MoxieLife

Are Women the Answer

It isn't unusual that I wouldn't agree with Marylin Sewell on what her vision of what the world would look like if women ruled it. I would like to believe the earth mother idea about women and how we all are nurturing. That would be nice, but it isn't my experience of other women. I have, instead, often found women to be petty, mean, small minded, stingy, cruel, and bitter. They can also be manipulative on a level that men can't even begin to understand.

If you have had the opportunity to work in any corporate structure you have met a woman or two who treated you with a cruelty that you couldn't imagine - mostly because they were taught that behavior in school. Mean Girls, isn't just for movies and TV - it is a reality on the playground and in the boardroom.

So, would the world be a "better" place if women ruled, I think not. Just different. Not better. The day when men and women, religions and races, cultures and cults can come together and rule with honesty and clarity of purpose will be where the change we are looking for comes from. I will not be the one counting on my gender to be the one to save the day.

Communicate Clearly and Mostly In Person

This should be filed under pet peeve: don't email me your "issue". CALL! Come find me. Take care of it yourself. Anything but email!

Here is the situation: If you have something that I need to do, but you don't inform me of it until it is impossible for me to take care of it what good does it do to email me that it should have been done.

In fact, why didn't you contact me the minute you noticed that it should have been taken care of?

Why didn't you pick up the phone and tell me.

Because, really, I am super helpful. I WANT to do things that help everyone. I like taking care of problems.

The lesson here is that if you see something that needs to be done you have two options (only two):

You can do it yourself.

or

You can call the person who you think should take care of it and ask them to do it.

That is it. There are no other options that create a positive outcome.

Oh, wait, you might not want a positive outcome. You might just like making yourself feel better than other people by telling them after the fact that they might of done something. Yep, that might be what you like doing.

Or maybe you just didn't realize that calling me would have solved your issue. The truth is I think in this age of instant communication we are having MORE communication issues rather than less. People use the tools that they have poorly. They don't communicate clearly. They make things worse, muddier, or filled with big messes.  I am probably just as guilty of doing that myself.

My goal: to communicate better with everyone. Lofty and noble, but hopeful!

Where is the Joy in Comparing?

Isn't it interesting when you are thinking, writing about something and then you either read or hear something else along that line. I am sure it is because I am just aware of that current idea and so I see it, but still it is an interesting occurrence. Recently I have been thinking about the idea of comparing myself to others - either up or down.

Things like: they have a nicer house than ours, she seems more polished than I ever will, when will I ever get as organized as her... that kind of thing.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it lessons the person that you are comparing yourself to and yourself. Either I am better or worse than they are and either way that is a feeling of judgment cast on someone. It has a residual sticky feeling that is sickening.

Buddhists talk about Sympathetic Joy as being one of the goals and that there are far and near enemies: envy being the far and comparing being the near. "Sympathetic joy is joy in the basic goodness of all beings, and joy in the fundamental well being of ourselves and others, from Joan Halifax Roshi"

Think about it, when someone tells you they are going on vacation, their child had some super success, or their husband just landed a great project do you have any twinge of feeling left out? A little, "why not me"? Of course we push through that to genuinely express our joy for them. We ARE happy that they are going to have something great in their life. We are. Mostly.

I am terribly guilty of comparing myself to others, and usually coming up short. It is as if I need to replay my mother saying I was dressed terribly over and over by comparing myself to how some other woman is dressed. That is the near-enemy of Sympathetic Joy and it grates on happiness or at least a sense of self.

Dani Shapiro writes in Devotion about having a bolt go through her during a meditation retreat where she is sitting half listening doing the comparing thing when Sharon Salzberg talks about how it is the enemy of Sympathetic Joy. She had passed over the Joy thing because she was genuinely happy for people, at least she thought she was until she realized she was constantly comparing herself on an up or down scale.

Why do this? Why play this constant game in our minds? I figure that, mostly, we are good enough for us.

Photo Credit: Wonderlane

Crack in the Veneer

Relationships are tricky. Friends, siblings, husbands, children... they all have different rules of engagement. Either that or I am hopelessly clueless. Let's take a little show of hands poll here to see if you always agree with your spouse. Not on what to have for dinner, but about ideas or concepts that create our world and society.

Hands up.

I don't always agree with mine.

On MOST things we are in perfect agreement, but sometimes we aren't. And when we aren't it is like there is a little crack in the veneer. It isn't a huge thing, but you can see it.

I could, to make things easier, just shut up about some things. Instead I talk it until it is dead. And that crack is just a little bit clearer.

Why? Why not just let it go? Why not leave it alone altogether?

Curious things these relationships.

The Right to Picket

In our paper the other day (I would link to it but they are lame and require you to be a subscriber to see anything) (oh, here it is) they talked about a city council decision in Boone County, Arkansas to not allow picketers to picket funerals. Now, they were talking about the infamous Phelp's family and their religion of haters who believe that soldiers that have died in Iraq or Afghanistan are somehow fighting the cause of homosexuality. Not sure of that link myself, but I am sure they have it all worked out in their twisted little minds.

So the ban on picketing. In THEORY I think this is the right thing to do. We don't want people harassed during one of the most difficult moments of their lives. We don't want them to suffer any more then the have already suffered. We care that they lost this soldier and want to afford them the dignity that they deserve.

But.

Yes, of course there is a but or I wouldn't bother typing this here.

We want the freedom to assemble. Simple. Clearly we need to not cause riots. We don't even need to say anything if noise is not permitted. But we want the freedom to assemble wherever we want to to protest anything we want.

That freedom is extended, however reluctantly, to freaks like the Phelp's family.

So, this decision, I am sure will be fought in court. And like my husband said, good because then the Phelps family can waste their money and time on lawyers rather then bothering suffering families.

I'll let ya know what happens.

Photo Credit: NewsPhoto! - Photo taken at protests in Iran

July Thoughts

Lately I have been thinking about some of the following things - not in any real order, just things I am thinking about:

Dog ownership is the best thing ever.

There are some people that I do not understand and then I do not like them. It is unfortunate thinking because maybe if I figured them out they wouldn't shift so quickly to the do not like.

Mean people, even when they think they are being constructive, are a pain and don't really help anything.

I have noticed that people like to whine more than they like to actually do something.

Having a more regular schedule would be helpful.

There is still, in this so called paperless society, way too much paper.

I do not go on enough picnics - as per the Bachelorette - they go on an infinite amount of picnics in romantic setting and apparently I am missing out and it is bruising my romance skills.

July in the South is just too hot.

I woke up one morning completely sure that there was nothing sacred outside of the mind/spirit and anything considered so is tainted by human ignorance/manipulation/power seeking.

True Blood is like bloody porn.

Other people online are not cooler than I am.

This is the second year we have raised, unknown to us, a nest of bunnies in our fenced garden.

Out of Sorts this Summer

I feel dislodged. This isn't an unusual feeling. It happens every time my daughter comes back from school or in this case from being a camp counselor at Girl Scout Camp. See, when she moved to college I took her room as my office. Except her bed, closet, and dresser are all still in there. So, it is really her room with my desk in it. So, when she comes back it gets overwhelmed by stacks of books, clothes, and accessories with no home. Leaving me feeling like I am working in a messy dressing room during a sale at Macy's.

Not conducive to feeling calm, collected, and organized.

So, I moved some of my work back up to my old office upstairs. Which is really a very nice work place, but is hot, stuffy, and covered in the hair of three aging cats.

Not to mention that as part of my job as a downtown coordinator (think: crazy ring master to events in a public park) a lot of what I do is jammed in tote bags and files stuffed in my car.

Today, I lost my purse. A moment of panic. First I thought it was still in the car, but after my husband looked for it in the back of the car and it wasn't there the panic set in. I went looking through the crates, bags, and back seat to see if I could find it. It wasn't there. I then remembered that I was taking parking tickets (one of the pluses of working downtown), checks, and notes from merchants out to organize up stairs into some kind of order. Ta Da! The purse was upstairs.

Not that it didn't cause me moments of sheer panic.

So, my summer looks like more of this. Feeling unsettled, unplaced, and running from project to project with no sense of accomplishment because each day there is something new to do.

The answer seems to be that I would put ALL of my things back upstairs and not let anyone else play up there - take it back as my own. But because of the time to move all of it and the loneliness of being up there with those three hacking cats I am reluctant - although it may be my only sanity!

That and a clear need for a vacation... something I haven't had in years.