Connecting With Words

One day recently I was dutifully taxi-driving a car load of children around the city. We passed a community building with a big sign hanging out front that said: "Say No to Family Violence." My eight-year-old asked, "What is family violence?" I explained how in some families parents thought it was okay for husbands to hit wives, wives to hit husbands, and even parents to hit children. "But are they allowed to?" she asked, shocked. We proceeded to discuss the laws (no, it's called assault) but that behind closed doors people often disregard laws. To my astonishment, a visiting child piped up in a very casual voice, "my mum and dad hit me all the time." She then lapsed into silence and I could see her brain working through this new information, trying to make some sense of her difficult situation. Further discussion with the child will take place out of range of my children's ears.

What breaks my heart is not just that she has had to endure parents who express their anger this way, but that she doesn't have anyone to trust at home to be able to ask questions to understand life. When my girls want to nut through some new information, they ask numerous questions so they can create a clear picture for themselves. I love those conversations. They trust that they can ask, that they will get help to understand, and that the answers are honest. If I don't know something, then we find out. Often I get to learn something new too. Perhaps I am making an assumption that this child can't trust someone at home, but can we trust someone if we fear their anger and lashing out with a smack?

I work with socially disadvantaged people, people cut off from mainstream society, people cut off from family ties or connections with meaningful relationships. I see what happens when people do not have someone to communicate with, someone they can trust to say anything to and know that they will be heard. Many homeless people interviewed report that disconnection is one of the reasons they land on the street and stay there. It's very sad, to me, and it's one of the reasons I love my job - because I offer a way of connecting with these people so that no matter how shy, how cut off, how humble or how much pain they are in, they can have a chat and a moment's connection to someone who does care.

Which brings me back to children. They are learning so much from adults around them; they are learning how to behave, and open communication is fundamental to their development as independent and secure adults. It is such a gift to give them to know how to articulate their feelings, to satiate their curiousity, to feel free to say whatever they like with people they trust. I love that my children come home from school and unload about their day, that we can talk about the good things that happened that made them feel good, and also dissect the not so good things that happen too. Because as you know, good and bad things happen to all of us, all our lives, and what a gift for any of us to have someone who cares and who wants to listen. It is reinforced to me, over and over again, just how important it is to foster that connection, to make time, to let them know they are worth listening to.

What Do You Fear?

It seems as I progress along my journey that my fears have changed. It used to be that I feared being average, and boring, and unable to excel at anything. That's why I pushed myself into misery trying trying trying to be something. I suppose it was a fear that I didn't matter. But in my pursuit to matter to others, I never learned to matter to me. Can I ever be successful in believing I matter to others if I never matter to myself? What exactly does that mean, to matter to myself? Do you feel that you matter to you, to your well-being, to your happiness?

I think it means to determine what matters to me, and then figuring out how I want to stand up for that matter. That is a quality I have always admired in others, people who know who they are, what they are about, what's important to them. I don't want to follow along anymore, too concerned with what others think of me to take any kind of stand. Now I'm only going to pay attention to what I think. Like a quote I saw in a bookstore that went something like this: Does the tiger worry what the sheep thinks?

What is it that I fear now? I fear that greed will destroy the natural paradise in which we live, without which we cannot survive; I fear getting swallowed up by the small details and losing track of the big beautiful picture of meaningful relationships, with people, nature, and myself; I fear that too many people are disconnected from each other and the world around them; and I fear failing my children by not teaching them to believe in themselves or to only worry about what they think or to find out what matters to them. And so I take action now to address those fears, to use them to guide me forward in every decision I make, and to continue to mull them over so that I may conquer them, each and every day.

What's your focus?

I attended the Environmental Film Festival last night. Who knew? And it's been around since 2010. Yay! The film I saw is The Earth Wins, and while it's a beautiful showcase of earth, what really took my breath away is the message of the film. Perhaps because one of the driving forces behind it is a pilot, Jerry Grayson, who is used to seeing earth from above and filmed the whole movie from the air. He and the producer, Sara Hine, chose to work from the premise that Earth will always win, and so can we if we choose to listen. Instead of what most of us would expect, perhaps charts and numbers or pictures of the devastation we cause in the form of oil spills, mining, waste, incidental deaths to people and animals etc., this crew chose to focus on the strength of nature, and that no matter how smart we think we are, she will always win. There is some profound footage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the bushfires that raged through Marysville and Kinglake, but also some spectacular moments of nature's glory - the whales and dolphins took my breath away. I loved that the film shifted my focus not from the agony of what we inflict upon earth, but that she will, in the end, win. Even if we pollute ourselves to death, she will recover and flourish. How's that for a shift?

Where do you stand?

After many prompts from a trustworthy friend I have decided to launch my ruminations into a blog. I was waiting for a catalyst big enough to justify the adventure and the universe responded rather dramatically as Tony Abbott was last night voted in as Prime Minister of Australia. Yikes. Other words came to mind but I'll try keep the postings free from that sort of language.
What scares me most is that the majority of Australians voted for a party that stands for trashing more of our national parks, eliminating the carbon tax, and stripping more money from the socially disadvantaged. Hugely successful movies often focus on the wonderful optimistic emotions generated when the underdog wins but now we get to watch  the underdog get kicked, over and over again. What fun. Especially if you are the underdog.
Dr David Suzuki, an eminent Canadian geneticist and naturalist and one of my idols is coming to Sydney later this month. He stands for nature and for hope. I am cramming now, reading and re-reading his books as I am definitely attending. Given our change in government, one of the points that stands out for me in Suzuki's book The Big Picture is that we must now consider a new economic model, one that isn't about producing more consumer goods. We currently use up in nine months what it takes one year for nature to produce. If the projected population is estimated to reach nine billion people by 2050, can we not see the potential disaster, the future written on the wall?
And so I share one of the many questions posed in his book: How much is enough? I ask: Do you know? Have you set an amount or a goal or even a dream of what you would like life to look like? What do you stand for? I read a passage from a different book yesterday that made me smile, this one called Earth Magic by Steven D. Farmer. In it he relates a story that he came across on the internet:

An American businessman was at the pier of a coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied that it only took a little while. The American then asked why he didn't want to stay out longer and catch more fish, but the Mexican said that it was enough to support his family's immediate needs.
The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late; fish a little; play with my children; take siesta with my wife, Maria; and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor."
The businessman scoffed. "I'm a Harvard MBA, and I could help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats; soon you'd have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You'd have to leave this small village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you'd run your expanding enterprise."
"But, senor, how long will all this take?"
"Fifteen to twenty years."
"But what then, senor?"
The American laughed. "That's the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!"
"Millions, senor? Then what?"
"Then you would retire. You would move to a small coastal fishing village where you'd sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll into the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos."

  How has it become so ingrained that we have to always be pushing ourselves to be more, do more, earn more, have more? Do you know why I think so many of us love to get into nature, be it a park, zoo, beach, or even garden? Because it's one place where we can just be. The trees don't rush the flowers, the grass doesn't rush the beetle, and none of it rushes us. We can just sit and be. And guess what, we don't need permission to do that. But now we will need to be proactive, thanks to our new Prime Minister, to preserve those places not only where we can just be, but that stabilise the climate, clean our air and water, keep our soil fertile, and maintain a very delicate balance that sustains all fifteen or so million animals (that we know of), including humans. We've had a change in government; it's a good time to change how we govern ourselves too.