The idea of entitlement and privilege haunts the conservative mindset and antagonize the socialist's. There is an appreciation for the groundwork established by ancestors, it should be valuable, secured. Some believe there shouldn't be a penalty for benefiting from the foundation of work and success already laid. There might not need to be a penalty, but paying respect to the entire foundation may be necessary. Who takes the risks? There seems to be this idea that successful people found success on their own. They took the risk. It may be important to give the old school their props, but what really makes up the old school. The railroads were laid by millions with investment from many. Fossil fuels were drilled by millions with technologies from many. The banking system was nurtured by millions of deposits. The technological advances were developed by millions of minds. The culture of industry was paid for in lives, risky working conditions, and daring attitudes from many, not just those who's names are on buildings. Who worked harder? Malcolm Gladwell helps me sift through the complexity for success in many of his ethnographies about success stories and rags to riches cultures. I find this topic a hot topic in the arena of politics because we like to think there is government money and private money, but we don't like to think that public worth if fed by both. The cost of goods and services distract us from the value of needs and sustainability. How do we justify work effort? It might not be who expends more energy, ideas, solutions, hours, or cash. It might be who we prefer to value. The urban culture has a term for this, the Old School. Nothing happens new that wasn't inspired or grounded in the Old School. So I feel entitled to the attitudes of hope and prosperity, but not the exploits from those who we consider Old School. I feel the exploits should be reinvested into the public worth not hoarded by dynasties. I feel giving props is acknowledging with patriotic benefaction for the privilege that comes from being connected and tapped into the Old Schools.
This is my first encounter with feeling inspired to collaborate with a Saint.
“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”?
-Francis of Assisi
Reading this quote can inspire, then as I realize my own sadness around being seen as labor, and not as often, seen as an artist, it doesn't completely help me feel divine. But, what I have noticed in my evaluation of people's perceptions through their cultures, privilege, and histories, especially my own obligation or rooted ideas to be seen or identified as a "Mexican-American", "Brown", or "Hispanic", is that I have allowed other's preferences and perceptions to define how I am perceived.
I participate in judging one's work, again especially my own. I establish my own scales of cost and compensation. I determine my own version of what it is to be labor or art. That scale is used for me and against me. I cultivate my competencies and doubts from these determinations. I internalize my worth, alongside my values, and ultimately my social cost. I have become a judge of quality and economized human worth.
One concept that Francis left out is that when I judge someone's work to be absent of head or heart or both head and heart, I participate in the historic human neurosis, possibly mental disease of bias, prejudice, and economics. What does it mean to hold an individual in comparison for what they contribute? What does it mean to use your head or heart? Is it fair to suggest that some people choose not to use their head and heart? I wonder about comparison. I often find it is the root of jealousy. It seems natural to see comparison as competition. We, I, have the need to excel and be more alluring. It might be our reproductive instinct for desirability. Are we fulfilling our primal instructions to reproduce? Does distinction drive us to improve or see ourselves as insufficient? I have a desire to know where I stand among others. Does my true self need to know this or is it my insecurity that is seeking this out? So I see this comparison as toxic and hurtful egoism. Without disregard or disrespect for separating mundane from enchanting, I have my contribution to this quote.
My contribution would be subtly different. Those who see the God in someone's work, without comparison, even when done modestly with their hands is an artist. Those who see Divinity in the distinct quality that reveals a person's thoughtfulness is an artist. Those who can see beyond jealousy and grandiosity of an individual who combines their labor with thoughtfulness to reveal their heart is an artist. Lastly when we can begin to look for the hands, head, and heart in all people's contribution we will be artisans.
I hope that one day we, I, will value the produce picker with the same preference as the gourmet chef. I am working to see the Crossfit games champion as valuable as the dainty homebody. I am working to see the nuclear physicists as valuable as the janitor who empties the trash. I desire a day when the carpenter with blistered hands is valued with same reward as the real estate agent with manicured nails.
I idealize about what life would be like when our knowledge won't have a cost on it, and our labor won't be the measure of our social worth. Who am I to judge someone's worth, much less their cost?
Maybe a better inquiry would be into how modestly can I provide enchanting contributions in community that I am compensated with resources that will not distance my opportunities to thrive from yours? Or Can I be an artist without keeping you a laborer? Are you an artist if only the elite can afford to benefit from your work?
Healing hurts. It takes a certain will power to heal. The body, the mind, the spirit all get wounded.
A fashioned life-like tree from the tools that destroyed it.
The wound has boundaries. The boundaries can create pain free zones. These zones can be crippling. A paradox exists because being pain free feels a lot like being healthy, but may not necessarily be healthy. The feeling of bliss may at times be unnoticeably unhealthy. Calibrating this paradox of comfortable health and painful health is challenging, requiring critical thought about personal perception and perspective with awareness of social norms. What you see as painless may really be a debilitating comfort zone. What you see as painful may really be the struggle to break free from illness. When we function with an idea of health as being a state or condition, it becomes purchasable, definable, or measurable. When I think of health as living, it becomes a relationship.
Black Lungs from Coal miner
How I treat health will be reflective of what value I have for it. In the end I am learning to know the value, not cost, of my pain. I have learned to put myself in pain to connect with health, and am working on distinguishing when my pain is damaging my connection with health. I am learning to avoid the comfort of profiting from health, while also receiving gratitude from helping others connect with health. I am having a hard time with connecting with those who use the fear of pain as a way to improve their own quality of life. I aspire to hold health gently, as if it were lying next to me each night. I think asking her questions that she may have never been asked before.
Health, can you teach me how to love you...but without the pain? I think she might say. To love me is to love yourself, I don't need anything you don't, nor can I do without anything you also need. The health that I have in my life today has come from both pain and fulfillment. I have yet to know health without spending a little of both. The same goes for sickness, I don't hate you, but you seem to bring more pain than joy, and then after really seeing your contribution to life, I see you are a remedy to arrogance, toxic pride, and grandiosity. I struggle with loving you too.
I am discouraged by how much I struggle to be Holy, a believer, or faithful. The more I engage in research, business, technology, and entertainment the more I find myself doubting. I think God has a way of reminding me that I don't have to leave the world to love the world.
I find my doubt is healed by the undeserved blessings I cannot help but be grateful for. The hard part is having to accept that God might be using my intellect, economics, conveniences, and luxuries to help remind me that divinity may not only be seen in nature. I am reminded that even in service there is a reward. Be balanced, don't take more than I need, and have respect are phrases that come to ease my worry after feeling the anxiety of discerning whether I am being blessed or being self-indulgent.
Returning from a immersion with a team studying, observing, and even some being called to Curanderismo has me, once again, remembering to ask for balance. Where there is energy, I'll likely find light. Where there is light I'll likely find heat. Where there is heat I'll find movement. Curar!
Tupac Shakur mentions in rap lyrics that he sees no changes, straight up racist faces, and for a long time I agreed. Now, with faith, I gotta say, I see straight up changes. I can't say I lived a thug life. I can't say I have shared in the darkest struggles that humanity or poverty seems to provide. I don't remember my barrios ever being hazardous, poor, or scary. As I look back on my barrios from the outskirts, from a different cultural group, I notice that they are perceived as dangerous, poor, and, when the sun goes down, scary. People are violent in the barrios where I came from, not so much to be bad asses, but to not be seen as weak. I look on my barrios now and see a whole lotta changes. I also hold the admission that history hints at plenty of things that appear to lack change.
I know there are struggles unique to regions, ethnicities, and cultures that can get overwhelmingly discouraging, but what seems to be common is a desperate yearning for worth. How desirable am I, are you, are we? What can I gain without giving, aka "efficient"? Wealthy, healthy, and obedient seem to be the preferred cultures. These qualities have the highest rank in the realm of worth. The perception that defines these quality's criteria are biased and even prejudice. It has become apparent to me that race is a scapegoat, because when I stare into the abyss of discrimination, I see through spiritual eyes, and see that the root of it all is worried peoples trying to keep, find, or validate their worth.
I think we have a hard time, sanctioning sadness, and it spans across cultures, because it depreciates desirability for most, causing a shrinkage in worth. Grief seems to carry a stigma of illness. I think the perception of sadness as a weakness causes people to avoid, fear, and suppress sadness. I think we fear the lack of productivity and action that can come from being sad. It makes sense to me that America prides itself on being fit, enduring, capable, and powerful, because there is so much cultural sadness that has been suppressed, avoided, and ignored. I have found that dignity and integrity, aspects of a person's identity, are cultivated in sadness and cannot be fooled by appearances, but unfortunately the ego is easily fooled.
There are too many cultures bringing their tired, sick, and huddled masses and aren't or haven't dealt with the grief of saying good bye to the rejecting, displacing, punishing, or deteriorating places that they left behind, or worse were taken from. Likewise they are not able to have enough time and space to integrate a pride for both their losing culture and their newly adopted Culture's attitudes. This grief is spread over generations. Every lineage has a generation struggling with identity, the conquistador, colonist, refugee, slave, pioneer, immigrant, and the transient.
I did at one time buy into Shakur's perspective that seemed to reflect no changes. I bought into the idea that things won't change, until I couldn't ignore how they have. I have my own perspectives that include the noticeable changes. I look at New Mexico's prisons and see it filling with cholo's faces. I see that discrimination changes too. Young boys once, over time and their development, rarely afforded an opportunity to taste America's graces, but often expected to know how to reach out with simple willpower. These vatos locos, raised by parents who stem from a family tree rooted in a legacy of Spanish treasure hunters, then peregrinos, eventually becoming displaced villagers. People who once upon a time were conquerors, now sit in concrete pens, conquered. A culture caught by pioneering Americans resting in simplicity, and now dazzled by America's dream while bitterly denying the pain of not really being desired in its reality.
I cannot yet describe being pulled by an ever growing number of identities, the least of them being American. I am stuck between countries that never belonged to my ancestors, and yet I am tied to a land that feels like a mother. I am critical of a country that a majority of people admire. I am resistant among people hypocritically holding a mindset that understands Christianity but who thrive on lifestyles more fitting of something like capitalistianity. I struggle with both myself. I see changes, some fitting my idea of just and often confused by those changes that seem unfair. I see the dignity in my parent's dilemmas and how they have changed and arrived at their identities. All this has helped me change my idea of success.
I see that the worth my un-primped barrios carry, because mi jente, my people, are succumbing to the monetary and economic gravity of property values, putting price tags on eloquent bosque views, and corrales around pedestals revealing Sandia sunsets, selling out, figuratively and literally. Many are continuing to suffer from the disease I like to call worth, including me.
I am not the same, so I see changes. The way I look has changed. The way I see has changed. The way I love has changed. The perceptions that matter to me have changed. I have changed the way I live. At the same time I still have to live with how so much doesn't seem to change.
I am a tough person to walk with. I am constantly toggling my morals. I make convenient my principles. I hypocritically set boundaries. I safely hike into the wild, skirting the ledge of reckless, feeling the vertigo just enough to remember I am still a scared little boy deep in my soul, but with every tragedy, adventure, and fiasco I grow more and more into a man with a child's curiosity and less childishly curious.
I am an even tougher person to run with. I am not a champion marathoner, but I love the doubt in my mind that wakens when my stiff ankles ache, knees pang, and lungs hesitate. Early on in life, I recklessly tore into the trails of ambition. As life piled on stress I learn to run with a driven strategy, but the same running shoes muddied with a victim's blood.
Now I have to ask permission of my body, starting with my intention, making my way down into my chest, wondering how many breathes I still have left. They are ready as ever. On to my hips where the passion lives. Once the blood flows in these joints, its on! That doubt that wakens, it is the little person in me that wants to play near the kitchen close to grandma. It is the part of me that says "here is enough". It is the part of me that whines "do we have to".
It is the beaten part of me. The rejected part of me. The saddened part of me. The lonely part of me. It is the part of me, I now, put right up top, propped on my shoulders, discouraged and all. I let that part of me sing songs of pity. I find my will to run in the songs of pity. I don't run to race. I don't even think there's a chase. I don't measure very often. It uplifts me, and keeps me looking forward.
Despite my laziness, addictions, abnormalities, and other qualities that set me me unfortunately apart, I am internally magnificent. I am a flawed creature with an adequate capability to progress, making service an expression of joy.
What a treacherous question. When I "people watch" I can't but help but realize that what is really under the covers are my projections. So when I compare the BMW to the 68' rusted pic up it is actually a sadness for the comfort and convenience I am not willing to strive for, but more importantly know I don't need. It is awkward because I felt so close to achieving what might be called prosperity by American terms. I sit wondering what inflamed my desire to find my way back to New Mexico. I sometimes think about the cliche idea that I made it out. The "made it out" that validated the hatred that swirls along with the love I have for my home. What does I was so close mean?
It sadly means I could have lived the dreams my grandparents dreamed for me. It means I might have fulfilled the hopes my parents hoped. I could have been accepted and swam in the sea called America. I might have had the manicured lawn, cleaning lady, and facades that painted me as acceptable. I might have seemed civil, worthy of invitation to the table of fraternal America.
It also means that I would validate my ancestral self doubt. I would acknowledge the projections from taburculosis ridden refugees from the eastern metropolises of America that planted the seeds of inferiority into my barrios. These sick and desperate bodies came with an economy that wasn't superior, but desperate. Had I stayed on the course of American prosperity I would have drowned the remaining dignity that my New Mexican heritage demanded.
I was so close to selling my soul to an American shadow. I walked the edge of prostituting my heritage. I came dangerously close to abandoning a life of service for a life of worth. I had grown into an attitude of self health versus a lifestyle of symbiosis. I almost became so self interested that I left the discouraged and tired people of New Mexico to accept a minuscule role as America's nuclear garbage can.
I sat with a young woman at a bar and listened while she asked me,"didn't you have any good men in your life"? I can say with a regulated heart and passionate soul, not only did I have some chignon men in my life, but I was raised and nurtured by the most amazing Chicana women.
I don't know if I am doing enough to earn what God has blessed me with but I know I could never do enough to repay the privilege gained from the debt my ancestor have paid in doubt, humility, and loyalty to Christ. I am working really hard to love myself and realize I am still a novice at knowing what love is.
