And the Iterative Villain

Like Paul Harvey says, "Now for the rest of the story".  My last post about the iterative hero was an expression of my shadow, needing to be favored.  I provided a justification and worse a platform for the part of me that hurts and wants justice.  But it wasn't the entire story.  I also have an iterative villain.

There is more to "the question" in the post "Iterative Hero".  Leading up to the question, didn't I have any good men in my life, was a complex series of exhaustive interactions and emotions. A series of events and circumstances that were requiring a level of tenderness that I was not or maybe still not capable of.  The question came from a person who was dearest to me at the time.  I, on the other hand, had not intended to be a villain, but regardless provoked an attitude that inspired "the question" to be asked.  The question did not come from hatred but rather protection.

I have had a tough journey into parts of myself and society that have hardened my heart and softening it is taking an equal amount of discovery.  Part of this newness is an inability to communicate my discovered principles.  I have ideas that I think are worth making values, but I deliver them with carelessness.  I am confrontational, antagonistic, and a even a villain.

I have become stubbornly comfortable with who I am.  I have found that my understanding of my emotions, needs, and purpose might seem arrogantly composed, even to the point of being insolent.  I am highly reactive to situations of hypocrisy.  I have an unsociable and hostile way of proving a point.  I can be rude and abusive.  It isn't necessarily rooted in evil, but the lack of responsibility for my emotions influences my impulses to protect myself and worse my opinions.

This raw and difficult expression is my true self being as open as possible.  So "the question" is not described here so that you can understand my sadness.  I describe and write about "the question" so that I can observe how I have been immature and careless with my attitudes, especially towards those I love.  My shadow needs to be seen as a good man, and my true self needs me to be a genuine man.

The Iterative Hero

Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung are great inspirations to my evolution as a man. Their ideas on manhood help me progress through emotion and psychological pain. I was once asked, "didn't you have any good men in your life"? I could only get the implied message that I wasn’t measuring up. This infuriated me, shamed me, degraded my family, but it has become the greatest blessing in my adulthood. This led me on a search for this idea of “good men”.

I found my passion and my shadow. I reflected on the many influential men, people, in my upbringing. I looked for the blessed. The shadow in me desires to be a "Good Man". There are no good men. There are only men who make their effort at life and then they are continually judged by their peers, enemies, and loved ones. The scorecard held up at the end is more a reflection of societies shortcomings than it is the results of one man's choices. I have loved as I had loved myself, using discouraged and defeated perceptions.

I found a way to believe I am lovable, internally, without pride, and gently. I no longer feel tied to societies understanding of what a good man should be. I know there are no good men. There are men whose mistakes are denounced. There are men whose successes are romanticized. There is a preference for the later, leaving very little room for boys and men to make mistakes. I have grown to be curious of my mistakes, minus the punishment.

Becoming a polished person is a personal journey, and how a person's actions are perceived become wind in their sails or boulders on their trails. We are all trying to spend this lifetime with a sense of purpose, hoping to be accepted, included, and understood. When this doesn't happen, we, or maybe, I start to identify others as good or bad.

Jung helps me to recognize aspects of myself as facades and Campbell helps me apply the hero’s journey to the maturity of each. I was born a child with dreams. Grew into an athlete with goals. I became a student of prosperity. I tested myself to love. I shrunk and suffered in grief. Through the agony of defeat and surrender, I am blessed with new life, to start all over again, and with a little more of the hero’s wisdom. Each stage of my life reminds that I might be designed to find the Hero's Journey.

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.