What do I deserve?

What am I doing to deserve what I have?  

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.

Don't prove...describe

I am close to a year into being a counselor.  I feel more aware of myself than I ever imagined.  I can grasp the contradiction, paradoxes, and hypocrisies I encounter and I don't become as overrun with emotion.  I have grown to be capable of non-judgmentality and value my judgmental characteristics.

I practice empathizing everyday, and it goes only so far.  I get better and better at it with every story, assessment, and observation.  My clients are teaching me to understand that there are rarely the social absolutes that I navigated in my early adulthood.  One  being that if you just work hard enough you can be anything you want.  I know now that some people have subtle or extreme advantage.  Some people have trust funds, others have land grants, others have highly educated parents, some lived in convenient places, and some just look more appealing.  The simple generalizations that once helped me create allies and enemies is now a complex M.C. Escher painting where proving isn't helpful and only describing has any grip.

I drive home every day and people watch.  Asking in my head what did that person do today to earn what they have?  How did that person contribute to others or was it all about getting theirs?  What makes that person fulfilled or are they a sieve?  How come that person needs a BMW to drive the same distance that person with a 68 pick up does?  What goes on in that building that they need landscaping?  What would life be like without business and money?  I accept that what people think what they need is growing and so is there need to feel deserving of everything...me too.

I think about what people spend money on and wonder how interesting and creative their rationality becomes for the waste.  It becomes a way of creatively justifying the hints of immorality to counter any contradiction, upholding and building a reason that fits a socially acceptable category.  I think everyday that if we only took what we need and shared our extras, would we have poverty, heroin addicts, luxury cars, races, fences, hair stylists, airplanes, electrical grids, licensing boards, passports, visas, or nuclear weapons facilities. Would we need social media?  Would we have more gardens than bars?  Would we have community fitness versus elite memberships?   Would we have a healthier industry around health care?  Would be still create economies and products out of wellness?

The brain might function the same way in every human.  The brain might release the same types of hormones, synthesize chemical cocktails in the same way, and grow and die in the same way, but each brain will never experience the same scenarios with the same perceptions.  We cannot ignore the possibility that individual medicine will not be enough to also be a social medicine.  The disease I like to call "worth" manipulates humans into making luxuries into necessities and needs too expensive.

I am learning that there isn't an audience that is looking for a cure but more an industry profiting from the lack of a critical perspective on genuine care of health.  The insurance arena, the pharmaceutical arena, and the marketeers of this modern culture of care seem to saddle up the professionals and ride them, feed them just enough, groom them, and appease them so they can themselves escape the existential tragedy of simplicity.  I don't understand the value in profiting from human fear of suffering or the actually suffering itself.  I have hope in health but not from a business or professional perspective, but from my own change in perspective.  Give to Lovelace what is Lovelace's and trust there is healing that will go beyond policies and coverages.  The illness might be in what we find worth it because where I see money gravitating is in the bank accounts of a new form of unhealthy people who suffer from the disease I call "worth".

I find myself collecting hours of therapeutic moments.    I am guilty of believing I care and then find myself contributing toxically.

I found my People

I finished my first class for fun.  Like nacho libre, sometimes Chancho, when you are a man you take graduate courses with other stretchy minds, for fun.  I finished my first semester of course work dedicated to enriching my mind versus my profitability.

It was just as stressful as in graduate school, and I often found myself wondering why the fuck I do this shit.  Why, fatherhood, two jobs, and school what was I thinking.  Like those self created Crossfit workouts that through the middle I have my throat burning, lower back aching, and physical therapists eagerly waiting. Then the light shines through a crease.  I love seeing the light.  I live for learning.

So what has this layer of life left me with.  What mark is life leaving on my forehead?
I'll start with the soppy poetic shit first.

I see love where hate thrives.  I see blossoms of admiration in fields of envy.  I see sadness when vengeance torques.  I see potential where pools of laziness smolder. I see hope, maybe lost, maybe tossed as prayer, along the glistening tracks of tears.

I have shaped my sadness that once took the shape of anger.  It once looked hardened, and now I've learned it is malleable.

I have harnessed my passion that once scattered like rage.  It has me powering through in symbiotic directions.

I rerouted my doubt that once fueled my cynicism.  I look gracefully on progress and the "no-rep", especially because I'm still breathing.  This means simply that I haven't died yet.  I am turning I can't into i'll get there.

What I have observed, through my late onset of adolescence, is accepted pity, self-deprecation, and toxic humility have been hard habits to undo.  I look at my cultures similarly and recognize the same paradoxical qualities.  I look at myself not as of a culture but as culture.  I seek out the economy, injustice, balance, and the tangential effects that cause peoples to "be".

I don't have time to prove anymore.  It feels a lot like my remaining life might be to play the instrument I have built myself to be.  I feel like my life will be to contribute where as before it had been to contrive.  I'm not resigning my ability to change or grow.  I have a responsibility to make learning part of my contribution, my song, a melody.

I get to learn now and I feel different,  I feel like an adult.  I am rooting myself in G R A V I T A S.

Sojourn

No words in my heart to speak today.

My heart is basking in a metaphorical and distant sun.

My heart is meditating on the realization that my ego is content, healing, and balancing.

My heart is sipping on the fresh juices, squeezed and dripping from the melee between my insecurities and principles.

I long for nothing more than the continuation of the grace I have right now.

My heart is napping, dreaming of realities that include hardships overcome.

No fantasies to pervert my heart's dreams, only romantic sounds to decorate the already gorgeous set of qualities put in motion by my lifestyle.

Maybe as the sun sets, I'll light a candle for my heart to have just enough light to see the flickering glow of naked hope, a flicker we can dance to.

A heart that is traveling!

Lacking

When I don't know that, how much I have right now, can be all I need, life becomes about what I don't have. Is 'what I want' the trails and passages to my sadness, envy, and fear?  Gratitude for having everything I need, reminds me I am free, lovable, and art.  

How do I help a 12 year old girl and a 15 year old young lady trust this principle, when most adults that inspire them still struggle, filling their lives with superficial spectacles and posting polished personas.  De-colonization can happen, slowly, purely, but not without the pleasure withdraw.  Don't let me catch me Lacking!  

Don't be sell-n-out meaning for happiness. 

E-race-ism

The term white privilege is used to label the contemporary advantage that Anglo lineage has gained from the likes of convenience, legacy, exploration, exploitation, commercialism, education, slavery, genetics, industry, technology, and other factors.  I find that this concept is difficult for some Anglo people to recognize or acknowledge.  As people grow closer and closer to identifying with the colonial concept called 'prosperity' so does the belief in their right to property.  What role does generational advantage (A.K.A privilege) play in the understanding of prosperity?    

I think privilege is a characteristic of competition and life doesn't have to be a matter of winning or losing.  I feel bound to intellectual concepts that promote culturally tainted values like competition and advantage.  I feel like I have missed out on how valuable sharing, collaboration, and vulnerability can be in commerce, education, and technology.  The word privilege points to the corrosive prosperity that very few in the dominant societies care to confront.  Dominant societies, meaning those that participate in luxurious markets or have first world problems.  Prosperous peoples rarely relinquish their desire for prosperity.  How else can we help these self-made believing peoples feel valued?  (Self-made by Franklin's definition and not the definition of Douglass...for which Douglass' definition is more appealing)

Privilege is a strategy of luxury, possibly leading to the understanding of being owed, honored, obliged, or authorized.  I find that this darker quality exists in close minded, fearful, stubborn, aspiring, and dogmatic peoples.  The hard part is that when you put a racial component in the front of such an authoritative word, I see the disservice it does to the commonality that all people suffer from the misuse of privilege.  Even more complex is that the definition for the proper use of privilege is too personal or perceptual.  

I wouldn't disagree if we called white privilege, colonial privilege.  I do find it unfair to many humble and modest Anglos that white privilege has become a blanket condition.  But I have spent many hours and thoughts on how to find peace when dealing with privileged people.  I found that privileged people who live in luxury or thoughtless spending, cannot see themselves as excessive or thoughtless with their resources.  I find the opposite.  Privileged people believe they are bettering the world by bettering themselves.  There is virtue and rational in what luxuries they are participating in.  Privileged people can almost always see themselves as blessed.   Privileged people conjugate with and around similarly privileged people.  Racial privilege is real, but it distracts from the real corrosive privilege that pollutes cultures of people.  

I find that cultural privilege is a formidable concept worth confronting.  I see that racial privilege is far to radioactive to approach.  I think as I have erased the racial component that often precedes privilege, I can encounter truer shared value for life, resources, and technology.  I have also added to the concept of privilege a heavy dose of responsibility.  I have this idea, a faithful belief, to be responsible to questioning and bringing awareness to the irresponsible.  I hope others do the same for me.

Arthur Schatz—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Happy Birthday Cesar Estrada Chavez.  You helped me to prefer responsibility over privilege; service over commerce; and progress over profits!

Trust in Pride

With permission from Cecelia, here is her contribution on the subject of toxicity in the Chicano culture.  First a brief description about Cecelia.  Cecelia and I met at a writing workshop.  I was there with a living hero, Jimmy Santiago Baca.  He allowed me to participate despite never being published or credited as a writer.  Cecelia was there too.  She supported me during a really difficult moment during the conference.  I didn't believe myself to be a writer and I was among professional and aspiring writers.  I was challenged to share my work out loud.

I was asked to read aloud my novice writing.  With my voice trembling in my tentative tone, I read a poem.  It got rocked and I was told my writing wasn't passionate.  I was called out, and I remember it went something like this, "your writing seems to lack passion".  With that statement, woke the calloused part of my soul.

I found an inner passion to describe the sadness I live with.  I told them about the parts of me that skirt around the big dogs because I don't feel I belong.  I have never been asked to read aloud.  I told the group how difficult it is to play passionately because what I am passionate about will provoke and confront their privileged metaphorical Anglo playgrounds.  I have to be somewhat abstract to conceal the sacredness of the moment and those involved.  But I let my educated, learned, and vetted understanding of myself and history propel my passionate, possibly disappointed, perspectives flow.

They came out in a voice that turned from trembling into a shaking near tears fountain of rawness. Out came my thoughts, from the depths of the cellars they have been kept quietly pacing.  Like bunched up New Mexicans at the labor lines waiting for the opportunity to contribute to my cause.  It felt like a petition, and quickly I realized I had spoken my truth.  At the end I found myself embarrassed and ashamed.  I felt like I had no right to be so passionate in someone else's passion playground.

But to sum it up, I described how I hold myself back because it feels like my place.  My place is modest and purpose centered.  I watched my grandmother prepare the best New Mexican food for the richest Anglos in New Mexico, and never ask to be called a chef.  I watched my grandpa build cabinets for several churches in the North Valley of Albuquerque never asking for recognition or profits.  I try to live the same way.

Here I was a wanna be writer among skilled writers just happy to be in the same room as Jimmy Baca.  I couldn't be passionate because I was scared that what I had to say would hurt feelings.  The source of my passion is in their ancestors injustice.  Especially the judgment, maybe jealousy,  I see in how free the Anglo culture is allowed to be proud and loud.  The passion I have is rooted in the paradox of being given opportunity to be great but only knowing how to be modest.

Cecelia and a few other strong Latin writers supported me and best of all shared the feelings.  I had skeena.  I have shared my passion with people who rarely understand and often call me disruptive, cynical, and harsh.  I have had to remind myself that I am a tender person who is a warrior.  I have to keep close the reminder that I was raised not to fight, and not to be afraid to protect myself.  Cecelia ratified my emotions, ideas, and passion.

We sat at dinner and she shared her story with me.  I knew after leaving that weekend that I must speak my passions modestly.  I will not be afraid to defend myself, my story, and my perspectives.  I will know that my truth is not necessarily offensive but can incense emotions in others.  It's not my responsibility any longer to wonder how my story will make others feel.

Thank you for the standing along side me.  It has felt for awhile as if my ideas are isolatingly antagonizing.  It is a joy and relief to be in the spirit of great people like Cecelia.

Cecelia  shared the following:

Ron,

This is a reflection on both Toxic Humility and Mistrust of Pride, as I see the two topics inextricably linked - at least in my experience as a Mexican-American woman growing up in southern California in the 50s and 60s.

My father was a strong man, with a humble spirit, and unspoken pride in his heritage, his work ethic and the accomplishments of his children.  He taught me "never draw attention to yourself" as that was arrogant and unnecessary.  He believed that "If you work hard and do what you have signed-on to do, people will notice and they will recognize you and reward you, as appropriate.  You don't need to promote yourself."

I have lived my 65 years of life believing this is true, acting in concert with it and seeing his prediction play out in my own life.  And yet, there have been moments when I too have been unable to take pride in the "magnificent" parts of myself and that has felt uncomfortable and (although I never would have come up with the term myself) "toxically humble."

These posts have shined a light on layers and layers of my being and my identity - for me to reexamine.  I will let you know where that road takes me.  Thank you, Ron.

Cecelia