A Flury of Hope

I go through phases, cycles of emotions that kind of follow the seasons.  There is sadness, anger, sarcasm, interest, acceptance, and what feels like hope.  I haven't really included in my writing the really fulfilling parts like adventure, romance, excitement, gratitude, or progress. I find that my writing has a preference for tragedy, fear, and jealousy, pretty much most insecurities draw me into the grinder of my critic.  My perspectives are changing, and I can see with the same eyes and have different, newer, hopeful perspectives.

Since about mid December, I have been trying to heal from a rotator cuff repair and bicep tendon tear.  I had "the surgery".  All reminders of how violent I have and can be on myself.  With this I have had to abstain from vigorous exercise (with my left arm), running, and climbing.  These were my go to stress relievers, pacifiers, and ego boosters.  Sitting still was torture for me.  It was also very emotional, an introspective time like some of my deepest.  I was forced to listen to the softest and most wounded voices in my head.

I heard all the similar messages.  I can't be loved.  I'm fine on my own. Get the fuck up quitter.  They can't understand me.  And other vicious and pointed motivators that point to all the ways life has treated me unfair.

"The surgery" has become more than six incisions around my left deltoid.  It is an abrupt alert system that has taught me to accept help, listen to pain, and to understand that not feeling pain doesn't necessarily mean healed.

With the help of drugs I was helped. I allowed myself to be nurtured, cared for, rescued, prayed for, and reminded to listen.  It wasn't pitiful, it was connecting.  I allowed myself to be hurt, weak, and helpless.  I had the solitude to miss people in the way they deserved to be missed.  I rested hours and hours at a time, watching episodes and episodes of mind numbing television, while my immune system and soul were being reconstructed vessel by vessel, essential by essential.  I stayed inactive but there was a lot going on that was inner-active.

I have a long way to go before I am healed.  5 weeks till I can run again. 3 months till I can lift with my recovering shoulder. And around six months before I'll try to climb again.  With higher importance, I am living pain free-er, in my shoulder, but especially in spirit.  I hope this years writing will describe my change in perspectives. A true demonstration of how stillness caused me to recognize how toxic my preferences have been.

Embracing the discriminator

There is an old Ron, and an even older Ron.  Yes the literal getting older, a few more wrinkles, slower, but also differently a mindset.  Much of what I have written about injustice is angry and pitiful.  I have chosen to buy into being discriminated, to isolate, to bare pride, and to suffer.  Yes like the Buddhist describe I am the creator of my suffering.  

Each post, after returning from my writing hiatus, was a deliberate demonstration of the progression of how I have dealt with the discriminant.  There has been anger, then resentment, fear, and intrigue.  I think I am ready to realize that I am capable of seeing beyond my self serving perspectives.  I am ready to live without the fear of being discriminated.  I can recognize that discrimination will live on but maybe within others.  I am learning to move along side its current.  Maybe it is like surfing the wave of fear.

I have a opened an eye for my light skinned brothers and sisters.  I understand that there is a huge barrier between the generational reconciliation.  There are too many episodes that have caused so many people to fear each other.  I can't convince the white community that brown people aren't dangerous or menacing. The reality is that some of us are.   I can't convince my fellow melanin rich companions to keep calm and forgive.  Death and extermination of futures is painful.  The beauty is that each of us is capable of tenderness.  It isn't my responsibility to create that in people, but it is my passion.

The anger I have inside is leaving my body with every hike in solitude, every stretch of my limbs during a climb, with every flinch of my injuries, and with the comfort from the healed cracks in my heart.  The sorrow I often tap into for fuel and pity isn't serving a purpose as much.  I accept that we are all finding our peace and safety.  I ask myself, afraid, worried about who I am leaving behind, scared to be gentle, uncertain about being vulnerable,  if I have found a way to really love.  Has my embrace of my discriminator helped me to embrace the most pitiful part of myself.  

It seems innate to discriminate.  The ultimate discrimination was taught to me early on.  As a Catholic it was ingrained into my psychology.  If you are bad you won't get into heaven.  Shaming myself has been a lesson as long as I can remember.  In an effort to see that I cannot be any less prejudice than the next person I had to put myself under criticism.  I have to own my prejudice and ignorance.  What better way to understand discrimination than to observe and describe my own.  

So I feel convinced that I can't eliminate my need to discriminate, but I have a responsibility to curiously deepen my understanding of what motivates me to discriminate.  The discriminator is the judgmental side of myself.  The judgmental part of me is critical to my survival and safety.  In community often my safety is felt through acceptance, rejection, or threat.  It stems from a primal understanding of who is safe.  This seems to become more complex and shared with life experiences in many cultures.

I feel comfortable around smiling faces.  I feel threatened around police or people in suits.  I feel hypersensitive around Caucasian, clean shaven, and demeaning.  I feel trusting of old Latina women.  I am hesitant around Chicano men.  I am most comfortable in culturally diverse, liberal and educated communities.  I seek out principled people who think paradoxically before thinking they have an answer.  I am steering away from competitors.  I am drawn to people who are not afraid to feel life and confront stigmas.  I am attracted and desire a modest women.  I fear the religious,  the evangelizing, wealthy, the glamorous, the blindly patriotic, and elitist or anyone who has a best.  There are plenty more discriminating baselines but this provides enough to make my point. 

I don't expect to see a world without discrimination.  I think discrimination is useful.  I look within and see that my discriminator is actually a very protective part of me.  It is the part of me that reminds me of damages done.  It also reminds me of embarrassments still left to atone or the karma to be returned, helping me to put off accountability.  It teaches me about how I come to conclusions.  It teaches me how to be more mature with my stereotypes.  It guides me to my concepts of enemy.  It brings about my defenses, the reactive responses to distance myself or cry out.  It causes me to hate where curiosity could be better used.  I may not be able to see a world without discrimination, but I do expect to see myself with less discriminant perceptions.

Discrimination isn't measurable, but it impacts and is alive in the minds of every person who has not looked into their fears.  This is not to say that hate is a fantasy either.  I am just right now able to accept that I have been loved by more cultures and types of people than I have been hated by.  So I grow deeper in love and leave another Ron behind.  The advocate in me grows stronger, humbler, safer, more accepting, wiser, joyful, slow to anger, and still passionate.

 But as I am growing and maturing into what I believe is my true self, I have fewer regrets and a graceful shame.  I can't dismiss my discriminator, I only felt like describing it.  I finally see how it is neither good nor bad but maybe that trait that is awkward in public, often misunderstood, and compelled by great intentions. 

I find that preference is a warm cousin to discrimination.  That is next on my mind.  Today I am still learning to love, better at it than ever, trying to be diplomatic, and trying to heal my racist.  Another Ron to say good bye to and cherish.  

Why so racial?

I wonder how being a divorced dad, raising 2 daughters with a cooperative mother, having 2 respectable careers, and being able bodied keeps me from living a typical or common life of contentment.  How am I not fulfilled by the American Dream?  Why am I critical about the dogmatic foolishness I believe thrives in Patriotism?  How come the privileged cultures allure me, light skinned women dazzle me, black struggle inspires me, my brown in between-ness excludes me, but Anglo authority antagonizes me.  I get asked how come I'm so critical or why can't I just have fun.  When I take another class at the university I get asked if I am getting another degree.  More personally I get asked about where the "old Ron is".  I have the same wonder.

I could easily afford a more comfortable and fun-filled life, or can I.  I wonder why I don't.  I have wrestled the ideas of cynicism and justice.  I have experienced barrio life, tasted New Mexico's Norteno culture, even immersed myself into corporate suburbia, excelled through a  masters academia, and now find myself content with just enough and culturally hovering.  So how come I still grieve?

Despite surviving through a collection of cultures I am still fearful of being taken advantage of, held back, or discriminated.  I am afraid and incited when others are too.  I am learning that racism is not as obvious as it's ever been. I am learning that ethnicity is less valuable as a generalize-er as it's ever been. I have to consider that holding on to diversity counter intuitively promotes division.  I have to hold the cognitive dissonance that is created when I encounter people who don't fit my stereotypes.  I have to work through the difficulty and subtlety that bias or ignorance isn't distinguishable or a visible trait, its often felt passively without certainty.  I have been called names before, and those times were easy to understand.  I knew why I was hated, targeted, or categorized.

But I have to sit back in my solitude and sift through the sadness in my history and present wondering if it's because of my heritage.  There are a lot of events in my life that hurt.  I cannot say that because I am Latino this happened to me.  At the same time I cannot help but wonder if some of what happened to me was because of generalizations, stereotypes, or prejudice.  And I cannot help but also worry that my actions or choices have been influenced by my own prejudice or ignorance.  I have to consider how my own hatred added to the complexity of distinction and discrepancy.

I am so racial because I have a desire to participate, contribute, and be valued in this lifetime.  There are a lot of circumstances that have helped me recognize that how I look, how I see, where I come from, where others come from, the way I sound, the way others sound, and the history that molded me impact the way I react and how people perceive me.  I have to believe that you are prejudice because I am.  I don't feel dangerous, violent, or menacing.  But I am not afraid to fight, I am not afraid of pain, and I will find a way to survive.  I strive to be loving, peaceful, and forgiving.  But I am also capable of rage, willing to be radical for change, and will hold you accountable before completely accepting you.  Maybe it is that you fear me too.

I am so racial because I am afraid of being eradicated, incarcerated, shot for no reason, censored, paid less for the same work, called lazy, called stupid, told I have work only because I'm brown, found guilty for a crime I didn't commit, charged for crime I didn't commit, punished worse than others,  treated different, pushed around, banished, neglected and left out.   I am so racial so that my daughters can be less racial.  I am so racial because I see too many people forgetting that people are still racial and cannot seem to understand how.

Consolidated Privilege

I have spent a lot of time writing about what privilege means to me.  I have described how it has been a source of discrepancies that inspired a prejudice in me.  I have described how it is the misuse of a blessing.  I have also described how it has allowed me to become who I am.  This makes the concept of privilege unique and complex.  I am comfortable knowing that for me it is a condition that allows me to orientate my attitudes and expressions, hopefully to create a healthier contribution to my communities and family.

There is a white privilege but I don't believe it is necessarily the key factor in privilege.  I understand that despite the my hardships and barriers to progress I have privilege.  No matter how angry I can be at the unfair conditions created by luxury and convenience, I cannot prove that privilege is determined by race or even ethnicity.  I know that the way the human species has evolved leads me to believe that the dominant culture or the culture with the most privileges are those that thirsted for power and authority.  For numerous theoretical and historical reasons the European peoples were great at leveraging their privilege.   This to me is white privilege.

The cognitive dissonance around privilege, especially my privilege, creates emotional burn out.  I cannot be fully spiteful of white privilege because in reflection the consequences have also rewarded me and my family.  It is easy to point how unfair it is to work for the man and slimly having the opportunity to be the man.  It is irritating having to learn about oppressive policies and then also have gratitude for charity from the same institutions.  Don't bite the hand that feeds you but you can't tell the difference between that and the hand that beats you.

The idea of privilege is not for debate but a subjective measure of existential awareness for who I am in community.  I don't want anyone to believe that they have what they have because of privilege.  I hope that we evolve to society that understands that blessing are not intended to better the individual life but to be a way to improve the wellness of all.  The hard and difficult challenge is that each one of us has our own truth about wellness.

When there are people who have far too many resources and can look at others who are deprived saying they need to try harder, we cannot be well.  When we have people who will value extravagance ignoring necessities, we cannot be well.  When we have people who take a blessing and make it unattainable through economics, politics, or religion, we cannot be well.  As long as there are people who deny their privileges, we cannot be well.  As long as individuals live to satisfy their own hungers, and not limiting hunger to food, we will continue to compete and value advantage.

There is a way to be extraordinary without competing, separating, conquering, or advertising.  I trust that I am wealthy enough.  I will grow to be desirable without deception or marketing.  I will do my best to not compete but contribute.  I will do my best to have grace for those who champion a different understanding of wellness.  I will respectfully pity those who value winning and suffer from defeat.  I will learn continuously about justice and being dignified. This will be my responsibility and my counterweight to my expressed privilege.

Sometimes...Pastimes

My privileged trait is the wounded child in me, embarrassed, feeling unworthy, finally succeeding, hands raised in celebration, but not taking the time to acknowledge the helping hands, the cushioned walls, padded floors, wind at my back, first aid tents, the stepped on, the ripped up, the chipped away, or left behind that contributed to getting me here.  That child in me is consumed by the trophy, the purse, the recognition, the celebrity, and the reward.  That child in me forgets the preciousness in the journey, the lessons shared, the gratitude returned, the credit due, and the responsibility to look back and give back.

I am guilty of feeling privileged especially to pity.  I have appropriately and with enough practicality exhausted my victimization.  I have engraved deep enough my sad stories.  I have held enough shared sadness to believe in my degradation.  I have felt the sting of my disadvantage and inconvenience.  I have grieved my perceptions of unfairness.  It led me to become a contradiction.  It caused me to bite the hand that feeds me.  Most of those hands were melanin deficient, blessed, and equally struggling to be loved.



Rich folks saved my life.  The taste of class motivated me.  The feel of quality inspired me.  The innovation that comes from technology taught me.  The institutions accommodated me.  I have for the past 4 years bitten the hands that fed me.  I am embarrassed.  Most of the hands had light skin, white skin.  Where I came from would have kept me tied up had it not been for those who untied me out there.  Out there is complex, rarely absolute, and a playground for cognitive dissonance.

El Rey Day!

Featured Artist: Nikkolas Smith

If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wore a hoodie:  My social progress has disconnected me from my social class, a childhood community.  I can't relate to the cholo like I once could.  I don't know if I am seen as Chicano.  I am living among the privileged, remembering like the disadvantaged, and thinking like the revolutionized.  I find my interests aren't congruent enough with my hommie's to participate in once cherished careless tomfoolery.  My tolerance for superficiality has almost evaporated.  The conscious Chicano is unfortunately scarce.  The proud Chicanos are just to loud for me.  Dr. King how come you never wore a hoodie?

I don't have the street cred passion that might have kept me close to the barrio.  I now lean towards the intellect, whom I find often isolate themselves, maybe for the same disconnecting reasons.  I am falling into indifference, not able to see injustice clearly, but understanding a common insecurity to compete.  I am seeing with non-violent eyes, but blending in like a dude with a hoodie.

I don't feel called to evangelize, revolt, march on main street, sit in, or ask for change.  I feel like throwing on my hoodie, popping out 100 pull ups, running some sprints, winking at the cutie with the light eyes, and then grabbing some green tea with a kale salad.  For once in my life I don't feel like changing this world, but can't seem to hold back the complaining.  I just feel like continuing to ground myself.  I feel worn down with resistance.   I have a hard time keeping my commitment to uncovering, discovering, and illuminating cultural dysfunction.

The pain, the lactic build up in my heart is there. The easy choice to be like everyone else whispers with pleasure.  Being non-violent doesn't mean there won't be pain.  I think it should have been called the Without Rudeness Movement or My Truth Hurts Movement because maintaining dignity can be violent.  I can barely remember the slang that united me with mi raza.  I have learned my way into an upper-enough class.  But  a class that still can't feel me.  Maybe a class that only sees a vato in a hoodie.  I am no longer familiar with one community and still not quite integrated into the other.  That is what I think of when I see the word "hoodie".  I am not quite from the hood, and I am not pedigree enough to be privileged.  I will always be just a little bit hoodie.

Dr. King what would you have to say about being somewhere between?

Delivery man bring some compassion.

I think I have learned from my entanglement with discrepancy that we all want to see ourselves as overcoming the impossible.  What has been difficult to share with people who don't come from the barrio, people who have light skin, people who are middle class, people who are the dominant culture, and people who are mainstream is the idea of advantage, a.k.a privilege.  As soon as you come across a person who argues the idea of social privilege, I come to the conclusion that their idea of success is a simple formula of hard work and dedication.  How do I argue that?  I don't!

I am learning to thank God that there are those out there that don't have to experience the barrio life, the suspicious appearance, the limited lifestyle, the inferior ideas, and the margins of acceptance.  I have learned to stop convincing, debating, and advocating for the disadvantaged.  I have learned that perception is the most powerful psychological tool a person can see with.  I have learned that we all like to see ourselves as overcoming the impossible, even the privileged.  I might even say that people like to believe that they have had a rough enough journey to qualify as an underdog.  I have come to the idea that privilege doesn't need an advocate, I am learning to accept that fairness is not measurable.

So what I can do is wonder and be curious.  After this song played, after the video settled into my psyche, I began to identify with the limited visibility we base our perceptions on. Maybe even as limited to our own memories or sad stories.  If so many folks believe that hard work and dedication are remedies to poverty, than so be it.  I start to critically remember that this video uses the metaphor of "pizza man" and a "no delivery zone", and I can expand on how that is only a thin slice of the pie.

If its too dangerous for the pizza man, then it sure is too dangerous for the mathematics tutors, college preparatory programs, after school programs, a young man to grieve, Wholefoods, a fitness center, Yoga, parks with grass, hoops with nets, Fro-Yo, sentences without cuss words, family with parents who have flexible work schedules, friends who can withstand peer pressure, employee or parent sponsored recovery programs for addicts, lawyers for misdemeanors, books on a bookshelf, walls without sprayed paint, dogs with collars on leashes wearing cardigans, selling drugs as a as a hobby because here its a career, a habit called responsible drug use, boy scouts tying knots, girls scouts selling cookies, patience, compassion, investment, or attention.

If its to dangerous for the pizza man then it sure ain't too dangerous for the payday lenders, the bondsman, the cigarette shop, the liquor store, the quick mart, planned parenthood, soup kitchen,  house flippers flipping houses, the drive by pharmacist dropping baggies, the Dollar Mart, pawn shop, train tracks, vocational high school, random traffic stops, DWI check points, and police sub stations.

But this might be because the privileged like to believe that privilege doesn't discriminate.  Often I hear, "why shouldn't I benefit from my family's successes".  The privileged don't feel obligated to question the advantage their ancestors created.  Sarcastically, it might be because some inferior peoples prefer to increase their discomfort.  Satirically, it might be the opportunity for some foolish peoples to create a chance for themselves to work even harder.  Maybe its that people add challenges to life for the chance to test their dedication. It could be like an exercise for wherewithal.

So it is possible that we all have privileges.  Again sarcastically, it might be that some of us prefer to alter our availability to it.  Maybe some of us are just not as motivated to work hard.  Maybe some of us just don't have the discipline to remain dedicated.  Or maybe having privilege makes it inconvenient to reflect back on how it was created.  Maybe we might see that our peeps, daddy, grandpa, mamma, grandma or mi patria took short cuts, cheated, payed the right people, sold out the right people, sold out the right cultures, took advantage of the right markets, or capitalized on the right insecurities.  It might be easier to believe that I deserve the privilege available to me because my peeps worked harder and had more dedication.  I can dig that, but I don't.  Its complicated, right?

Privilege is when I take a blessing and turn it into an advantage to elevate my social value at the expense of others.  Responsibility is a word that I am committing my life to.  Responsibility is when I take a blessing and enhance my life so that it enhances the life of those around me.  As long as there is disadvantage or discrepancy I will have to critically evaluate how I leverage my blessings.  There is a beautiful paradox between learning to understand privilege and knowing how to be responsible to the living, because far too much value has been depended on or inherited from the dead.

Truth doesn't remove doubt

Living in New Mexico the majority of my life I rarely understood or considered my ethnic privilege. Similar to white privilege, the Spanish exploration and decimation of many cultures in the pursuit of expanding Catholicism and commerce established mestizo communities that for many years functioned like a privileged and dominant force. It isn't well publicized how the Spanish rampaged through North America. The allure of the Catholic churches camouflages the elitist qualities that seem to have found its way here. I finally have embraced my "white privilege".  The Spaniard in me.  It is confusing for me because Anglo American's Old Money privilege has replaced the Spanish conquest privilege.  I no longer feel the full capacity of privilege.
 

I celebrate the Birthday of a hero today.  Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan woman who endured the Guatemalan civil war, with a passion to tell the truth.  The story of Che Guevara helped me discover the truths behind the Guatemalan civil war.  The truth that brown people, jente, and raza could hold that same greedy characteristics as the Roosevelt's,  Rockefellers, and Simms (of Albuquerque).  I see that these wealthy families see money and ownership as success, where to me it looks like greed.  They see their excesses and convenience as accomplishments, where to me it seems like gluttonous luxury.  They see their impact as contribution instead of intrusion.  I could go on, but regardless I found brown privilege in my reflection for the first time in my life.

Despite thriving in a region surrounded by neglected pueblo and Indian communities, I grew to function like a victim.  My journeys to Guatemala changed that.  Rigoberta's book and story helped me realize my blessings and the shadow quality of them. These shadows I call privilege.  Privilege is the darker side of a blessing.  The civil war in Guatemala has not been publicized to the world because it shows the darker American dreams.  It shows that a little truth, like a valid tiny communist presence in Guatemala, could be enough reason for wealthy Dulles brothers to capitalize on their privilege, instigating war.  This allowed for brown privilege to inspire ideology and fear.  The results were a well trained and convinced army that eliminated thousands of innocent people.  I believe in a responsibility that comes with being blessed and it is to be humble, modest, and dignified.  I pray that fairness find its roots in Guatemala, and not from the perspective of the privileged.

This Ted talk synchronously released near Rigoberta's birthday is magical.  It helps me bring to mind my own ancestors, my contributions to Burque (Albuquerque), and how I can minimize the darker side of my blessings.

 

An intro to ChicanoFit

Cool talk about the shadow characteristics of efficiency.  When I think of efficiency I think of Crossfit.  The revolutionary fitness strategy that applies the latest research and discoveries in fitness in hopes of creating the fittest human beings.  I am going to apply this talk to my fitness.  



I have grown beyond the Crossfit model, not excluding it, but rather integrating it.  I don't call myself a crossfitter, but I do admire the community.  I believe it is the fittest community a person can buy.  I have found that despite its principles being focused on efficiency and functionality, it is really geared toward being a better crossfitter and heavy aspects of looking stronger, maybe even "Hot"!   

As I wanted to apply my Crossfit body to my life, creating a lifestyle, I found that a lot of people who are out there exploring, adventuring, and using functional strength aren't crossfitting.  Often they call Crossfit a cult, even those I know in the special forces or SEAL community.  I know that Crossfit is an essential ingredient to my wellness, so I hold praise and criticism with curiosity.  I do know that I have held an unbalanced appreciation for efficiency that has had a detrimental effect on my ideas and body. 

Crossfitters are crossfitting, but are they doing it functionally in the world or in their boxes?  Is efficient absolutely efficient?  I continue to ChicanoFit, which for now includes Crossfit.  I integrate Crossfit, but only so it can make me functional for life outside a "Box".  Created with a brother in wellness, M.D. Galen Castillo-Loughrey and I, as we embarked on our bandwagon discovery of Crossfit, found that our methods were slightly unique enough to have a different name.  ChicanoFit is our approach to wellness.  I will be writing about it, claiming it as a true philosophy towards wellness.  I will be calling it a search for joy, where best isn't necessarily the "Best"!  I hope it will be a modest and humble path to empowerment.  Still considering whether we'll keep our shirts on.  {Smiling}

A return to "Soul-cial Media"

A New Year! No tracks, a clear path, and the whistle of a winter storm invites!

I stopped blogging almost a year ago.  I actually quit "blogging" long before that.  I was not sharing to present a perspective of me for others, I was hoping to write to paint a portrait for legacy's sake. I'm not trying to express myself for social media.  I try to let my posting be a small contribution of a true me to a e-community that is human at heart and ego thirsty by nature.  I try to express me in the greatest of light and in the eeriest of shadows. Social media tends to be more about presenting the self as we hope to be perceived.  I am guilty of this desire, and chose to take time away from wanting to be seen.  With the end of 2014, I visited how I presented myself through social media.  I was pleased and with it I will "Restart".



What a better way than a chronological restart to help a "soul-cial media" restart.  I have continued writing all year, on a moleskin journal, an evernote electronic notebook, and as an amateur and published poet.  Those that take time to know the real me, beyond the social media me, understand I am rarely typical.  I am often seen as difficult, an old soul, and even unrealistic with a hint of idealism.  Those I click with, have gentler descriptions.  Those that don't understand me might call me rude, criminal, or unfair.  Those in my family might have even more critical versions.  Regardless, I want to continue my participation as a citizen of a social media with a genuine contribution of my writing and discovery.  Because I might be missing out.



The year was an amazing collection of endings, beginnings, and continuations.  I accomplished goals. I accepted new ones. I stopped to see that I had major injuries to the body and spirit.  I cared for myself by slowing life down.  I asked for help.  I had surgery on my body, mind, and soul.  I watched my daughters begin to communicate like future adults.  I grew closer to my father and mother.  I grew further from some friends.  I strengthened my lifestyle with a continued faith in Christ.  I left the year 2013 wondering if I really was a good man.  I leave the year 2014 knowing I've made so much progress with being hu...man.  I am discovering the areas I can be curious about.  I arrive in 2015 determined to do all things with dignity.