April Fool?

91 years of age, today! That’s Nancy. Imagine if it were you? What is there between now and then that we have yet to see, to do, to experience, to learn? And how might we not face into the future? Regrets? A bucket list with holes in the bucket? A sense of being at peace? Or a sense of falling to pieces?

M’Lady Nancy continues life with a vitality interested in things, in people, in circumstances, and in decorum and dignity. The preparations for her party are underway, and the tidying up of the outdoor spaces has commenced. “That’s too heavy for you,” she asserts, and she takes the big yellow recycle bin and tilts it on its wheels and trundles it out of sight. The thing is nearly as big as she is. But there is an energy of wanting things done that sustains her activities, keeps her focused. She phones to ascertain the numbers coming to her party. She ensures adequate seating. She checks the fridges and the supplies. She gets table-cloths out for the several outdoor picnic tables, and she wonders aloud what to wear. The presentation is about example, about pleasing others, about making thing comfortable for them. Yes, so too for most women I know, but surely not at 90? The expansion of oneself usually stops at a given age, and a closing down of interests ensues. For Nancy the day is for discovery! Every day.

April 01^st is notoriously a fool’s day. But Nancy is no fool. She’s perhaps heard the jokes about this day for most of her life. But if foolishness is about immaturity and uncaring and self-centredness and shallowness, then M’Lady has exemplified the opposite. There is a perpetual wisdom inherent in her examination of life, in her wanting the best for others, and in her concern for those she knows, as well as those she as yet does not. Seeing the diagram of the Chakras, she instantly said, “That’s me; Love”. It flows from her. Neighbours, relations, passersby, the birds, and the flowers too are all the recipients of her love. It is an energy that simply wants the best for each. And if she be taken advantage of (as some have done in her past) then she is aware, and wishes them well, and hopes that such foolishness in those who do not take care of themselves, or of others, might desist. But she herself is no fool.

Generosity of spirit needs begin with the self. That we are our own worst enemy may indeed be true, but we also needs be our own best friend. A person who lives alone, especially for years on end, needs develop a sense of oneness with something much larger than the self, a sense of connectivity to all despite the isolation, the lack of easy and instant communication, the absence of rapport. Nancy has demonstrated the self-actualization of one ‘without’, yet one ‘with-all’. Loneliness arises from dependency, arises from dwelling on what one does not have, arises from wishes that one cannot fulfill, arises from attachment to others that will not let them be free but expects their proximity, their phone calls, their letters, their attendance, their reciprocal love. But Nancy is free. She simply loves. She sends gifts and cards and letters. She makes few phone calls. She is grateful for an other’s contact, but she is quite alright to keep herself occupied, hours and days on end, independently. It is a remarkable lesson in self-actualization, this ability to love without attachment, this ability to let others be, this ability within the self to be free. And even more so, this ability to love others so very deeply.

91 years of age today. What an achievement! Some of us may slide toward that year unwittingly, our days a series of happenstances given no special reflection, no untoward notice, unless they be beset by tragedy. And even then, for many of us, there is but a rebuilding of what we always do, habitually. But for Nancy, the days have been milestones on a journey toward ‘being at peace’, as she told me yesterday. And in that peace, being truly free. For every day then, Happy Birthday, M'Lady Nancy.   

When Women are Free

One well may think one has heard it all before, but a subtle sentence change here or there makes all the difference. So too for our habits, our way of thinking, our way of being. Women and men, interdependent as they are, have a long way yet to go before either sex, as an individual, is set free.

Women have for too long been more subject to others than have men. Throughout his-story men have dominated such that a comparatively few women are elevated to fame. Not until the 1870’s did female suffrage become a political and social issue, thanks in large part to Susan B. Anthony, a co-founder of the American National Woman Suffrage Association. Not even during the 1580’s of Queen Elizabeth were women considered equals to men. And despite women like Katherine the Great, or Christina of Sweden, females have remained subjugated until only recently, when not only being franchised but also being allowed to enter any profession has become the norm. And even then, not everywhere. Almost 50 years after the initial suffragettes, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, and had to incite her female audiences to destruction of property and disruption of government proceedings in order to draw sufficient attention to the ongoing cause. Jailed and vilified, Emmeline’s lot changed with her focus on aiding the 1914 World War efforts. But women continued to be deemed second class citizens in Britain, in the States and in Canada for more than 30 or 50 years. At least, legally.

M’Lady Nancy was very much a victim of such classism. Girls were meant for Finishing School. Girls were meant for servitude and wifedom. Girls were meant to have children and to serve from behind the lines of political, social, and religious boundaries. Women were not elevated to train drivers, to pilots, to chief executive officers, to ministerial positions, to the priesthood, to become prime ministers. And if by advantage of birth a woman became a Queen, it was not other women who were permitted to counsel her, but men. Growing up, little Nancy Street, was surrounded by brilliant and ambitious men, was given the role of little sister, and was the tag-along to the sweep of history that enfolded her family. There simply was no real opportunity for her to let her talents develop. Besides, as a person evidently with a great deal of multi-potentiality, there was no one field into which she could comfortably involve herself, without having to let go of her other interests. Were a field of foci to have presented itself (let’s say a movie director, for example) she might’ve been able to deploy her varied interests to greater self-satisfaction, but the his-story of the 20’s through the 50’s, the time in which Nancy went from being little girl to grown woman, provided little opportunity or incentive. And the second world war, with things prior to, and things afterwards, consumed all. It was a harrowing time for a person to be growing up, let alone a tender girl. As such, Nancy was a nurse in London, in Scotland, in Egypt for two years, and again in London, and then, the war at last over, she married and became her war-hero-market-farmer’s wife, before the economic depression of the post-war had them seeking emigration to Australia, 1959.

A multiplicity of talents appears insufficient to have M’Lady proud of her accomplishments. There is something more she wishes she could have done with her life. Five children. A legacy of rebounding from great adversity, and still she feels she could have done more. It is that very vitality of the soul filled with potential that imbues her thinking; she feels she could have done yet more! Which of us, but for the anchors of others, the anchor of our past, might not feel that way too?

But then, if we re-examine the anonymous quote (above), is one's worth really up to the self? ‘Gnothi Saeuton’ the Grecian incantation goes, Know Thyself!  When women are ‘allowed’ to be, men too will more truly be set free.

Of Women and Men

Women have long been more subject to others than have men. Throughout his-story men have dominated such that a comparatively few women are elevated to fame. Not until the 1870’s did female suffrage become a political and social issue, thanks in large part to Susan B. Anthony, a co-founder of the American National Woman Suffrage Association. Not even during the 1580’s of Queen Elizabeth were women considered equals to men. And despite women like Katherine the Great, or Christina of Sweden, females have remained subjugated until only recently, when not only being franchised but also being allowed to enter any profession has become the norm. And even then, not everywhere. Almost 50 years after the initial suffragettes, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, and had to incite her female audiences to destruction of property and disruption of government proceedings in order to draw sufficient attention to the ongoing cause. Jailed and vilified, Emmeline’s lot changed with her focus on aiding the 1914 World War efforts. But women continued to be deemed second class citizens in Britain, in the States and in Canada for more than 30 or 50 years. At least, legally.

M’Lady Nancy was very much a victim of such classism. Girls were meant for Finishing School. Girls were meant for servitude and wifedom. Girls were meant to have children and to serve from behind the lines of political, social, and religious boundaries. Women were not elevated to train drivers, to pilots, to chief executive officers, to ministerial positions, to the priesthood, to become prime ministers. And if by advantage of birth a woman became a Queen, it was not other women who were permitted to counsel her, but men. Growing up, little Nancy Street was surrounded by brilliant and ambitious men, was given the role of little sister, and was the tag-along to the sweep of history that enfolded her family. There simply was no real opportunity for her to let her talents develop. Besides, as a person evidently with a great deal of multi-potentiality, there was no one field into which she could comfortably involve herself, without having to let go of her other interests. Were a field of foci to have presented itself (let’s say a movie director, for example) she might’ve been able to deploy her varied interests to greater self-satisfaction, but the his-story of the 20’s through the 50’s, the time in which Nancy went from being little girl to grown woman, provided little opportunity or incentive. And the second world war, with things prior to, and things afterwards, consumed all. It was a harrowing time for a person to be growing up, let alone a tender girl. As such, Nancy was a nurse in London, in Scotland, in Egypt for two years, and again in London, and then, the war at last over, she married and became her war-hero-market-farmer’s wife, before the economic depression of the post-war had them seeking emigration to Australia, 1959.

A multiplicity of talents appears insufficient to have M’Lady proud of her accomplishments. There is something more she wishes she could have done with her life. Five children. A legacy of rebounding from great adversity, and still she feels she could have done more. It is that very vitality of the soul filled with potential that imbues her thinking; she feels she could have done yet more! Which of us, but for the anchors of others, the anchor of our past, might not feel that way too?

But then, if we re-examine Bob Moawad’s quote (above), is today, today, truly a new day? ‘Gnothi Saeuton’ the Grecian incantation goes, Know Thyself!  

Come What May!

M’Lady is about to jump! At 91 years of age, a grandmother of 12, great-grandmother of 4 (going on 5), Nancy Sinclair is prepared to hurl herself from the fuselage of a plane, just as her twin brother, her husband, and both her older brothers did before her. Only, they were in the Second World War; Nancy is about to jump by choice. And unlike them Nancy will be wearing the famed Caterpillar Badge when she jumps. The Caterpillar is an award given to those who needed to use their silk parachutes to save their lives. Her husband as well as her twin brother had to bale from damaged aircraft, and both ended up in the dread Stalag Luft 111 Prisoner of War camp. In her brother’s case, the Caterpillar was awarded posthumously. He was one of the 50 shot in The Great Escape. In Nancy’s case, she wears it with pride.

There was a sparkle to her bright blue eyes when she was told that her wish to jump from a plane was about to be granted. A 91^st birthday present from her daughter and son-in-law, Linda and David, Nancy immediately set about getting the proper outfit to wear. A recent medical check up has pronounced her fit. “I want to experience what it might’ve been like for my three brothers and for my husband,” Nancy affirms. “I’ve always wanted to do it, but now I get to have a dream come true! Yes, I know it’ll have to be tandem, but it’ll be as close as I can get to sensing what they felt.”

Nancy’s eldest brother, Colonel Douglas Street, had to bail out over the Belgian Congo. Her older brother, Pat Street, was with the Parachute Regiment. Nancy’s twin brother Denys Street was the pilot of a Lancaster Bomber on the raid over Berlin, 1943. Caught in a crossfire, Denys had to bail out. Nancy’s husband (yet-to-meet,) Mosquito pilot Denys Sinclair, was also downed. His navigator caught a bullet in the head. And both Denys Sinclair and Denys Street were on the same Prisoner of War train to Stalag Luft 111. The two of them soon became firm friends. They helped dig the now famous escape tunnels. But Denys Sinclair did not draw the short straw; he played the gramophone to hide the noise as the escapees went into the tight squeeze of the escape route; never to see Denys Street again.

After release from prison Denys Sinclair went to London to seek out the family of his dead friend, Denys Street. Nancy’s father, Sir Arthur Street, Permanent Secretary for the Air Ministry, was already famous. And he was most impressed with this young man, Denys Sinclair. So was his daughter! During their courtship they both had official duties first to focus on, Nancy as a war-time nurse, Denys as a pilot, but by 1945, after several proposals, Nancy and Denys were married.

The couple established a market garden farm in Surrey, had five children, and made a vital life for themselves. But with the fiscal realities of the post-war depression era, they began to look abroad for a new life. In 1959 they emigrated to Western Australia. Denys eventually found a job as a Flying Instructor. Nancy created a Kindergarten in the local Nedlands community. And their five children grew up, got married, and had children of their own. But the disasters in Nancy’s life were not over.

She’d lost her twin brother to the war. Her father, Sir Arthur, died at the age of 58, and now Nancy lost both her grown up sons, her husband, and one of her three daughters, all in quick succession. Yet with her two remaining daughters, Linda and Fiona, and a host of friends and family and neighbours who love and support Nancy Sinclair, a most remarkable and multi-talented woman, life remains worth jumping for!  She hurtles not so much into the past as she takes on the present and the future, come what may!  

Driven By Opinion

Opinions, Intuition, Rationality. These three may be the gear-stick, brake, and gas pedal for the vehicle of man. Yet already I may seem to have made an assertion. And the rational mind will perhaps halt up and search for alternatives to my theme. After all, there are thousands of words out there, why pick those three?

Should Democritus have really stated that ‘Nothing exists accept empty space and atoms; everything else is opinion’ (and fact finders may well find that he said otherwise) then my intuitive mind instantly adopts the image and can see how our constructs of language and labels create for us opinions. Yet the rationality of ‘everything’ intrigues, for a bridge and a house and a doll do not appear as opinions. As well, that ‘nothing exists’ appears to discount ‘everything’. If we state, ‘Everything exists within space and atoms; everything is subject to opinion’, we have what I hope is taken for infallible inclusion. Ha!

The point is, acceptance of another’s statements is very much part of the rapport of life; re-evaluating, re-directing, and adding to initial impetus is a skill-set that may prevent argument, prevent a sense of counter-productivity, prevent negativity. And discourse, as we know, is quite different from argument. Discourse is the melding of minds within further exploration; argument is the disassociation of minds within asserted boundaries.

Einstein’s quote leads also toward further exploration. Powerful images: ‘Sacred. Gift. Faithful. Servant. Honors. Forgotten.’ Implications abound. Taken as read Einstein’s quote is a call to honor our Intuition and to put the servant, the rational mind, back in its place of servitude. Nice. Yet it is the last sentence that might give us reflection. “We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” While generalities generally suffice (ha!), there is a paradoxical limitation to the pronouncement, given that ‘society’ is so markedly differentiated depending on where one is; and the generality of our having ‘forgotten’ is self-evidently a generality. Who, me?

Point is, generalities are a way of our being able to express intuitive thoughts, and there be hardly a thing one can say that someone else cannot rephrase more-better, or less-better, as the case may be.

Blind acceptance of other’s opinions is an anathema to the spirit. It is better for one to examine, to evaluate, and to drive within the music of words, senses, ideas, opinions, feelings, contentions, and pronouncements of all. Argument is divisive. The skill of merging with the varied traffic of life is to be able to adjust comfortably with patterns beyond one’s control, but to wait where necessary, to overtake when safe, and to enjoy the journey.  We either drive our own vehicles independently within the laws of traffic, or we get driven. Taking responsibility makes all the difference.  And courtesy for all is the real mark of the good driver, not he who roars off from the traffic light! Now then, shall we go for a drive?

Fear or Favor?

Facing into one’s fears is an old theme. We prefer to keep them penned out, bottled down, tucked away, unsaid. Thing is, we cannot quite trust the reaction of the person we reveal ourselves to, and so we learn to be secretive, clandestine, deceitful. I always wanted parents like Timmy’s in the Lassie TV series, or like The Wilders in Little House on the Prairie, or like John Boy’s parents. Why could my own mistakes not be dealt with like that? But no, caught with my hand in the cookie jar I was not given a loving understanding of the implications of the trust I’d betrayed; I was severely dealt with. Brutally. More, my sins were told to all and sundry. And even more, that moment was thereafter the moment that I became forever afterward an ‘untrustworthy’. After all, that’s when I was called a devil, a thief, an ingrate. Yes, many a child has hardly been able to surmount such a simple moment, chiefly because of the reception they received at the discovery. “Tell me the truth now,” someone will say, and then all hell breaks loose. So children learn to lie. Adults perpetuate little white lies. It all goes toward saving face, if not our own, then someone else’s. Truth is sometimes too valuable to share. We are human, we make mistakes, but there appears a harsh judge and unforgiving jury at many a turn. Would you put on your application form that you once stole a chocolate bar? At 10, at 16, or how about at 37? No, we instinctively know what may get us into more trouble than it is worth. Ha! Imagine if we examined our presidential candidates based on such a platform? Ever lied about ‘anything’ at all? Ever? Never ever?

Actually, that whole cookie-jar story I just made up. It did not happen to me. But it serves to show the extent to which one can relate. I did not get caught at so very many of the things I did as a youth; others did. And much of the reason I did not get caught was that I was super-cautious, full of fear; others may not have cared as much for the consequences, so they were less cautious. And then there’s the whole issue of how very differently we each learn.  A single glance is enough to reprogram one student altogether; other students I’ve known, especially back in my boarding school days, got caned many times over for doing the same thing. Fear reaches us differently. Any jail reveals that much. And conscience grows us in us at different rates; we learn some things quickly, other things we repeat and repeat. Other’s examples do not suffice, or we might have been perfect after Solomon, or Jesus, or...

Dichotomies are not quite my thing. The either/or transubstantiations of life tend to polarize at the expense of the whole. Some psychoanalytical types (I guess I be one) claim we either give or we take, we love or we fear, we are positive or we are negative. What may not be understood by the listener is that we well may be perceived as such, in the moment! And then we add ‘predominantly’ to our actions and we create a general picture of ourselves being half empty or half full, etc., and augment thereby the labelling of ourselves such that we readily say, “I’m a fearful person.” Well, I’ve been called a coward once or twice in my life, perhaps more. But I also have been called brave. It is knowing inside oneself what the value of leaping the fence and countenancing the dragon is worth to the self, to others, to the universe, that matters. And even then, one may most surely get it ‘wrong’. What to one person is the boogie-man personified is to another just a harmless grass snake. Some may mock at your fears.

Meeting one’s dragon head on and taming it might best be a most private thing. Bringing it back for others to see is likely to have it shot down on sight, or at least to incur everlasting distrust that it may eventually reveal the beast that it truly is. For some, our dragons are invisible, yet others know they are there. They have their own too. Many of us cannot name them. Others feed them, like caged-up pets. To walk freely amidst the ongoing turmoil of life is to be one who truly knows his dragons, tamed, and free. 

A Courage of Convictions?

Perfection is but fleeting. That eightfold pathway (of my last essay) has central to its tenants the word ‘path’. It is a thing upon which one moves. Queuing up once to see the Crown Jewels in The Tower, I was disappointed to learn that they were replicas, anyway. But if such jewels be deemed perfection then their very stasis is not an anathema to my contentions; the bejewelled crowns are entirely dependent on the protection and esteem and evaluation given to them by another. Some little girl would wear them to a fairy party; leave them behind in the taxi. Things may be ‘perfect’, but perfect in terms of being human, of living, of doing, of enjoying a sunset is fleeting at best. The neighbour says, “Pretty good, but you should see the sunsets out at the point, or the one we saw in...” and by comparison the perfect moment is transformed. It is the transitory nature of our beings to which i here draw attention.

It all is what it is. Venn diagrams have the effect of apportioning things, concepts, people, attributes, and collections into neatly fenced in particulars. Experiments in classrooms have shown that all children with blue eyes, segregated from these with green, with brown, and with flecked eyes, can easily become marginalized by their very apportionment. Once we segregate, allot, label, and quantify something we relegate it almost automatically to someone else’s hierarchy, if not our own. It is natural for us to lean toward, belong to, subscribe to, adhere to, and join up with things we find interesting, most like us, and we thereby entrench and espouse the same values. Our children adopt, in general, our values. Our group manifests, in general, a similar set of values. Yet boardrooms abound with contentions, fragmentations, splits, differences of opinion, and overthrows. It all is natural.

To not exercise strong preference is to be perceived as phlegmatic. To not have strong wants and needs is to be perceived as wishy-washy, a pushover. To be integrative and assimilative and accepting and easy and accommodating may be perceived as being bland. To not get riled, annoyed, angered and actively engaged is to be seen as weak. To not put one’s foot down may be perceived as cowardly. Until we see such an one stand up for a cause. Racism. Disenfranchisement. Suffrage. Intentional harm. Abuse. These are the moments where a person stands affirmed by convictions of integrity and calls a spade a spade, and does what one can to counter the forces of blatant negativity, or not. But as for the rest, negativity is not so blatant. It is a subtle apportioning of acceptable and non-acceptable, whether it is our disliking someone for talking with their mouth full, or another for their preferences being different from the self.

Dismissive-ness can be a subtle aggression. Being discounted is tantamount to having been given the cold shoulder. Yet it is most natural to each of us to do so. Jokes abound about those with whom we do not identify. And we easily give defamatory, derogatory, dung-filled terminology to those we dislike. Their own existence within the subsets of the Venn, different from our own, are at once devalued.

Integration would have us allow for everything to coexist, as is, as it was, as it shall be, with our own influence toward easing the discord at the edges of evolutionary growth toward more and more inclusiveness as we head toward more and more enlightenment. The proof of it is in history. The slave trade overthrown, women receiving the vote, homosexuals freed from closets. Tolerance and acceptance grows in our conceptualization of who we are as a body-politic on this planet. But not quite yet for everybody. The Venn Diagram above can serve to dissemble us, or to unify; depends, doesn’t it?     

At the very least, having seen it, I have done something. Now to act upon the courage of my convictions too!