Resentment Is Like Drinking Poison...

This is a brilliant analogy. For supposedly being the most evolved and self-aware creatures on the planet, we humans can be fragile, ego-driven beings who work so hard at trying to fool people around us...maybe we even think we can fool ourselves. (We can't.) But holding on to resentment never, ever ends well.

Sure, we all temporarily harbor a little resentment or anger from time to time. (Hey, we're human!) But to make an occupation of it--that takes enormous compartmentalizing, the memory of an elephant, and a serious lack of hobbies. Worst of all, it damages relationships; and, ultimately, it erodes the spirit of the grudge-holder, in the way a choppy surf erodes a shoreline.

I was recently visited by the resentment of someone in my life. It reared it's ugly head in a gift shop, of all places. One passing question from the clerk solicited a rare, honest comment from this person. From that instant, this person couldn't recover from the fact that they had actually made a genuine statement about their resentment towards me. So, very unfortunately, the remainder of our day together was peppered with this person alternately trying to smooth-over their original comment and, yet, also (once again) air their almost two-decades-old grievance.

I have empathy for the fact that deep down inside their heart, this resentment comes from hurt. I don't wish for anyone to be hurting. At the same time, geez--way past time to unpack that toxic baggage! This person's inability to see past this one event has always hindered our relationship. One choice decided my place in this person's mind and heart--that has not and will not ever change. I know this because I've tried. And tried. And tried. It took me a good 10 years to realize that nothing I ever subsequently did or said would ever make up for my supposed misstep of 17 years ago. I finally gave up futilely trying to convince this person to put down the poison bottle. I "let it go" (to quote another strong female character) because I won't allow my spirit to be poisoned by another's darkness. Do not ever allow someone's negativity to erode your spirit! 

I am sad for this person because they'll keep drinking from that ol' poison bottle, hoping that I'll be the one who's damaged. And in their pain and resentment they have and will continue to miss out on many potentially beautiful moments.

This. Is. Not. Normal.

I am devastated for our nation. I have been since the wee hours of November 9, 2016.
How could so many people--many of who are generally kind, loving, helpful, some Christian, thoughtful people--have voted for the most unabashedly cruel and bigoted politician of our modern age? It's almost three months later, and I still have no answers to that question. My devastation has not been quelled by the events of those three months, either.

From all evidence, Donald Trump is a spoiled, mean-spirited, narcissistic, thoughtless, woefully selfish juvenile trapped in an adult-sized body. By his words and actions, his "religion" seems to be Trumpism, and his brethren is only those who are just like him. Or those who just say yes to everything he wants--I suppose that works for him, too. Such a personality may work fine for the business world, but now his "business" is matters of world importance. Again, by all his words and actions, he is ill-equipped to run our country. (And don't even get me started on his still-remaining ties to his actual business....urghhhhhhhh. A truly for-profit presidency.)

None of this feels...well,...regular, acceptable, normal. I loathe the word "normal". I absolutely despise its very labeling, alienating, us vs. you nature. But, I find myself using it to describe Trump's actions before and after his inauguration: This. Is. Not. Normal.
He is sooooooooooooooooooooo far outside the borders of the realm of anything that is reasonable and justifiable that using the word "normal" in that phrase becomes a more succinct way to express this.

So, at the suggestion of a friend, here is this blog, dedicated solely to thinking, discussing, and commenting about our new reality: living in a trumped-up America. In just three months, our nation has become more and more the Land of the Payers and Players. I fear what it will look like at the end of the remaining 47.5-ish months. Let's live through it together.

Let It Be

I started this post back in November, as I was lamenting about how lax I have been in posting on this blog. Hello, February.

My hiatus was definitely not for a lack of thinking about life and stuff. Alas, house hunting, packing, closing on a house (which was a nightmare and almost didn't happen), moving into said house, unpacking, looking for part-time writing work, fall revelry, Halloweeny activities, election trauma, Thanksgiving preparations, packing all the fall revelry away, working part-time, decorating for the December holidays, celebrating the various December holidays, losing our beloved Granny, traveling for a memorial service, inauguration trauma, and then traveling to visit more family have all kept me off the ol' blog (in addition to the usual household, homeschooling, family, mom, and wife stuff). So, as far as this blog, I had to just let it be for a while. It's been a whirlwind. More and more, life is a whirlwind. But I now return to typing my humble thoughts on the keyboard to share. You know, with all two of you who read this blog.

From BridgieBean, With Love...

This post has been percolating in my mind for a while now. After reading about the tragedies of this past weekend in New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota, and the danger of a collapsed ceasefire in Syria, today seemed like a good day to post it. Sending love, strength, and peace to those places and people, and to anywhere and anyone else in the world that needs it...

Times like these that we've recently experienced are scary. It seems like not a day goes by without hearing of a new incident of violence in some corner of our world. Some days, that corner of the world is right in our own neighborhood, so to speak. And almost every time, the initial shock and devastation gives way to waves of antagonistic bluster and finger-pointing. Guns, religion, skin color, politics, nationality, gender, economics, privilege, racism--all are batted about in a grotesque ping-pong game of endless blame and recrimination. Except in this game, there are no winners, only an increasingly divided society, where fear, misunderstanding, and hate are perpetuated. Differences are accentuated and divides are widened. It occurs to me that for a nation that claims to pride itself on celebrating diversity, individuality, and chutzpah, our society more often fears and loathes those qualities and anyone who exemplifies them...anyone who represents something different than some homogenized vision we have of ourselves. We have to moved past this mentality that is neither kind nor constructive.

During these trying times, some people have the audacity to talk about peace and love. (I like to think that I fall into this group.) 
Give peace a chance. 
          Love is all we need. 
                    We are One. We are Love.
Seems harmless enough, right? Though, somehow, even peace-mongers and love-enthusiasts come under attack in the blame game, with accusation hurled at them like You're living in a fairy tale land if you think that matters! or Peace and love are not how the real world works! These are actual statements people have made to me when I've spoken or written about peace and love being the answer to what ails humanity. It saddens me that there are folks who are so accepting of and drowning in negativity that they no longer see that love does conquer all, if we let it. But in that disappointment, there is still hope that our overall societal approach to problem solving can change for the better.

I was once someone more prone to bluster. I grew up exposed to the Rambo-esque action movies of the 80's and 90's where the "heroes" used tough talk--and often brute shows of force--to argue their points and save the day. Real life rarely resembles the movies. Such "cowboy diplomacy" does not save the day. If anything, it makes hostilities more intense and widens the rift between those with opposing view points. Such rifts are so difficult to mend. I've seen this both in my own life and in watching the events of our world. While I hope that I have and continue to learn to approach problems in my life with a gentler touch, I don't see the world at large learning that lesson. Violence keeps happening. Perpetrators do so expecting to affect some major paradigm shift--but it isn't working. Leaders' responses (usually involving "thoughts and prayers") are always the same, but the violence that plagues us goes unchanged. Perhaps worsening. What's that adage about doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result?

There was this great scene in the most recent season of Doctor Who where the title character talked about exactly this. He pleaded that the two sides in their predicament sit and genuinely listen to each other. Imagine if we humans found a way to truly do that... I think we'd see that we have similar hopes, fears, joys, struggles, and dreams. I think we'd learn about each other and begin to understand that we're so similar. Realizing that would make that cowboy diplomacy, that us-against-them mentality virtually obsolete. If we'd all wake-up from the meaningless drivel that divides us, we'd realize that we can decide how the world works. We are all us. We are all them. We are ONE. And we'd find that we want nothing for ourselves but peace and love. 

☮ ღ ☺

Flag Flying...

My hubby and I recently started watching Sports Night on Hulu. (Love Hulu!) I’d caught part of the series during its original run back in the late 90’s and thought it was great. And seriously underrated. It was cancelled after just two seasons. Starting from the series’ beginning, I’m seeing episodes I missed the first time. The one we watched tonight was the best one yet. Titled Six Southern Gentlemen, the episode chronicles (among others storylines) a fictionalized college football star at a southern university who stands up to his school’s displaying of the Confederate flag by refusing to play until they remove it. Viewers learn as the story proceeds that his team and his school are going to cut him loose, potentially derailing his dreams of earning a degree, which his full football scholarship was funding. Besides this obvious drama, friction is caused when managing editor Isaac Jaffe—masterfully portrayed by the great Robert Guillaume—is battling an internal struggle to either ignore the situation in deference to his southern-gentleman-boss or make an on-air editorial in support of the young man, possibly risking his job. It’s a beautifully written and acted episode. What hit me most was his actual editorial (which I suppose it was designed to do), especially this part where he takes on the often referenced “tradition” and “heritage” of the flag itself: 

“In the history of the South, there's much to celebrate. And that flag is a desecration of all of it. It's a banner of hatred and separatism. It's a banner of ignorance and violence and a war that pitted brother against brother, and to ask young black men and women, young Jewish men and women, Asians, Native Americans, to ask Americans to walk beneath its shadow is a humiliation of irreducible proportions. And we all know it.”

If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know I was raised in Florida. While Florida is the adopted home state of many transplants from a variety of places and often doesn’t closely resemble the other southern states, there remains an element of “southern pride” there. And the South does, indeed, offer a lot for which to be proud: a fine and varied musical tradition that includes bluegrass, jazz, rock n' roll, and the blues; lovely architecture that often invites the outdoors in; biscuits and gravy (oh yes, I said it!); and an amazing literary ancestry, including such greats as Mark Twain, Harper Lee, William Faulkner, Zora Neal Hurston, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Walker, and Tennessee Williams (to name a few). A short list from the top of my head that is certainly incomplete. But none of this culture and beauty that the South has to offer has anything to do with stars and bars on a red background.

I remember seeing my share of Confederate flags growing up. As a child, I didn’t possess the depth or historical knowledge to fully grasp the flag and the scope of its meaning. I even remember, at one point, having a “Dixie” pin. I cannot fathom where I got that, but I knew the design meant something about being a rebel--which, honestly, I associated with Star Wars, rather than with a life-and-death insurrection over slavery. In junior high and high school, I learned much more American history, and that pin was promptly trashed once I learned of all that design encompasses. I have read and heard many people defend the Confederate flag as “heritage, not hate”. I have seen—as I did earlier today—people flying that flag in their front yards or driving around town with it affixed the backs of their cars and trucks. These folks remain unmoved in defending their “heritage”; an antiquated identity which is apparently wrapped up in a flag from a “nation” that went belly-up 151 years ago. (Please join us in the 21st century.) It’s insane to me that this debate about displaying that flag still exists. That quote above, from a short-lived television show, perfectly cuts through all the nonsensical justifications for displaying that flag by cutting to the heart of it: the Confederate flag represents a heritage of hate. 

Why keep displaying a symbol of hatred that is a mortifying representation of our nation at its worst, and is rightfully offensive to so many of our citizens? Especially when we could choose to focus on the many positive things, the many similarities that we Americans share. How about we foster a heritage of peace, respect, and love? I'd fly that flag on the back of my vehicle any day.

My Bucket List...

This summer has been one of some changes for my family, with more changes on the horizon. This got me thinking about things I hope to do with the life I have left. Sort of like in the movie "The Bucket List".... but hopefully with more time allotted to me than those guys had. *fingers crossed*
My list, in no particular order (save that first one)--to be amended as needed...

-raise our kids to be the truest, kindest, most confident, most well-rounded, most outside-the-box-thinking, most grounded, happiest versions of themselves
-learn to grow our own fruit and veggies
-become fluent in at least one other language
-participate in a "Thriller" flashmob
-live a consistently healthier lifestyle
-write a children's book
-have love and peace be so much a part of me that my thoughts, words, and actions genuinely and consistently come from that core
-learn to knit and sew
-go parasailing

-learn to be virtually impervious to negativity
-become a philanthropist
-visit Paris

Admittedly, there's nothing particularly mind-blowing there. But it represents what I hope to do in my little corner of the universe.

Peace ღ Love ღ Homeschool

We've begun our fourth year of homeschooling this week!
Another interesting factoid: I began my former career as a public school teacher 20 years ago this month. When I started teaching, fresh-faced, 23-year old me would never have imagined that I'd someday homeschool my own kids. I taught in one capacity or another for 13 years and loved it. Ummm, okay--I did not love the bureaucracy or the testing craze or the ever-increasing amount of redundant and mostly pointless paperwork. But I felt great joy in working with students and their families to (hopefully) assist those little ones in growing into the best versions of themselves.

I feel so amazingly privileged to have the opportunity to do the same with our own children. My heart is thankful every day for a spouse who doesn't mind being the "breadwinner" because we share the same priorities and vision for our kids: to help them grow into the most confident, most well-rounded, most centered and grounded, most amazing versions of themselves. We are so fortunate to have our family who support, encourage, and often partake in our learning, and to have a group of new, like-minded homeschooling friends with who we can share learning adventures. I look forward to where we are and where we'll go with an open and jubilant heart.
So, Homeschooling Year #4--Allons-y!