Letting Go

 A recent colloquy discussion at the Ethical Society of Austin asked us to discuss "What would you save?" in the context of disaster or emergency.  Aside from needing a Go Bag, I hadn't given it much thought.  My thinking these days is more centered on Letting Go, not merely "decluttering," but detaching myself from the things that, yes, clutter up my space, but also take up needed space in my heart and mind.  

One thing I plan to let go of is a plate.  It's a pink plate with a rose on it.  When I received it as a gift, it was part of a set of four pink plates with various flowers in the center of each.  I'm not really a pink person.  Rarely is there anything pink in my wardrobe, and I am not drawn to pink objects when fighting my urge to collect knickknacks.  I'm not much of a plate person.  True, there are several plates around on various book shelves.  My mother was a plate person, so I saved a few from her collection(s) that interested me for one reason or another, but no plates hang on my walls nor have I, that I recall, actually purchased a decorative plate for my own pleasure.  The thing about this plate is that it holds painful memories.  The person who gave it to me has done some damage in my life.  I let go of three of the four plates in the set when I moved, realizing that I had no room to display them and little room to store them.  The remaining plate sits on a shelf in a display rack.  Every time I look at it, I think of how angry the giver would be that the other three plates are not also displayed--if by some remote chance she ever set foot in this house again.  I love her.  I carry her in my heart.  But I think that this object is making me hold onto negative thoughts that won't allow me to heal--or allow for any healing in a broken relationship.  I will let go of the plate today.

Another object that I am thinking about letting go of is an ebony carving.  This one holds memories of a time in my life when I--pretty much unconsciously--accumulated symbols of motherly love.  The carving is a representation of a mother holding an infant, vaguely "Madonna and child."  I believe that I bought it to give to my mother, but I don't think that I did.  Instead, I kept the "message" ("please love me?") to myself.  Now Mama did the best she good.  She was significantly handicapped.  I have no idea how she managed to carry me to term, but her determination in the things that she really wanted to do was phenomenal.  She had suffered so much in her youth that it is unimaginable that she would subject herself to a pregnancy that would lead to a cesarean birth--in the forties.  And yet she did.  As much as that might have told me about my mother's love, there were a lot of years when she was ill and understandably (to adults) cranky.  More directly affecting me was her critical insistence on high standards of behavior, appearance, and achievement.  I often felt that I was "no good," certain not "good enough."  In the last years of her life, when she had dementia, she often didn't know who I was.  Sometimes she thought I was one of her sisters, other times I was an inadequate maid who could be curtly dismissed:  "You're dismissed," as she said when some family friends were visiting.  

In the ten years since my mother passed away, I have had plenty of time to revisit these moments of pain and doubt.  I have also looked through masses of greeting cards and journal entries and letters.  Over time, the pain has lessened enough for the joy and delight to come through.  Mama was fun.  She was brave.  She was compassionate.  She was beautiful.  That may sound vain, when I point out that I glanced in the mirror one day not too long ago, pleased about something or other, and saw my mother smiling back at me.  I might have a little too much of my father's nose (bless the Parkers), but I have Mama's smile, which came to me as part of the healing that these past years have brought.  Mama did love me; she did the best she could.

I am more or less cleaning and clearing these days (mostly "less" on the cleaning bit), so I picked up the ebony carving to dust and polish it.  At that moment, I realized that I had already let go of all of those feelings of insecurity about my relationship with my mother.  Then I thought I might let go of the carving.  I have a friend who lost her daughter and is going through some hard grief.  Could this carving of motherly love help her?  I will think about it some more, but I don't think I need the carving any more.  I can just smile at the mirror and see Mama smiling back.

One more thing for me to think about is the memorial webpage that honors my late husband.  Every year I am asked to pay a fee to renew that webpage.  Every year I think about letting it go and decide that I can't do it.  I have a link to his memorial site on the address-bar-thingie of my web browser.  I often glance at his name there and am comforted by his presence.  Now and then I click the link and visit the site.  Nothing has changed in all these years, but sometimes I just feel the need to visit.  I did that a few weeks ago, rereading the statement that I had written for the site.  I was actually surprised to realize that I was reading about an Ethical man.  Of course he was!  Even though we had never heard of Ethical Culture before, I should have realized that he was exactly the kind of person that we are all striving to be in EC.  Not that I'm saying he was perfect, but he certainly practiced the compassionate service that we often attempt in EC.  It pleased me to read that statement and come to that realization.

Imagine my shock, checking the site a few days ago, to find it gone.  The tenth anniversary of his passing is coming up in November.  I expected to be asked to renew the site, and I was thinking that, while it serves no one else, it comforts me.  I clicked the link, thinking that I would renew early, just in case my travel plans might make me miss a deadline.  The link, instead of taking me to his crinkly smile, goes to a search page for obituaries.  I was devastated.  Panicked.  

Eventually, I found him again.  Legacy.com has restructured their website.  They apparently did try to notify me with a message that went to the Promotions folder (which I mostly ignore).  The information is still available--after much clicking--but it is broken up into multiple parcels rather than all together.  Will I be forced to let go of this comfort?  The link is still on my address bar with the other important bookmarks--it just doesn't take me to my husband.  

I guess we don't have eternal life on the internet either.    

The Power of Words

Sticks and Stones (Wikimedia Commons)

Words have power.  For all that we learned as children to chant--"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!'--words can hurt.  They can uplift as well.  The power of words comes not only from what they mean, but how they are used and how they are understood.  We learn, also as children, to seek the denotative meaning of words.  It is only through experience that we learn the connotative meanings and, sometimes, how those connotative meanings send additional messages by how and by whom they are used.

A denotative meaning for "bitch" is the female dog (or wolf, fox, or otter).  How it morphed into an epithet for women, I have no idea, nor do I want to ponder too closely how a woman and dog became somehow similar in the male mind.  These days the word is hate speech--when used as a noun by a male (human) and directed at a female (human).  There are still contexts in which "bitch" can be used as a verb (express displeasure, grumble or complain) without any gender (denotative or connotative) attached to it--except that we have to acknowledge that the behavior being labeled by the verb is understood--if we think about it--to derive from the behavior of the female human who can be called a "bitch" by those males still brave enough to utter the word.

On the other hand, there are contexts in which the word can be used as a positive statement.  Women may choose to label themselves as a "bitch" as a statement of self-empowerment.  Tee shirts, buttons, bumper stickers--whatever medium can be used to assert that power--may read "Super Bitch," "Certified Bitch," and, a favorite, "That's Queen Bitch to you!"  And so on.

I'm thinking now about metaphors and how they shape our attitudes.  "Bitch" does not fit our formal concept of a metaphor, but it is a word used to identify a female animal extended to a new context:  a woman.  We often take words from events and experiences and stretch them to apply to some other thing or action or situation.  In this case, we are seeing a label for a particular animal anthropomorphized (correlating animal behavior to human behavior) to apply to a human with the effect, not only of equating the behaviors (animal and human), but also, and more importantly, to equate the human with the animal.  Once such an equivalence is made, we are thereby permitted to act toward the human as we would act toward the animal.  All too often that behavior is negative, abusive, demeaning.

I am not arguing against animal metaphors or similes, calling for a ban on their use.  Our language is enriched by our creative use of imagery from the world around us.  I am, however, suggesting that we might productively spend some time thinking about our casual use of animal epithets in relation to our fellow humans.  Why did we use that language?  Does this language reflect a tendency toward dehumanizing our fellow human?  Does this language reduce our commitment to respecting the inherent worth of the individual?  In this, I am only thinking in terms of our Ethical commitment to treat each other with integrity.  What are we saying when we use these words--dog, cat, horse, ass, pig, ox, cow, sheep, deer, fox, ape, baboon, rat, weasel, skunk, etc.--to describe another human being?  Is someone who "speaks (too) loudly" the same as someone who "brays like an ass"?  

One word, Ben: Plastics!

Where too much plastic waste ends up!

Or words to that effect, as I recall that moment in The Graduate when someone leans over to give the new graduate some advice for the future.  That phrase has continued as, I suppose, a meme ever since that remarkable scene.  I think the audience was as taken aback as Dustin Hoffman's character, Ben, was, and that reaction may have contributed to making the scene so memorable.  The advice of that encounter in a 1967 movie turned out to be prescient.  Plastics now dominate our lives on this planet.  Many consumable products are packaged in plastic.  Many products are themselves made of plastic.  Our homes are filled with plastic, and now our bodies seem also to be filled with microplastics.  What this bodes for the future of humans is not good.  The United Nations Development Program advises that the plastics that leach into our bodies from containers and other products:

are linked to serious health issues such as endocrine disruption, weight gain, insulin resistance, decreased reproductive health, and cancer.

In discussing what to do to observe Earth Month in April, members of the Ethical Society of Austin were challenged to "make one change" in use or consumption of plastics.  That change needed to be something that we are not already doing.  That caveat gave me pause.

I have already been "woke" to the dangers of plastics.  I certainly have not done enough to remove plastics from my life and my home.  I do, however, faithfully recycle the single-use plastics that come into my home.  I have two blue plastic recycling bins in which I place the items to be recycled (metal, paper, plastic, glass, etc.).  Whatever goes into those bins is placed in the larger plastic bin that is rolled to the curb every two weeks and picked up for recycling by a contractor with my local government.  I wash the contaminants from whatever goes in those bins to make sure that the items I am recycling are ready for recycling.  

One problem in this process is that so much single-use plastic still comes into my home.  That's why I end up saving a lot of plastic containers for other uses on the theory that repurposing items is also a way to extend the life of the material used to make the plastic.  One container, reused once, reduces the impact of the blob of plastic that made it by 50%--or so the calculation goes.  Multiple reuses of the same container would presumably continue to reduce its impact more and more over time.  In the meantime, if I am buying more of the same product in the same kind of container, I will, at some point, have too many to reuse.  I have, in fact, reached that point with several types of containers.

For the challenge to "make one change," I did make the change to stop buying beverages in plastic containers and switch to glass or metal containers.   Since my beverage of choice is sparkling water, I have plenty of choice in brand and type while sticking to my favorite unflavored drink.  

I do, however, have to be more careful now with the remaining plastic bottles that previously contained said sparkling water.  I have two Pellegrino brand bottles that I saved from a train trip last year, two Topo Chico bottles that showed up from a couple of trips around Texas, and two half-pint bottles that I got for free somewhere.  I like these bottles for their shapes and sizes, and I keep them filled with "still water" in my fridge.  I have sometimes carried them with me on errands, losing a bottle here and there.  These remaining bottles, I have now pledged, will be continuously reused unless I decide to stop using them and send them for recycling.  No new ones allowed.  

I don't know how significant an effect my "one change" will make for the planet, but it does make me aware--every day--that Ethics, to be central, requires making the same choice over and over again.  It has been a challenge to go into the grocery store and not pick up a bottle of water (in plastic) to sip while I shop.  Yesterday, I put a can of sparkling water in my purse, carried it into a big box store, showed it to the greeter, who waved me through.  It's more awkward to keep a can balanced than a bottle with a lid that prevents spills, but at least I'm learning to support my choices with a little advance planning.  

Stories about Social Service

Once again I have to refer to the work that I am doing on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture and the ideas that seem to be flying at me from my discoveries.  Today's idea is Social Service.  

Social service seems, in my knowledge and experience, to include assistive services provided to those who are somehow at a disadvantage in our community, whether they are disadvantaged by poverty, ability, genetics, place of origin, language, etc.  These would be services provided by public or private entities to relieve those disadvantages with food, funds, pro-social policies, translators, etc.  There's a great deal of assumption built into that notion of "disadvantaged," but the focus on social service will have to skip those assumptions for the time being and merely note that my and, I believe, our common understanding of "social service" speaks of services of whatever sort provided by a group entity to individuals who are considered to be "disadvantaged."

Today, I'm documenting a book by Frederick James Gould, called The Children's Book of Moral Lessons. Gould was a crusader (I think the word is apt) for moral education for children--in both public and private settings.  He worked with Stanton Coit to found the East London Ethical Society, was known as a "pioneer of secular humanism," and spoke widely as a representative of the Moral Education League.  This particular book is the second in the series, and focuses on "kindness" and "work."  The first, which I have not yet located, focused on "self-control" and "truthfulness."  The search is now on for the first series and any later series.

In the meantime, I took the opportunity to glance through the very lengthy table of contents and noticed a section under "work" called "social service."  I am increasingly disturbed by the attitudes I am seeing among my fellow members of Ethical Culture regarding "Ethical action," concerned that there is too much emphasis on the act of providing social services and not enough emphasis on the ethical roots and purposes of those actions and services.  I hope someday to be able to articulate that concern in some better fashion.  At the moment, I find that Gould has given me a new point of view on social services.

In Chapter 41, Gould begins with a discussion of Michelangelo's statue of David.  He has a charming way of keeping his narrative at a child's level (I'm thinking elementary school level), defining his terms, making sure that, when he talks about the Italian setting for his story, he is providing parallels for understanding by the English schoolchild.  His story talks about Michelangelo's carving of the statue as a social service--service to his community--because he used an abandoned piece of marble, seeing in it the future David.  The marble had been laying about near the cathedral for "more than a hundred years" (p. 193), and Michelangelo's service replaced an eyesore with a work of art.  Gould's story continues with more "social service" by those who talked about what to do with the statue (where to put it), those who struggled for four days to move the statue with ropes and rollers, and even those who criticized the statue.  In all cases, individuals--sometimes working together, sometimes independently--provided a service to their community through their skills, their energy, their ideas.  That service he called "social service."

Later Ethical leaders referred to "public spirit" for some of the same "services."  They referred to the duty to vote, the importance of speaking out in councils (both public and private), the value of stepping up to serve on those same councils.  

I have talked in the past about four modes of Ethical action:  Living, Giving, Serving, and Teaching/Educating/Testifying.  (I am still working on that fourth label.)  In my thinking, some of these same modes of action fit into the notion of "social service" that Gould advocates and also with the idea of "public spirit."  As we make ethics central in our lives, how we live can (and should) be an Ethical action.  What we give (including time, talents, and money) can also be an Ethical action when it is given in the spirit of social service--and not merely as charity, which makes us the giver of bounty rather than a servant of the community.  Serving is easiest for us to see as both Ethical action and social service, but, interestingly, Gould turns the notion on its head when he tells the story of the cathedral bell-ringer in Switzerland.  Simple actions that serve the community, he points out, should be respected just as the grand deed of an artistic genius such as Michelangelo should be respected.  In that, the respect we give to others is an Ethical action.  The final mode--teaching, etc.--is simply how we use our voice to show others the ethics of the situation, whether it is to speak up and point out wrong, plan a better path forward, or to clarify the benefits to community and self in a particular course of action or event.  Speaking up to assert, challenge, praise, identify--all of the ways in which we can express our Ethical values in the presence of others--becomes, in that way, an Ethical action--and a social service.