Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Thelma & Louise: a couple of good women

I grew up in the midwest United States with fairly liberal, but traditional values about gender roles, manners, and the way good people (women, in particular) present themselves publicly.  These values were reinforced by my schooling at a southern university.  At Vanderbilt, for example, at the time I attended, the 'norm' was for women to be invited on dates to the football games.  If you went on a football date, you wore a church dress and pantyhose and lipstick.  In general, like all of us, I soaked in many messages from my infancy through age 19 or so about how/what 'good girls' are and do.

The first message:  It's good to be good.  Now, I'm not talking about being morally/ethically/spiritually 'good' when I say this.  I'm talking more about good appearances.  So, it goes on from there:  Good girls are polite.  Good girls don't cause problems.  Good girls aren't cynical about people.  Good girls maintain an outward naivete about sex and gender relations. 

I read on Yahoo last week that it's the 20th anniversary of the movie, Thelma & Louise.  Hurray, Thelma & Louise!  Seeing that movie was formative for me, because it expanded some questions and ideas I was beginning to explore about the merits of being a "good girl." 

First, what does it mean for any of us to be 'good' - whether you're a woman or a man?  Whose definition of good is it?

To me, being good, even in outward appearance, is being a three-dimensional person and being insistent that you treat yourself this way and are treated by those around you this way.  It's about valuing yourself and others for their complexity.  An easy example of this (and one demonstrated in Thelma & Louise) is the harm to all women when some women are seen as body parts. ("He called us beavers on his CB radio!")  Objectification isn't just strippers and porn stars - it can also be the 'object' of a 'good girl' who isn't allowed or doesn't allow herself to express anything and everything from dislike to anger to sexuality.  This can cross gender lines the opposite way too - women who see men as a means to financial gain/lifestyle/status.  It does not serve a deeper version of goodness when we see and treat one another this way. 

Being 'good', in a deeper version of goodness is also, to me, not being afraid of your own power.  We are all stronger than we know and are worthy of interacting with the world in a confident way. 

Being 'good' in a three-dimensional way does not exclude courtesy, but values truth as much as courtesy.  I believe we can say anything, but we have a responsibility in how we say it.

I love Thelma & Louise because, through the art of movies, I got to see a different way of being a woman. I'm not talking about the end - I'm talking about the way a character in a book or movie, or even the 'voice' of a song or poem, can free you.  If we want, we can throw our pantyhose away!  We don't have to like everyone we meet.   We can know certain things are unfair and speak up about it.  

We can define being good in our own way - in fact, we have the responsibility to do so.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

some things I've learned

Now, for something a little different.  Some things I've learned about life and people so far (and subject to change, I might add...):

1) Don't make decisions out of fear.  I've never made a good decision primarily motivated by fear and I haven't observed this to work for others, either. 

2) No matter what people say, they usually DO what they want.  If you're confused by someone, pay attention to their actions, not their words.

3) You can't make someone else change.  You can change your reaction to that person.

4) Most people are doing their best most of the time.

5) It's not about me.  In both good and bad, we tend to take overly much credit or overly much guilt/shame.  We benefit from putting ourselves in a more realistic perspective. 

6)  It is important to be careful with our words.  We probably heard this from someone when we were kids - think before you speak.

7) Try to find a vocation you like.  We spend a lot of time working, so it's better to like what you do.  Encourage your kids to study what they enjoy and find a way to make a vocation of it.

8)  Shame and secrets are destructive forces.  Keep pushing for honesty with yourself and judicious honesty with others.  When we are open, we find that much of what we were ashamed of isn't nearly as powerful as we thought.

9) Listen and pay attention to older people.  In our culture, which so values youth, we are missing out on much more interesting people.

10) In the scope of creation, we are little and there is much that is mysterious.   There is almost always a choice- choose love and compassion. 

That's it for the week.  I hope you have a good one. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

can justice ever look like forgiveness?

Last month was National Poetry Month, and my mind was preoccupied with a talk I gave on April 30 for the Greater St. Louis Hospice Organization's Volunteer Symposium on the Poetry of Hospice. I tried to blog about the process of putting this talk together, but instead of focusing me on what I wanted to say, I felt overwhelmed.  So, that's one of the main reasons I wasn't keeping up with the blog.   If you'd like more information on volunteering with any hospice, you could check out http://www.gslho.org/ or any local hospice group. 

Now.  Thinking about Osama bin Laden's death.  I wrote the beginning of what I think is a poem last night:  I stumbled on forgiveness like a gift I didn't want.  Here is what confuses me:  is it important to delineate between small scale hate, like bullying and large scale hate, like what has been perpetrated by Osama bin Laden?  I can forgive on the small scale.  In fact, in my own life, I have forgiven a number of transgressions.  Sometimes I've talked to the person who I felt wronged me, sometimes, the forgiveness was something internal.  Sometimes, I didn't even want to forgive - I even enjoyed holding onto my anger like a little souvenir from being wronged and it gave me a 'superiority' to know that I had been wronged.  But.  Over time, holding onto that anger was a waste of my energy.  The anger dissipated.  I realized that most people in our own little lives are not trying to, are not purposefully hurting us.  They are just living their lives.  Most people hurt us in ignorance, or out of the inability to get out of their own point of view, but they are not usually hurting us out of maliciousness.  What's the point in holding onto that anger or rage? 

But hate, evil, transgressions on a large scale...can that be forgiven?  Should it be forgiven?  If it is forgiven where is the justice?  I had several hospice patients who were Holocaust survivors.  Certainly, all their lives were shaped by that unimaginable experience.  But they each had a unique attitude toward it:  one man told me he "didn't go in for all this forgiveness business."   One woman said there was nothing special about her survival, only pure luck.  One woman espoused New Age philosphy/spirituality.  I think about Elie Wiesel and the great good he brings to the world through his memory and testament to the Jewish people, persecuted people everywhere and any person in despair.  Reading him, I am struck not by his damning of those who caused his suffering, but his commitment to and love of his fellow man. 

I don't know the answers here. I am challenged.  I know that forgiveness has been a good, freeing part of my own little life.  I think I am able to see  more objectively how others interact w/ me and my influence on others.  I feel a greater compassion and my own world is a  less threatening place.

On the global scale, it seems clear that some do have malicious intent toward us.  What is the ethically/morally correct response to this?  It is my gut feeling that more death and killing is not the best response, but if not that, then what?

It's very unsatisfying, but I don't have a way to wrap this up.  I would just like to raise the question(s) and continue to be a voice that is not afraid of not knowing.  A voice, that I hope without naivete or ignorance, can ponder words, ideas and feelings like Love and Forgiveness.