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2006-12-03 - 10:51 p.m. Conversations this weekend with my beautiful friend Mary have helped birth some pretty important thoughts that I would love to share with all of you because, of course, it is nearing the end of the school term and so I have tons of homework to do. Which, of course, means that I am avoiding that homework like the plague. Kaplan dips her toes in... That book that I was reading a couple entries ago, and quoting from? Well, it's making another appearance, because I am almost done reading it. Mary and I were talking much of the weekend -- particularly at the Visalia Peace Rally today -- of how difficult and frustrating it is to speak to people on issues where our emotions get in the way and the other person refuses to acknowledge any potential truth in my view point, refuses even to concede that they might be wrong, because of their emotional investment in their argument*. This was in the context of conversing with folks about the invasion of Iraq (the ways that people who espouse a great love of Christ can somehow hold that truth while also holding the truth that it's okay to kill a bunch of people halfway across the world). But it could be applied to many contexts, and I think it really addresses the root of why it is so often difficult to hear people who are speaking for a change that is new and maybe frightening to our world view. *I love how even as I'm typing this, I can hear how it sounds like we're BOTH entrenched in our viewpoints, but this will make more sense as I go along... So I'm sitting in my room, reading Kaplan, and I come across this amazing quotation, and it strikes me as at least a partial explanation for why some people who have not been exposed to different ideas just refuse, at some point, to hear others out. Kaplan is speaking to women who are anti-feminist, but it works across so many contexts: An area of study in psychology that focuses on what are called 'outlaw relations' has made some interesting observations. An 'outlaw relationship' is one that I have with a person who comes from another kind of life and whose values and ideas about what is important are very different from my own. One researcher studied two groups of people: some who had had an outlaw relationship and some who had not. She found that people in the former group had a stronger sense of their own identity, of who they were and what they needed, than the latter group. She also found that those who had had an outlaw relationship seemed to have a better tolerance of ambiguity than those who had not. The more secure we are about who we are, the less we are shaken by encountering someone who is different from ourselves, and the less we panic when confronted with new possibilities and choices that we had never before considered. For anti-feminist women, feminists seem in this sense to be 'outlaws', which are to be avoided." *Wow, I'm so lazy. Or, you know, for anti-war people, peace lovers are outlaws. Because they come from a time when to love your president WAS/IS the sign of patriotism, and there is just no other way to make sense of the world without being REALLY fucking frightened of it. There's a security (something else she talks about) in allowing someone you believe to be BIGGER than you to make all your decisions for you. It seems to make a lot of sense, especially with the power dynamics of women vs men and citizens vs government and just generally not wanting to take full possession of our destinies because there must be someone who can do a better job at it than us, I'm going to paraphrase something that we heard in a movie a few days ago and were both very struck by: A man said his father, in Nazi Germany, had expressed that he would rather trust and be disappointed than live life being mistrustful. Doesn't it seem to fit with people who just really really want to be able to trust their government and feel safe and secure knowing their gov't is doing the right thing? We all just want to put our trust into something bigger than us that we hope will take care of us, n'est-ce pas?
But there has been a grief and a regret associated with that for so long, and I only just today put it into words. I really wish that I had had some way to take him home with me. He didn't want to die in a hospital, and yet none of his children were willing to take him to their home. And I, with roommates and a somewhat-crazy life, felt unable to do so even though I felt compelled. What I realize now is that I ought to have insisted that mom and dad take him in. Despite my mother's (very justified) fears of how taxing it would be to her. Despite her fears about the stairs in their condo and the slippery hardwood floors. I should have insisted they set up a hospital bed in the living room, I should have dropped out of school for the semester and moved into the downstairs guestroom, and I should have helped my grandpa die. I could have done this, but it was not expected of me and I did not understand until recently how important it could have been for me. I learnt so much from the small part of his death that I was honored to witness. My belief in reincarnation was solidified as I witnessed baby after baby crowning from between their mothers' legs, even as my eyes were open and my thoughts were completely lucid. I learned how very much grief can mirror, intensify, act as, pretend to be, dementia. I witnessed the complexities of an old man trying to move towards his reunion with his deceased wife in an intentional and dignified manner, and the great difficulty he experienced on that journey. I am considering more and more how much palliative care work is going to figure into my counseling practice, how very important this will be for me. The suicide bereavement training at the Support Network will be an important start, but there is so much more. It is astonishing how the human mind and heart, if given the opportunity, continues to grow visibly even up until the very point of death (and invisibly beyond). I am astonished at what I am still learning from that wonderful man and the two wonderful women who went before him, my grandmothers. So much richness, so much life. I want to do better by my parents, when it is their time to go, than they did by my grandfather. I do not say this in a blaming way. I say it as a statement of intent, of love, of care, of deep understanding. I say this fully acknowledging how incredibly important it is to me to do so. I can only hope that they will allow me to do so.
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