Tears, and things deep and true.

This morning I finish​ed The Four Winds, a novel by Kristin Hannah​.  The end was both sad and inspiring: I was moved to tears. When that happens, I often remember my late mother saying something like, "When tears come, you know you have found something deep and true."

To many people, crying - especially when a man cries - is a sign of weakness. Surely, it is a sign of vulnerability - but that is not a bad thing!  It is sad that many people seem unwilling to act on, or even fully experience, what is deep and true for them.  There is a lot of ​"keeping it together,​" for our self-image and others' image of us.  At what cost? Vitality? Joy? Connection?

I would rather be deeply and openly moved and inspired by stories of courage, strength, grace, perseverance, and love than be stoic at the cost of experiencing the emotions that flow from those experiences. 

I find a kind of freedom and joy in being reminded that, if we look for them, there are as many occasions for deep and true emotions as we can bear - each moment of Life, wretched and horrifying or glorious and inspiring, being uniquely amazing.

Examining reactions to unfulfilled expectations

Though shared values and beliefs in what is right and what is wrong are essential to peaceful and just societies and cultures, the perception of right and wrong varies from person to person.

How we react when our expectations are not met - in matters large and small, personal, social and political - is important to the quality of our daily lives and our relationships. Usually, there is a major subconscious aspect to our reactions to life's events, including to unfulfilled expectations. And often - because it is human to want to be right - we accept our reactions as right: we don't examine them.

Yet we decide, consciously or not, whether to accept unfulfilled expectations and find and focus on other things that brings us gratitude and joy, OR to judge ourselves wronged by disappointment - somehow victimized by Life or by another person.  

The habit of reacting to - of judging - unfulfilled expectations as wrong makes it hard for us to be happy and to maintain our relationships. In particular, the more entitled we feel to have our expectations of another person met by them - especially if we disregard how we may be failing to meet their expectations of us! - the greater the frustration and misery for both. And "minor" issues often become major ones.

So, dear readers, I invite you to join me in striving to cultivate the habit of examining our reactions to  life as it unfolds, and retaining only the helpful ones - ideally, the loving ones - as an important part of self-knowledge and being a good, peaceful and happy person, partner, friend and citizen.

Where will presidential excesses stop?

Two questions inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 query, “I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?”

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President of the United States, acting outside “his exclusive constitutional authority” (Trump v. United States, slip op. at 21), starts and escalates a war without a Declaration of War by Congress (Const. Art. I, sec. 8), where will it stop?

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President makes threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and the Secretary of War threatens to show “no quarter, no mercy” and not to follow “stupid rules of engagement”, which threats are “plainly illegal”; see When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality: The Slippery Slope to Total War on Iran, M. Donovan and R. VanLandingham, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.); where will it stop?

 

Published on Substack as "Where will it stop?"  

An homage to Nathan Hale

When my time is up, I aim to repeat what my mother said were my very first words - "Lee happy" - and to have no regret that, having only one life to give to my family, my community, my country, and humanity, I gave less in that service than the best I was given to see to do.