Enough is Enough

He can't help it, really.  After all, there was a time when he was all alone and on his own--scavenging, starving.  There wasn't enough.

But now his brain is stuck in that place, a place that screams "shortage." He spends most of his time reacting to the screams.  He's never far from the potential for satiety, the refill, the handout.  He's an addict.

I've thought about ways that I might help him overcome his insecurity and my own feelings of pain and frustration at his fathomless fear--I've thought about some kind of therapeutic intervention, some new gestalt. But there is no reason here. There is no reason to doubt that there will be a next meal, a safe harbor, a home....and there is no reason to overcome the doubt.  It is survival.

To some degree, we are all survivors of trauma, and victims of our own ensuing insecurities.  We may not hover around our food dish like Thomas the cat (who in the years since we took him in hasn't missed a meal or snack, has grown big as a turkey and rightfully earned the title "Fat Boy"), but we do hover.  We hover around that which will address, however temporarily, our shortages and shortcomings: the holes in our souls.  Food or clothes or shopping or politics or religion--the lofty and the lowly--we all seek to satisfy that which will never be satisfied.  It works for a while, whatever it is, until it doesn't work and we're back, hovering, hoping, longing.

Until we find the reason.

My NAY-bor

Mark this one "easier said than done."

I swear he's a walking oxymoron (with emphasis on the "moron").  He's generous and uncouth and caring and stubborn, at once as wise as Solomon and dumb as a stump.  He'll show up unannounced with his arms overflowing with gifts and then launch into a scornful Trump-like rant about immigration.  He'll snark about a friend behind her back but then be the only one to visit her when she's in the hospital.  He'll make fun of anything intelligent you have to say but never let your birthday go by without bringing you a bagful of gifts.

I know, it's not (always) easy to love your neighbor.  But here's the thing: the love we need to share is not a love based on good behavior and a generous spirit.  It's not a love to be withdrawn when the snarky comments fly.  It's just love--unconditional.

Except for one...the only condition...that we must.  There is no choice.

But something tells me that in the end it won't matter anyway...the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly...just the love.

"Faith, hope, love abide, these three.  But the greatest of these is love."

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(c) 2015 Fiechter
 

Stunned

When he said it, I was stunned.  And then I practically had to bite my tongue to keep from crying.

I'm privileged to work in a program that provides support and assistance to people who have been living on the streets longer than many of them can remember.  Some have serious physical or mental health problems.  The system labels them "chronically homeless."  We just call them people.  They are people who have been marginalized by a culture that glorifies the strong and villifies those who have had the deck stacked against them from the get go.  But don't get me started.

Not long ago, we decided that we would recognize the birthdays of each of our program participants. 

"What a nice idea," I thought.

Today one of our participants celebrated his 62nd birthday.  When we gave him his card he was delighted.  And that's when he said it.

"It''s been 31 years since anyone has given me a birthday card."

I can hardly wrap my brain around that...let alone my heart.  Thirty one years?  He hasn't gotten a birthday card in 31 years?   For half of his life he hasn't received so much as a simple birthday card--a note to tell him that someone cares that he is alive, that someone is celebrating his life on this planet?  Not one?

I'm so sick and tired of living in a world where people are tossed aside like trash.  I'm so sick and tired of living in a world where human beings are left to fend for themselves for decades without so much as a card to let them know someone gives a damn about them.  I'm so sick and tired of watching as people of privilege treat their pets better than they treat their neighbors.  And I don't care how weird or angry or cranky or stinky they are.  What really stinks is how badly we treat the people we should be loving.

Just a card, a note, a hand, a vote.  You can change the world.

One thing I know for sure, I'll never look at a birthday card the same way again.  Will you?

That's the Spirit!

Yesterday I listened as yet another person shared how essential his faith in a "higher power" had been in his journey from chronic homelessness toward a more fulfilling, healthy, stable and happy life....and I started to wonder.  

Spirituality has been defined in many ways, and certainly is expressed and embraced in a variety of fashions.  Some follow a very traditional route, via established religious codes.  Others forge a path that samples from different traditions (a friend describes himself as a "Jew-Bu" reflecting on his Jewish roots and Buddhist sensibilities).  Others create their own path, acknowledging their spirituality while avoiding or even rejecting traditional ideas about God.  Some reject notions of spirituality altogether.  Yet, even so…

What seems to be true across this spectrum of belief is an innate human desire to understand ourselves and the world around us--to create meaning out of our own experience.  We want to make sense out of our stories, and we want our stories to make sense.   But when our stories don't make sense, or they are too painful or difficult for us to embrace--when we we feel disconnected or ungrounded or struggle with mental illnesses that are a barrier to our finding positive meaning, that's when the opportunities arise for other elements to take the place of the meaning we all desire--things like drugs or alcohol or other numbing or distracting behaviors.  Ironically, the things we turn to in order to find meaning become the very things that keep us from finding it.

This opens up an opportunity for us, as people in the privileged places of helping others: how can we encourage people to explore their spiritual natures--to find meaning in their stories and continue on their journeys toward richer, healthier and more meaningful lives?  How can we help open up avenues of healing and hope for those we serve?

I'm not suggesting we promote any particular religion, perspective or path.  What I'm saying is that the paths are already there--and one way we can help people grow and break free of destructive patterns is to encourage their exploration; invite people to walk down a new path of meaning.

Genius!

There's only ever going to be one Einstein.  The mold broke after Astaire and Rogers. No bulb will ever burn with the same brightness as Edison.  As much as we may long for one there is no clone of Curie and no one ever met another Etta.

True genius is rare.  Or is it?

Of course it's true that the genius of people like Michelangelo and Mozart isn't common.  Austins don't abound.  Roosevelts are rare. Tolstoys don't grow on trees.  But is it their particular genius that we recall--or that they became known for it?  What if the next symphony is living on Skid Row?  What if the cure for cancer is working a minimum wage job because she only speaks Spanish?  What if....

What if genius isn't rare?

The truth is, each of us is a genius--a genius at being ourselves.  No one does it better (or, as Oscar Wilde quipped, "Be yourself.  Everyone else is already taken").  And each of us has, built in, a genius that is unmatched.  The trick is in recognizing it...and our gift to the world is in acting on it.

Many are taught early on that it's best to keep things hidden--under a bushel, out of harm's way.  We don't want to risk it.  And sadder still, many have learned, over and over, that there is no opportunity for them to shine--their genius oppressed because of their state of mind, the color of their skin or the curl of their hair.  But none of that takes away from the reality that each person on this planet has something to give. 

Maybe you can imagine a world in which the genius of every one of us is realized.

I think you can.  You're smart that way.

(c) Fiechter, 2015.  Thanks for reading...feel free to share.  Permission for republication is reserved. 

Born Blind?

"We are born color-blind." 

It's a recurring theme among people of good will in the wake of yet another horrifying and tragic act of terrorism against innocent people who have had to bear the terrifying burden of racism.  As we struggle to understand, as we are stunned and saddened by our own complicity, and as we search for a way forward many want to remind us that hatred and violence are taught and learned. 

"No one is born a racist," they say.

The science is more complicated and challenging.  The reality is, human beings have evolved with an uncanny ability to instantly recognize difference.  Before our conscious brains are even aware of it, we have made note of our differences and marked our territory.  It's a trait that evolved for our survival in a world in which there was little interaction between villages and cultures at a time when the ability to instantly recognize differences would mean the difference between life and death: survival. 

We are not born color-blind.  That's the problem.  We are born with a keen awareness of our differences.  The challenge is really what we do with that.  If we spend our time denying it, we'll be fooling ourselves and we'll get nowhere.  If we go on thinking it's OK to remain separate because of our differences, we'll all die a long and painful death.  But if we see our differences and celebrate them, work to understand one-another and join together as a single humanity to make this world better for all people, well, then, we might just find that way forward so many of us long for.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

A Little Self-Control

Everything about her was larger than life: her laugh, her car, her hairdo--and most of all, her heart.  It's really hard to imagine that she's gone. 

It didn't take very long, I'm told: a winter diagnosis, a spring death.  And while the countless lives she touched live on all the better for having known her, today she has me reflecting on how little control we have in life.  Here today and gone tomorrow: what have we to say?

As it turns out, a lot.  True, there is much in life that is out of our control, and we really do live much happier lives when we heed the instruction of Wisdom to let these things go.  But we are fools wasting precious opportunities if we think there is nothing over which we have control.

My friend knew that.  That's why she spent so much time loving people.  It didn't necessarily change what they thought of her, but it did change what she thought of them.  You see, if there's one thing we DO have control over in this life, it is how we treat others.  Love is a verb--a call to action. 

I guess sometimes someone has to die to get us to notice.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

(c) Fiechter, 2015.  Thanks for reading.  It's nice to share--so please do.  But remember to ask first if you're reprinting or publishing.