On being

"If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” - T. Alan Armstrong

I saw the current Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart over the weekend. For anyone who lived through the beginnings of the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 1980s, it is an incredibly evocative and painful piece. I was indeed here, living in Greenwich Village and, while I am not arrogant enough to say that I was in the center of it all, it majorly impacted my life in many, many ways. I still cannot quite accept that it all unfolded the way that it did. The handling of this pandemic rates high on my list of things this country should be ashamed of.

That being said, I found myself strangely nostalgic and almost wistful for that time. I was a little jealous of the passion and galvanizing anger of the characters; of their focus and dedication to the rightness and necessity of a cause.

I miss that. I remember feeling that way then. I remember feeling that way doing clinic defense against the misguided Operation Rescue when they attacked women's clinics in NYC.

Several of my jobs have involved work in causes dear to my heart -- women's rights at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund; environmental issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council..children's' issues at Spunk Fund and Ventures in Education. Being at the front lines of these issues and being able to work for something I believed in, rather than just to put money in someone else's pocket in the corporate world, made the more mundane and boring tasks less so. I deeply believe in the sentiment expressed by Marian Wright Edelman " Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

I now work at a large foundation that does some very good work, but we are removed from the front lines. We are the money behind the scenes. While it is noble work in its own way, its not the same. The types of people are not the same. The attitudes are not the same. If I were younger....and if I didn't have a child....but I'm not and I do, and for now, I need the benefits. In little more than two years I will have earned my benefits for life -- the golden handcuffs are locked until mid September 2013.

I need more. I have many causes dear to my heart that sort fell to the wayside during Adam's first few years at home. I think it is time to shift a little more focus and figure out what I can do to fill my soul while I am filling my pocket. I want that for me and I want to set an example for my son, for the kind of person I dearly hope he will be, the type for whom Marian Wright Edelman's words will resonate:

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”

“Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons” - Napoleon Bonaparte

A grantee shared an anecdote at a meeting this week that I absolutely loved and found so profound and meaningful. The previous week, he had been at an event where Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke. During his speech, the Archbishop spoke at length about the influence his mother had on his politics, morality and character. The grantee had also seen former president Jimmy Carter, a man he equated in character to the Archbishop, speak and Carter also waxed eloquently about his mother's influence. The grantee observed that, in contrast, whenever he saw corporate figures speak, they inevitably commented on the influence of their fathers, whereas social activists credited their mothers, almost exclusively.

Carter and Tutu grew up in very different times when the roles of parents were very clearly delineated along gender lines which has to account for some aspect of this phenomenon. Do you think this differentiation in imparting character is still the norm? I would like to think it isn't.

I have had experiences that give me hope. I have been working in nonprofit/social change organizations exclusively for almost 23 years. During the 1980s and 90s I babysat extensively for a variety of fellow employees and the fathers were absolutely doing their parts to raise children with social consciences. But, honestly, in my experience, these guys are the exception rather than the norm.

I do think that, on the whole, fathers are freer to be more open and loving and involved with their children than in the past, that as society has evolved in terms of gender roles, fatherhood itself has evolved. Cultural evolution is, by its very nature, a slow process....

There's a popular old axiom "Slow and steady wins the race...." Here's to the slow and steady process of cultural evolution winning for the HUMAN race...

“And our dreams are who we are” - Barbara Sher

So if our dreams are who we are, what do recurring dreams say about us? For a very long time, I had a recurring dream that varied in its details, but the central premise was always the same. Something terrible was about to happen -- sometimes it was an earthquake, or Godzilla coming to attack. Whatever the terrible thing was, I knew that it was going to happen. And if people would only LISTEN to me, we had plenty of time to get away. But no one would listen...

Another variation has me unable to correctly dial 911 in an emergency or forgetting to go to work and not realizing it until the middle of the day and then being unable to correctly dial the office.

I dreamt about elevators for the longest time -- about being in an elevator and the floor suddenly sliding on a hinge and having to grip onto the walls to not fall out. Or being in a freight type elevator with no doors or walls.

Yet another had me dreaming for many years that my grandfather was not dead -- I would run into him unexpectedly someplace and realize the mistake I had made in thinking he was dead.

The dream about my grandfather, I think, was just a manifestation of grief. Most of the others, my amateur psychologist mind has discerned, are about frustration about not being heard, not having a voice, not being understood. I still have those dreams sometimes, though not nearly as often. They tend to recur when something of that nature is occurring in my life.

I haven't had the elevator one in years, and don't quite understand its meaning.

What are your recurring dreams and what do you think they say about you?

...with a single step....

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. - Isaac Asimov

When I came across this Asimov quote, it resonated so strongly with me that I immediately knew that I had not only found a title for the new blog I'd been planning, but received a message from the universe that I dearly needed to hear (or needed to remember), exactly at the moment I needed to hear it.

I have so much to say. So much to think through and get feedback on. So many things to comment on. (Seriously -- do these people REALLY think that if you run for President AND get elected, the powers involved in that process haven't ascertained that you are a CITIZEN who was born in the United States? Please stop wasting our time with this nonsense! I'd much rather hear about the theory that Bristol Palin is the mother of Trig and mommy dearest pretended to give birth as both a cover up for her daughter AND to score points with the right by giving birth to a child diagnosed in utero with Down's.)

I've been seduced by the instant gratification of Facebook and forgotten the satisfaction of really writing. How you can start out thinking you are going one place and the process leads you someplace completely unexpected and different. I haven't forgotten how much the support and thoughtful feedback I got on my Adopting Adam blog meant to me.

So, here I am....and with a single step....I am looking forward to to the journey.