It is hard. It’s way harder than we thought. It’s not like the books said – happily ever after. It’s not that way at all.
Nope. It is all very hard. But some things are just worth it.
But really. What else are you going to do? Lie around and complain?
Yeah, yeah. Sure – that’s popular. Works for a bit.
Or you could just roll up your sleeves and do it. Hard and all.
I’ve heard about this for a long time. I’ve istened to complaints about this for a long time. We’ve laughed, the way they do in this video.
But you know – it’s really not fair. Worse, it’s really not nice.
So when is it going to stop? When are we going to make this go away?
One of the most fascinating things about us humans is that we are able to believe very different things.
The trouble starts when we begin judging our beliefs as moral and immoral, or labeling them right or wrong.
Throughout history cultures have valued or committed acts that when viewed through our current lens, totally horrify us; the sacrificing of humans or children to appease a god or gods; the eating of human flesh in a ritual. Most people today are horrified by these notions, and have no trouble decrying then as vastly immoral.
Today, cultures still have varying beliefs with appropriate codes of proper conduct. And punishment.
I just read a story in The Daily Mail that aptly “horrified” me: a man had his own daughter killed because she caused shame to the family.
The crime? Kissing.
Banaz Mahmod of Birmingham England, a young girl of 20, dared break the code of conduct in her strict Muslim family, and left an arranged marriage for “an unsuitable man.”
For this family, and the people in her community, this is a ghastly crime. It is considered so shameful, that those who dare commit it can be punished by death. A death caused by their own family member.
“On the orders of her 52-year-old father and uncle, Ari Mahmod, 50, she was strangled with a bootlace by Kurdish assassins, her body stuffed in a suitcase and buried six feet down in the garden of a house belonging to an associate in Birmingham.”
“Two of the murderers, who fled back to Iraq after this horrific so-called “honour killing”, have since boasted of raping Banaz before she died in January 2006.”
Today’s International Female Value Index falls 50 points because it is still believed somewhere that a woman defying a man, or her father, is a very bad thing. In this same place killing a female family member is a good thing. Somewhere a man thinks he has brought honour to his family by asking murderers and rapists to kill his young vibrant daughter. Family, friends, and neighbours agree, condone, or watch silently.
But the IFVI also jumps up 100 points, because of Banaz’s sister, who was a key witness at the three-month trial of her father and uncle, which this week resulted in their convictions.
Bekhal Mahmod is believed by British police to be the first female family member ever to give evidence in an “honour killing” trial. Even her own mother and three other sisters refused to cooperate with the police for fear of upsetting the community.
The fear of reprisal is very strong and Bekhal has no contact with her family, for fear she will be found. Plus she does not want to put them at risk from the Kurdish community for associating with her.
Behhal Mahmod is very brave to have differing beliefs from her family, culture and community, and to stand up for them. How many of us can say the same?
Read the full story:
‘Honour killing’ sister breaks her silence
Wow. I totally fucked up this evening.
I was talking to some new friends the way I normally talk to my core friends. And they didn’t understand me. At all.
It wasn’t until I had babbled on for quite a long while, with passion, vociferousness, maybe some zealotry, that they interrupted me to say that they didn’t believe in the pecking order I was talking about.
Pecking order? I wasn’t talking about pecking order. The only thing that I mentioned that was close to any kind of order was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I only mentioned that because they asked a question.
Things got more than a little bit uncomfortable after that.
I got quite emotional. First of all, because I hate making mistakes. Here I was babbling for some time, thinking all the while I was making total sense, that I was making myself understood and that they were following me. I actually thought I sounded pretty clever.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case. They weren’t following me. At all. In fact, they probably thought I was a bit of a nutbar.
But I live by the notion that the onus is on the communicator, so I got even more emotional because after a couple of questions, I realized I pretty much was making sense, only they didn’t understand me. The vocab, the ideas, the reference levels were too “far out” for them. They hadn’t experienced these ideas yet.
Crap. I know this feeling. I lived it most of my life.
The ideas I was talking about were foreign to them. But, if I were talking to a different group of friends I would have gotten a totally different reaction. For example, if I had been talking to a bunch of clown friends, they would have totally got it.
Clowns you say? Yup – clowns. I studied European stage clowning here in Toronto, and we have quite a healthy community of clowns in the city.
Clowning is the art of portraying the universal truth of how we feel inside. That’s a pretty heady sentence, but Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball were modern clowns, and it’s far from heady stuff. In fact the key words of clowning are “from the heart.”
The art of the clown is to feel and express truthfully what we as humans are not allowed to freely express. The audience is taken on a journey. The goal? To see ourselves as we really are. That way we can stop taking ourselves so seriously. The less seriously we take ourselves, the healthier the society is. This is especially true for the King – the more seriosly he takes himself, the more tyrannic or despotic his rule.
Clown training it is all about encouraging us to feel and express what we really feel, without judgement of our emotions. It’s one of the few places I have ever experienced that. And it took me a while to find it.
My new friends hadn’t gone to clown school.
Nor had they taken one of Julia Cameron’s workshops. Julia is the acclaimed author of “The artist’s way” and I am currently reading her follow-up book, “The Vein of Gold.”
Here’s the paragraph I stopped at while reading last night. I can clearly see what inspired my rant tonight.
As youngsters, when we are judged by outside authority, we often take that judgment into ourselves. The choir teacher who makes fun of a quavering adolescent voice, may cause a singer to lose that voice. The college professor who tells his students, “your job is to convince me that you are brilliant (not express yourself), may rob his students of the right to self-expression….
…In shamanic tradition , the loss of these parts is called “soul loss.” Any severe artistic shaming is sufficient to cause such a self-displacement, and the results can be catastrophic in terms of both identity and productivity. Our gift for design, our gift for poetry – some part of us is judged and then disowned. This disowned gift goes underground.
What I was talking about was freeing the artist within, by supporting the child within. I was saying it would be cool for us to support each other in becoming the best we could be. That we should endeavor to develop our natural talents or childhood desires that weren’t supported, to practice and become skillful – at being us.
The the over zealous part kicked in and I went on to say that it was about self-actualization, and how the great books and mystics describe adulthood as the point where we no longer need anyone’s approval, not even our parents’. We walk on our own two feet. We make our own decisions. We have to know what are our own values are, versus just mimicking those of our culture and community.
Well, that’s what I thought I was saying.
My new friends were thinking that I was judging them for not being the best. They said they were happy where they were. They were sorry that I wasn’t happy. But “if I wanted something, I should stop complaining and apply myself and work hard to get it.”
We kind of got stuck there. I got defensive and teary, saying “ok, then you support me and I will have to do nothing for you. Cool. If you are OK with that, then sure. I was only trying to be fair.”
But in truth, I was sad, because what I was hoping to do was to re-create clown school. Because I miss it and the supportive atmosphere. Because I am trying to do something new and hard, and I will surely make an ass of myself, and I want that to be Ok. Because when I was growing up making mistakes wasn’t OK. In fact, being an artist, or doing artsy stuff, wasn’t OK. And I don’t want to make mistakes all by my lonesome – company and support from knowing friends makes all the difference.
I wanted a community of like-minded souls. And I wanted these friends to be it.
Problem is, they didn’t want it.
Crap.
Onwards.
Argh. This blogging business is taking longer than I thought it would. Famous last words. Often mine.
I started writing a post about New Year’s Resotutions worth stealing more than 2 weeks ago, and forgot about it. It must’ve fallen into the hole where all my other “started but not yet complete” projects go. It’s so full, I’m amazed anything else fit in.
Then I found it today in the Performancing plugin that goes with Firefox. The plugin is a blog editing tool which allows you to write and post to your blogs from the Firefox browser. I was checking it out, wasn’t getting it, wasn’t happy with my post, so decided to leave it till later. My other famous words.
Then life got busy as usual, and since I didn’t have any more time to check out the new editor, I didn’t open it again and so forgot about my half-written post. That is until today, when I decided to see if the plugin was a good option for writing notes to myself about stuff to blog about in the future – so that I wouldn’t forget them. Hah.
And there it was. Awwwwww. That’s the sound you make when you see a cute little puppy with a cast on his leg.
I saw the forgotten collection of words, looking like it was tucked hastily into a drawer, and immediately felt sorry for it. Poor thing – you’ve been neglected. Kind of like in my recurring nightmares where I find ignored pet hamsters in my parents’ linen closets, or tropical fish flopping about in the last inch of gungy aquarium water. Am I telling too much?
And then the following thoughts plugged up my head:
“Geez. It’s a little late to write about New Year’s Resolutions now. But you can’t just throw it out – what a waste. But it will look bad if I put it up on the blog now – it will look like I’m late, a slacker. I don’t want people to think I’m a loser. Well, it’s not like you have anything much else up there. Ouch – good one. No, really, just chuck it. But, ohhhh, it’s a really good cause – you can’t just drop it. You caaaannnnn’t.”
‘Tis true, I can’t just drop it. My 2006 New Year’s Resolution was to finish all the stuff I started. No matter what.
Crap. Mutter, mutter.
Ok. I will post it.
Then more head mess ensues.
“Do I just put it up and pretend no one will notice? Kind of like sneaking into the back of the class when it’s all ready started? Or do I come up with a good excuse? How about a segue – something about second chances for resolutions if you’ve messed yours up all ready. Yeah, yeah. I could say something about Chinese New Year coming up in February. That’s it. We’ve got an in! Phew.
And so goes my humble little third post for my personal blog. Follow on to the fourth, which should have been the third.
At the end of Tae Kwon Do class today, our instructor, a young Master from Korea, asked us to close our eyes and meditate on 2007, the coming new year, to challenge ourselves, and to set a goal.
It sounded like an OK thing to do. I hadn’t had time really to come up with resolutions. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath or two, and marveled that the CD player was playing a song with the lyrics “I’m going to be happy”, or something like that, in the background. Wow – how’s that for serendipity.
Then I breathed some more, listened to the traffic outside, and thought to myself that I was getting more “space” in between my thoughts, and how cool was that, what a good girl am I, my zen meditation must be working.
Tra la la.
Then I realized my hands weren’t in the right position, so I fixed that and sat up straighter. Checked out my lower back because it had been hurting recently, and adjusted my posture because it’s been concerning me.
Took another breath and lo, time was up. We stood up, but instead of ending the class, the Master asked us to say our resolutions out loud.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Egads. I hate that. Really hate it. I hate it, hate it, double hate it. Triple hate it. And crap, I hadn’t even thought of any. Argh.
Now my usual way to get out of this would be to come up with a good excuse. “Uh, is that my mother calling? Gotta go.” Sometimes the excuse was bad…”Sorry, my religion proclaims that I can’t say these things aloud. Yeah, weird, eh? “
But if it worked and got me out of the fear and into relief, any excuse was damn brilliant.
Until the adrenaline wore away. As it always does. And your heart rate goes back to normal, your clammy hands dry up, and you are left wondering what it feels like to be one of those little reindeer that plays those reindeer games, laughing, and smiling, and obviously having fun.
Then your heart skips a beat and you groan as your stomach churns when you remember the retarded excuse you came up with, and wondered how you were ever going to face them all again. And you wished the earth would split open right then and there, and swallow you whole.
So, I didn’t do it. I want to be one of those reindeers playing reindeer games. I want to participate and have fun doing it. And in order to do that, I have to stop running from the discomfort.
I’ve also just started reading a book that maintains that if you write down your goals, they will come true. It is similar to the idea that if you tell everyone your idea, it will be realized, or if you build it, they will come. So, I decided to go for it.
I had just enough time to formulate some words in my head before I was called out randomly to go ahead. Luckily, the words came in a complete sentence and luckily I didn’t have the time to start censoring and rewriting them.
So, I said them. “I wanted to be bigger, braver and have more confidence.” I wasn’t as loud as I could have been, and tae kwon do is all about being loud. But I said them, and no one laughed or pointed or snickered. Phew.
It felt good to say those words. Ok, that could just be the relief of getting it over with. But upon hear them aloud, they grew on me, and made a lot of sense. So I think I will keep them. And now I will write them.
In 2007 I want to “go big or go home.” I want to be brave enough to be able to go bigger. I want the experience to fill me with confidence.
Tra la la.
Tags: new years, resolutions, confidence, fear, courage, public speaking, loud
Just waiting for that final shipment of guts to arrive.