Ten on Ten

Ten piece of advice for my daughter on her tenth birthday:


1. Leave every space you are in better than you found it.

Whether you are in your own room, a restaurant, a park trail, the beach, a classroom, a sidewalk, a park or a car always pick up after yourself and leave no trace of yourself behind. If you can make it better by picking up other peoples’ trash or pushing in a chair or setting down some flowers, then do it. Sweep if it needs sweeping, wash if it needs washing, tidy when tidiness is needed. Arrange things to make the next person enjoy the space more than you did.




2. Every person has a story and has suffered in ways you need to understand.

Do not judge people or gossip in hurtful ways. You do not know the pain that people may have faced. Put yourself in their shoes and give them the benefit of the doubt. Even when they are mean or cruel, try and understand their anger. Listen when you can and ask questions before you react. Many people in life will act from pain and suffering and they may warrant your wrath, but give them your grace instead. The ugliest people need love too, and sometimes you might be the only one that can give it to them.


3. Do not act violently or in anger.

You will see suffering and injustice that will make you want to hate. You will see ignorance and racism and violence, that is so intense that you will think the only answer is equal amounts of anger and violence, but know this- love and peace will be the only way out of this trap. Even in the face of unspeakable atrocities, your love is the only way forward.


4. There is no right. There are only different ways of seeing things.

Anybody who tells you they know the right way to be, to think, to pray, to believe is not to be trusted. There is no “right” way to exist in the world. Only blinded, close-minded people think the world is so simple as to have a right way to experience it. Take it all in. Listen, trust, believe, explore. Try to balance opposing ways of thinking. Try to make sense of two opposing truths at once.


5. Art, music or a book will always make things better.

You are not the first person in the world. There have been countless others on this journey. They have sung and written and painted and sculpted their love and pain onto vinyl and stone and paper and canvas. Their pain and joy is your pain and joy, learn from it, be swallowed by it. Seek it. Devour it. Love and be loved by it. There is no question that cannot be answered by the exploration and/or creation of art. Music. Books. Dance. It will always be there for you. Create it. Turn yourself inside out and tell your story. It has value and is beautiful and necessary.


6. You are nature.

Never think that you are something different or separate from the ocean and the stars and the moon and the universe and every leaf and bug and animal on the planet. You are the planet. Love yourself and love all life. There is no need to kill. Respect the powerful form of nature that runs through you. Spend time in the forest and the desert and the ocean. Admire and protect every piece of life, from the tiny plankton to the giant whale. Learn about biology and chemistry and zoology, and be sure to spend time in nature. Take hikes, dive, ski, swim in rivers. Marvel at the clouds and the small breezes. Pay attention to shadows and leaves and trees everywhere you look.


7. Be kind even when it feels like unearned.

Smile at strangers. Especially when they have their heads down and scowling. Hold doors for people and let others go first. Pay for people when they are short. Compliment your friends and send handwritten thank you cards. When someone makes you feel bad, forgive them. When they insult you, know that they are dealing with their own insecurities. Go out of your way to make people feel better. Put other people’s needs before your own.


8. Being alone is not the same as being lonely.

Love that voice in your head. It will be with you till the end. Trust your gut. Love yourself. Long and hard. There is no one in the world who will be there for your more often and with more consistency than yourself. Take quiet walks. Watch movies alone. Lose yourself in a book. Eat alone at restaurants. Talk to yourself and ask questions. Never lie to yourself. Trust yourself. Be kind to yourself. You are doing your best. You are enough.


9. Stay away from guns and people who love guns.

Nothing was ever made better by a gun. They are weapons of destruction, anger, violence and pain. You can live your whole life and never even see a gun, I have done it. When people have guns, go somewhere else. If you meet people who glorify or love guns, leave them and find people who love peace and nature. People might say that they are good for hunting or shooting or protection. They are good for nothing. If you are in a place with a gun, move to another place without a gun. Your life will be much lighter and more beautiful if you avoid guns and people who love guns.


10. There is no such thing as race or countries or religions.

You are no better than anyone else for any reason. We are all human beings, regardless of what we believe, where we were born or the color of our skin. Love all people with the same enthusiasm as if they look and think just like you. Don’t believe in dogma or flags or passports. You are a child of the world, a wonder-star in the universe, never limit yourself to something as petty as a nation or a race. Love people. The more oppressed and poor that they are, the more they need your love. Take people in. Love them. Fight with them. March. Protest and stand up for the voiceless. If someone says that they are oppressed, do not question their oppression. People are scared of poverty and so they make excuses to hurt and oppress the poor, but you do not need to be scared. You simply need to listen and love.

The World Burns Around Us

Warning: Half baked thoughts raw with emotion and definitely not soaked in any kind of rationality. They were rattling around inside me somewhere and I needed them out.

Either you believe in evil or you don't. Either you think that human beings do terrible things because of sin and demons or you don't. Either you call people evil-doers or infidels or you don't. It is easy to accuse people of evil when they don masks and massacre journalists in broad day light. It is easy to say that people are wicked when they bomb and kill and scream and sin.

But what if we assume that human beings, all of us, are not evil or the experiments of some omniscient being, but just fucked up individuals tied to our expereinces, cultures, and histories. That every tragedy is not based on a soul's value, but on sociology. What if our default assumptions were that we can fix these things. That we can eradicate ignorance.

What if we believed that even the worst of us can be healed and cured and fixed. Taliban or Tea-Party, Extremist or Progressive, makes no difference. What if we understood that we are who we are due to a plethora of variables and it is the exploration of these variables that will lead to understanding.

After every tragedy, and man does there seem to be lots of them these days, we point fingers and assign blame. We volley hate and pain and accusations. They did this so we will do that. But what if, we stop to ask why? How does a person become so angry and disillusioned, so ignorant and terrified, so insecure and so violent to think that because someone thinks differently then they do that they should kill the other person. This behavior is a sickness. It is not evil. It is the failure of the systems we have created. Failures of nation states, churches and mosques, families and schools. Every massacre is proof that we have failed to understand each other.

Every tragedy is a reminder that we have barely advanced from the birth of our civilization. But that is no reason to throw up our hands and yell, evil. We owe it to the beauty of humanity to keep working toward a better understanding of each other. Both Darren Wilson and Kim Jong-Un are reminders of how far we still have to go to educate and illuminate.

These men are not evil, but the results of circumstances. The result of colonialism and war. Misguided immigration policy and failing school systems. Broken families and false promises. These men are the result of failure. 

I know it can be difficult to remain calm in the face of reckless murder and injustice. It is difficult to ignore our natural need for revenge in the face of barbarity and petty ignorance, but if have any hope for the future we have to see the perpetrators of violent acts as human beings. Not evil monsters. Because there is no hope for a monster. There is no cure for evil, but there is work to be done for flawed human beings. This work starts with love and education, empathy and trust.

Sometimes I imagine adults who commit terrible crimes as children in my classroom. What would I say to the three men who shot up the Charlie Hebdo magazine when they were twelve? How would I counsel or teach the cop who killed Eric Garner when he was ten?

It's not easy to stay loving and calm as the world burns around us, but it seems to me that we have no choice.

Set Free

I have been burdened by a series of conflicting emotions since I first heard the news, so this post could flow in many different directions. I followed the Twitter feed, which started with conjecture, moved to corroboration and weirdly ended with celebration. I did my part to quiet the simmering jubilation that was quickly spreading across the web...

 
 

...but still feel like something more needs to be said, if for no other reason than I need to clear my own head. I will start in a place that most of you would not expect me to ever venture- scripture:

But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
    —Luke 6:27-31. KJV

This passage is the one section of the Bible I have always loved and respected. I believe the promotion of unconditional love is the very spirit of Christianity, not just Christianity but all religion. The concept of compassion and tenderness, of forgiveness and empathy is also a cornerstone of Buddhism. I find it ironic that many will read a passage like the one above and claim it to be idealistic or naive.

"It would be great if we lived in a world like that, but how can we allow monsters like Osama and Hilter get away with evil?"

I guess this is where I see values and morals and commitment to love as more than lip service. Yes it is difficult to do good to them which hate you. It is not everyman who can bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. But if we ever want to move toward a true peace, we must begin to understand that vengeance and violence only lead to more of the same. I also do not believe in evil or sin. Every problem, every villain is a product of cause and effect. To change mankind, we do not rid our hearts of sin or attack evil, we search for our own hatreds and replace them with love. You want to defeat men like Osama learn to forgive and love them. It will not happen overnight, but the other way has never worked. Look through any history for evidence of revenge.

It is easy to follow the pack and demand revenge. It is easy to hate and celebrate the death of a monster, but it is not so easy to stand firm and demand love when it is undeserved. It takes courage to see beauty where it is hidden. It takes strength to be able to act non-violently.

Before I am accused of self-righteousness, let me be the first to say I seldom have this strength. I too find it impossible to give love when given hate, but if we believe in the power of love, if we believe in the value of peace we can never resort to hate and violence, because when we allow vengeance and hatred to enter our heart, we immediately become that which we hate.

To celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden is to allow him victory. He is a man who fans hatred and violence. He dwells in ignorance and a world in which ideas are black or white. Good and evil. But love exists beyond such dichotomous premises. I am in no way endorsing Bin Laden, on the contrary I am saying that to defeat him and his ideology we must face hate with love, violence with peace, aggression with calm.

I sleep tonight with a heavy heart knowing that men and woman on both sides celebrate and mourn not with love in their hearts, but with vengeance and hatred. In America, people will take pride in a military machine that has caused the deaths of millions of people since its inception, cost trillions of needed dollars, and done nothing to promote peace in the world. The rest of the world will plot new schemes and create new strong men to rally the ignorant to violence. Nothing has changed because of this act. Nothing has been made better, safer, or more peaceful. There is nothing to celebrate no one to honor, no reason for pride.If it is the young people in the military we want to honor, then bring them home. Educate them, find them jobs...free them from the cycle of death.

Now we just wait and see how the other side will react. Declarations of revenge? Suicide bombings? Is the War in Terror over? We are pawns in a theater of propaganda architects. We cheer, we sob. Our emotions are gristle for their mill. I am looking deep in my heart and trying to take back my emotions from the clutches of the mob. I ask you do the same. Ask yourself, "What does it say about me when I celebrate death? Why do I take joy in violence? Are my emotions spreading peace or violence? Will their revenge be justified? If they feel they are right?"

Going in circles so I will stop here and maybe continue in the comments...I hope the comments remain civilized.