A Primer For Happiness

 

When my best friend emailed me the link to Marcus Buckingham’s article in the Huffington Post, “What’s Happening To Women’s Happiness?” (September 17, 2009), I stared at his question at the bottom of the email, “How can I help the women in my life buck the trend?”

Evidence of such a decline wasn’t anything I had seen or felt. Were women really less happy? Having two daughters of my own, and a son who cares about and relates to women, I was moved to address his heartfelt question. After all, my relationships in the past have not been with men who spent much time thinking about women’s happiness. My friend has three daughters, as does his college roommate who emailed him the link, but that alone didn’t explain their concern. I was impressed.

So I read the article about how women are calling themselves less happy in their marriages and the workplace, despite advances in equal opportunity. Looking at my own life and how happy I have been through the years, I didn’t think I matched the data in the article. I have created a new life, ever since divorce and widowhood, which is balancing the frustrating parts of my married years when I was in my 30s and 40s. Unable to encourage my now deceased husband to help out more with the kids and around the house – like reading to them before bed, attending more of their activities, and helping with carpools – I felt like an overworked, single mom much of the time. He took very good care of us financially, loved life, and was very generous in many ways, but not in the ways in which I needed support.

Now, looking back, I smile at how far I’ve come. I love living alone. Though not yet satisfied with my career accomplishments, I am completely happy in my personal life, which means I have bucked the trend of unhappy women by increasing my happiness immeasurably. But I didn’t arrive at this place easily, and there was a huge cost. A primary caregiver to my husband for 23 out of the 29 years of our marriage, it was an agonizing decision to leave him, and my children as caregivers in my stead. But I had to do it. He didn’t care for his health, and I felt like an accomplice by working harder on his health than he did. I had lost self-respect by not caring for my own needs, which all caregivers must learn to do to survive long term.

There have been other painful events that have led me to see the world through new eyes. But I regret none of the subsequent anxiety and fear. Living without answers to my questions, “How could this be happening to our family?” and “What will happen to us?” got me to where I am now. I have more healing to do, yes, but now I see future challenges as opportunities for a life made richer by the peace that comes from self-acceptance. I am gaining trust that good things really do happen, that life is not just drudgery, and that when we are grounded in compassion and good will, we attract like-minded people and events to us. This has not just been my belief but my experience.

Here are a few recommendations, learned in the trenches, for how to simplify life and find happiness. My path in finding balance and peace has been to listen to and nurture the emotional and spiritual sides of myself:

1. Let your journey teach you to identify your needs, and learn how to ask for help in satisfying them.

2. Visualize where you want to go. Imagine yourself doing the things you want to be doing with the people you want to be doing them with.

3. Face your feelings head on and accept them, whatever they are. Forgive yourself for having fear, regret, and anger. This allows you to forgive others as well.

4. Find your passion and joy in connecting – to people, nature, animals, and ideas.

5. Laugh at yourself and life’s events. My friend’s parents kept an “Accident Book,” writing down every outrageous mishap, big and small.

6. Take risk, get out of your comfort zone, and let go of needing control.

7. Let life’s lessons be your guide. Your outlook on life is greatly influenced by your health, so eat healthful food, and get plenty of sleep and exercise. Become a good manager of your body and all your resources. Make time for yourself and be present in the moment. Put the past and the future out of your mind and take the normal ups and downs with grace and equanimity.

A Locker Room Full of Wisdom

Some of the most helpful insights that come my way occur during heart to heart chats with friends, in locker rooms no less, which seem to rank right up there with hair salons as effective soul-searching venues. Last night at the gym some of us stumbled on the value of letting go of needing control over our lives. I’ve heard the argument before, “Let go and let God,” but this time I heard it with new ears. I was changing my work habits, so for me this conversation was not a stumble but a dive into affirming the destructiveness of fear in keeping me from achieving my career and relationship goals.

Tina said, “For all the worrying I’ve done in my lifetime, it got me no further. The problem was still there. I had a job with the government for 12 years. The negativity of the environment was dragging me down. I had to get out. And you know what? I quit the job and never missed a mortgage payment.” I felt a surge of hope and excitement that mindset could bring about such speedy change, which I knew, but I didn’t have enough examples.

I get so much from working out with women from all over the world; their experience of tough times gives me a wider range of viewpoints, along with proof that my problems are not unique. We are more alike than not, despite our differences.

I know I need positive-thinking people around me, and finding them involves choices. I can control those choices, but I need to leave their outcome to God. He does what is right for me in His own time. My job is to hang on to patience and flexibility. And faith.

This locker room story addresses a strategy I had adopted that very day, speaking to me in a new way because I was ready to hear it. This strategy – revolutionary for me – was to reprioritize my goals. My children and significant others have always come first. And yet at the top of my TO DO list I always wrote “Career” because I have less demonstrated experience. I’ve been a volunteer for more years than I’ve brought in income. And without greater trust in myself, I feel more urgency for my publishing goals to work out fast. But I sabotage myself; the pressure to get it all done slows me down. Then a few days ago, something made me pull out an index card and write ” Kids and Boyfriend” first and “Career” second. I was finally listening to my heart, not my fear. It wasn’t impossible to achieve because I already had number one! I was reminded of my neighbor who shouted to me over the fence that the reason she worked so hard was so she could play – take her kids on trips. But until yesterday, I didn’t plan play time. I felt I had to put career first, not seeing I already had abundance, in and from those I loved. Relaxation didn’t have to happen by default, by diverting from my goal and then feeling like a slouch. I had been stuck. Making career my top priority had only pulled me down.

Yes, mindset is critical to success. The book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck, was suggested to me by my friend Paula, a former academic dean of a girls’ school. My understanding is that it’s about raising children to take risk and achieve, and how praise can make them satisfied and not keep striving to grow. I bought a copy today for a baby shower this weekend. A gift of knowledge lasts longer than a box of diapers, thankfully.

My new mindset is not rocket science. I expect it to motivate me to work harder and take more risk, so the weight of my goals won’t paralyze me. With family first and career second, when I send off a query and proposal, I will remember that rejection by an agent isn’t anything when you have family behind you. This makes it easier to ignore the negative voices in my head that say, “This is too hard; I’ll never get there!” I can let go of wishing I could control the outcome.

A few hours after I started writing this, I was driving out of a parking spot when a man I’d walked out of the building with came up to my car. With a big, curious smile he blurted out, “What do you think is going to happen with health care?” He told me he was a surveyor, had gone through his savings and now was using up his 401k. He said, “Even if health care doesn’t pass (after the President’s speech tonight) we will be OK.” His faith was so unshakable, it stunned me.

We need faith whenever we find the courage to start over, whether it is creating and advocating a new health plan or adopting a new way of looking at our own priorities. And between us, we really can devise ways to get there that motivate and sustain us all.

Invigorated By The Sound of School Buses

The beginning of the school year, and getting back to a more regimented daily routine, has always been invigorating to me. So when the yellow school buses started rolling last week, I grieved my unfinished summer goals briefly before putting myself into a new gear. The momentum of the buses, and the children starting over with new teachers and new classrooms, was energy I could draft from. And like the children, I discovered anew that the loss of summer’s freedom fades quickly.

When I heard that the five year old twins down the street were starting Pre-K, I felt a thrill and a shock. Had five years already passed? I watched them bicycle by my house and pass the school bus - the whole family – mom, dad and the five kids, including two sets of twins, forging on like the indomitable ducklings in Make Way for Ducklings, one of many books they mastered long ago. Home schooled until now, they seemed to be wiser, more curious, and more street savvy than their peers. Though their bike ride to school would be a long one for short legs on new bikes, through the busiest streets this quiet part of town can boast, they peddled full steam ahead, undaunted, completely oblivious to how contagious their commitment and energy were to me.

Soon, neighborhood kids all around me spilled out of their houses, their new haircuts and wet, slicked back hair making them look two years older and as many inches taller. The five year old next door climbed in the car wired into his first headset, his little brother toddling along behind and, like all younger children, wishing he could go to school, too. Kids live in so many different kinds of pecking orders, and I felt a sudden envy of their seemingly easy adjustment to balancing them all.

Don’t we adults compare ourselves to others as well? I’m reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, the inspirational biography by Tracy Kidder of Dr. Paul Farmer and his work to eradicate Infectious Disease in Haiti, Peru and Russia. The man is superhuman – his heart, mind, vision, mission and energy. It is impossible not to feel guilty I don’t do more with the time given me, or compare myself to how much he gets done in a single day. His accomplishments are sheer magic. And he started with so little. Public school buses and new school clothes was more than he could claim as a child and yet his peripatetic family life gave him more than enough coping skills for life:  compassion and curiosity, commitment and passion, and the zeal of searching for cures.

Though many of our public schools in Georgia suffer in budget, imagination and resources, it is entirely possible that any of these schools, public or private, excellent or poor, could foster another Paul Farmer, a young kid who grows up to succeed despite hardship and with nothing to bank on except his experience in making do and overcoming.

We owe our success in life to the motivation we receive from our parents, or parent substitutes, from life’s adventures, or from luck. Shortly after the school buses pulled away, a young man knocked on my door. He wanted to sell me a bottle of some miraculous cleaning fluid I’ve bought before. His pitch made more sense to me than most of the folks I’ve talked to in the last year. With only a seventh grade education and foster homes to fall back on, he’d adopted Zig Zigler and Og Mandino as his role models, to better the life of his three year old son. He is today’s Paul Farmer and he will make it by sheer grit, hard work and wise choices. And he inspired me to set my goals a little higher like the five year old twins riding their bikes to school.

Nothing feels as good as making progress on my dreams. The harder I work, the more I like myself. Just like the cyclical rhythm of the waves at the seashore, the momentum and energy of going back to school is as compelling and secure as any rhythm I experience.

But, aside from the energy, I rejoice in feeling like a kid again, when I know in my gut that the whole world lies ahead, with nothing impossible. I smiled at my memories of losing my lunch money, falling down and getting stitches, and not being able to remember the difference between ‘through’ and ‘though’ and ‘thorough’. 

The youth passing by my door remind me I can overcome mountains beyond mountains. Summertime helps me see ways of crossing over, of overcoming my perceived obstacles. But fall gives me the energy to actually do it. The sound of the school buses starts that cycle of faith each year in which I transform dreams into triumphs, from opening my eyes to the inspiration and know-how that surrounds me, to realizing I won’t lose my passion and ingenuity en route.

A Valentine of Hope and Unity

Somehow I never wrote about attending Obama’s Inauguration this January 20th but those memories surfaced in my Valentine to friends and family that I am putting in the mail today.

Here it is, to spread the good vibrations a little further:

 

A Message of Hope and Unity

   

This comes with my deep hope that this year will bring us a surer notion of just how much we can achieve. And that by working together we can all prove this to be true. Things won’t be easy, but we’ll come out on top.

 

Our family (3/4ths of us at least) felt these certainties on Inauguration Day as we stood on the frozen grass of the National Mall, between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, in a direct line from Lincoln behind us to Obama in front. We were part of the cheers, and we felt the energy and hope of the country. We sensed – so strongly that it felt like knowing – we were witnessing the beginning of healing, not just for the last 8 years but for the wrongs of racism and slavery as well. It was real. It was happening. I felt it in the blinding sun of the winter sky as I watched a hawk make circles over the National Gallery, in front of the SWAT team on the rooftop. I pretended it was an eagle and wished the whole country could have been there, because it made me forget every worry I’d ever had.

 

It just takes a single moment to create that kind of faith that allows us to see the whole range of possibility in our lives. But that one moment can spur us on to realize our dreams, and to help others achieve theirs. They say it’s easier for friends to help each other in the down times than it is to celebrate each other’s triumphs. But let’s start, this year – now – by doing both.

 

As you know, I started sending valentines instead of Christmas cards a few years ago when I needed to feel more compassion to balance the pain I felt from the tone and policies of the White House. I figured it was up to me to create what I didn’t have. Now we have it, thankfully, in Washington and across the world. But it’s up to each one of us to sustain it, to strengthen it – in our homes, down the street, in our towns. We can start by sustaining one another.

 

I start by saying to you, let me know if you need help, and how. We all need it now. I’ll be there beside you in the good times, too, that with hard work are just around the corner!

 

With love,

 

Mary Ann

 

 

 

Victory Heals Old Wounds

My elation and choked sobs upon Barack Obama’s election told me how many wounds I had inside me that I didn’t know were still there, from protesting against racism in the 1960s and watching Washington D.C. burn after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. But then, I don’t think any of us realizes the full effect something has had until the situations that caused the pain better themselves. Quite simply, my tears of joy triggered and released all that pain I’d held in previously. I was washed in healing – late – but healing can never be too late.

As a white college student, I’d missed the March on Washington in 1963 not only because I couldn’t leave a summer job but also because I didn’t understand the full import of what I was passing up. It would be the next year when I would become a civil rights activist.

 

Now, with Senator Obama running for President, I wasn’t going to miss another chance to be part of history. My volunteering for his campaign took me to new parts of Georgia – my home – and NC where I listened to voters in a trailer park outside Asheville voice their fear about outsiders. That was my first introduction to deep Appalachian racism up close. Though I often seek out being the only white in an African-American environment, I do not enjoy being the only liberal in a sea of conservatism that seems spawned by fear.

 

The best campaign experience was Election Day, when I drove voters to the polls in Atlanta. These images and emotions will be with me forever:

 

- The young African-American woman crossing the street, smiling at me in a line of volunteer drivers, then looking back again to see if I saw her. I’m used to genuine smiles but this longer eye contact was different as I’m usually the one who needs to connect. Election results were not yet in and the world was already different from hope and working together.

 

- The middle-aged African-American man walking towards me as I sat outside a polling place in my car waiting for my voter to finish voting. He was smiling to himself so gently, with a bit of surprise as if the whole experience was surreal. “Are you done?” I asked. “Yeah, all done,” he said, and his smile grew broader as if he was stepping into a bubble of safety and peace. When my voter came out he was grinning from ear to ear, and as he got into the car he gave me a high five. His feeling of newfound empowerment made me feel I was enabling someone in achieving something that was as important as breathing and eating.

 

- And at the end of the day, the young woman who worked in the cafeteria at Atlanta University who, like everyone I drove that day, was a first time voter. We raced around in the dark on endless stretches of highway, lost and determined to reach the polls before closing. With two minutes to spare, she was able to vote a provisional ballot because we had ended up at the wrong polling station. The poll workers thanked me for bringing her, then gave her – the last voter - a round of applause on her way out. The poll volunteer outside gave us both hugs, prompting a confession from my voter that she almost cried she was so worried she wouldn’t be able to vote. What a different election this was!

 

I have been so inspired by Obama’s hard work and the change in those voters I met that I’ve made a pledge to myself to be more disciplined in achieving my own goals. My biggest challenge, however, will be to not give up on my friends who voted for his opponent. Normally I wouldn’t have known, because I learned long ago not to talk about politics if I wanted to build unity, but this campaign trained me to ask strangers whom they were voting for. And when I carried that practice over to a few friends I learned our values weren’t similar at all, which was a heartbreaking discovery. 

 

Nevertheless, in a day when a biracial man can become President and inspire a country to hope, I should be able to hope that I can give my friends greater room to grow in their own way. With Obama’s bipartisanship and invitation to help in changing America, there is hope they will come around to seeing life from a different perspective, one that fosters working together for the same goal, that of caring for our country and one another.

 

 

 

 

 

Replacing Treasured Sounding Boards

This past weekend I felt the loss of two old reliable sounding boards on public policy and current events.

Both of these individuals were passionate about politics, a passion of mine as well. And both were comforting, intellectual stalwarts to me whose opinion I sought and valued. Though I felt their viewpoints were fairly predictable, now that they are gone I want to know what they think about every crazy twist in the news.

It’s not like I can’t think for myself, but somehow knowing how they stood on certain issues was a gauge to me in assessing the mood of the country; how things were going. That measure helped me keep some realism in interpreting public policy. I had a clearer notion of the path I had chosen to travel when I heard what they had to say.

The first loss struck last Friday, with the sudden death of NBC’s political commentator, Tim Russert. I not only adored him but he was one of the few TV pundits whose opinion I truly valued. How could you not trust him? That teddy bear figure of knowledge, smarts and experience grounded in common sense. He was fun and lively and passionate. But, most of all, real. I believed him and I needed him. I can’t imagine getting through the drama of the conventions and general election without him.

The second is my husband who died four years ago. I missed him more poignantly than usual yesterday because it was Father’s Day. I told my son I wonder so often what he would think about the economy and the election, oil prices, the racist comments out of the Clinton campaign, Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, and the Supreme Court becoming more rightist (except for a recent Guantanamo ruling). He never missed a word of Time magazine in his 62 years, and read widely on foreign policy. We didn’t agree on much in politics in our younger years. I would disregard the clipping from the newspaper he would hand me on his way to work on election day, about whom to vote for. For all the mock indignation I felt and expressed, now I miss those laughs we had. He knew I wouldn’t listen and even said he married me for my independent streak.

As a Goldwater Republican, my husband became more moderate as the years went by. I, a liberal civil rights advocate of the 1960’s who grew up with my father sending telegrams to the White House on open housing, have become more moderate as I have faced the economic realities of life. There is nothing like supporting oneself to make one face life realistically. My idealism will never leave me, but I know the value of balance now.

So I feel a bit bereft now without my political sounding boards. Change isn’t easy when it hits close to our values and ideals but new folks will arise to take their place. I’ll have to look hard. But they are there.

And in the meantime, I will rely on my own gut a little more strongly. It is guiding me more surely and only because I am listening to it better. These things are vicious cycles, I find. The more I follow my instincts in speaking out on issues, the better able I am to voice those thoughts in fresh ways that connect me to how others are finding their own voice and footing. We’re all in this search for truth together, I figure. Saying what we have to say is all a matter of offering up our thoughts as sincerely and clearly as we can. We lead each other through our encouragement, as Tim Russert was so good at doing.

So I’ll think of these two men – so different from one another - during the conventions this summer, and when I cast my vote in the fall for Obama. I think that what makes someone’s opinion worth listening to is the fact that we feel that they believe in us, and that helps us feel our way into our own issues. And that feeling – that gut knowledge of life and what we are looking for – isn’t taken away by death.

Many of our everyday opinions bring us angst and joy. Though they are our own individual issues, the stuff behind them is universal, with that everyman quality hanging out there, waiting for us to grab onto it and carry it on. In our own way. And in so doing, we become our own people. Our own everyman, and everywoman. Which helps us find our own voice, a replacement for those special people in our lives we knew were unique, and feared were irreplacable.

Thank you, Tim and Chip. Your speaking up will still be with me, influencing me as I grow in freedom of expression.

 

Thoroughbred Racing Has to Stop

I could not watch the Kentucky Derby as much as I used to glory in the beauty and exhilaration of the Triple Crown. 

Ever since Barbaro broke down, I’ve sworn that I could and would not support horse racing.

My son asked me if I was going to watch and I told him no. And I didn’t. But I checked the results online. Despite fearing the worst, I was stunned to find that the worst had indeed happened. Again, and multiply that by thousands. The runner up, a filly named Eight Belles, broke two front ankles and was euthanized on the track.

How many deaths will it take before this sport of bringing beautiful animals into the world to suffer and die is halted? It’s like bringing Olympic athletes into the world to face death. Russian Roulette: salvation or death. What kind of rush could such odds bring anyone? Sadistic, truly.

What does it take for you to hear us, breeders, owners and trainers, who indulge in this cruelty? If you don’t have hearts, think of those of us who do.

Larry Jones, Eight Belles’s trainer, said in a Reuters article ( 5/3/08 ) published in The New York Times, “We couldn’t be more proud of her effort…. The main thing was she never had to suffer. She just went out in a blaze of glory.” I can’t believe breaking two ankles and literally breaking down wasn’t painful. Just proof that denial is what keeps the industry alive.

Hear us, Larry Jones, and Eight Belles’s owner. Hear us, Gretchen and Roy Jackson, and Michael Matz. None of you are exempt. At the very least you are guilty of a grave injustice and withholding of compassion. Cruelty to animals is cruelty to your fellow man. How dare you think we feel as you do, that it is alright to subject animals to the torture that is horse racing. 

I can’t take it. It hurts unbearably. Another talented and beautiful life gone. Wasted. Thrown away. Ravaged. Do you not see that you are waging war on the animals you profess to care for? Why is pain and death the ‘life’ you choose for them?

Nothing hurts as much as the deaths that didn’t have to be. In Iraq and Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and on city streets. Do you not see that our country is on overload? It takes the same amount of work to create something constructive as it does to tear down, whether from violence, apathy or neglect. The effect is the same.

Your actions, horse racing industry, diminish all of us. This is indeed a tragic day.

Sharing My Roses with the Aphids

 

 

In celebration of Earth Day, I’m writing about my friends the aphids. They are attacking my New Dawn rose bushes. These two rhapsodic rose bushes are climbers, growing higher every year. If you count their spilling over the trellis and arbor, which I keep adding on to, they are about 16 feet tall at this point, with more life in them than all the new trees and bushes I have planted in the last four years. The buds, only visible the last few days, are growing. It will be a few more days before they open.

 

I was so excited at dusk last night to see if they’d started blooming that Mocha cat and I went out onto the screen porch after dinner, and I noticed – horrors of all horrors – that the aphids had returned. I’ve been looking for them, while trying to think positive thoughts that maybe they’d stay away this year. I really thought I’d headed them off with a few preventive whiffs of rose bug poison. But no, there were a few tell-tale headless stalks visible but undeterred, thankfully, from reaching for the sun.

 

If I’d been successful in ordering liquid garlic to spray instead of pesticides, I’d probably be OK. But the company turned out to be fraudulent. And I’m just not willing to load the air with pesticides, so it may take a few more years to conquer this battle. But, in the meantime, I’ve decided to be at peace.

 

“Live and let live!” my husband used to say about vermin. The kids and I didn’t pay much attention to this bravado until he said it one evening about the roach crawling across our map of the world in the family room. Then we cringed at the grossness. I said it seemed a little irresponsible to be that passive, even though I hate killing any creature. “World traveler,” the kids named the poor little guy, groaning and giggling at the same time it made it across several continents, safely.

 

That memory is now long gone, as I breathe in and let the pale pink roses warm my heart. I asked the protecting guardian of wildife and nature, Ariel, to spare me a few blooms. 

 

And so in a spirit of compromise on Earth Day, I am conceding to the little bugs. We share a gentle love and discriminating taste. I should be able to give up a few decapitated stalks in the midst of boundless beauty. As for the carpenter bees that have been digging holes in the arbor, I’ll tolerate them, too, until I find a green solution.

 

As life so often brings us full circle, I am reminded of ninth grade when we had to memorize a poem. I chose Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” which I still remember after all these years:

 

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower–but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. 
 

Now that I’m wiser, I don’t yearn to know so passionately why things are the way they are in the universe. I’ve fought too many battles, demanded too much control, and sought too many answers. I just want to enjoy my roses.

 

With triumph over the aphids no longer my priority, I can settle in quite nicely to co-existing with both aphids and bees. It makes me wonder how they adapt to making do with humans. Maybe setting an example of mutual respect is no effort to them at all. Maybe they, too, think that it only takes a handful of pink patches at dawn and dusk to fill their heart’s desire, and their stomachs.

 

Looks like my husband had it right all along by picking the important battles. A few missing rose buds are the right savory touch to enticing me to contemplate changing my position on how much I fight with nature. Or how much I resist anything unwelcome.

 

 

 

 

The Search for a People’s Leader

When I meditate about the loss our country has endured from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago today, I feel grief first of all; grief and anger that we have had to do without his vision, dignity and courage all these years. Others have taken up the mantle but not as comprehensively, passionately and effectively.  

There is great promise in the leadership of Barack Obama, though his vision of social and economic justice and equality and its implemention is broader, more concrete and less theoretical than Dr. King’s. No one could accurately call him a black leader; he doesn’t focus on race, and he fights for the rights of all races.

In the span between 1968 and today, blacks had to move on without receiving the justice and equality they sought, and many of us sought for them. It has come bit by bit, especially with the Civil Rights Act, but not in the hearts of every American citizen and therefore not in practice.

And in that same time,  from when Dr. King was assassinated until now, Barack Obama was growing up, a child not just of America but of the world, his path made easier by the legacy of Dr. King as he says but more from the hands-on experience of living abroad, of seeing the clash of cultures close up and of learning the importance of their respecting one another and working together.

I mention Dr. King and Senator Obama because they have been the ideal leaders during my lifetime, with the exception of President Kennedy. The ones that inspired me to care, and to speak out and say that fairness and equality still don’t exist. Dr. King’s legacy reminds me I can’t give up hope; he wouldn’t have until economic justice has been won. 

I feel frustration, too, which comes from enduring the incompetence, arrogance and dishonesty of President George W. Bush. Since Senator Clinton has adopted many of his traits, especially his dishonesty, I ache for Dr. King’s character, demonstration of heart, and openness and I yearn for his leadership.

But is it gone? I believe it remains not only in his legacy but also in his hope for us which hovers above our continued need of the ideals he fought for.

Perhaps it is the example of character and leadership of Dr. King and Senator Obama that accentuate the falsehoods of Bush and Clinton. For without integrity it is impossible to lead; the definition of a leader is one who inspires others to courage and action with the interests of the country at heart… not fixating on approval ratings or special interests. 

However, legacies aren’t enough in themselves. They only pave the way, serving as silent leaders, demanding action from each of us. 

When I yearn for a transformation of Dr. King’s message of nonviolence, and an example of his straightforwardness and sincerity in the flesh, I look beyond these false and destructive ‘leaders’, elected and not, who underestimate…in their rush for acclaim and their quest for power at any cost… the intelligence and perception of voters. I listen to my own heart and to the heart of my brothers and sisters and it motivates me because the audacity of their not understanding what Americans want and need is frightening. But there is strength in voter numbers, and Americans are catching on, finally. 

Setting things right after the death of a people’s leader, and making unactualized dreams real, is not just about developing better programs or policies. Wounded hearts have to dare to feel again, and trust has to be restored, which takes constant effort on the part of us all to forgive one another for the past. 

I pray that we will all keep striving for unity as we continue our pursuit of justice and equality. One option we have is to stand behind Senator Obama’s capacity to attract experts whose answers complement his own, and accept his invitation to in essence fulfill Dr. King’s legacy, thereby creating a new moral and economically fair order.

Remembering the words of Dr. King, timely today from its unfinished business, gets us closer to achieving the goal of dignity, jobs, education and food on the table. It is asking so little that all Americans have enough to keep them healthy and happy. By inching, together, towards these rights and their fulflllment, we gain a mile, and in the meantime, our own dignity. 

 

A Good Speech Heals the Hurts

Yesterday was one of those off days, thankfully rare, with two bad interactions in yoga class.

A friend reported she had lost a book I loaned her. No apology, just “I have no idea where it is. Maybe if I had the title.” I didn’t remind her that I had given her the title of what I thought it was. We had been discussing this for seven months and I should have let it go long ago but I couldn’t get past her nonchalance.

The yoga class was intense. With my stiff back, holding poses for a long time isn’t something I adore. One man announced it was ”the hardest class” he’d been to with this instructor. I smiled at him, glad to have company. In the locker room,  when I ran into a circle of ladies complaining amiably, I said, “I’ll go tell the instructor,” thinking that I could represent all of us. Since he was a friend he might listen, and didn’t teachers want to know when people were dropping out and why? I marched back into class, nabbing him before he left, and told him that there were a bunch of folks who were struggling. His reaction caught me off guard. “I don’t have a problem with them. People always tell me my classes are too hard,” he said, turning his back and walking away.  

I was dumbfounded; it never entered my head he wouldn’t care about helping his students’ progress. I’m sure I could have presented my case more smoothly, too, though I tried not to sound accusatory.  

Driving home, I narrowed down what was bugging me: one person had shown a tinge of accountability and the other none, while neither showed empathy. For some, it’s too threatening to admit a mistake; and for others, they can’t get beyond themselves. 

Then the most amazing thing happened. I found the healing I needed while reading a speech in The New York Times. Not just any speech but one of the most majestic, truthful and heartfelt speeches I’ve heard in my lifetime. It was Barack Obama’s Speech on Race, (delivered March 18, 2008). It meant more than a warm hug or a friend saying, “I hear you, it’s OK.” Imagine that, a speech with that much healing power… for small hurts that couldn’t even measure up to significant subjects like race and unity and equality. 

Obama’s honesty, openness and insights on race in America brought tears to my eyes, his words demonstrating such directness and understanding of universal pain that it soothed every doubt and fear I have about the future, not just my present petty concerns.

How phenomenal that a speech that cynics could label as purely political could bring so much hope. But it did because we have to heal to make room for hope. If it had that effect on me, there’s no doubt it hit others, too, as being history in the making. I count it as one of the most important speeches of all times, up there with the Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream. I was reminded first of King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail thinking, “I’m living this event, not looking this speech up in the library years later.” I was cheered by the timing because David Patterson’s speech just the day before, upon his swearing in as Governor of New York State, had inspired me similarly.

Healing can come from the least likely places, though the events are not random. Gestures of healing don’t have to come directly from the person who hurts us, but they do need to contain directness. I was reminded of my favorite words of sympathy from a friend after one of my husband’s parents died years ago. The friend saw me outside church, walked up to me, looked me in the eye and said, “Mary Ann, I don’t know what to say.” Nothing could have comforted me more. He gave me all he had, most of all honesty.

It wasn’t just empathy I needed in yoga class but honesty and forthrightness, two little triggers that help us feel supported so we can find the courage to forgive, move on and seek the solutions we desire. When it didn’t come from “friends,” it was my duty to be honest and kind to myself, as I need to do regardless. Always.