up to "older dude in sex-segregated society unused to having female company", so I'm hoping it's just my literary conditioning causing me to read too much into it.

What I plan to read next

I hang my head in shame - I'd planned to read The Master and Margarita on the plane back but I was so braindead I ended up watching Zootopia on the plane's streaming service instead. (Which I can't say I regret because it was funny and well-constructed and so much smarter than I was expecting and really go give it a watch, especially if you're having a day when your faith in humanity is low. And seriously, there are some great gags.) Soon, though, I promise!

Last night, Brian and I watched what's turned out to be one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: Voyager: "Living Witness".

It starts out with a "What's Wrong With This Picture?" portrayal of the Voyager crew. The actors and costumes are the same, but lots of details are wrong: everyone wears black gloves, Chakotay's tattoo takes up half his face, Janeway and Tuvok flirt with each other, the Doctor is a sociopathic android, and the crew members constantly belittle and insult each other. Most shockingly, Janeway and the crew commit outright genocide in a battle between two races on a nearby planet.

Rather than a mirror-universe story, the opening act turns out to be a recreation in a museum by an alien civilization, 700 years in the future, telling the history of their conflict with their co-species. Needless to say, a patron who's a member of that species isn't particularly fond of the portrayal, and challenges the curator as to the authenticity of his data. The curator smugly informs him that they've just discovered a data storage unit at an excavation that they hopes to recover more data from to fine-tune their story; when the patron asks him what will happen if the data contradicts their expectations, the curator assures him they will reexamine their assumptions.

After some work, the curator finally activates the data device, only to find that it's a backup copy of the holographic doctor, who reacts with understandable shock and horror to this portrayal of his friends. Initially excited, the curator grows increasingly agitated as the Doctor argues for the character of the Voyager crew, insisting that they weren't the aggressors at all and that the crew were inadvertently caught in the conflict as they attempted to negotiate a trade agreement. Angry at having his worldview challenged, the curator refuses to listen and shuts off the Doctor's program mid-sentence. (This being Star Trek, though, that's not the end of the story.)

It's probably not surprising that I loved this story; I've written before about the trickiness of history, and how easy it is to cast people and events in an entirely different light, depending on what you include or leave out, or even such subtleties as the descriptors you use. But I think what I loved about it even more was the journey the curator takes throughout the story.

I've been spending a lot of time lately ruminating on the paradox of intelligence and self-awareness, and how the two don't always coincide where you would expect. One of the classic examples is with situations precisely like the curator's: you would think that intelligent and scientifically-minded people, who are aware of confirmation bias and how it works, would be more open than the average person to changing their assumptions. And yet, in practice, it turns out the reverse is true; intelligent and scientifically-minded people are some of the most prone to confirmation bias, because they're particularly good at marshaling arguments to support their assumptions, as well as finding reasons to dismiss evidence counter to their views. That's not to say they can't reexamine their beliefs, but it's sometimes harder for them.

So it really struck me when the curator re-activated the Doctor's program a day or two later, even (with prompting) apologizing for cutting him off mid-sentence, and asked him to continue his recounting of events. The Doctor, still miffed, asks why he'd want to listen to the words of a genocidal maniac like him - what changed his mind? And the curator replies, with refreshing honesty: "Time to think."

I wonder if, here in this age of social media arguments and instant messaging, that's what's missing from our discussions. Not just the lack of investment in the other person's humanity - so easy when you're shielded by two screens - but also that willingness to step back and absorb, or even more, let the other person step back and absorb. Instead we batter them with all the reasons why we're right, sometimes with the aid of other people, having convinced ourselves that we just need to win, we don't need to worry about the state of the other person involved or what they think of us. Even though we know this tactic doesn't work - the evidence is right in front of our faces.

As I mentioned before, I very much loved Ancillary Justice, in part because of the multilayered approach - the story works very well on its own, but there are a lot of Big Ideas addressed both overtly and subtly, and so many crunchy questions of ethics and morality and technology and culture to debate. The aspect that caught my eye the most, though, was how a little over midway through the book, it also became a parable about identity.

( Spoilers ahoy! )

I recently came across a wonderful metaphor for consciousness in (of all things) Come As You Are. Nagoski describes our minds as being like a flock of birds - at any given time you have your ideals, your assumptions, your values, your emotions, your opinions of the world, the information given to you by your senses, your feelings about that information, your memories, all flying at once. When they're all in harmony with each other - when they're all on a level and all agree with each other about which direction to fly - all is well. When some are in disagreement, however - when past actions disagree with your values, or when you receive new information that's at odds with your assumptions of how the world operates - this causes cognitive dissonance, which can be uncomfortable enough to eventually alter our values and thus the direction of the entire flock. In extreme cases, where traumatic events take place and our flock goes all over the place, we end up paralyzed. But most of the time, it's not that extreme; we continue on, and eventually resolve the dissonance by changing what we can -
whether that's our behavior or our beliefs.

But how often have we accidentally entrapped our friends within that dissonance? How often have we, in not wanting to address our own shortcomings, put those we care most about in a no-win situation? I think particularly of romantic relationships, because they're so emotionally fraught and full of scenarios where our feelings don't live up to our values. Say a partner breaks up with us; we believe that they're an individual and have the right to pursue their own happiness, so we do our best to keep our chin up and bravely soldier on. But breakups hurt; social disconnection hits at our very core sense of self-worth (not to mention our more primal fears of survival, as social connection is fundamental to that survival). Then some weeks later - long enough for us to have gotten over the worst of the sting, but nowhere near long enough to have recovered entirely - someone we care about approaches us and tells us they've been wanting to see our former partner romantically, and is that okay with us? We're faced with a dilemma - no, emotionally it's not okay with us, but to say so means admitting our humanity and our vulnerability on this point, not to mention demonstrating that we're not living up to our vision of ourselves as someone able to Get Over Things. So we say that it's quite all right, thus setting our friend up for precisely this kind of failure - if they take us out our word, we resent them and possibly lash out at them later; if they don't, they're as good as saying they don't trust us. Either way, disconnection.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons I find teaching yoga so rewarding. My emotional integrity has improved by leaps and bounds since I began practicing regularly; something about the meditative aspects of yoga really helps me acknowledge and be more compassionate towards the parts of my consciousness that don't align with who I most want to be, and the physical activity helps to defuse the stronger emotion and get that part of me flying in line with the rest of the birds. I hope that, to some extent, I share that same feeling with my students; it's the kind of small-scale change that can have a huge effect in a person's life, and perhaps even ripple out to have positive effects on everyone around them.

My last post might have been lighthearted in nature, but strangely (and despite freezing temperatures today), it really does feel like spring has begun. I wonder if there's any actual connection between changes in people's lives and changes in the seasons. I know it's always felt that way to me, but I'm not precisely an unbiased observer.

In any case, we're due for a high of 72 on Friday. Time to get the bikes out!


What I've just finished reading

Paper Girls, vol. 2, by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang. I'm completely entertained at how much DNA this series shares with Stranger Things, at least for the first couple of acts; refreshingly, however, the kids terrorizing their neighborhood on bikes are all girls, and this informs their outlook more than a little. There's less character-building and more action in this volume, as the futuristic elements teased in the first come into full play here. I enjoyed it - the thought of a Godzilla-sized tardigrade terrorizing a quiet suburb entertained me to no end - but missed the interplay between the characters, as most of this volume (understandably) consists of their splitting up to do detective work and figure out what's going on. There are some good moments, though; I'm hoping that the next volume, which is going to have to start providing some explanation, finds a way to keep the character development going alongside.

What I'm currently reading

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon. I remember seeing promotional posters for this book everywhere when it came out, probably because it's set in Southeast Alaska and I had just moved to Juneau at the time. I'm enjoying Chabon's characters and the wryly vivid way he describes his characters and world: "The rest of Sitka's homicides are so-called crimes of passion, which is a shorthand way of expressing the mathematical product of alcohol and firearms." Interestingly, I'd barely noticed the dialect until reading a review that pointed it out, despite having had real trouble with it in other works (I couldn't make it past the first couple pages of A Clockwork Orange). I wonder if it's because I'm listening to it via audiobook; it would make sense, given my significantly-better reading (as opposed to audio) comprehension, that my brain would be worrying at the unfamiliar words and have trouble getting past them when written, but would be so busy interpreting and piecing together the sounds that it'd be more willing to sort of gloss over the unfamiliar words and pick them up from context.

all about love, by bell hooks. Given my general dislike of philosophy books, I seem to be reading a lot of them all of a sudden. Even when they annoy me, realizing I can journal about them and make them into a sort of dialogue helps them feel less preachy. But it also doesn't make for particularly fast reading - I think I've managed all of one chapter of this one all week.

The chapter in question is on values - and specifically, how many of our cultural values actively inhibit living by a love ethic. So it's probably not surprising that I found a lot of stuff I agreed with, haha. Still, this passage in particular caught my eye:

Speaking as someone with more than a passing interest in erotica, this kind of thing drives me nuts. Some folks really do dig anonymous sex, but in my experience they're a minority - and usually it's more the transgressive thrill of the act itself than anything particular in the sex that they enjoy. Seeing so many movies where the message is "these people are in love and that magically means they're 100% compatible in the bedroom despite their never having, y'know, sat down and talked to each other about what they like" both sets up an unrealistic cultural standard and actively suppresses a normal and healthy part of sexuality. It took me years and several partners to get past the "if I have to tell my partner what I like then clearly we're not really In Love!", and I know some people never get past it; opening up your mouth and asking for what you want is hard enough without that kind of baggage attached. (I genuinely wonder if this kind of problem has been more harmful to our collective sexual health than the oft-laughed at pornographic tropes; at least with the latter, it makes no bones about being a fantasy and not representative of real life.) Besides, talking about your desires is sexy - it demonstrates confidence and self-knowledge. Leaving that out of a romantic story means you're missing out on some seriously good stuff.

What I plan to read next

It's pretty up in the air at the moment - I've got a fair amount on my plate right now.  Still, I suspect I'll be eyeing something new soon - you can't keep a good polybibliophile down for long!

...my path through the cultural morass has mostly been to be unquestionably brilliant -- it's really hard for people to argue that you shouldn't be on the team if you're the best at it.
--thewronghands/ivy, on dealing with society's engrained sexism

Having written recently about my sense of pride, this quote resonated in my mind with the clarity of a plucked string. If I'm the best at something, no one can criticize me or tell me I don't belong somewhere; in our culture, as a member of a group traditionally excluded, that's a potent defense. Unfortunately, it feeds right into the negative side as well - It makes it difficult for me to learn new things, because I have to first admit that I'm new to this and don't already know everything about it. And if it turns out to be harder than I expected to pick it up, if my unspoken mental "time allotted to become brilliant" is exceeded, I grow very tempted to abandon the effort - the risk of being challenged on it is simply too great.

Upon reflection, I realized it's social as well as vocational: I used to be obnoxiously assertive with my opinions, arguing them to the death when challenged. I've grown better about this in recent years, cultivating the ability to ask others and listen to their responses as well as to pick and choose my battles, but I've noticed that the more men are in a particular group, and especially the less attention I feel they're paying to non-male points of view, the more likely I am to revert to my old habits.

And god forbid I am challenged and shown to be less than brilliant, says my insecurity - that might lead people to question my brilliance in other arenas, and soon I'll be shut out entirely.

"Take this paper, and write down all the regrets you have from the past year. Then we'll burn them and start with a clean slate."

My friend hands me a torn scrap of foolscap, and I pull my purple pen from my purse, considering. The other party guests banter with each other, covering up the inherent vulnerability of the moment by proposing outrageous stories or asking whether such-and-such mundane thing counts as a regret.

I write a few lines, mostly small things; slowly, they begin to imply a theme of something larger that I can't yet articulate. I write a few more, circling around the issue: I regret not taking some of the opportunities my mother offered to grow closer. I regret not reaching out to my friends when I needed emotional support. I regret letting my certainty that I already knew the answers cloud my ability to learn new things.

Finally, I've outlined the shape enough to identify what it is my brain's been hiding from me: carefully, in clear letters, I print "I regret all the times my pride has kept me from connecting with the world."

Then I circle it and underline it twice, as if to emphasize its importance to the oncoming flames.

--

"Even from the time Ambrosia was little, she knew her self-worth."

I am twelve years old, and my mother has told this story many times. Still, my back straightens a little.

"When she was a toddler, I would take her to the playpark in our neighborhood, and she would want to stay longer. So I would tell her, 'Okay, I'm going home without you,' and pretend to leave. And she would keep on swinging, or playing on the jungle gym, until I turned right back around and scooped her up."

At this age, in the nadir of middle school, I am just now beginning to be aware that my greater-than-average self-confidence has been a handicap to my social acceptance. Eight years of teasing, of ostracism both subtle and blatant, of outright violence on a few memorable occasions, are finally starting to penetrate. I am slowly realizing that, contrary to the "just be yourself!" messages of a thousand thousand afterschool specials and middle-grade novels, my defiance of social dictates - my refusal to wear 'normal' clothes, to care about my presentation, to keep my opinions to myself in class - are exacting a very real toll on my ability to get on with my classmates.

Until this point, I've taken pride in not caring about the shallow and superficial things most people in my age group care about, in marching to the beat of my own drum. But the constant shaming wears on me, as it is meant to do; we are social creatures, exquisitely attuned to the slights of others. It will be some years yet before I start to appreciate the value of building my personality through careful negotiation with social norms, of bearing superficial markers indicating belonging to a particular class or cohort. And it will be many more years of careful observation and learning - often by saying precisely the wrong thing - until I learn the subtle arts of getting along in a community, of deferring to others' knowledge even when I'm convinced of my own correctness, of influencing group opinion in small ways, of quietly building social currency against the day when my integrity will demand that I take a stand.

--

This morning, cocooned in blankets and absent any driving motivation to get out of bed early, I sank into the sort of brightly-lit, highly-detailed dream that often seems to visit me at such hours. I was visiting a mall storefront that turned out to be a beautifully decorated Jewish temple, run by a particularly Orthodox sect. For some reason I had a pressing need to wash my hands, and I remember asking a stern-browed woman if I might do so; she looked displeased at the notion, but apparently my need was great enough to overcome her reservations.

I proceeded to the back of the space, where there were several sinks, and started washing my hands at one of them, only to realize from the horrified faces of those around me that not only was I using entirely the wrong sink, but that I was trespassing upon the men's side of the temple, as well as likely violating several other rules I didn't even know. I take such pride in knowing the social tenets in any given situation, in acting carefully to ensure the comfort and approbation of others; the realization that I was in a situation where I was socially illiterate sends a wave of shame, pure and unadulterated as few non-dream emotions are, swamping my chest and my cheeks. Strong as it is, it burns indelibly into my memory the dream that might otherwise have faded in the light of day.


--

"Are you feeling inspired?" I ask my client, once she's taken a few breaths of her aromatherapy oils. We had been laughing at the silliness of naming a scent blend "Inspiration", as if achieving so notoriously elusive a state could be as simple as taking a few breaths.

"Oh, absolutely!" she answers, tongue planted firmly in cheek. "Now I can go home and finish all those half-done songs I have filling my notebooks!"

We spend a few moments bonding over the difficulties of musicianship, and the specific frustration of unfinished artistic efforts. She admits that she finishes perhaps one in ten songs that she starts; I, having not even been brave enough to start ten, feel simultaneously relieved and humbled.

I've long known that my difficulties in finishing anything artistic stem from my perfectionism; so long as a song or a story lives only as an idea in my mind, it will always be perfect, spared the trauma of birth and the inevitable marring of being shaped by imperfect hands. But, with pride much on my mind of late, I begin to consider how much of that perfectionism stems from pride. Completion means sharing, and sharing means risk - of judgment, of failure, of losing my sense of specialness. If I could let go of that need to feel special, set apart, would that help me to take artistic risks? Would it be easier to share something imperfect and true if I didn't tie my self-worth to my pride?

That last thought startles me with the truth it implies, and I almost miss a stroke in the massage.

--

"You can spend your life trying to fit yourself into a box. But you'll always be too much for some people. For others, you'll never be enough. But the great joy is that, if you let yourself, you'll always be exactly enough for you."

Something in the yoga teacher's voice catches me, which seems odd - I've been ruminating of late on how the doctrine of self-exceptionalism has been harmful in my life, and on the surface her message reads very much as a variation on the "just be yourself!" mantra.

You'll always be exactly enough for you.

It occurs to me, as my brain slowly slots the puzzle pieces together, that perhaps the problem isn't pride, per se - it's what I'm proud of. All my life I've been told that I'm talented, intelligent, exceptional; all my life I've been secretly terrified that I'm going to seriously screw up and prove everybody wrong, prove that I really am that weird girl who deserved to be bullied and ostracized, disappoint everyone who had such faith in me. I've accomplished a few things, it's true, and I'm proud of them, but I think I've been even more proud of how they reaffirmed my belief in my own exceptionalism.

And yet...in order for me to be exceptional, it logically follows that others have to be unexceptional. And I've long since rejected the idea of talent as a zero-sum game; I strongly dislike the idea that because one person doesn't measure up to another on one arbitrary scale, that means they don't have something to contribute on another axis. I wonder how much of the fear and misery I can forestall by refusing comparison, by practicing humility with regards to others, by working on being enough for me.

I wonder if, freed of its shackles of fear and embracing its gift of imperfect life, my art might someday take wing, finally able to share itself with the world, to help forge those tenuous connections we so desperately need.

I've tried my best to keep my political posts to a minimum, this election. This is not because I don't like politics, or think they shouldn't be discussed in polite company; I find sociology and demographics and economics and all the other fields that contribute to political choice-making fascinating. Even more, I feel strongly that the point of a democracy (and deliberative government in general) is to encourage discussion and exchange of views between people who may not agree. It's slow, and inefficient, and often anxiety-making; it requires an ability to listen in good faith, and to find common ground. But, at its best, it helps us broaden our viewpoints and make decisions that are best for everyone. I've made a very real effort, therefore, to befriend people on all parts of the political spectrum.

And so I feel like I've gotten a front-row seat to our country's increasing polarization over the past decade. And that's made discussing politics increasingly uncomfortable.

There's no one single cause that I've seen a convincing argument for. Income inequality absolutely contributes, as does the stark divide in rural vs. urban culture and economic opportunity. Self-constructed Internet echo chambers may have had an effect, as well as the culture of bullying that Internet anonymity has given rise to. A news media that depends on conflict and horse-race reporting to generate clicks. But the one very real effect is a complete breakdown of communication between people with different views. An obstructionist Congress that refuses to work with the other branches of government. A Supreme Court evenly split along ideological lines. And, on a smaller scale, a stream of people in my social media feeds - many of whom I like and respect - demanding that people who voted for an opposing candidate, or who have different ideas about this or that issue, unfriend them right now. No more communication.

And the damned thing is, I can understand that. We're all human. None of us like uncertainty. None of us want to admit we might be wrong, that our friends might be wrong. A lot of us aren't even comfortable discussing our thinking anymore - it's too likely someone will take advantage of even that small vulnerability to land a sucker punch. It's so much easier to hide in our bunker with the people who pass our tests of ideological purity, who will reinforce our view of the world, and who won't challenge us for fear of being ousted from our circle.

But the cost is...this. A government so dysfunctional it can't even fulfill its basic, Constitutionally-mandated responsibilities. Social media feeds full of 'gotcha' memes and biased information. And now, a whole section of the populace that feels so left behind, so ignored, that they've (very likely) elected a supremely unqualified person for the highest office in the land, solely for the satisfaction of throwing a brick through the window.

It's times like this that being a big-picture sort of person gets really depressing. Because, ultimately, there's not much I can do about any of these trends. I can't make people listen to each other. I can't stop Internet trolling, or demand that the media quit publishing clickbait headlines, or stop my friends from posting questionable memes. I can't fight what feels like the inevitable tendency of humanity to lose sight of common goals in favor of petty squabbles.

So what can I do? What can any of us do?

Listen. Cultivate empathy to the people you might normally dismiss. Empathy is not the same thing as sympathy; it doesn't mean you agree. It simply means you're willing to consider what they have to say, and their possible reasons for saying it.

Find common ground. For all that we love to find reasons to argue, we're all human, and that means we all have far more in common than we don't. No matter your differences in background, culture, or demographic, I guarantee you have something in common with the next person.

Bring people together. It might be small ways - a yoga class, a church service. It might be bigger - writing a novel, running a protest. But find some way to help people reconnect with others. Help them remember that we're bigger than this.

Set healthy boundaries. Say no to interactions, discussions, and relationships that only drain you. This might seem counterintuitive, but people with the strongest sense of boundaries are able to be the most openhearted with others, because they've saved their energy for the difficult work of listening in good faith.

Maintain your integrity. Practice what you preach.

These are my resolutions for the next four years. What are yours?