Regardless that these are babies, child or adults feel connected, safe, when the people in our lives SHOW they care about us, what we want, how we feel, and why. Shutting down, shutting those we ostensibly care about out, to self-protect, is destructive in the extreme.
From the clip:
“When she’s grounded, is comfortable in her world, she can explore, meet other people, try new things, as she’s got that safe base she can rely on.”
In other words, communication builds trust, and trust is the foundation of love.
“I’m educated, but uniformed,” Sheryl said deadpan. “And I want to stay uniformed.”
I laughed.
“Laughing is good,” she said.
But I was laughing at her, and not with happiness, but skin-crawling disgust.
An accountant for over 30 years, at one time running her own firm, Sheryl has an MBA from Wharton, which informed her about the world of finance. Unfortunately, Sheryl’s thirst for knowledge ended as soon as she passed her CPA exam.
To fill the schisms in her understanding of our world beyond her accounting job, she forms her opinions based on interactions with the few family members and neighbors remaining in her tiny, financially depressed Colorado town. They were, and still are angry they lost their coal mining jobs the town of Delta, CO was built on. They blame democrats for closing down their coal mines, though their mines have been closing since the 1990s, with natural gas, as well as renewable energy sources of wind and solar, slowly replacing dirty coal.
“Obama killed this town,” she assured me on the phone last week. “Closing all the mines for no good reason.”
“Well, global warming is a pretty good reason to get rid of coal,” I offered. “Don’t ya think?”
“It sure isn’t doing this town any good,” her retort.
“Yeah, well, it’ll do the planet some good, and the rest of humanity, as without clean air, we all die, even the good folks left in Delta.”
Dead silence on the other end of the line. I waited some time for her to say something, but she didn’t.
“Sher, you do know that burning coal pollutes the air with toxic chemistry like lead, mercury, and other heavy metals, right?”
“All I know is Delta was once vibrant, and now it’s like a ghost town. And that didn’t need to happen.”
“You’re right. It didn’t. Had the town acted, invited other industries to set up shop, or the miners had gone back to school to retrain for thinking jobs, instead of manual labor that a robot can do better…” I let my voice trail off, as I knew I’d lost her.
“Anyway,” she finally offered. “I find talking about stuff like this tedious. It’s so depressing. Friends and family I know have lost their jobs, their homes, which destroyed their marriages, like my sister and her ex-husband.”
Sheryl’s sister married the high school quarterback the day they both graduated because she was pregnant with his baby. He was injured his first year with the Colorado State Rams, quit college shortly thereafter, and has lived on welfare since. He was never a coal miner.
“But you know that burning more coal to generate electricity is bad for the planet, and every living thing on it, right?”
“I don’t know anything but what I see. And the air around where I live looks just fine to me.”
“Be that as it may, the world doesn’t begin and end in Delta, Colorado, Sher,” I reminded her. “Dirty air travels around the planet. Come on, girl, you are highly educated. You know this.”
“I’m educated, but uniformed,” she said. “And I prefer to stay uninformed.
I laughed. Hearing someone tout their ignorance was shocking.
“Laughing is good,” she sighed, with my heavy sigh. “Like I said, talking about all this drama, or reading about it, or even watching the news, is just so tedious.”
I didn’t try to engage her further. I made some excuse about having to go somewhere and hung up, but I still can not get her words out of my head. She proudly proclaimed she’s “uninformed,” and chooses to stay this way.
Sheryl’s brother committed suicide at 45 years old. Why? Her family has no idea. They didn’t, and don’t deal in weighty, “tedious” subjects. Ever. It was so much easier to ignore his depression, keep the conversations light. Makes everyone less uptight.
Sheryl is a Republican. Choosing to remain ignorant to the rise in global temperatures most every scientist in the world now acknowledges is real, she voted for Trump and his band of merry rich men who promised to bring the coal industry back to Delta, CO. This has yet to happen.
Ignorance isn’t bliss. It didn’t help Sheryl’s brother, or her mother who still grieves the loss of her son, or the unemployed coal miners get their jobs back. Ignoring “tedious” issues didn’t serve Sheryl either. Ignorance is corrosive, lazy, self-interested—sticking your head in the sand, or more precisely, up your own ass to live carefree, thoughtlessly, binge watching TV. Choosing to remain “uninformed,” avoiding ‘weighty’ issues to ‘lighter,’ trite exchanges about the latest celebrity gossip, or [scripted] realty TV, serves nobody.
If the human race, and every living thing on this planet is to survive the technology people create, each of us must invest the time and the energy it takes to become “informed” about important local and global issues, as they arise. All of us must work to defeat ignorance, by seeking knowledge from those who share our perspectives, and those who don’t. When we learn to really listen to each other, seek to understand, with empathy, not judgment, exchange informed opinions, and engage in the art of compromise…humanity will thrive. ; }
Talked to an old friend yesterday. We hadn’t spoken for almost 2 yrs. No particular reason. Life took over and we lost touch. The last time we spoke he told me his 45 year old wife had quit her job as a restaurant manager and was very happy to be home, fixing up their house, shopping, cooking, doing things she never had time to do when working.
Two years later, she is still at home. The house is now fixed up. There are no children, and she has no other responsibilities. When I asked my friend what his wife does with her days, he told me she enjoys working out, watching TV, and she plays a lot of Angry Birds.
My mother-in-law lost her husband of 53 yrs a couple years back, a year after they closed the small business they ran together for almost as long. With no business to maintain, no kids to care for, and only sparse time with grown grandchildren, I assumed she’d would find her niche in volunteering, perhaps invest time into her community, teach literacy at her local library, or maybe the hospice her husband spent most of his last days in. I don’t like sick people, she told me upon inquiry. And she has no interest in teaching, anyone, anything, she insisted, clearly annoyed at my suggestions. I’ve worked my whole life. It’s my turn to do what I want. What does she do all day? At 78, and in perfect health, she plays Solitaire, or goes to plays and movies with friends and family, when they’re available, which isn’t often. Most retired folks she knows are helping their kids with the grandkids, or volunteering.
On the phone with my old friend, I intimated his wife was wasting her life. A talented professional, she has too much to give to waste time with Angry Birds, I insisted. But my friend disagreed. She enjoys her days now, no longer under constant pressure to preform, he informed me. She’s allowed to relax, after working most of her life. She’s 45 yrs old, I countered. And has been relaxing for almost 4 yrs now. So? He was perturbed by my observation. They don’t need her income. He makes enough to support them both, so no harm, right?
Wrong.
We are ALL born owing humanity for the life we have. Without those who worked hard before us, there would be no humanity at all. My mother-in-law, my friend’s wife, you or I wouldn’t exist without the hard work of those before us. From our laws to the lightbulb, we stand on the shoulders of those who contributed to the human race that provide us with the life we now enjoy.
Our system that seemingly runs itself–doesn’t. We actually have to work at making it work. And playing Solitaire or Angry Birds all day, most every day, does nothing for our society. It’s selfish and lazy. Everyday we are alive we owe each other and those who will follow us. We are ALL responsible to make the world better. Whether fighting for a worthy cause we believe in, or inventing technology to make our lives more productive, or managing a restaurant or small business, we must continually contribute to humanity for our race to survive.
Life did not begin, nor does it end with my friend’s wife, or my mother-in-law, or the tens of thousands out there wasting enormous amounts of every day of their lives playing with themselves. Lazy behavior must be compensated for by those who see beyond their own narcissistic desires, putting the burden of humanities survival on the few, instead of us ALL, which is where it must be for our race to thrive.
I had a conversation with my former financial advisor when the markets were crashing back in ‘08. I asked him to give me an estimate, his best, ostensibly educated guess when the market might turn around or at least stabilize. He assured me it would be soon. The credit default scandal had already been exposed. Real estate foreclosures had been assessed and the projected losses factored in to financial projections. The fact is, he offered with conviction, in any industry one had to account for a certain amount of corruption. Maybe 5% of the people in any given field were evil. The evil had now been weeded out and the markets would bounce back to its mean of 8 to 10% growth or better annually very soon.
Turns out, evil abounds in the financial industry. From Bernie Madoff to AIG to JP Morgan Chase and their corporate cronies with 7, 8 figure bonuses; to banks and mortgage brokers hording stimulus funds, my advisor had to be grossly low on his 5% estimate of evil in finance.
According to forensic psychologist and author Robert Hare, it is possible, even likely, that the percentage of evil is greater in the financial industry than most any other field. Money attracts greedy people. Those who choose a career pursuing money, instead of building, inventing, engineering, teaching, are generally looking for what they can get from society instead of what they can give to it. In Snakes in Suits, Mr. Hare claims at least 10% of all those in finance are psychopaths.
The 5% (or more) who callously exploit the rest of us is what makes the free-market system they purport a myth. That 5% evil controls 95% of the financial markets of the world. The enormous scale of capital they play with has proven to collapse economies, robbing millions of their life savings, their jobs, their homes.
Most of us put our earnings in the bank or the market and hope our savings will go up. We depend on those in charge of most everyone’s money to know what they’re doing and manage the money we entrust to them wisely. Most of us don’t have the time or inclination for in-depth study and monitoring of the markets. Even if we did, it is rarely possible to get an intimate and transparent view inside most corporations. We rely on our government to monitor the SEC and avoid financial catastrophes. The Bush administration is an example of what happens when they don’t.
A ‘free-market’ system strives to maintain very few restrictions, touting supply and demand will regulate economics. And though this is a lovely idea, like communism, it doesn’t work in the real world. The economy collapses when demand is only from the [wealthy] 1% of the population that can afford anything. Public companies with no limits on growth, minimal regulations, limited liability and lack of transparency virtually inviteexploitation by the small, but none the less formidable percentage of evil. Our ‘free-market’ invariably becomes controlled by a small minority who represent only their own interests. This corrupts the entire society by shifting the balance of power to a handful of narcissists, if not out and out psychopaths, as Robert Hare claims.
Republicans and conservatives threaten socialism if the government regulates the markets beyond ‘protection of property and against force or fraud.’ But everyone pays the price for the 5% that continually redefine the term ‘fraud.’ The 5% evil at AIG, and more recently JP Morgan Chase that took ridiculous risks for excessive short term yields to line their pockets continue to send shock waves throughout our financial industry and beyond. And the fact is, it IS socialism when taxpayers are forced to bail out banks and brokers who were, and are still indifferent to the suffering they cause—the very definition of ‘Psychopath.’
We will never be able to ‘weed out’ evil from humanity. A certain percentage of our population will always be narcissists, care exclusively about their own welfare over the society in which they live. Regulations on our financial industry must be imposed and upheld to keep evil in-check, and limit the damage the 5% factor will surely cause again and again. We are more than willing to put sanctions on countries that support terrorism. If we are truly ‘by the people, of the people and for the people‘ of this nation, we must sanction the evil in our system as well.
I’m participating in one of the creepiest, weirdest, most…surreal experiences I’ve ever had.
Greg Tremblay is a voice actor currently producing the audiobook for my novel Reverb. We met through ACX, Amazon’s audiobook portal which hooks up authors with actors/producers for creating audiobooks to sell exclusively through Amazon and their channel partners. I hadn’t consider Reverb as an audiobook until several readers inquired if I had one available. I’d never heard an audiobook before. Every time I try to listen to one my mind drifts, generally first to whatever is in front of me, then it begins a-wanderin, drowning out all sound to the muse in my head. It does with TV too. Can’t help it. Not much holds my attention the way my imagination does.
I’m currently reviewing the chapters of Reverb that Greg has recorded to date. A practiced professional, he’s ‘playing’ all characters true to their voice and nature. It’s bizarre, at best, giving voice to the people I’d only heard in my head, but he’s particularly nailed James, the protagonist in the novel, with his cultivated British accent, the rich tenor of his voice. And it’s creeping me out. I get anxious, breathless, listening. The story, in parts “brutally raw,” is hard enough to read, yet alone hear, and the intensity of Greg’s deliver is so palpable it feels real.
James had been inside my head since I was a kid. Made him up when I felt afraid. Started when I was little, pretending to be a guy because men were supposed to be stronger than women, and when I felt scared I sought strength. I found it in James. He was brilliant, what I always wished to be, and insular, like most men seemed to me.
As I grew, James took on a life of his own, with a complex history. Through my teens I ran scenes in my head of how James would respond to mean family members, or bullying by contemporaries. Traveling around the world on my own in my 20s, I summoned James often. In the middle-east when I was stopped by soldiers, I cloaked James, stood tall, looked them in the eye, addressed them aggressively, like a man. In times of black loneliness, I’ve worn James, delved into writing, drawing, creating, as he did with music, shrouding himself from his own feelings with his career, as so many men do.
While I never lost the reality that James was fiction, someone I made up to serve me, there were times I felt his presence projecting from me so powerfully, the line between reality and fiction blurred. It scared me. Absorbing myself with myself every time I felt scared or lonely was not leading to the intimacy I wanted to share. By my 30s, it was clear I was distancing myself from the relationship I sought as a woman, when I took on James, and projected a man.
In an effort to distance myself from James, to shed him from me completely, I felt compelled to write about him. In giving him his own ground, perhaps I too could find some, learn to handle fear on my own.
It took a year to write the novel, and another year editing it to leached James out of me and onto the page. For quite some time after finishing the novel, I stopped thinking about him. He simply didn’t come to mind. Fear is still choking, often, but now I deal with it instead of cloaking James. He’s merely a character in a novel, after all.
Until now. Greg’s audio narration of Reverb has given James a voice. He’s been actualized, made real. And having James out there now, playing out his life story as I write this blog, is on the extreme end of surreal.
The most exquisitely bizarre bit—I can’t wait for the next chapter Greg delivers to hear James again, be with him, in the same room, the same space, camera pov, a fly on the wall—listening, seeing him in my mind’s eye. “Addicting read,” several reviewers have called Reverb. I get that now, and other reviews like, “frantically turning the pages to see what happens next.” I can’t wait to hear the rest of his story, like I didn’t write it. Someone else who knows James did.
I’m bemused where other authors get inspiration for their characters, and wonder if my feelings, this surreal experience is typical for other writers who’ve had their work actualized into voice or film. I’m grateful I’ve endeavored down this audiobook path. After I completed Reverb, I thought James and I were done. Through Greg’s interpretation, I’m now getting to know James outside of my head, as an individual. And while I’ll always feel affection for him, having helped me through all those moments of fear, our separation is now complete.
I am NOT a #Christian. I do not believe in fairytales, like Jesus or Zeus. The ONLY reason for robbing women the RIGHT TO CHOOSE WHAT TO DO WITH OUR OWN BODIES, is #Christianity, which is imposing its fantasies (as opposed to science) on everyone and anyone.
Is this NOT the U.S. anymore, where we have the RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF RELIGION, or believing in none at all?
Obesity is a PRE-EXISTING CONDITION! 65% of all U.S. are #FAT. How will they pay the excessive premium? And who pays if they can’t?
Estimated ANNUAL health care costs of obesity-related illness are a staggering $190.2 billion or nearly 21% of ANNUAL medical spending in the United States. Childhood obesity alone is responsible for $14 billion ANNUALLY in direct medical costs. #Obesity#trumpcare SUCKS! Keep #ObamaCare!
A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She
lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a
boat below.
She shouts to him, ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I
promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I
don’t know where I am.’
The man consults his portable GPS and replies, ‘You’re
in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a
ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are
at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100
degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolls her eyes and says, ‘You must be a
Democrat!’
‘I am,’ replies the man. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well,’ answers the balloonist, ‘everything you tell
me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to
do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly,
you’re not much help to me.’
The man smiles and responds, ‘You must be a Republican.’
‘I am,’ replies the balloonist. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well,’ says the man, ‘You don’t know where you are or
where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due
to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise
that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect
me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same
position you were in before we met, but, somehow,
now it’s my fault.
Talked to an old friend yesterday. We hadn’t spoken for almost 2 yrs. No particular reason. Life took over and we lost touch. The last time we spoke he told me his 45 year old wife had quit her job as a restaurant manager and was very happy to be home, fixing up their house, shopping, cooking, doing things she never had time to do when working.
I’m participating in one of the creepiest, weirdest, most…surreal experiences I’ve ever had.
jcafesin.com 