Execution

The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions…will I ever be able to quell my conscience…the Pandora’s Box was deceiving… seeming so small and so innocuous…how did this happen? The craving pangs feel as though I will be haunted for eternity. There is only one who can put an end to this torture and yet too lame by his own admission to even know of it‘s existence. I stuffed it down for so many years…the fire is consuming. Apathy has killed what jealousy damned.

Yes, I am an Atheist...it's ok to still like me.

I'd been having a crisis of faith for a long time. Seeing so many injustices in the world has really shaped where I am coming from now. You see it all the time…kids dying before their time, before they have even had a chance to see the snow, go to the ocean, or climb a mountain. The wars waged in the name of God…if this God is so benevolent, why has he not put a stop to the bloodshed, the famines and the terror that goes on in countries most Americans can’t locate on a map, let alone pronounce? I just can’t reconcile it.

Back in January I really started to question why I believed in God...what was the compulsion? I was not able to put my finger on it. One day back in April I found myself at a book store in the religion and philosophy section staring at a book entitled Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. I immediately opened it and started to read...

Since hopping over the fence …each day I feel more and more at peace with my life. Now I try to make every day count because I know there is nothing…at least I feel that there is no hereafter and I need to make it good. In many ways I feel as if I have more control over things because I am not leaving it up to some imaginary being who is going to magically make things better because I have ‘faith’. I am responsible for me. If a cell goes wild in my body and mutates it is not up to God to heal me, it is up to the doctors and if they fail it is not an act of God but a natural consequence of Cancer. These things happen. However, I don’t want to discount the power that faith has on the mind…faith gets many through horrible crises and I am thankful that there is something that people can turn to when they are troubled. Some people need a God that they can thank when things go their way and that they can blame when things don’t work in their favour. I'm just not in that camp.

Ultimately, I believe in free will. Let me be responsible for myself and allow me to own up to my mistakes and my triumphs.

Thankful

Yesterday was a pretty horrible day for me as I woke up to the news that after a long and painful battle with cancer my mentor and someone I had looked to as a father figure passed. Federico was headmaster at the school I taught at in Japan. He was also someone who believed in me and my skills as a teacher. When Federico took me on I was very green to the field. He gave me my big break in teaching with a crash course in curriculum development. He was a great mentor and gave me the confidence that I had been lacking for so long.

A few years ago Federico called me into his office...we often chatted after school about the kids, curriculum and the events happening in the world at the time. He loved politics(a man after my own heart)…and being born into Franco’s Fascist Spain he appreciated my liberal ideals and the fact that I found so much fault with the social injustices of the Bush Administration. He also had excellent taste in music. At any given time you could walk into his office and hear playing in the background REM or Pink Floyd to Vivaldi or Chopin and you could not help but love him. On this particular day he told me about the cancer and that it was spreading rapidly. I was devastated.

We hung out all the time. He tried, on a few occasions, to teach me how to make paella. He was very patient. He let me into his kitchen and I let him into my heart. I will forever be grateful for his friendship, his cooking and his passion for teaching. The world was a little more bearable with him in it.

So this is what I am thankful for today and everyday: Good family and good friends. The fact that my son and husband are healthy and appreciate my sub par cooking. I am thankful for the family I seldom see but that I love and appreciate in more ways than I can put into words. I am thankful to my Aunt who sends my son a card for every holiday under the sun. My son’s God Mommy who has come twice half way around the world just to see him. I appreciate how my son looks forward to birthday parties and Christmas. I appreciate that he believes in Santa and I am hoping we have at least another few years of magic and wonder at Christmas. I am thankful for the friends that I’d not seen in years who hugged me at the reunion and who promised to keep in touch but life happens. I am thankful for the friends I’ve known for what seems like thousands of years but thanks to facebook I can see them in a new light with their talents on display. I appreciate the friend I met at TJMaxx in New Jersey, both of us in the linen section, with our newborn baby’s in tow, a friendship that has lasted even though we have not see each other in a very long time. I appreciate my beautiful friend Ruth whom I would trust with my life. I appreciate Summer and how a room can light up with just her presence. I appreciate the friend who thought of me as a total dweeb when she fist met me in Dr. Powell's Theory class but ended up becoming one of my dearest friends. I appreciate the freshness a newborn baby has brought to a friend and how she is learning that the love you have for your child is unlike any love you have ever known. I appreciate the friend I’ve known for a very very long time who befrinded me in the middle of our senior year of high school, the one I hurt with disparaging words early on this past summer...one of the few regrets I will carry with me. I appreciate that just because one scholars in a particular subject does not automatically translate to excellence in the craft itself. So while I have a Masters in communication, I am not fluent. I will always make mistakes. I just hope the people I appreciate can appreciate that.

Facebook Etiquette....is there such a thing?

Defriending…we don’t like to talk about it but it happens. I have looked for proper etiquette on the subject but there is really nothing out there. Defriending as I understand it, is when one deletes a friend off of their friend list on facebook, myspace, twitter, friendster, linkedin or any number of other SNS sites. It can be a bit dehumanizing if it is done without explanation.

I got defriended this week…it took me about 5 minutes to figure out who the culprit was…a friend of an ex friend. Keeping perspective I was a bit glad although, initial embarrassment did set in for a moment, however fleeting, it still stings.

Then it dawned on me…I have friends on Facebook that I invited to Facebook and for whom I am their only friend and they don‘t even use it to communicate with me, they insist on sending emails. The nerve. After doing some research into my friends list I noticed that I have one friend whom I’ve not heard from in literally a year…I checked her profile and she had not even looked into her Facebook account for quite some time. She was a colleague of mine in Japan for 6 months and then she moved back to Australia. We’ve been in touch once since then and that was when I first got on Facebook. I defriended her today, not out of spite but because her account is not active. I also defriended an ex boyfriend who got on facebook because I asked him to but never used it(I was his only friend). A bit pointless. I have both their email addresses and will be informing them of my decision. I don't want to come off like a bitch...although, right now it seems to be an exercise in futility.

I like Facebook because most of my friends are on the other side of the world…I don’t see them very often but I love them and I want to keep in touch. Friends are important and at times are an extension of your family. I have some friends on Facebook I know would not notice if I defriended them…at least it would take them a while to figure it out…out of the 767 friends they had yesterday they now have 766.

Compassion and the Moral Imperative

Wednesday morning the 5th of November was a bittersweet day for me. I took my son to school per usual but felt weighed down by my brothers and sisters in Ca who had struggled for months to block Proposition 8. On the one hand Barack Obama was on his way to the White House, what a victory for Civil Rights, what a victory for so many of a generation who witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream” speech, who witnessed the rise and fall of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and thought, someday. But I could not bring myself to be happy. Yes, I am delirious that Obama made it. As a democrat I could not be prouder of my country but as a resident of California I was so disappointed with the passage of Prop 8.

After dropping my son off at school I decided to go to the local market and buy myself some solace in a bottle of Cabernet. As I made my way to the store front I tripped on a piece of black plastic strapping. I fell to the ground too hard and fast for my nearly 40 years to fall. It took a few seconds for me to even realise what had happened. As I checked my surroundings, my shoes in disarray and off my feet from the force of the fall. I saw two people who had watched me fall get into their car. I had fallen 20 feet in front of their car….they watched. They did not come over to assist me, they did not ask if I was OK but they did watch me and as I became more aware of what had happened they drove off. Disgusting. I have always been one to lend assistance to people in need, regardless of whether or not they asked for it, so for me the actions of these strangers was an ultimate betrayal. In shock I made my way to the store, put the back strapping around a poll inside the store and purchased my bottle of wine. I went home and felt victimized. How can another human being watch someone get hurt and not feel compelled to give assistance?

As of two days later I am still recovering. Pride intact. I do feel my recovery time would have been cut in half if someone in that parking lot cared enough about another human being to take a minute out of their day to assist me getting to my feet and asking if I was ok. Compassion.

I have not been the most compassionate person when it comes to my family especially, with my mother and her chronic aches and pains. I have not been very compassionate when my husband, who travels extensively for business, gets sick. Mea culpa. Karma? Perhaps. Things happen for a reason, divine interventions way of reminding us of our past infractions and the ramifications they have had on others. Often to help us, if we did not learn from them before, to learn from them now. I will be more compassionate with both my husband and my mother. I earned this fall and the bruises and sore muscles that accompany it.

Thank You Barack

It is about time. It is about time for Americans to see themselves in a better light. For us to rise above ourselves and our cynicism. For us to, dare I say, know that dreams can come true and change for the better is achievable. It s time for us to reach out to each other to show our caring and understanding that yes, we do have differences, but we can work together for the common good that is our future.
So many of us has have felt disenfranchised over the last eight years….Barack Obama, you gave the disenfranchised a voice. There are struggles ahead for your administration and I pray for patience not only of myself but of the others who have waited for you for so long.