The 4th of July

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robert-frank-untitled-children-with-sparklers-in-provincetownTonight, I stood on the sandy shore of Lake Hartwell with an old friend. Across the water, fireworks shot into the sky from the Clemson YMCA. Now National Champions, Clemson’s fireworks were fancier than ever – some exploded into the letters “U.S.A.”, others turned into blue stars.

We stood beside tiki torches and all around us swirled what seemed like a dozens of children, all of them holding sparklers. The magnesium glowed red, gold, and blue, occasionally sputtering into large silvery sparks. We were well aware that third degree burns were one stumble away, but it was all too beautiful to take objection.

My friend is a wise woman, possessor of many unique, far flung experiences, and her perspective is always of great interest to me. As we watched the fireworks (USA, USA), I asked her, “So what do you think of America these days?” “America,” she said, “just needs to chill out.”

I then asked her, “Are you still glad you left Facebook?”

“Happiest days of my life,” she replied. She then said that we’ve become trapped in the echo chamber of social media, everything becoming louder and angrier and more divided. Adding, “I think we are better off if we live in our own small worlds. We can do a lot more good. And realize that things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

No doubt the fireworks and the lake and the sparkler-holding children contributed to the effect, but her words hit me hard. Facebook has become an increasingly toxic place. For years I was immune to it. People would talk about the time suck, the negativity that comes from comparison, and while I understood their points I didn’t suffer from the symptoms myself. Facebook has done a lot of good for me– especially when it comes to promoting comedy shows.

Since the election, I’ve found social media a tough place to be. To say I am anti-Trump would be an understatement–which is part of why I find the Left’s response so frustrating. The hegemony of leftist political correctness is abhorrent to me. The Left reminds me of a freshman in film school, or any other artistic discipline. Freshmen do not know how to take a note. You criticize their project and their ego falls apart. By the time they are seniors, any good creative will know how to take a note like a professional. This quality–the ability to take a note–is a trait I hold in the highest regard. On Facebook these days, hardly anyone knows how to take a note.

For what it’s worth, and granted this is a sweeping generality, but I think conservatives tend to take notes differently than liberals. For liberals, politics are personal. Like the freshman art student, when their politics are attacked, they feel personally attacked. It is immature and exhausting to witness the fragility of the ego involved. Conservatives – again, just my opinion – tend to receive political attacks with a smug sort of superiority. They’re deeply confident in their own ideas, and just don’t care that much about the opinions of others. They have a force field that deflects inquiry with stunning effectiveness. And no, in case you were wondering, I do not think highly of either Leftists or Right Wingers. I feel for the silent majority, the moderates who are willing to embrace complexity and shades of grey in their world view. Rarely in history have they been as silent as they are now.

Because all conversation stops before it begins, there is no point in dialogue. On Facebook, anyway. In person, in face-to-face conversation, I believe we function very differently. We are still people when we are in the world. Which takes me back to what my friend had to say–“I think we are better off if we live in our own small worlds. We can do a lot more good. And realize that things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

 

Gethsemane

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Olive trees and a starry sky.

Olive trees and a starry sky.

(This year for Lent I decided to blog about matters of faith.)

Intermittently for a couple of years now, Gethsemane has been on my mind, and I’m not really sure why. What I do know is that I find it the most moving passage in the Bible. More so than the crucifixion, more so than the death of Lazarus. More so than anything else.

Maybe I’ve just missed all the right homilies or something, but it is strange to me that Gethsemane is not mentioned more often when discussing Jesus’s human nature. It is, in my opinion, by far his most human moment. More so than kicking over tables in the Temple, more so than when he wept. Righteous anger and sorrowful empathy are qualities we’ve long associated with Gods/God. But anxiety? No. Uncertainty, the desire to escape, soul-deep levels of stress? No. This the province of Man, not God.

But what gets me is, Jesus asks for so little for himself. He asks a lot from us, for us. But rarely does he express anything like a selfish desire. At the wedding of Cana he tells his mother that it isn’t his time. His wish to put off everything that will happen once the ball gets rolling is human. Of course, if we wait until we are ready to begin anything we will never begin. It’s why we have people in our lives who push us forward.

Jesus’s journey as the Christ is bookended at both ends with these exceedingly rare moments of self-interest. At the beginning, at Cana, he wants more time. At the end, in Gethsemane, he wants exactly the same thing – more time. He is denied on both occasions.

However, at Cana there isn’t it the sorrow, stress, and anxiety that there is in Gethsemane. That moment has always been vibrantly alive in my imagination. The cool of the night, the pale dusty ground, the moonlight on the olive trees, the outline of the mountains in the distance. Utter silence. The beauty of the surroundings at odds with the dread sitting heavy in Jesus’s gut as he contemplates what tomorrow will bring. Just like any of us facing something inevitable and horrific, he hopes in vain that maybe reality will shift. It doesn’t. Jesus is the one who works miracles for others. Miracles are not for him.

But I still haven’t gotten to the heart of the issue.

Jesus asks his disciples to stay up and pray with him. It is such a small ask, and yet they’re unable to find the fortitude, the wisdom, the generosity, to comply. Instead, they fall asleep. And Jesus feels betrayed, angry, and abandoned. There is no moment more human in the Bible than this one. We fail each other relentlessly, and the hurt of that failure is as germane to being human as is eating. If you live long enough, and not even very long at that, others will hurt you. More than that, those who are supposed to be there for you will fail you, and you will be alone.

Every day I see people living in Gethsemane. If you don’t, then apparently you’re not on Facebook.

Ironically, I think one of the ways we worsen this experience is by seeking to protect ourselves against it. In particular, I see people try to find perfect shelter in romantic love. “If I find the right man, I will never feel alone again.” We put a tremendous amount of burden upon our partners these days. I believe this is because so many of us have lost a strong mooring in our families and communities, and we try to make one person become all things. More importantly, instead of relying on God for our strength, we rely on one person. I know I did this prior to getting married, and I know I’m not the only one who has. Of course, you can’t know what lies outside of your education and experience. Life is a process, to paraphrase my good friend Charlie Grey. And to close with a quote from my mother, “Be kind to yourself.”

 

 

 

 

A Chance to Win

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I was driving the other day when I had something like an epiphany. The idea is so basic I don’t think it counts as a full epiphany, but still perhaps something worth mentioning. It occurred to me that all human behavior – or at least all American human behavior – can be viewed through the lens of whether or not they believe they have a chance to win. Win what, you might ask? Everything and anything. Can they win with their spouse? At their job? And in a macro sense, at life?

A lot of people have wondered why Trump won the election. I would say that it boils down to the feeling of millions of Americans that they can’t win. They’ve been put into a situation where they perceive no opportunity for the win, however that may be defined. I saw a Tweet of a statistic that many Trump voters earned 60k+ a year, and therefore this was not a working class revolt. But let’s say that’s 60k with three kids and maybe the cost of living is high. 60k is not comfortable in that situation. That voter probably does not feel like they’re winning, or even have a chance to win. Trump, more than anything else, told Americans that they have a chance to win. (BTW – this is not a political statement about Trump or how his economic policies will impact the people who voted for him. Right now I’m only interested in the psychology of it.)

Swinging away from that macro example to a micro one – relationships, be they familial or romantic or platonic – have to offer an opportunity for someone to win. The phrase, “I just can’t win with you,” is a perfect reflection of this. My feeling is, friendships will end fairly quickly if subjected to this sort of behavior, but marriages and parent/child relationships aren’t so quickly dissolved.

Perhaps the most natural application of this idea is at the workplace. When employees feel like they can’t win they very quickly come to hate their jobs. And the bizarre thing of it is, usually what it would take to make them feel like they’re winning is minor.

Again, I understand this isn’t a major epiphany, but it what it boils down to is this – if you find yourself frustrated with your spouse, child, employee, partner, etc. take a look and see if you’ve shut down their avenues to success. In my own head I call it, “the path to citizenship” which I know is strange, but that’s what I call it in my head. Everybody, or at least Americans, want to win. If you’re working in concert with another toward a common goal, so much more power and success is manifested through mutual empowerment, as opposed to diminishment and control.

I suppose what I am really saying is – I see so many people around me who feel like they can’t win. At life, at work, with their spouse, at their passion. That’s such a terrible mindset to suffer under, and I see the ramifications of that mindset everywhere. I’m not sure how we fix it, other than examining our behavior in our own personal relationships.

 

 

 

Anxiety

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Me, holding onto my old ways of being.

Me, holding onto my old ways of being. Alternatively, Charlton Heston in his NRA glory days.

So, is it just me, or is the whole wide world just filled to the brim with anxiety these days? Or, you know, at least us Americans. And here is the other thing – am I the only one who has a problem with this? Because I have a problem with it. And furthermore, I have an even bigger problem with the fact that it seems to no longer be considered a problem.

Certainly, life can be stressful and anxiety producing. Serious health problems, getting laid off from work, living through a tragedy of some kind. Anxiety during or in the wake of an anxiety-producing event is natural and to be expected. What I am referring to is anxiety that hums along as background noise in daily life.

I know so many people who self-identify as living with anxiety. This concerns me. A lot. Especially because it seems to me that the solution to living with anxiety these days is to simply live with anxiety. Historically speaking, this is a new event. And I don’t think it’s a good thing. (The fact that I don’t feel particularly comfortable levying this criticism speaks to a larger issue I have, which is that everybody is so freaking fragile these days that we go around in large bubbles, scared anybody might come along and pop it.)

But back to anxiety. I don’t think we were designed to live this way. This is not who we are. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, my friends. We were made better than this. So why have we allowed fear to enslave us?

I know there is the rush to blame biology and biochemistry, but make no mistake–there is a mind/body connection that is undeniably powerful. The recent discovery of the lymph system that feeds the central nervous system is new proof of this long known fact. More disturbing, the finding the fearfulness can be inherited, that we can in fact burn our fear into own DNA and pass it on to our children, should motivate us to find a way to unlearn this habit of anxiety.

So why are we so anxious? I make it a habit of being honest here on my blog, so I will tell you that I believe the answer is going to have a spiritual component. (For those who don’t know, I am a big fan of Jesus.) But I also endeavor to speak to everyone, and I think there is another level to this equation that is universal regardless of your beliefs, and that’s the one I’d like to discuss. It strikes me that the root of much anxiety in this world is an overarching lack of authenticity.

The people I know with the least amount of anxiety in their lives are also the ones who live the most authentically. I know something about this, having spent a lot of my life in anxiety and also, correspondingly, in denial of my true self. It is possible that my own personal experience with this issue leads me to view anxiety through a false paradigm, but I don’t think so. I think I am right. I think every time we squeeze ourselves into a box that doesn’t fit – be it in our job, our marriage, our family, our friends, our community – we layer on the anxiety. Working with one box that doesn’t fit is manageable, but you try two or three on for size and you’re going to be in a miserable state of affairs. At that point, you’re looking at one of two scenarios – you’re in an unsustainable situation and something is going to break catastrophically, or you’re going to die miserable.

Unfortunately, you can’t change until you’re ready to change. I know I clung to all my old ways with a Charlton Heston cold-dead-hands level grip. Embracing change is probably something that can only be learned the hard way. However, there are moments when the right person comes along and says the right thing at the right time. For me, that person was Mary Tannery, who realized before I did that my situation was dire. She told me, “Everything is going to be okay.” I said, “What if it isn’t?” Meaning, what if I did wind up getting a divorce. And she said, “That’s what I am talking about. If that happens, it is still going to be okay.” I drove home considering this whole new world. It was another year and a half before I actually entered into that whole new world, but Mary cracked open the door that day to my own emotional survival.

For me, the root of my chronic anxiety was my inability to be genuinely honest with myself and with others. I wasn’t trying to be dishonest, I was trying to survive inside boxes I felt I had to live in, but that didn’t fit me at all. I wish I had known how to get brave and honest, but I didn’t. “Shoulds” ruled my life. I lived the life I I believed I should be living and convinced myself it was great – but it wasn’t, and the resulting anxiety was my number one symptom of my lack of authenticity.

Here’s the thing, though – it isn’t necessary. We needn’t live in anxiety. Our problems are solvable. We can live authentically. It is a choice we can make. It is unbelievably difficult, but it is doable. Finally – if you need a judgment-free person to listen, I am here. You can email me at carolynleeadams at gmail.com, or better yet, find me on Facebook. (I prefer messenger to email.)

[It just occurred to me I failed to make a distinction between good stress and anxiety. The stress that comes from dealing with pressure situations isn’t bad at all. It’s actually awesome. It’s what your body should be doing with pressure situations. Oh well. Hopefully I won’t be misunderstood.]

 

Trump

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When I first moved to LA, I was prejudiced against the Hispanic community. I was 18 and stupid, and I am not even sure exactly what the heart of my racism was, other than just a vague sort of discomfort about “the other.” I remember coming home for Christmas and complaining about hearing so much Spanish. My dad let me know just how wrong I was to have such a complaint. By the time I graduated, I’d forgotten my bias and my first job out of college was working at an equestrian center. I was the only white woman in a large, all male, all Hispanic workforce. They treated me with respect. They treated me like family. We bartered for lunch – I’d bring coca-cola and they’d serve me carnitas cooked over a little grill in an unused horse stall. To this day, the best lunches of my life and the best job I ever had.
Years later, in North Carolina, I went to a religious conference as a representative of my church. We had round table discussions. I sat at a table of about 12 people, all white, all wealthy. The last question of the day was, “Discuss the challenges of the growing Hispanic population.” I was all set to talk about how great it was to have these bi-cultural churches. To my naive shock, what I heard instead were endless complaints and some examples of outright racism. Adrenaline flooded my body, my heart raced. I was the last to speak. I talked about my experiences in Los Angeles and I started to cry. I didn’t tell them what I thought about what they had said, I just told them how I’d been treated by the Hispanic community. And cried. The session ended for the day and several of the people came up to me and told me they weren’t racist. Some of them grabbed my hand while they did it, like I was a priest who could absolve them of their sins.
Right now, I feel the same way as I did sitting at that round table as I watch our country embrace a man who has said far worse things about Mexicans than what I heard at that church conference. A man who is running on bigotry as policy. A man whose security has escorted out peaceful Muslims, Blacks, and Hispanics from his rallies. A man who has retweeted white supremacists.
It is easy to veer toward racism if you don’t have people like my father in your life to set you straight. And I’d suggest that everyone is racist to a degree. But we must constantly strive toward the better angels of our nature. Trump appeals to the worst of us, to our fears and our greed. But here is the thing, my friends – with Trump, you do not know which way the ball will bounce. Are you a creationist? An atheist? Any shade of brown? Do you homeschool? Pro-life or pro-choice? Does your company work with Central or Latin America? Do not assume you’re safe from fascism just because you’re not Black or brown. Will you be the one escorted from rallies for what you believe? Trust me when I tell you – you do not know who will be safe and who will not, for expediency is the currency in which Trump deals, and in only that is he truly wealthy.