caring less (though not being careless)

instead of romancing the tragic

How difficult it is to shift gears. I see that in myself still, even with all the skills I’ve gained over the years. So often I still need to go to sleep and wake up to a new day to be able to shift out of a conflict, in myself or with another. In order to reset I seem to need to rest and rise again.

Most of the time it still feels almost impossible to shift swiftly in the moment. I go blank, like an animal caught in headlights, unable to move or process. Yet I have enough awareness and perspective to see myself standing stuck in opposition to the Other. Even with the awareness of what’s going on, I’m not able to move - at least authentically - from that place into an easier place. If I force it then it feels like I’m glossing over or being fake, and my thorough-going nature abhors both.

Maybe that's ok. Maybe the most vital thing is to be authentic, especially when my intention is to evolve and to harmonize. But how do we ever know the Other has gotten it? Though maybe that’s none of my business. In the moment the Other may only hear what I'm requesting on the surface and, just like me, not be able to shift so quickly to an easier place. They may also be stuck in their own long-established and familiar patterns, caught in their own headlights.

In acting we go easily in and out of moods, emotions and approaches to the text, so I know I’m capable of it. I have a good example of what is possible. Simply act more like an actor. Play more with life. Be less attached to the story and take the approach of playing it, putting it on like a garment, taking it off and then trying on yet another texture and colour.

Well that feels like a good answer, but now there's the potentially slower task of real-world implementation. Because offstage I am more attached. I see it as My life, My story, My point, My boundaries that have been transgressed.

Which brings me to the phrase I've been playing with for a number of years now…

Just because I care less doesn't mean I'm careless.

Just because I shift gears and take a lighter approach to the dynamic doesn't mean it doesn't impact me, or that I'm not aware of how it impacts others. And, curiously, when I am able to do this my seeming carelessness or maybe better to say care-free-ness infiltrates the whole situation and I feel freer. I usually perceive that others do as well.

Actually it's more that my seeming care-less-ness means I'm grasping less onto the story or the perceptions I have of myself and the Other(s). When I'm pushing my story, or holding tight to it and not allowing the Other’s story in, it’s actually then that I'm likely to be more careless and be more of a situational or emotional bully. In these cases I’m convinced that it's my story that must reign while the Other’s story must take second fiddle, backseat, whatever metaphor appeals.

When I manage to back off and don't hold so tight to getting my point across or to feeling understood by the other, and also come to my own understanding and centeredness around the value of my point, I respect myself in a different way. By giving us both space I also respect the Other, even if I still don’t agree with them, or feel heard, understood and respected by them.

“Patience is the greatest tapas,” meaning it’s a discipline and therefore a power. So sayeth Gautama the Buddha. Or, in a seemingly opposite camp of quotables, as Chris Voss of Tactical Empathy fame says, ‘patience is the greatest weapon’. (I prefer “tool” over weapon myself…)

If there's an obstacle here with this person, then why continue to bang my head up against him? I can state my case and continue on about my business with or without him. If he's going to continue to be obstinate then I can continue to move along and leave him behind, flow like a good moving river. Of course that's not all-ways a solution since the majority of head-butting is with those closest to us.

It's more likely we have to learn to live together.

Then doesn't it come down to trusting the longer journey, and from that vantage point evaluating the value of this particular point in the long run? If it's something that's recurring and I want to stop it and reroute it then I might be more stubborn or persistent about it. But I may also have to balance that with whether making a big deal about it in this moment is the best tactic. If the person is tired or emotional, will they really be able to take in and implement what I'm asking? Is this the kindest time or way to have this conversation, and therefore the most effective?

And all of this burbles to the surface today because here in Australia and New Zealand it is ANZAC day, a day of commemoration of those who have served, suffered and died in warfare. I watched a friend immerse himself in patriotic songs and memories of the tragedies and the losses. His energy dipped and it seemed to me a case of romancing the tragic without realizing the repercussions on overall health.

I was also reminded of another friend in LA whose band is called Bullet Made Statues and how we made a song together in 2014 about water. Just that title says it all—these statues we put up to honour our dead are made of all the bullets that have been used to kill them.

Where are the statues for all the babies and mothers that were saved in childbirth, all the species that have been saved from extinction, all the plants that have provided medicines? You get my drift. Or actually if we were to follow suit with our bullet made statues, we would make statues to all the animals who died from our bullets of greed. How about a park commemorating the 107 species that have gone extinct in my lifetime alone? With plaques that clearly detail the warfare we waged upon them that they didn’t survive—poaching, human greed, lack of action to protect them.

So that got me to thinking how easily we drop into the dire and difficult, how we’re wired for the tragic. And how much skill and determination is required to rewire. How brave was Pollyanna? And how effective? We use it as a slur, a way of diminishing those who care enough to openly desire a more beautiful and balanced world. We slight Pollyannas because it’s easier than learning to play the Glad Game she lived by of finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak it may be.

Every problem is every problem.

Which is why I then turned the lens of looking back on myself and my own relations, and my own inablity to shift quickly and genuinely into the positive.

I come from a long line of warriors of varying ranks, from chief to colonel to lieutenant to soldier. I also (as we all do) come from a long line of women who have survived. That in itself makes them heroes of another sort. My parents protested the Vietnam War, right there in Washington D.C. while living amongst the protests, riots and curfews. They so adamantly believed in a more beautiful world without warfare that it changed the course of their lives. My father went AWOL from the military he had been coerced to join in the first place, which made them illegal in their own country.

Both of my parents’ fathers had served in (and survived) World War II. One grandfather was a bombardier with 44 successful missions in Europe, dropping bombs. He was given a 21 gun salute at his burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Before his death, alcohol was the available, and socially acceptable, coping mechanism for the weight of what he had accomplished. My other grandfather was the communications officer on the battleship Nevada at Normandy and saw his comrades slaughtered in that battle, forever changing his view of living.

To have their children protest war, regardless of reasoning, was likely a personal affront to their sacrifices and values. Thus my parents were ostracized from their own families and country, and only found sympathy in a conscientious objector’s community in Nova Scotia. It was there that I was conceived. Born out of protest, ostracization and a refugee community.

So much of our amazing technology was borne from wartimes. We know we’re capable. We only lack impetus. We have the capacity to innovate, to rally and unite, to stand by what we love and value, but we lack the clear galvanizing directive.

Curiously, Earth Day is three days prior to ANZAC day. How do we honour the fallen to the extent that we eliminate further wars? How do we make the sacrifice of their lives or health (if they came back alive but deeply wounded) sacred? How do we take this time of remembrance and move from it to co-create a vision of coming days where we don’t repeat patterns in ourselves, our countries, and on our planet that perpetuate antagonism, strife, violence and bloodshed over boundaries?

Wouldn’t that be the greatest honour we could bestow on our valiant ancestors and comrades? To co-create a world where their descendants don’t have to die to survive?

A big ask I realize, as I look at the small wars in my own life. How scary I find it to apply tactical empathy or nonviolent communication to my challenging interpersonal interactions. And we’re talking misunderstandings, Mercury retrograde-level snafus of miscommunication, not outright battles to the death. Still I balk and stumble and revert to old patterns of engagement out of fear of the awkwardness of trying something new.

Yet, every problem is every problem. If I insist on diminishing my own seemingly small problems as not as worthy of attention then I sabotage the cultivation of skills necessary to transmute poison into potion. By not facing the discomfort and awkwardness of learning peaceful strategies to manage my own battles, I’m contributing to the ongoing strife in the world.

My piece of earth, my body and the relations I have with other bodies is all that’s truly mine to husband, a word whose root means to be, exist, grow. When we steward or husband something or someone, we make it possible for them to be, exist and grow. Lord originally means ‘the one who guards the loaves’. When we lord over a thing or person, contrary to how it sounds today, we guard them because they nourish us. We protect who and what we love because we’re nourished by them.

For peace on Earth I must lord over and husband my own piece of earth first.

With great gratitude for all our ancestors. May their sacrifices not be wasted but be carried forth in the harmony we live today and the beauty we perpetrate into our tomorrows for our descendants.