Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Today was 2020 in Miniature

Oh, 2020, you are quite the adventure, you rascal.

I’ve been really (really, really) needing to create things to look forward to. The last few months have been tough (duh) and the monotony of these Groundhog Day weeks can easily get me down. It helps a lot if I have things to look forward to - a camping weekend, an evening plan, anything.

But, it’s also been really (really, really) hard to muster the hope and energy to schedule and plan for these things to look forward to.

Last week, Steve and I summoned up our planning skill and made plans and reservations for a few fun things over the next few weeks, which feels great. One of these things today’s float down the Provo River. Usually we float the Provo as a Qualtrics Engineering summer fun activity, but since that isn’t happening (sigh), I figured we could break up the week with a Wednesday float. I arranged to take the afternoon off, the boys had off work as well, we made our reservations, we were ready to go. 

And then last night I looked at the weather forecast. For 4-6 weeks, our highs have been in the 90s every day. Hot, sunny, dry. It’s summer in the desert; we’re used to it. But what was today’s weather? The one day we had planned to enjoy the heat? High 70s and rainy. 

I experienced a mix of emotions at seeing the forecast. From, “meh, it will probably be warmer than that, we’ll still go and it will be fine” to “seriously!?! WTF?” And then I felt the commingled frustration at my foiled plans and guilty shame because other people are dealing with way worse circumstances than this and what right do I have to feel angry about this small thing. I am such a mess.

But the weather wasn’t too bad at noon, so Ben and I decided to ride our respective unicycle and bike up to the starting point while the others met us there. And as we rode, the rain started, the wind whipped, and the temperatures dropped. 

By the time we arrived, Steve had texted to tell us that he and the other kids were having grave doubts about the wisdom of this plan and could I see if we could move the reservation?

Disappointed by my family wussing out (but also now reaching the conclusion that they were clearly right), I checked in and successfully moved our reservations to a (hopefully) warmer day. And Ben and I sat under a pavilion and watched the rain and ate our apples. And then Ben had the brilliant idea that we should grab lunch, so we rode down the canyon soaking wet and had a really fun lunch together (because lunches with a 17-year-old are few and far between!) and rode home in the still-increasing wetness. And I took a hot shower and enjoyed a little nap and it turns out that those are also pretty great activities to enjoy on an afternoon off. 

I feel like today has been exactly like 2020 in miniature:
  1. Feel crappy
  2. Summon your energy and make some plans that will feel good
  3. Plans are foiled
  4. Feel a bizarre and caustic mix of anger and disappointment and frustration and hopelessness
  5. Feel guilty that you feel this way just because your little plans were ruined, when other people have it so much worse
  6. Do an alternate thing
  7. Find out that the alternate thing has its own sweetness. It wasn’t what you were looking for, wasn’t what you planned, but still provided its own redemption
  8. Repeat
2020, I don’t love the lessons you’re teaching me. They are hard. Punishing. Exhausting. But I do love the sweet results of some of these lessons and the ways they’re shaping me. So, I’ll take that victory... because I really don’t have much of a choice anyway!

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Optimism and Permission to Feel

I’m an optimist.

I naturally see the bright side of most situations. I always think things will be faster and easier than they are. I expect the best.

And there’s so much good stuff about this part of my personality - I’m super grateful to be an optimist.

Note that the previous sentence was the most meta-optimistic sentence you’re ever likely to read.

But.

Over the past few months I have also experienced som e marked downsides to my natural optimism and the resultant behaviors I’ve perfected over the years. As an optimist and a control-freak, I’ve taken the concept of “take captive every thought” to a new level, sometimes at the expense of allowing myself to experience the natural negative emotions that accompany a circumstance, decision, or season.

The logic goes like this:

  1. A person experiencing this thing I’m experiencing could feel some negative emotions. In fact, perhaps I’m experiencing some twinge or shadow of those emotions.
  2. But, I don’t see how those emotions are going to help me lead a more fulfilled, productive or happy life.
  3. Plus, through the power of logic and intellect, I can talk myself into other emotions that would also be valid for a person experiencing this thing I’m experiencing and that seem more useful, positive, or at least less icky.
  4. Therefore, I will choose this second set of more useful emotions rather than that first icky set.
Basically, I just say, “Hmm... this emotion seems to lead to a yucky place, so I’ll just replace it with a more positive or productive emotion.” Or I implicitly tell myself, “What’s the use in feeling this way? Nothing? Well, then, feel this other way instead.”

Now, perhaps this chain of logic makes no sense to you and you are now thinking I am a deeply bizarre and unwell person. I can live with that; I’m just being real here.

And I do believe there’s some utility in this line of reasoning. Over-indulging in negative emotions has some really negative and gross side-effects that I want nothing to do with. I don’t want to ruminate on my hurt or pain or doubt. I don’t want my negative emotions or experiences to monopolize my life. I don’t want to get stuck in the hurt. Choosing to replace something negative with something positive has its time and place (and, Lord knows, I have perfected that process). 

But I’ve also started to learn that honoring and allowing myself to feel what I actually feel, rather than what I think would be more useful or positive to feel, is pretty important. As self-helpy as it sounds, I have learned that there’s some good stuff to honoring what I’m feeling and giving it the space to just be, rather than immediately talking myself out of the efficacy of that emotion.

For example, my long-standing habit in, say, prayer or journaling times has been to talk about something hard or something I feel negative emotions about, and then in the next sentence explain why it’s not really “that bad,”or the other side of the story, or the good that could come of it or how I really ought to feel about it.

What I’m learning is to give space for the icky feelings, the bad experiences, and just to let them feel bad. I don’t always have to talk myself into making them feel ok or immediately seeing the inherent value or lesson in a tough time. It’s ok for me to admit to myself that some things are just hard. They will, eventually, become easier. They will bring their own lessons. But in the middle of it all, it’s ok if it just feels hard.

What does this look like, practically? 

Well, one new practice for me is that every morning in my journal I list out the Sweet and Tough things from the previous day. And now I don’t excuse or justify or un-justify or explain the tough things. I just let them sit in the “tough” column. I don’t try to explain the validity or invalidity of their presence in the column. I just let them be. 

Because it’s ok for something to feel hard or hurtful or icky for its season.

At least, that’s what I’m trying to tell myself.

Monday, July 6, 2020

How I'm Learning from Black Lives Matter

Like so many other Whites in the U.S., these past few weeks have been wildly disruptive for me. I've been confronted in uncomfortable ways with my prejudice, assumptions, laziness, and responsibility when it comes to race and racism. I thought I got it before... and I was wrong. I still don't get it - but I'm getting iteratively closer to understanding, listening better, and becoming an active part of the solution.

This post is a line in the sand for me, briefly documenting what I am coming to understand.

If you're a Black reader, don't waste any more time on this post - you know all this and are shaking your head at my sad ignorance.

For all other readers, this isn't intended to be a sermon, and it isn't written to convince or chastise you. It's not written for you at all, it's written for me to work through what I'm learning and to record it, however immaturely and clumsily. If any of this causes you discomfort, start to sit with that discomfort and ask why you feel that way. If you want to learn more, you don't even need to ask for resources - there are a billion lists out there of wonderful podcasts, movies, scholarly research, and novels to help you dig into equality and anti-racism more deeply. Here's a great place to start: https://www.qualtrics.com/qualtrics-life/how-to-be-an-ally-to-the-black-community

Many of these thoughts were catalyzed by White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. It's deeply challenging. If you want to start with a summary, here's a good one: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm. You'll probably agree with some of it, be challenged by some of it, disagree with some of it - that's cool. That's what learning should look like.

In no particular order, here are some of the things I've been wrestling with and learning from:

1. I kind of have a problem with Jesus and his love for the lost and oppressed
This comic hit way, way too close to home.

In Luke 15:3-9, Jesus tells two parables that are essentially about how he will leave the masses of safe folks behind to risk life and limb to help the hurting and lost.

In my more honest moments (e.g. these ones), I'll admit that I don't really like this Jesus. I want him to chase after me. All the time. I know everybody else matters... but in reality I want to be the one who really matters the mostest. And although on one level we are all the lost sheep and lost coin of the parables and Jesus seeks to save each of us, it's also super clear in the Bible, and especially the New Testament, that Jesus chases super duper hard after the oppressed.

It's easy to spout off Christian-sounding niceties that Jesus came for all and died for all (a short semantic hop to "all lives matter"). And, yes, yes he did. But he also spent a whole lot of time working on behalf of the downtrodden of his day - the Samaritans, the widows, the prostitutes, the sick, the poor, the powerless - those whose rights were systematically denied by the Jewish law and economy and government. Jesus chases after the ones in danger. And boy does he have some harsh words for insiders (the ones who benefit from, perpetuate, and don't actively dismantle the bigoted attitudes and policies)

And he calls us to do the same.

2. I don't naturally self-identify as White
I don't think of myself as White. I don't think of my family as (mostly) White. My subconscious position is that race is something for other people groups  - you know, the "racial" ones. And White just means that I'm not Black or Indigenous or Asian or Latinx or Middle Eastern or...

I simply don't see race as an essential part of my experience. Because I am the defacto one. And the other races are, just that, "other".

Now, it drives me crazy that I needed to hit my 41st year to recognize how insane this is. For many years, I have experienced the segregation and bias of being "other" - by being a woman. My gender is does not represent the defacto experience. My environment is predominantly defined and controlled by and for men, and I am out side of that. Even the name of my gender remind me of that - the origin of "woman" is "wife-man" - my gender's very word is a description of our relationship to the group in power.

I know how hard it hurts to be so far outside.

Yet I never really internalized (or, at least, started to internalize) that this is just a small shade of how hard it hurts to be even farther outside of the defacto, assumptive normal experience as a Black person.

It is super uncomfortable to talk about myself as White, and I think that's at least partially because of the clear privilege encapsulated in the term. Thinking of myself in racial terms has been a healthy struggle.

3. The most useful definitions of racism are not about individual moral choices
If you asked me to define racism a few weeks ago, I would have described racism as something like, "decisions bad people make to discriminate against people of another race."

I now understand that this definition of racism isn't super useful. This definition is mostly a shortcut tool that we use to prove that we can't be racist and don't need to enter into the conversation about racism. The logic goes something like this: "I am a good person. I don't make individual choices to discriminate against people of another race. Therefore, there's really no need for me to educate myself about racism or to enter the conversation except perhaps to point out how morally inferior racists are."

It's tidy logic that exempts me conveniently from discomfort or responsibility in regards to racism.

But.

Then there's the undeniable evidence that Blacks are incredibly oppressed in our nation by every measure I can think of - from political power to economic power to incarceration numbers to educational achievement to social mobility to corporate power. The "better" you get along any of these scales, the whiter (and more male) your surroundings and the people around you.

The system is rigged. And the use of power and policy to perpetuate the elevation of one group at the expense of others is a pretty decent working definition of racism.

4. And, so, I have a responsibility
White Fragility says it well, "I don't feel guilty about racism. I didn't choose this socialization, and it could not be avoided. But I am responsible for my role in it. To the degree that I have done my best in each moment to interrupt my participation, I can rest with a clearer conscience. But that clear conscience is not achieved by complacency or a sense that I have arrived."

For years I have been trying to help my coworkers and employers understand that gender disparity isn't a women's problem - it's a human problem and that it cannot be solved without the support of those in power. Yet, somehow, I hadn't made the emotional and intellectual leap to think the same about racism.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it's one that helped me:
Women gained suffrage in 1920 (remember these were mostly White, middle class women who gained suffrage, but the analogy still stands). It was impossible for women to earn or gain themselves suffrage. Because women were unequal in the eyes of the law, they could not get their own suffrage no matter how hard they tried.

The only way women could gain suffrage is for the people with the power (in this case, White men) to grant it, to extend it, to change their policies and attitudes.

The group in power had to care and get involved enough to dismantle bigoted policies and extend that power to another group.

My right and responsibility as part of the group in power is to stand with and for Blacks. To listen, to educate myself about the Black experience, to dismantle systems of privilege, to gain sensitivity to my own prejudice and dismantle it, to enter uncomfortable conversations, to engage in uncomfortable learning (all learning is uncomfortable!), to put my energy and money where my mouth is and invest in equality, to replace racist systems with anti-racist ones.

This is rough learning. And I am deeply grateful to be on this uncomfortable journey.

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