How Important Are You?

"Do you see Color?"  

Carol Cassara asked that question on a blog post the other day. She had heard an interview on tv where the person being interviewed was asked about bias and bigotry and the person replied that they did not see color! Is that a good thing or a bad thing. Or did I simply misunderstand.

Carol pointed out the ignoring another person's color denied that person of their identity all together. After all we are a part of many generations of humans that led to who they are. But her thinking was that when a person says that it is not what they mean. Those that disagree with the statement have taken it literally. We might do the same if we didn't think about what the deeper meaning was. Here is what she wrote:

"So let’s break it down. Yes, yes, fools like me do want to rush in where angels fear to tread. Kids, we MUST discuss these hard topics or we are doomed to be stuck in this hell called our society forever.

So it’s impossible not to see color. Color of hair, color of eyes, color of clothing and YES, color of SKIN. Racial identity. We ALL see color. But here’s what I think people NOT of color mean when they say “I don’t see color."

They mean that they do not attach negative and stereotypical traits to a particular race.

I liked her words...a lot. Thank you Carole for bringing meaning to a phrase that is being misread over and over. Unfortunately, as I travel the world as well as my own country, I see evidence that many leaders do see "color". I give you that wall between Mexico and the USA that I live close to in the winter. 

Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates

I might take that a bit further. It is a razors edge we walk on when it come to color, age, sexual orientation or even linage. It all depends on what your base reaction is. I have traveled a lot and I know that color permeates every culture. The Chinese look down on the Mongolians. The Indian's base their opinion of another on the color of their skin and is a result of centuries of the caste system. The Middle East is all about religion and so it goes. In the United States all you have to be is different. Each finds someone to hate or denigrate. Maybe that is true everywhere on this planet.

I have always believed that humans disparage others because it makes themselves feel more important. Back when I was a child we often said the our poor uneducated white people hated the blacks because it make them feel bigger and, well, less poor and uneducated. Does that make sense?

I took a trip to India in May of this year where I got a glimpse of what the English rule in that country did to that culture. Inside The Imperial New Dehli where my daughter-in-law and granddaughters stayed spent one night, we saw a world where no sign of the language of India appeared. Even thought pictures lined the walls were lithographs of India's history created back in the sands of time, the language under each was English. It seemed like a time warp of sorts. The hotel was built in early 1930 and opened in 1936. The Indian people won their independence in 1947. The architecture speaks to the era. 

But according to this piece of history of the hotel, the governing body and those with influence in India found a place here. It served as a meeting place for the Indo-British governing bodies in spite of it's "Britishness". I find that very interesting. 

"The Imperial was placed on the second most important social boulevard of the nation, the prestigious Queensway, now called Janpath, the first being the grand and ceremonious Kingsway, now known as Rajpath. From the time it opened its doors in the 1930s, when India was beginning to write the last chapters of its saga on independence, there was little space in New Delhi for an Indo-British rubbing of shoulders. The Imperial provided such a space. Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met at The Imperial under congenial conditions to discuss the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. The Nehru family had a permanent suite here."

Doorman

My suite.

Grounds of the Imperial

The Spice Road Restaurant

Before dinner drinks with Daughter-in-law Amanda

The British control of this country is history but how it left the country with an image of it's people was less than kind. I suppose even today there are those that look down on the Indian culture. I recall when a girl from my hometown married a gentleman from India 40 years ago, my mother commented that he just look black to her.  

As for the Indian people they also had the caste system leaving every level of society feeling better about themselves because they had someone to look down on...that was and is important. My son's maid did not clean the toilets until caught refusing to do that ugly "unclean" job. It is and was part of what a lower caste did.

When we traveled in China my son lived in Pu Dong just east of Shanghai. The development where his school was locate was built at the end of a dirt road that traveled through a Mongolian settlement. The people lived (and maybe worked) in the neighborhood. The school for the children was segregated from the local school district serving the Chinese people. It was not good! I might mention here that no "foreigner" could attend a Chinese public school. Inner Mongolia is part of China so there is that. But in my world it was not an unfamiliar.

But do we not acknowledge that these people are from a different culture and actually do look different than we do? I don't think so. We simply need to learn more and maybe even rub shoulders with them so we can understand and even maybe make a part of their culture our own. I am as guilty as anyone of carrying bigotry from a childhood where people struggled and it was important to, well, feel important.

So, how important do you need to feel? I stopped and thought about that today and I think we all should do that?

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Rules Worth Following: NO BEING CREEPY

In 2017 ago I wrote a post about rules from a Cranky Old Man blog. His take on the rules were just plain fun and interesting. The rule that I loved was so to the point and I have never forgotten it. It went like this:

• "NO BEING CREEPY". 

I try to follow that rule everyday...and it is truly is hard sometimes. 

But today's post is a little more serious. I want to talk about road blocks we put in our own path...ones that can in may cases make a bad time in our life even worse. 

I was going through my Facebook page last night reading all those items I have shared over the last few months-words of wisdom from people wiser than myself yet actually could have come from my mouth. 

The one that struck me was an idea about all the rules we abide by in our daily life...sort the laundry into several piles, sort the knives, forks and spoon before returning them to the drawer, sort the laundry again before returning them to the drawers, push in your chair when you leave the table and don't drop the baby.

Most of these rules, except the one about dropping the baby, are just suggestions. If you have ever looked up and found your world in shambles to the point that you feel worthless, you will know what I mean. Rules can do that.

In the Facebook post taken from Quora, the lady that wrote  was very depress and actually could not do her work because the rules were just too much. So the dishes sat molding in the sink. Her house began to smell. It all seemed so insignificant that she hesitated to share her increasing depression with her therapist because...who care about dishes? Other people were in a lot worse shape over really big stuff so dishes were simply not important.

After much urging she finally talked about her problem. She hated to prewash the dishes before them went in the an old not working very good dishwasher...it went like this:

“Run the dishwasher twice.” [the therapist said]

I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.

“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist.” 

Quote from Kate Scott's Quora feed.

Rules do not exist! I think the therapist is a genius...washing the dishes before washing the dishes does not need to happen. And adding a cycle or two was not really important if that is what you need to do to get through the day. It is o.k.

Most rules are not written on a big tablet and handed down from the mount. Most of them are more guidelines that can be erased or skirted around.

So the thought for the day is "Getting it done might be more important that how you are getting it done!" The rules be hanged. 

S-o-o-o-o...what rules did you break today?

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I have written several posts on "Rules". I like this one:

No Urinating on the Golf Course

What will that look like?

Many, many times I have written about growing old with a positive attitude. I am beginning to wonder if I truly understood what that looked like in real life.

I turned 79 on my last birthday but this is not really about me. Those people around me are a little older and a little younger in their age. But this is not about that either.

I have often talked about a study group in San Diego that focused on cohorts...age mates I suppose. They were all women. But more importantly, they were not well at all. But in spite of aches and pains, these women remained positive. I thought, great, at least we will not be grumpy or angry. That is good I think.

My friends was celebrating 100 years of
Life at a party. She played 18 holes of
Golf with lady’s club.
They have special rules for her.

But what I did not realize is that as people grow older they miss what they cannot do anymore. Finding a replacement for a lifelong love of reading or golfing or even mowing the lawn is not easy. Each person misses something just a little different. What I would miss more than anything is being a snowbird...I love my life today. It is perfect for both my husband and me. There would be an empty space left in life.

I was at a gathering for my friend Franny last Wednesday. (She was being given a 100th birthday party.) I sat with a group of seemingly well, happy and satisfied women...my age I suppose but some were younger. Their age was not so much important as their health. I am talking about health issues that cannot be fixed. 

After the obligatory “organ recital” were everyone shares their aches and pains, the conversation moved to things everyone loves to do and a could not do anymore.It was very interesting how they were all struggling for that next passion to replace what was gone.

I think we should start a handicapped golf league so we could still play a little golf and have a happy hour afterwards.

I love playing cards and it fills most of my social time.

The thing I really want is to spend time here at the golf course with other women...I love the social part of golf almost more than golfing!

 

Visit to a local resort in Tucson.

Of course there are ways to all of those things. A game at putting, cards in the club house and even a scheduled happy hour. Most holes can be filled I suppose. 

That was when I began to wonder about that fourth stage in life. That one where life goes on in spite of it all. That part where disability sets in. Now I am talking about myself. What will I want to do?

One ladies husband is turning 90 soon and she said that he didn’t want to eat anything that was good for him...it sounded so wonderful to him. 

Carole and I always said that when we reached that stage we were going to do all those things that were absolutely forbidden...in her case she is going to take up smoking again. I might have wine for breakfast if that sounds good or eat butter. 

The truth is that making ourself miserable with overdoing our forbidden doesn’t sound like as much fun as it did at one time.

Do you suppose that a day will come when there is an acceptance of the fourth stage or will it be thrust upon us? Will it be on a Friday or a Tuesday? Will in be in the spring  or the summer? Then will we all stop fighting what is happening to find some peace? I don’t know but I do know that my husbands’ s life has never been about sitting still physically or mentally. I am right there with him. I am hoping that being mentally active will be enough to keep us both happy.

Do you have any thoughts?

Have a wonderful day.

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Oh, and as for Franny...she loved her party. She played 18 holes of golf and she beats everyone every time. They are rethinking letting her hit the ball closer on one par three...that is her special rule! She is an amazing women and we all want to be like her when we grow up!

 

Alexander Hamilton on "Exil[ing] an entire category of people without hearing or trials." Was That A Good Idea?

I was reading a blog post the other day on the emotional response we have to words and how reading expands our perception of other people's take on the world around us. The ideas that the post started flying around in my head was amazing.

The Hamilton book is at my bedside now. Yesterday was a day of rest for me so I sat up in bed with a pencil reading the book and underlining passages. It was amazing how looking at life through a periscope makes things so much clearer. The right and wrong of things is easier to see when we are talking about what has happened and then have the privilege of actually seeing the outcome.

The passage that caught my interest yesterday was related to the emotional response of the rabble and radicals of NYC to those people that hung back during the war failing to decide to join the cause. In a law passed by New York, Tory's were evacuated from the city and sent back to the place they came from. In fact New York City celebrated Evacuation Day on November 25 for over 100 years beginning in 1783.

Alexander Hamilton opposed that law and defended those British sympathizers courts of law. Here was his thinking as stated by Ron Chernow, the author of Alexander Hamilton:

He railed against the baleful precedent that would be set if the legislature exiled an entire category of people without hearing or trials. If that happened, "no man can be safe nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense."

Hamilton disputed the rhetoric of Tory baiters and said categorically that they are motivated by "little vindictive selfish mean passions". 

I might add here that Hamilton saw that those people being evacuated were taking the new country's monetary wealth with them. "-seven thousand had sailed for Nova Scotia in April" of that year and he "feared for the economic wreckage that might ensue from the large-scale exodus." so the very rich left with the money before the evacuation order because they saw the handwriting on the wall. It took many years for the new nation to catch back up again.

Change a very few words in this passage and we could talking about today's news. We could insert Muslim, Mexican, Black, Canadian etc. History is repeating itself. As history does that very thing, those of us that sit watching have the right and obligation to reference that happened in the past. We can and should learn from the past because it is being played out once again.

Now, you have to know that Hamilton was the man that actually came up with the concept that is now our constitution, the one that Jefference so elegantly put into words. He wrote and submitted a resolution to the Continental Congress setting out a plan for amending the Articles of Confederation in in 1783 or there abouts. Our constitution was not passed until 1787.

The reason this is all so interesting is that Hamilton wrote everything down. His words were there for everyone to read and understand. We are learning how permanent words are even online on sites like Twitter and Facebook even today. They NEVER go away.

I am beginning to see that the way the American people feel now about so many issues are the same emotions our founders felt. Fear, bigotry and the knee jerk reaction are not new things. We are smart if we take heed and take a look at history and decide if we want out place in history to be remembered one way or the other.

It is all about words and books and learning. I liked that blog post a lot. I wish I could remember where I saw it.

What do you think? Is that a good idea?

It is just a thought.

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Note: I am beginning to understand now how the cast of Hamilton felt so emotionally attached to this issue that they addressed Mike Pence during a performance back in November. The past has become very real for that cast in ways we cannot even fathom. I thank them for that!