Near Loss Experience

What is a wakeup call? When do we get them? And why?

Having nearly lost access to my blog recently, these thoughts came to mind. I was forced into a position where I had to reflect on how I would feel if a certain something (or someone) I cared about were to leave my life permanently.

In part, my spiritual beliefs have helped me understand loss better. We don’t really lose anything it turns out. People who are taken from us live on in us. No, it is nowhere near the same as sitting down with them for tea or hearing their voice.

But the voice and memories they left us live on inside us. When my Dad died, someone sent me this in a sympathy card: “Now he is no longer where he was. Now, he is always with you.” I can conjure up my Dad in my mind’s eye whenever I want to.

I think about how much time and energy we put into “protecting” our possessions. Insurance. Wall safes. Safety deposit boxes. Alarm systems on our doors and windows. Certainly all are valuable for our peace of mind (and to legally comply in some cases as it is with auto insurance.)

I am struck not only by how much I have lost in my life but what replaced it. The family of origin I lost was replaced by dear, lifelong friends. I’ve made a safe and stable home to replace the one I never had as a child. I replaced low self-esteem with consistently decent behavior that has built a solid sense of self-respect. The lost love of my childhood was eventually replaced by a solid and mature love relationship.

Are all of these replacements equivalent to what was? No they aren’t but it doesn’t matter. To start, human beings are infinitely adaptable. It is our collective superpower as a species. Those who let go of the past and accept and build on what is in front of them right now are survivors.

To feel joy in the present, we cannot constantly grieve for the past. Doing so is a form of emotional sickness. Of course, we have strange ideas about this sometimes. A widow fears sullying her late husband’s memory by dating again or falling in love.

Yet, we hear that in the healthiest relationships, spouses pray for a new beginning for their partner if they should pass. We are given the time we are given with someone or something. When it is over, it is time to let go and move on.

In your own time, of course. It is ludicrous to think that there is a deadline by which to stop grieving. Most people who have suffered the loss of loved ones never really do “recover” completely. That is part of loving.

Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays can all bring back memories. Instead of slipping into grief and depression, we could turn those feelings around and use those occasions to honor and celebrate what we once had with them. This can also be painful and may bring tears. But, of catharsis.

It is a reframing and acceptance of grief to recognize its’ inevitability in all of our lives. Go to the graveyard. Leave flowers. Or raise a glass of fine single scotch whiskey in their memory. Pour some on their grave (not too much, of course! Fine spirits should be savored by the living, after all.)

It all circles back to the need to live each moment in the present. I have been as guilty as the next person of running around doing a bunch of things instead of carving out time and settling in for a chat with a friend.

I have improved. There are phone calls I will not make unless I have a free hour to talk. I still write letters and send cards occasionally. We forget the impact of the literal written word in our high tech age.

Not only do I love sending cards, I love getting them. Someone has taken the time to pick out a card, write a note, find a stamp and put it in the mailbox. That’s a mighty loving gesture right there.

Access to my blog was finally restored after a day of minor panic and frustration. It was a wake-up call to secure my writing output somewhere that it might be safe and accessible even if the internet crashes one day. (Wouldn’t that be something? Life as we know it would come to a complete standstill.)

And even if it was lost, would it matter? Sadly not. Like my life, these musings are but a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things. They are only important to me because they are mine. If you find something in here that resonates, that pleases me. We are all – as my friend said to me just the other day – “walking each other home.”

That makes me exactly like all of you. We are all most interested and indeed, called upon to nurture and protect what is ours. While we can and while we still are able.

One day, we won’t be here to do that. If we are lucky, there will be a few folk out there who will carry us in their hearts until their lives come to an end just as we carried those who went before us.

In this way, we throw our two cents worth into the infinite and self-replenishing fountain of love and wisdom of the ages. For others to carry forward. In perpetuity.

Technical Glitch

Today was weird and terrifying.

I lost my blog. Now a blog is not a thing you can misplace like a purse or a set of keys or eyeglasses.

But I did. I went to open it after clearing my browser’s cache. I went looking for it. I could not find it. Some damned link was broken

Today I learned a hard lesson – as have many others – about my dependence on technology. I am at its’ mercy. So many of us are its’ mercy.

It occurred to me I have not so much as printed out all of my blog pages.

Perhaps that’s an old-fashioned idea. Paper copies!

I am not even 100% sure if I can download them to a thumb drive. (Are thumb drives still a thing??)

Today spoke to that horribly uncomfortable feeling I have occasionally about technology. We are slaves to anonymous masters. It seems to be the way it is.

After today, I personally felt my vulnerability to the technology powers that be out there.

It accomplished one thing. I am not going to leave my creative output out there in the cloud where it could easily be blown away by the whims of some anonymous techno administrator.

For a writer who talks and writes a lot about boundaries, I learned another vital lesson about them today.

My writing. My filing cabinet. Waterproof and fireproof.

Call me old-fashioned. I’ll happily accept the compliment.

Christmas Spirit Contagion

Ten days until the BIG day. And I am utterly unprepared.

The true spirit of Christmas is weighed down by incessant messages of commercialism and self-interest. We may have to dig down a few layers to find Christmas spirit. I am personally convinced it is still out there. Opinions vary on how to access it.

A combination of worldly and picayune preoccupations can obscure the true message and meaning of the season.

Finding complete addresses and stamps to send Christmas cards or packages to friends and acquaintances. And before the mailing deadlines.

The mad rushing around to make sure every designated loved one has a gift under the tree. The laying in of food and baking supplies to create sweet seasonal offerings.

I am trying to do Christmas differently this year. I am doing this by not doing much of anything. If there is a key gift I wish to share with loved ones this year, it is me being calm and present.

Whatever other messages Jesus Christ was trying to convey, I am pretty sure running yourself ragged and inviting near bankruptcy wasn’t one of them. It all circles back to how we have been trained to express love and appreciation.

For my Dad, it was with money. You could tell how much he loved you or how good he felt about himself by the size of the Christmas check.

For my mother, it was the little elements that signified a “real” Christmas was underway: barley toys, and special Christmas baking. Bought not made. We’d lay in fruitcake (dark AND light) even if no one really liked it or ate it. Throwing out fruitcake after the New Year was another part of our regular holiday traditions.

And chicken bones – not actual chicken bones but a confection of chocolate and cinnamon produced by a homegrown candy shop back where I grew up in Canada.

This year, I hope to find my Christmas spirit in contemplation and prayer. Or at the very least, peace and quiet. There are Christmas traditions I enjoy but none more than having nothing to do and nowhere to go. And nowhere else I would rather be.

There will likely be a Christmas Eve church service we attend this year. The sheer beauty and enjoyment of singing old Christmas standards within a community of others has always been a surefire path to loving and peaceful feelings. A revival of the spirit at the very least.

These days, I am not in a place where I can lay my hands on chicken bones or barley toys. Just as well. No one should eat that much sugar.

This year, we will create our own Christmas. All of us always do but it varies from year to year.

The traditional Christmas fir tree is replaced by a tabletop rosemary tree with ribbons instead of ornaments.

I used to be hard on myself for not living up to all of the Christmas expectations. There is a flutter of guilt I recognize for deliberately abandoning traditions that feel more like obligations.

Choosing to celebrate Christmas quietly luxuriating in the peacefulness and joy of the season seems like a much more authentic response. 

And possibly what JC would advise. I mean, he just hung around being idolized on Christmas Day. And I bet he didn’t feel even a little bit guilty.

Happy holidays, everyone.

When Someone Says It Better

What Jodie Foster says here is what I deeply believe.

Surely we are not the only ones? 

Is it reasonable to assume a whole lot of people are collectively chafing over the current lack of logic and balance in our lives? Are we to assume we need to continue living our lives as we are because “that is just how things are”?

Surely the pendulum will swing back to a semblance of humanity and sanity? Lofty ambition, I realize.

Maybe sanity is a life we can only achieve individually and encourage its tendrils to spread further.

I live in hope. Something’s got to give.

“My philosophy is that what people say about me is none of my business.”

I am who I am and what I do.

Expect nothing and accept everything.

It makes life easier.

We live in a world where funerals are more important than celebrating the living, marriage is more important than love and looks are more important than the soul.

We live in a packaging culture that despises content.”

Jodie Foster (one of my heroines)

But I Don’t Wanna

Getting up and on with it every day is a choice. Even raising the question may baffle some people. “Of course, we have to get up every morning and face the day.”

No we don’t. Not really. And therein lies the miracle and mystery of our lives.

It has been a long time since I heard the phrase “will to live.” We have not been actively and daily engaged in close-to-home wars or other mass traumas that provide us with examples. Yet I believe it is still very much a thing. How else does staying alive make any sense after heart shredding and gut-wrenching losses?

I watch in wonder at beautiful young men and women whose limbs have been blown off in foreign lands. They come home to recover and rehabilitate. What they have to recover from defies understanding. How they manage to go through the rehabilitation required to re-engage in their lives stupefies me.

These young men and women are lucky enough – if you can call it that – to have well-supported systems in place to aid in their recovery. And they go through recovery with fellow travelers dealing with similar injuries. They help each other find a reason to keep on living and moving forward.

War has always been riddled with stories of hope and recovery even in the most miserable and bleak conditions imaginable. I recently finished watching the mini-series The Pacific on Netflix. Not only did I not know much about the skirmishes that took place in the Forties in that part of the world, the story unfolds unsparingly episode by episode in reflecting the horrors of war.

I winced (as did any others who watched the series, I am sure) during a scene where an American Marine tosses rocks into the open skull and exposed brain of a recently killed Japanese soldier, sitting upright with his rifle still in his hands.

I did come away from that series with a better understanding of why veterans share such a deep and intractable bond. Sharing extreme experiences can do that.

Parents whose children were murdered in mass shootings. Victims of natural disasters. They likely use the same god-given techniques to get through and live with it. That experience was and would always be “theirs.”

Opportunities for extreme bonding generally diminish as we get older. Gone is the fresh blush and deep impact of first experiences (reflect on your first kiss or lover). We are more open and malleable in youth.

In fact, a key part of staying “young at heart” is remaining open. Which can be quite a challenge. Many people don’t even bother.

I recently attended a high school reunion where it was exciting and fun to catch up with our remaining high school buddies. The telling part was the stories of those who are still around and didn’t come. They hated high school then and saw no good reason to relive it now in their dotage.

Fair enough. But that attitude comes at a cost to everyone. Both themselves and those of us who missed seeing them again. It is very likely now that we never will.

We eventually learn to roll with life’s punches. We realize loss is a constant as life continually renews itself. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Like leaves in autumn, our friends start falling from the tree of our lives. Celebrities who defined our adulthood start to leave, too. Ryan O’Neal most recently.

Even political stalwarts like Henry Kissinger and the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor have recently died. (I recall trying to reach her by telephone for the better part of a day for an interview on CBC-Radio when she was first appointed back in the Eighties. My calls were not returned. A missed journalistic coup.)

So this morning (if it wasn’t obvious), I didn’t wanna get up and face the day. No harm would have been done by me whiling the day away in bed. I’ve done it before. But, no. There is a “to-do” list to face. And a husband to make coffee for. And a blog post to write. And Christmas looming.

We may never fully understand and appreciate what external and internal forces get us up and moving forward every day. But I’m sure our will to live has something to do with it. And our tacitly held expectation of pleasant and happy surprises. Especially around Christmas.

This season of light and miracles practically demands we engage with or at least acknowledge the beautiful mysteries and possibilities of life. That’s enough to get me up and going on most days even as I balance less beautiful challenges with utterly no mystery.

It is all part of the whole that we eventually learn to accept as life. Both the astonishingly good and the horrifically bad.

A line from the poem Desiderata sums it up: “With all of its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

On it – even if somewhat sleepily and reluctantly this particular morning.

Auld Lang Syne

I finally caught up with an old friend last week after a number of false starts. Hung up with mixed feelings.

Full disclosure: I have been under an enormous strain these past few months for a number of reasons. I have lived with a PTSD diagnosis for a long time. Some of the strain in my life has been deeply triggering. I am trying to navigate and resolve those feelings. There doesn’t appear to be a quick fix.

Here’s how triggered PTSD manifests in me: I talk my fool head off and mostly about me. I can’t fully explain why I do that or what that feels like. It is as if I am fighting for my life. It feels like I MUST make my position and feelings known and clear to whoever I am talking to. I desperately seek validation and reassurance.

That is compounded as I am terrified of not being heard. I am terrified that some crisis will happen because I didn’t warn someone strongly enough about what I see is about to happen. Not that I have ultimately been listened to anyway. To the listener, of course, it comes off as self-absorbed poppycock.

The listener isn’t wrong. Especially when they have no idea of the strain you are under or have been out of your life for a while. Life intervenes. Stuff happens.

So it was an odd phone call where the dynamic quickly shifted from “girls catching up.” She transitioned into “counsellor” mode and I was relegated to being “the patient.” It felt icky.

No doubt it was discomfiting on her part to engage in a phone call you thought would be a cheer-filled catchup only to find you are faced by a barrage of well-worn, existential complaints. And not for the first time.

I have had to navigate this dichotomy my whole life. Raised without solid boundaries or a clear and solid sense of self, I have erred on the boundary crashing front in extremis. I have had to identify and learn for myself what most of my peers picked up just by living at home.

Nowhere has this been more troublesome than in intimate relationships. I used to have a no-fail relationship management strategy. Before things got too close and intimate, I’d blow the relationship up. I’d break it off or create an irresolvable situation. By so doing, I was able to keep the pain of self-disclosure and exposure at bay for years. Sure, it was lonely. but it worked.

So I am on the phone with this old friend and desperately hoping she can sense and hear my pain and I spew my inflamed and irritated feelings all over the conversation. In a healthy and reasonable response, she backs off, shuts down and changes gear.

I am no longer the “old friend.” I am the supplicant. A problem to be solved. An object of pity and sadness. The Margot that drives her crazy. I gotta tell ya, that summary sucks.

And yet I clearly see how we have evolved into this place. We have hardly talked but a few times to catch up in recent months (years?). She has walked with me through a dozen major and minor crises in my life (largely self-created) over several decades. Her comparatively stable upbringing is the calm and centering counterpoint to my chaotic upbringing.

But I am a peripheral friend. An artifact of our college days. Outside her core of sensible and compatible friends who are calm and centered like she is. She has been a good friend nonetheless but time is having its way with us.

No longer the easy and familiar camaraderie. No longer the unspoken understandings that write the shorthand of longtime familiarity. Not much idea either of what is going in each other or in our lives that makes conversation fluid and empathetic.

I’m not grieving exactly. Our friendship is not finished. I am having to adjust to how it has altered. And why it has altered. My self-absorption and rumination would be part of it. But also our lives have changed in ways neither of us can fully appreciate. How could we? We haven’t seen each other face-to-face for years.

The loci of her life and of mine have separately shifted to the point of being unrecognizable to each other. I have not visited or even seen the new house she and her husband moved in to over two years ago. Even members of a kaffeeklatsch are more intimate.

I love her dearly and have always been profoundly grateful to have her in my life. But there have been periods of strain between us (some longer than others). Sometimes I marveled that the friendship held up at all.

i’ve always harbored the nagging feeling of being on the rim of her life as something of an interesting oddity. But trusting she found me bright and engaging enough to make a continued friendship worthwhile.

We talked about the weirdness of our last phone call. She found it weird, too. She identified an old and objectionable pattern in me where negative emotions took me over and ruled the day. I will try not to make that mistake again.

She is to be forgiven for not wanting to tolerate how pain manifests in me as it can be contagious. And it’s pretty self-absorbed. She likely has no idea how humiliating and upsetting it is to know my childhood deficiencies still manifest inappropriately.

I was heartened a year or two ago when she sent me something of a personal manifesto in an email. She wrote about carving out her own space and reclaiming her soul after a life devoted to serving others. She wanted to figure out how she wants to be and what she wants to keep in her life moving forward. Right on, said I.

My old saw: nothing in life is constant but change. She is now a long-married, happily retired professional woman who gallivants about North America and the world in her retirement while she and her husband still can. I am happy for them. It is a well-deserved coda to a good woman’s life.

Our friendship will continue. Most probably not apace. I received no signals that I’ve been kicked to the proverbial curb (yet!) in her emotional and psychic sorting process. I will try to be more careful and considerate in times of personal stress and strain. She is quite right. She doesn’t need that in her life.

It is an old and valuable friendship that has been through many shared experiences and challenges. The friendship is still there and still valuable. It has simply changed. Which was inevitable and up to me to adjust to. I’m learning the adjustments just keep on coming as we spend more time on the planet. Such is life.

Love you, old friend.

To Each Their Own

As soon as we’re born, we all get some challenge to wrassle with. Some affliction or obstacle that we have to overcome or learn to live with. I’ve observed certain obstacles seem to run in families.

In our family, it was alcoholism and mental health. If there was an upside to being born in an environment where those issues were at play, I learned stuff. Of course, I learned a lot of stuff I didn’t necessarily want to know but we don’t get to choose what hand we are dealt. The learning is lifelong.

Alcoholism is generally regarded in society as a “personal failing” or “a disease.” Alcoholism is often systematic with deep roots in a family’s history or the surrounding society. Ireland and drinking are practically synonyms.

Booze is an especially treacherous opponent because it works. Alcohol can numb our pain and make us feel better even if only temporarily. And temporary is all most people need. A stiff drink to “settle” your nerves. A celebratory toast. Or four. A bridge in social groups to ease discomfort or self-consciousness.

Like many other afflictions, it can be hard to pin down the exact moment when booze shifts from being a “friendly visitor” into a monkey on your back. Dealing with alcoholism myself, there were a few turning points. I lived the dynamic with booze that AA calls “cunning and powerful.”

As my drinking got worse, my body absorbed it more easily and I once experienced a blackout. It is alarming to not have any recall of a particular event or outing. When I saw the car in the driveway one morning and had no idea how it got there, I knew my choices were to heal or to die.

I have read that the Universe can be quite systematic in showing you that you are going off the rails. When you are just starting to head in the wrong direction, it may just jostle you a bit.

You might get klutzier than usual. Maybe break a few things in your house. Lose stuff more frequently. Or you might come down with frequent head colds. if you aren’t paying attention, the jostling can get worse.

I was in a relationship that I should not have been in for a bunch of reasons. We were in a car accident in the early days and had a minor fender bender. Some months later (same relationship), we hit and killed a deer on a back country road. Severe damage to the car.

The third accident – after the relationship ended and we were talking about reuniting – nearly killed us. We were broadsided by someone who ran a red light. Totaled the car. I was concussed and suffered a broken collarbone.

It was only in retrospect that the pattern of increasingly severe accidents became clear. It sure feels like I was being given a message to get the hell out of there.

Emerging from an unstable childhood with excessive drinking and wacky adult behavior all around me prepared me to be flexible. It probably made me resilient. I can easily spot dysfunctional wackiness in other adults (of the deleterious kind – not that of the fun and harmless wackos whom I love dearly).

Other families may have a history of DNA challenges that shape them: Huntington’s disease or MS or autoimmune disorders or ALS or a certain birth defect. The list goes on. Each family and family member has to accept and prepare for the possibility of that affliction popping up in their life up the road. No family is spared though the afflictions vary widely.

The good news is that we can grow out of these restrictions and learn how to manage them as adults. In my case, I gave up drinking almost a quarter of a century ago. I sought out counsellors for years as I tried to raise my family alone and recover from a rocky childhood.

Other good news is that whatever challenges we faced in our family can put us on a path of growth and exploration as adults. I could do nothing about the circumstances into which I was born. No one can. But I had and have ample choice in choosing what I had to do to live with it.

Choice is freedom. Those of us who came from difficult backgrounds where healthy choices were scarce may better appreciate our available choices as adults. Then it is up to us to improve our own lives and leave those circumstances in the dustbin of history where they belong.

There is usually no choice to change our inherited challenges (such as carrying a defective gene). As adults, however, our job is learning to carry whatever that burden is and face it with grace.

Then one day, you may get the chance to support someone else in similar circumstances who may benefit from your insight and knowledge about that issue. If you’re lucky.

Even Keel

I would love to feel every day exactly as I do this morning. Calm. Grounded. Mostly untroubled (though I could probably stir things up pretty quickly by glancing at my “to-do” list! So I won’t.)

I am nearing the end of my grieving process for the lost forest behind us. I recognize I have gone through the five stages of grieving made famous by Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five common stages of grief, popularly referred to as DABDA. They include:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance

I have gone through nearly all of them. I am transitioning from depression to acceptance. What is happening on that back lot is not within my control. It never was.

I did give the legal route a try and contacted the county powers-that-be and came up with bupkis. Apparently, disrupting a neighbor’s dream and destroying their privacy is not sufficient for a “stop build” order.

So I’ve learned things about grief and the process it wends its way through. Not for the first time.

I’m not sure anyone can adequately prepare themselves for grief. It is one of those things that reads much differently on the page than it feels in real life.

None of us can prepare for the shredding of our reality by the departure of someone or something that matters deeply to us. Whether that is a person, or a pet, or the availability of something or a dream. And yet, we all have – or most certainly will – experience loss.

I have a regular habit I employ now when I expect bad news. I erect a psychological barrier. Bad news coming by mail: don’t open it. Bad news coming by phone: don’t answer it. Bad news at your front door: don’t answer that either.

Not indefinitely, but for as long as it takes to shore up my inner resources and prepare. We are often given the gift of time to prepare with an impending death. It does not necessarily make the actual loss easier. But pre-grieving is a real thing that allows us to imagine what life will be when she/him/it/they are not longer present.

I did it with both of my parents.

Their age and infirmities set me up to begin grieving them long before they left. It did not change how I was with them in the day-to-day. It built an emotional cushion inside me and made space for the inevitable loss. In both deaths, there was grieving but also relief and resolution. In sudden or premature death, that is not always possible.

Processing grief is critical if we are to move on in life. I have a friend who lost her young adult daughter suddenly and violently in a car crash. More than twenty years later, that loss is still the core of her emotional life. It has driven her to an alcoholism and a gambling addiction. She is neither fully engaged nor present in her everyday life.

Leaving the emotional safety of grief can be a terrifying leap of faith. It is a common, if ineffective, way to keep someone’s presence in your life even when they are emphatically gone. When grief has not been processed and integrated, it can screw us up and stunt our growth and healing.

My friend has found comfort and escape in booze and gambling. Not the most healthy response. Her behavior hurts not only her but those around her. Yet there is nothing anyone can do unless she elects to do something differently. That is the responsibility of being an adult.

These past few weeks (months maybe) have been exceedingly difficult. Not only because of the lost forest but other losses and realizations. Though our house move was mostly positive, it has been incredibly taxing. I have learned I am not as strong and energetic as I once was. I am more and more aware of our limited time on the planet.

I have been advised to learn to let go. I once described my self as someone who clung to the mast on a boat (my life) that was shipwrecked and taking on water fast. That worked for a long time though I know how much I missed with my inflexibility and neuroses. No matter. I survived.

I am going in a different direction now and making different choices. And this morning’s mood was an unexpected payoff. Peace actually is possible even in the face of disappointment and loss. Even if it takes awhile to get there.

Damned if I am going to spit in god’s face for the gifts and good things I have in my life by letting loss overwhelm me. God will deal with the perpetrators in time and in his/her own way. Or not.

Good and Evil Basics

I used to be very confused about the difference between good and evil. It became something of an obsession. I tried to make sense of an adult world where there was a lot of saying one thing and doing another.

My mother used to talk about “white lies.” Statements that were somehow meant to “hide unpleasant facts” or “protect someone’s feelings.” It all seemed a little skewed and manipulative to me even as a young girl.

Sometimes it was a case of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Overkill and unnecessary. Other times, it sure looked like someone (okay, my mother) was covering up some embarrassing lapse.

I am not advocating running around callously telling our complete truth to everyone we meet. That can get downright rude and cruel. And socially isolating. Integrity is based on the quality of your own degree of honesty with yourself.

It is a move away from the “nobody will notice” approach to morality to a perspective of “I will notice.” If we’re lucky, we eventually become our own gauge for standards and accountability. It is one of the key moral transitions we have to make to be fully adult.

So now here we are – full adults. The line between good and evil seems a lot less black and white rather than shades of grey on a continuum. Do I try to find the owner of that $20 I just found in the parking lot? Do I tell Auntie Mae what I think of her new fuchsia hat (with felt flowers) when asked? Do I decline the party invite outright or make up a mealy-mouthed (and dishonest) excuse?

Small challenges in the scheme of things, I realize. But small things have a way of growing into big things. And there is a universal truth about stepping over a forbidden line making it harder to step back into an honorable way of being. In the parlance, it’s called a “slippery slope.”

It is like the tragedy of crack addiction. It is often said one hit and you are on a runaway downhill train. Not starting something is a whole lot easier than quitting something we’ve begun.

On the upside, life does give us the gift of internalization in the maturation process. Once we have adopted and taken in a sense of morality as our own, we don’t think about it much as we go about our daily lives. It is just who we are. That’s a blessing.

The tiny discernments we make between good and evil do little to affect the larger good and evil in the world. But there is one thing that is certain, by being a good example of honesty and decency to yourself, you are not contributing to making things worse.

And you are likely a lot more interesting and pleasant person to be around. At least, compared to the legions of sleazy and lying schmucks out there.

Anomie

I first heard the word anomie in a sociology lecture. Anomie means: “social instability caused by erosion of standards and values, or, alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals.”

We are living in a state of anomie. I don’t know about anyone else but general consensus on just about everything is in short supply and a hard commodity to come by lately. I used to know what to focus on and give attention to. And I used to know why what I did was important to me.

I have memories of periods of intense focus. Spending a whole weekend (or a few) surrounded by books and papers doing research for an essay. Playing some sport that kept me outdoors and running around for hours. Either at a beach or maybe on a mountain.

A full evening of social time with friends may have started at 8 in the evening and could go on into the wee small hours of the morning. Not a cellphone in sight or in our imaginations.

There wasn’t another single activity that was more important than doing what we were doing in that moment. I’m not naive. There was plenty of “zoning out” in those days, too, but generally.

What’s missing today, I find, is global “permission” to carve out those unfettered blocks of time without feeling some sort of guilt or FOMO – fear of missing out. We don’t even agree anymore about where and what it is important to focus on.

I am way too susceptible to distractions. And there are plenty of distractions these days. We all know what they are and I know I am not alone. I believe we are all feeling it.

I am reading more and more articles about putting a label on these crazy times and collectively pray it is only a phase. A phase that has been ongoing for a good decade or more.

The world is grotesquely out of balance and that is not sustainable. I will not watch news coverage about Gaza. I cannot handle that level of inhumanity and insanity. Yet, clearly many do.

Watch it and shudder or sigh or inhale a half a cheesecake. These are very bad times for the easily triggered.

We can’t always see ahead to when and how things might slip off the rails. In our lives, for example. There are indicators. And if we don’t see them and pay attention, there will be consequences. Ignore them at our peril.

That cavity you avoid getting filled. That bank balance consistently slipping into overdraft. The credit card statements that “somehow” keep getting bigger and bigger. You’ll experience the consequences soon enough.

Consequences today seem haphazardly dispensed. Shady politicians and career criminals carry on blithely with minimal fear of paying any price for their actions.

That George Santos was expelled from Congress was a minor miracle that occurred this week. My question has been: how did he get as far as he did in Congress in the first place? Where is our system of checks and balances?

Sadly, the answer seems to be that it has eroded dramatically.

An insane system is kept relevant by enablers who either allow or participate in letting the insanity continue. Personally, I haven’t got the stomach for it.

So I am in full retreat. I am most reluctant to put myself on the line publicly for my beliefs. It has become a more private occupation contained within a circle of people I trust and like. That is where I choose to put my focus these days.

I have been testing society’s floorboards of late and find them a little spongy. If that were to happen in a real house, I would slowly withdraw from the room and back away to prevent being hurt.

I no longer have term papers to write but there are other activities that can absorb my attention. Books are always available. As is “me-time.” In a world where the rules have gone out the window and everyone seems to be in survival mode, it seems the most reasonable option.