Heartbreak

I am not doing well today.

It’s been a difficult week, emotionally. As someone who understands that feelings are just sensations in the body that we interpret as one thing or another, I have been working on not turning those ickies of what feels like fear into interpretations of loneliness, abandonment, friendlessness (which is one of the paths my brain chose to take), and blaming instead the consistently, objectively, large scale BAD STUFF that is undeniably contributing to my current state. War (Israel) and war (Sudan) and war (Ukraine), and climate catastrophes and brutality and heartlessness fucking everywhere our eyes choose to focus.

I think my irritability, acting out blame and frustration these days, may be a reaction to my futility in controlling the things that actually matter and that scare me the most: a no-holds-barred Trump presidency; a non-Trump presidency and civil war; the best case scenario of a non-Trump presidency, no civil war, and nearly half of eligible voters endorsing the rhetoric of hatred, violence, revenge, and antipathy. I can’t change that. But I can yell at B for misplacing a phone charger. And then feel like shit, of course. And then I can just focus on what a broken, horrible person I am and forget about the rest of the world. Doop-de-doop.

The range of news I can tolerate has gotten smaller and smaller. Not just that I don’t like it, and not just the constant reminder that the leaders of one of our two major political parties will literally put people’s lives on the line – both people they’d just as soon see dead and their own supporters – in an attempt to increase fear and anger and votes. Not just the nearly unbelievable compulsion to spread lies about legal, invited immigrants eating White people’s pets and the government blocking assistance to hurricane victims. It’s so much more than that: I feel physical pain whenever I hear an otherwise decent-sounding human tell a reporter they’re voting for Trump because “the economy” or “illegal immigrants” or when I hear anything personal out of Gaza or Lebanon or Sudan, or when I hear Americanness or masculinity or decency defined as cruelty, exclusion, fear, and violence; or when I hear people blaming the pain and emptiness in the pit of their stomachs on foreigners or trans people or poor people or non-Christians instead of the actual, intentional source that is the isolation, fear, and materialism, mandated by unfettered capitalism. Or just the burden of being human, if you prefer that. I’ve listened to NPR’s Morning Edition 4-7 days a week for 20-30 years. Now I can’t get through more than 5 minutes without rushing to mute my speakers, for fear of a total breakdown and inability to get through the work day. Even my comfort news is mostly unwatchable these days. Seth Meyers helped B & I get through COVID and everything since, not only because he’s delightful, hilarious, and a far leftist, but because he does the only Trump impersonation that both diminishes his power and allows me a little compassion for him – making him both more laughable and less terrifying. But I can’t sit through the show’s clips of his latest violent rhetoric or unabashed lies without screaming at the television or hunching over with my head in my hands, my eyes deep in my palms, just praying for it all to be over.

And here I am writing this – writing which feels more essential to my ability to get through the day than literally anything else – when I should SHOULD be making calls to Wisconsin voters (presumably helping keep Trump out of office) or signing up for more Voter Hotline shifts (presumably helping MN voters with information and voting issues) or preparing for my next Mindfulness Meditation class (presumably helping my students cope with whatever happens in the election) or doing the reading for my own MBSR class (presumably helping myself deal with this and all the rest of the stuff in my life) because I feel paralyzed by fear and sadness.

I can buffer this a bit by acknowledging that I am hormonal, and who knows what impact perimenopause is having on my mental state. In general, I’ve gotten off easy in the lottery of female chemistry, but it’s difficult not knowing if my heightened emotions, sensitivity, fragility in the last few years is private and personal or because the world, the country, humanity, is so fucking scary right now. Does it matter which? Probably not. Except to remind me that impermanence is reliable and real, when nothing else is.

There’s been an interesting shift for me in the past few months, and more subtly over the past few years, – from my default emotion – anger – to a less familiar one – sadness. When all of this cruelty and chaos manages to seep past my news filter I feel my heart unzipping, the zipper irretrievably separating. I know I should let it. That’s what the Buddhists say. Let your Heart Break Open. But then how do I get through the day? How do I do my stupid job and cook meals and interact with people I care about and enjoy the humor and beauty that makes life worth living? How do I do that if I’m curled up on the floor in tears?

Don’t worry, I still get angry over stupid, non-political shit. Just ask B. Poor B.

Today is the Day of Atonement. As usual, I am fasting but not so much Atoning. Instead I’m writing, which is pretty close for me. And, I guess, Confessing. Because I’m not great at being a Jew.

I feel like an open wound. I feel somehow responsible for everything and completely powerless. Which is simultaneously true (karma) and false (I can only control my own actions & reactions). I wish I had people to sit and cry with in community. Why don’t I have that? If I had it, would I just be doing that all the time? Surely someone, sometime, would tell us to stop, right? Or we’d run out of tears? Where is our grief circle for the death of compassion? I can’t even generate hatred for Trump anymore. I just feel so fucking sad that people buy into his shit. GOOD PEOPLE, as well as some irretrievably or near-impossibly fucked up people. Maybe too sick to be cured in this lifetime, so the best case scenario is dropping some breadcrumbs for the next. If you’re someone who believes everyone who doesn’t vote for Harris/Walz is stupid, utterly selfish, or unapologetically racist, then you are closing your eyes to a lot of worthwhile human beings. Those judgments apply to a lot of Trump voters, but not to half of the voting population. Why do I care that you don’t believe me? Because there is no bouncing back from the current self-destructive mutual fear and hatred if we oversimplify, build walls, and just bounce around our little bubbles. It’s certainly easier to demonize the other political side – their leaders and mouthpieces make it so fucking easy – but dehumanizing people is literally the beginning of every genocide, and every act of brutality ever. I can’t let myself buy into it. Which means that, instead of angry, I am heartbroken.

I am also subject to my hormones, and who knows what impact perimenopause is having on my mental state. I’ve had a winning ticket in the lottery of female chemistry, but it’s difficult not knowing if my heightened emotions, sensitivity, fragility in the last few years is private and personal or because the world, the country, humanity, is so fucking scary right now. Does it matter? Probably not.

Emotionally, I will feelbetter tomorrow. My period will start and the magnitude of these emotions will feel temporarily inaccessible. But only the magnitude of them. It doesn’t change the truth of any of this. And it doesn’t help me figure out the answer to what do I do? I’m a notorious dabbler; I have no clearly defined role in this life, or not one that is easy to translate into action. What should I be doing? (What is this should? What the fuck is that shit? I’ll tell you what it is: my evil voice. It says everything I do is wrong and/or not enough. It recently stuck me that I don’t think I’ve ever gone a full day in my life without hearing my evil voice – faintly or deafeningly – declaring that I SHOULD actually be doing something more useful, necessary, difficult, productive It’s like my parents were Capitalism & Catholicism; they were neither.) I have a serious spiritual practice, I’m a writer, I actively volunteer, I have been involved in election stuff. I don’t know where I should be putting in my energies and therefore they swirl and ball up into a knot inside me that sucks me dry. Because I’m overwhelmed with all of it. The state of the world, the state of and threats to the people in it, and how little I can do to change it.

The only times I can remember feeling good this week was when I was talking to folks at Peace House or participating in a Restorative Justice conference – the activities that take me out of myself and bring another, an “other”, person into clearer focus and care and community. So if that feels good, I should do more of that, right? Well, first, it’s not easy to just increase that time commitment, but secondly, I don’t know if I should be doing what feels good. Maybe the torture of phone banking is just what this world needs from me. Is it?

Of course there are no right answers. Truly. I believe that, underneath my evil voice. I will probably phone bank if only to fight off my evil self’s future insistence that I caused Trump to win (what an ego!). I’m not looking for any sympathy or any answers, here. Any answers you might provide will be rationalized into what I have already chosen to believe. And I am truly, as they say, fine. But I’d love to hear if this resonates with any of you. I know I’m not alone, but I’m feeling very alone this October 2024. You?

Israel/Palestine Feel It? Or Fight Over It?

Once again … still … always … these are difficult times, friends.

To be honest, I haven’t been digging into world news much. I get the lowlights from NPR and Seth Meyers, and haven’t sought out a whole lot more. I’ve downloaded podcasts about what’s going on in Israel & Palestine and the specific cognitive dissonance of liberal American Jews, but I haven’t listened to most of them. When I have a few minutes free, chomping down PB&J before moving onto other responsibilities, I’ve generally sought out educational pieces on the history of Israel & Palestine, not reporting from the front lines. This practice hasn’t felt right, but it also doesn’t make my heart hurt. And I’ve got other stuff on my plate.

My beloved online sangha had our monthly checkin on Halloween and I was late due to candy responsibilities and missed what was going on with the Jewish women in the group. I assumed we were all on the same page politically – this is a spiritual community that came out of a Socially Engaged Buddhist program, so we tend to agree on issues – but it became kinda clear I wasn’t really with them in spirit. On my turn, I talked about my disgust with what’s happening and what’s happened, some difficult conversations I’ve had with an anti-Muslim guy at The Listening Place, sympathizing with anti-Israel protestors while questioning the tone and content of those protests, and basically just spitting out whatever random shit was floating around in my mind. Someone else spoke, we sat in silence for a bit, and then one of my Jewish Sisters said,

We’ve been kicked out of everywhere. Where is there left for us to go?

And I finally felt it. I felt there was something deeply lacking in my engagement. I felt that I was behaving in a way that was human-adjacent, instead of truly sinking into the human horror of the situation. And it wasn’t just that I haven’t seen many images of what did happen and what is happening (though that is true), and it’s not that I don’t have sympathy (I do), and it’s not that the fog cleared and I saw the clear path to the right way to witness this conflict, but I knew what I was doing was wrong.

It wasn’t until a dear friend and I connected today that I figured out what was wrong, or rather we figured it out together. She and I are both Jewish, but almost entirely by heritage. Neither of us grew up in a Jewish culture or in families that practiced Judaism, culturally or religiously. We did both grow up in highly political families – left-wing, activist, anti-war families. That was essentially our religion. So in the same way that Jews, no matter how liberal, may have a bias when it comes to Israeli sovereignty, we have a political bias that colors our perception of what’s happening. And that obfuscates the humanity of the situation just enough to where I am not witnessing in the way that a Socially Engaged Buddhist should.

What does that mean?

Well, it’s subtle, and it might be almost imperceptible from the outside, but putting the political ahead of the human suffering changes the way I think and talk about what is happening. It turns on my brain and dampens the embers of my heart. And that is not how I want to approach suffering. I want my eyes open, my heart aflame, and my brain subservient to the two (three) of them.

Example: the conversation with the anti-Muslim guy referenced above. He has a sweet disposition and a lot of knowledge, but in his homeland, Bangladesh, his mother was slaughtered (his word) by Muslims, and he has a deep and understandable bias against the religion and those who practice it. During the usual invitation for prayer requests, he asked that we think of the hostages and all the Israeli people who had suffered because of Hamas. I countered with, “and all the innocent Palestinians who are being bombed and killed by Israel.” I knew about his Islamophobia, and didn’t want it to go unchecked. Since he is really a kind and engaged person, we had a pretty long talk about it afterwards. He knows more history of the area than I (questionable though it may be) and knows more of the Koran than I (again, from a particular perspective), and while I knew everything he was saying was not true, I was unqualified to meet him where he was at. Eventually I said that I really didn’t think we could continue the conversation because we couldn’t agree on basic facts, and that he wasn’t going to convince me (as it appeared his intention was) that Islam was a fundamentally and distinctly violent religion. This was all done in a calm and friendly manner and we had a pleasant interaction on a different topic a short time later. It isn’t my tone that I’m trying to fix here; it’s the foundation of the discussion. It was futile to even engage in a conversation based on history and religious beliefs, and not just because of my own ignorance. It’s because all of that background is intellectual, and our brains will defend that apparent rationality to the death. The only way to chisel a crack into that hardened foundation is through the heart. It’s the heart that led him down that ideological path – his broken heart for his murdered mother – and it’s only the heart that has a chance of changing him again. Instead of arguing about the righteousness of one side of the other, we could have addressed the suffering of the families. We could have talked about the children. We could have simply acknowledged the pain of the human beings caught in this hell. We could have softened our hearts instead of entrenching our positions. We could have empathized instead of trying to win.

Would it have done any good? I don’t know. But I am more interested in the long game than the winning this particular pot. If there is anything I can do to help this man let go of some of the suffering that he interprets as hate and disguises as justification, it won’t come from arguing the merits of the Palestinian position. It will only come from love. I’ve spent a lot of time studying how to talk to people about race in the last decade, but I still fuck up fraught conversations constantly. Of course, I feel far more comfortable arguing over the history of Black people in America than I do the Middle East, but my comfort or familiarity is not the point. It always comes down to coaxing our humanity to the surface. Not just the humanity of the people we’re demonizing, but the humanity of the person who’s demonizing them. I should have asked him more questions, confirmed that I was understanding him correctly, and kept coming back to the people and the suffering. No, we wouldn’t have resolved out positions or, certainly, the war itself, but a seed might have been planted for a bit more growth in the future, a little less preaching and a little more witnessing, a little thimble of space for holding these victims with care and respect before jumping back into justifications and self-righteousness.

I don’t know. But I do feel, feel, that the way I’ve been approaching this isn’t right. Buddhism is pretty deontologist – since we can’t know how things will turn out, our attention is focused on performing as wisely and lovingly as we can in the moment. There are no ends that will justify an immoral means. So killing civilians in order to stop a terrorist is hard to justify. And cultivating compassion is always a good choice, even if it does nothing to end the war of the moment.

Ideally, compassion would bring us to a place of peace. But I’m not naïve enough to expect that in Gaza. I can only try to practice on a small scale what I want from the world at large, and my heart won’t let me do otherwise for long. Witnessing the pain on both sides hurts, but protecting myself with an intellectual glaze just feels gross, and I hope I’m past that for now.

That’ll Teach ’em

Sometimes it’s hard not to hate. The horrid irony of hating haters.

States are passing laws that prohibit cities from opening safe injection sites for users of illegal drugs. Vandals slash water bottles that people leave in the desert Southwest for desperate migrants. Public policy or private action – they both say the same thing: You’ll learn your lesson when you’re fucking dead.

You can write off some opposition to safe injection sites as ignorance. You say “using drugs” and people freak out about their neighborhood, their kids, their safety. Most Americans don’t have the time or interest to dig into the details and evidence around much of anything that doesn’t directly impact their day to day actions or finances. But when politicians (Republicans and Democrats) whose job it is to understand the consequences of the laws they choose to pass choose to ignore the facts, that says to me that they don’t give a fuck or they have chosen to represent the cult of those who don’t give a fuck about people in order to get votes. And to that I say, Fuck Them. To remove a lifeline for addicted people in the midst of a national crisis in which, according to the latest data available, 290 people are dying every day is about as unethical as it gets. Not only do safe, supervised drug use centers keep people from dying, they provide a resource in which many people eventually choose to stop using. But only if they live. Perhaps even worse (it’s hard to rank atrocities), Idaho is restricting funding for Narcan, a drug whose sole purpose is to reverse drug overdoses and prevent people from dying. How can you just not give a shit about people dying unnatural deaths?

Look, I can understand that people don’t get drug addicts. There are probably some people left, somewhere, somehow, who have never known (or admitted that they know) someone with an addiction. But I really thought that things might turn around once the overdose deaths became overwhelmingly, undeniably White. We certainly didn’t go after prosecuting opiate addicts the way we did crack users in the 80s. Maybe we’d learned our lesson. But no. We still consider death a reasonable lesson plan, a responsible way to treat a condition that literally changes your brain. We, some of us, would rather that people die than be provided a safe place to use, or a safe way to recover from unregulated drugs that are more dangerous than ever.

Slashing water bottles in the desert comes out of the same philosophy. You shouldn’t come here without explicit permission, so you should die here. No matter if you’re running from the threat of death, torture, rape, or being forced to kill, torture, or rape others. No matter if you’re a child or a grandmother. We will teach you how to obey “the law” if you have to die to learn it.

I’ve othered people myself. I started hanging out at the Gathering Place because I realized I was othering homeless folks. Not in a way that made me wish them harm, but in a way that nonetheless diminished their humanity. I didn’t like that, so I decided to confront my bullshit by facing reality.

I know not everyone has the time for self-analysis and volunteering that I do. When I cut past the disgust, I have to see these demonic actions as symptoms of a mindset from which almost all of us suffer to one degree or another: the idea that we are separate, isolated individuals or groups, with no impact on the lives of each other. If we could truly accept our interdependence, our Oneness, our mutuality as human beings, at least, though the connection with other living beings is no less crucial, then “inhumane” policies like these would never pass, they would never even be suggested. How do we learn to see our fellow beings as a mirror to ourselves?

Student Loan Forgiveness as a Metaphor

I heard this frustrating and beautiful story on NPR last week (which is somehow lost in the web). When it comes to issues that actually have more than one reasonable position, NPR will generally try to give voice to opposing sides, so as I listened to this young woman recount the numerous ways (3 jobs while attending school, being hospitalized for exhaustion, etc.) and multiple years she had to struggle in order to keep her college loans low and pay back what she did take out, I assumed she would conclude as so many I’ve heard have, with Why should someone else get a free ride when I had to bust my ass to pay off my loans?

She didn’t. She didn’t want her younger brother or anyone else to suffer like she did.

What makes this narrator so compassionate? Perhaps it’s because she has a younger brother – a face to put to the potential suffering. Perhaps she’s just a generous person. Perhaps it’s because her parents are immigrants, and she’s grown up with the idea that you make sacrifices to make things better for others.

When I think about it, in my memory (utterly bereft of statistical backing) it seems most of the people I’ve heard complaining about student loan forgiveness are middle-class White men. Assuming (against all reason) that I am correct, why would that be?

I think it might come back to the lie of the American Dream. Those who buy into it have to believe, to a significant degree, that we have a level playing field. That we not only start the race from the same location, but with the same strength, speed, quality of coach, abilities, shoes and feet to wear them, instructions, familial and community support, nutrition, etc. They believe this even as they see that others cannot attend college at all, that some can pay for college painlessly, that some are desirable enough to be paid to attend college.

They say they worked hard to pay off their loans, as if that act of valor stands in a vacuum. As if others are not working just as hard, or twice as hard, for a quarter of their wages. As if the sacrifices they made, the luxuries they denied themselves, weren’t too extravagant for a large portion of the population to even shoot for, let alone deny themselves. As if people haven’t had to struggle through poor public schools, hunger, poverty, and unsafe environments just to walk through the doors of the college, and walked out with a lifetime’s worth of debt. As if the racial wealth gap weren’t a hallmark of American society and as if thousands upon thousands of Black people with degrees weren’t using their relative success to financially assist their systemically underprioritized, underpaid, and overburdened friends and family members rather than pay off their own loans.

I’m not saying I don’t feel it when things like this happen. I had a pang of bitterness just last week, when I found out that my old roof did not sustain enough hail damage to be replaced by my insurance company, when the house half a block away did. Why does she get the free roof? Why do I have to keep waiting that a giant storm hits before the thing starts leaking and the cost has to come out of my own pocket?

Because that’s just the way it goes. And I’m totally fine.

The idea of fairness on this fraught and complex an issue is, frankly, ridiculous. The world is a bizarre place and the number of factors contributing to someone’s financial and academic success are almost unimaginable. Justice may be possible, though we’re certainly far from that, too. Fairness is relative, at best. Besides, contemporary capitalism isn’t about fairness anyway. Maybe the loan forgiveness objectors should try communism.

And, all that aside, why would we ever want others to suffer as we’ve suffered? Do we think it makes things better? Yes, life is suffering, but Buddhism believes it is undesirable and avoidable thing, and we work on ourselves and the world to alleviate it. How do we alleviate it? By letting go. Letting go of our righteousness, our ideas of fairness, and everything else we’re attached to. It helps everyone, spiritually. And easing the burden of college debt helps everyone in practical terms as well. Without the stress of crushing debt, people are healthier and happier, rippling that wellbeing out to their community and easing the burden of the health case system. Without having to put hundreds of dollars toward payments every month, people could be saving or spending money on the products that “keep the economy moving” or buying healthier food or helping their neighbors or traveling to expand their minds and hearts. Without the desperate need to work a job, the best paying job, to pay off loans, people could be doing what they want to do, going into the fields they’ve trained for at what might be a lower starting wage, becoming entrepreneurs, working at nonprofits. People who came from poverty could start buying homes, building generational wealth, investing.

(the same could be said for universal health care, FYI)

Money encourages us to become very narrow in our thinking, because it breaks real, actual, complex costs and benefits into cold numbers. Perhaps your tally now shows -$100,000 dollars in paid loans and you see someone else at +$25,000 from the government. It looks unfair. But who is it unfair to? Everyone benefits from this, and what you have sacrificed does not change. I suppose you could argue that “my tax dollars are paying for their education.” Is that a bad thing? Don’t we want educated neighbors? Do you know what else your tax dollars pay for? The billionaire-expanding, environment-destroying, war-waging, and plain unnecessary crap we pay for? This seems like a far better investment.

The End of Empathy, pt.1

(Unnecessarily dramatic title brought to you by the allure of alliteration.)

Invisibilia is one of my favorite podcasts. Given, I only listen to half a dozen podcasts, but that’s because I’m picky, dammit. They recently did an episode on empathy, that left me with at least as many questions as answers, which is, in my view, doing things right.

Before I get into this, I’d like to try and distinguish between empathy and compassion (something the Invisibilia ladies did not do). You can disagree with my conclusions, but good luck trying to find definitive definitions. I’ve read half a dozen interpretations online and no two of them agreed. Even my trusty Shorter Oxford dictionary couldn’t help, for the simple reason that English just doubled up on the term by pulling it from two different languages. Empathy is Greek; Compassion is Latin. As much as I’d like to believe that every word in our ridiculously large lexicon is unique and necessary, it’s simply not true.

But I do think there is an important distinction in the definitions applied to the two words. When they are distinguished, one is taken to mean something like co-feeling: actually experiencing the pain, etc. of another. This is also referred to as Affective Empathy. The other is more like relating to, or understanding, or being able to identify with another. That’s called Cognitive Empathy, but I’m going to refer to it as Compassion, because that’s the word typically used in (metta) meditation, and I’ll use Empathy as co-feeling (except where I’m forced to do otherwise by the language of my sources). Compassion seems to have a level of useful detachment to it, which also aligns with Buddhism; whereas empathy gets you deep in the shit.

You may have heard that empathy is on the downslide in our youth. This conclusion is mostly based on self-assessments that have been administered to college students methodically over the past 50 years, with some cohort-wide behavioral changes tossed in for validation. Most of the guesses as to the why of it all have to do with decreased personal interaction with others due to technology, highly competitive schools and sports, and an emphasis on “success.” I’m interested in why it’s there, but more in our capacity to right the course going forward. And that ties nicely into the “punching a Nazi” culture that has compelled and repulsed me ever since Trump got elected.

The Invisibilia episode hinges on a clash of values – those of host Hanna Rosen, and producer/job applicant Lina Misitzis. Hanna fully admits that her goal, the show’s goal, is to help listeners feel empathy (either definition) for people who they might typically write off. When Lina asked her “Why?” I was stunned, but impressed. To me, compassion is an inherent good. Compassion increases connection and decreases conflict and isolation. It’s what we should be aiming for as a species. The most horrifying thing about terroristic acts is not what they do, it’s that they do not care about the people they perform these acts upon. Religious extremists are terrifying in their absolute assurance that they are correct, and that others are not worth correcting or worth giving a shit about.

(I was impressed with the Why because I think questioning any assumptions is a wise move.) Anyway, Lina’s position is that empathy is not healthy because humanizing people you are opposed to weakens your resolve to fight them. She said she had listened to an interview with the guy who organized the racist Charlotte rally, an interview that let him express himself like a regular person, and it started “fucking with my conviction.” I guess it’s natural that this worried her, but it ties into a couple things that I’ve heard a lot the last few years, and that I disagree with.

First, that anger is a great motivator, or that it is necessary to fuel action.

Second, Don’t Know Thy Enemy.

Third, Compassion is a limited resource.

To be continued soon. Sorry for the delay on this one, dear reader/s.

clawing my way to enlightenment

Tag: compassion