Posts from — October 2010

Josh and I had a daytime date yesterday, and we went to see The Social Network.  And I freakin’ bawled.  That’s pretty much my assessment of the movie.

I know, I wasn’t really expecting that reaction either.  I mean, I went into Milk knowing that I would cry myself sick and I, indeed, cried myself sick.  But I thought this was going to be a straightforward he’s-a-mean-billionaire movie.  And it wasn’t.  Well, it was.  And it wasn’t.

I cried for two main reasons.  One, regardless of how accurate the movie portrayed the creation and implementation of Facebook, it did get to the heart of one of my biggest fears about both social situations and/or Facebook, which is the deletability of friendships.

This isn’t unique to the online world — you spend years cultivating a friendship, trust someone with the core of your being, and then one day, they’re simply gone.  Either there is a clear falling out, or there is a drifting apart.  Or sometimes, there is neither.  I don’t think I’m unique in that I have a friendship that simply ended, without explanation.  One that I didn’t want to have end.

The Social Network both highlights the ease one takes sometimes in deleting a friendship — both online or in-person.  I think some people agonize over unfriending someone and breaking a connection on Facebook.  I think other people delete people out of spite.  Someone pisses them off, so they hit delete.  Because it’s easier than trying to understand the other person, work out the hurt feelings.

How many people have used unfriending as a last resort, and how many people use it as a first line defense?

And yes, it’s also true that it speaks to the quality of the friendships if we’re okay letting them go so easily.  Perhaps we’d think more about hitting delete on someone who has been in our life for years and years vs. someone we just met online.  But perhaps that is why I have such trouble with the word “friending” in connection to Facebook.

I have a lot of Facebook anxiety, can you tell?  And it has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with the unspoken messages we send with a Facebook connection as well as the fact that we’re not all playing on the site with the same rules.  Does that make sense?  I think that’s why I have such trouble with Facebook, with knowing what to post and what to hold back and how to label my relationship with another person.

The second part of the movie that made me cry was the fact that this movie was made at all.  I actually got up in the middle and walked around for a few minutes just because it was making me so anxious to watch it.  Because how craptastic do you think Mark Zuckerberg feels about the portrayal of his life in this movie?

I’m well aware that people justify it in saying that Mark Zuckerberg has proven time and time again that he doesn’t care about people’s privacy.  But at what point do we cross the line in discussing another person?  Are politicians fair game?  Actors and actresses?  What about not discussing their work, but instead discussing their marriage?  What about business owners such as Mark Zuckerberg — should he be fair game?  What about another blogger — does the person need to have a certain following to make it “okay” and then what is the threshold?

Have you ever read something crappy about yourself written online?  How did you feel reading it?  Was it a comment on your own blog?  Was it in someone else’s post?  Did the location of the words make a difference?  Now multiply that by 5.2 million, because that’s about how many people have seen the movie.

And whether or not it’s fiction is beside the point.  So much of what we read is one person’s point-of-view and is hardly a picture of reality.  But the fact is, other people read it and think they have learned something real.  And beyond that, Mark Zuckerberg and his friends and family know it’s out there, and how do you think they feel having his life co-opted for entertainment’s sake?  To spark a discussion?

I felt dirty watching the film.  And I worry that I’m contributing to his discomfort now simply by writing this.  I’m justifying it to myself because I have said nothing about Mark Zuckerberg, since without knowing him, cannot relay information as if it were true facts about who he is as a person.  I don’t know his motivations or whether he tried to screw people along the way.  This post is simply about where we draw the line in discussing another person, and how do we value our friendships.

And truly, I’m only imagining that he’s feeling like shit because I would feel like shit if this movie had been made about me, and because he said it in People magazine*.  And while what you read on blogs may or may not be true, People magazine is gospel.

Right?

* Yes, I read People magazine.  Please, do not get me started on that guilt.

We’re having a stinkbug problem in Maryland.  I’ve noticed them on and off over the years, but this fall, they’re coming in swarms.  We’ve had about 20 of them in the car — they fly right in when you open the door.  Up until this point, they’ve been in the back seat and the kids will see them as we’re driving, Josh will take care of them, and we’ll go on our merry way.

Until this week.

I was driving to the library when something jumped down onto the dashboard.  I pulled over, shrieking (I’m an equal-opportunity hater when it comes to bugs), and inexplicably, threw on my windshield wipers.  I tried to swat at the bug with my shoe, but only succeeded in knocking it into a crevice on the dashboard.

I stood outside the car, unsure of what to do.  Three teenagers were walking down the street at that moment, listening to their iPods (seriously, do kids not speak to one another anymore while they walk?), and I called them over.  “Would any of you, by chance, be willing to get a stinkbug out my car?”

And G-d love those boys.  They took out their ear buds and got to work, trying to coax the thing out of the crevice.  They didn’t ask why the windshield wipers were running at full speed.  They worked on the problem for about 8 minutes, finally telling me that the stinkbug had crawled into the vent and it was impossible to get the thing out.

The largest boy gently told me that the bug would likely fry inside the hood of the car, using the same tone of voice I use to describe unpleasant things to the kids — a voice that betrays that the speaker doesn’t believe what they’re saying one bit, but they need to calm down a person on the brink of hysteria.  The ends justify the means.

“Thank you,” I said, “not only for trying to get the bug out of the car, but for not mocking me in the process.”

The boys solemnly told me that they would not be discussing me once I drove away, they would not be mocking me or turning me into one of their private jokes.

But they were using that voice, so you know that they probably have a nickname for me now.

And I deserve it.

*******

The Weekly What If: What if you were given a choice — either everyone would tell you the truth, brutally and uncensored — or you could continue with the world you know, where people are sometimes trustworthy, sometimes truthful, sometimes fibbers, and sometimes outright liars.  Would you take that opportunity to know exactly where you stand with absolute truth from everyone; or is ignorance bliss?

*******

It draws ever closer, therefore, it’s time to mention once again that I’m going to be delivering the keynote address at Resolve of New England’s conference.  I promise, it’s going to be spectacular.  It will begin with some Fosse-like dancing a la the opening of Pippin.  Then, I will juggle 8 knifes — AT ONCE.  And eat a 40-pound block of grilled tofu while jumping through a ring of fire.  I’m going to give away a car to everyone in the audience (you get a new car, and you get a new car, and you get a new car, you all get matchbox caaaaaaaaaaaaaaars!).  And finally, I will give you a piece of advice that will change your freakin’ life.

Seriously, would you miss that?

Come to the conference on Saturday, November 6th (you can register online).

*******

And now, the blogs…

Time passing was definitely a theme this week, beginning with Infertile Revolution’s post about her one year anniversary.  She writes about the familiar faces that have moved on from the clinic, “Still, there was something comforting about seeing them over and over. Like commuters stranded on the subway platform, we were sharing the same experience, even if we didn’t talk about it.”  I love her juxtaposition of the hated but familiar routine with the idea of it ending.

Hold My Hope has a post about her brother on the seventh anniversary of his death.  It contains the most gorgeous line: “It’s just another day.  When people see me today, they won’t know what this day is for me.  And then I wonder about their story – what ordinary day isn’t ordinary for them?”  Didn’t that give you chills?

I Spy a Family has a post about people asking questions about her children’s adoptions in front of her children.  I love how she clearly outlines the time and place for curiosity, and even gives people the benefit of the doubt.  She explains, “I signed up for this – I knew we’d look different from everybody else, I knew we’d face curiosity and occasionally racism. I knew this and willingly agreed to it … but my kids did not.”  Their stories may be intertwined, but it is that deep respect for the child that drew me to this post.

A Little Sweetness writes a post about why she wants her child to be born near the due date of the child she lost.  Not as a replacement, but to ease the burden of memory.  It is a post about being the sole carrier of a memory, and how heavy that weight can feel.

Lastly, Things Get If’fy has a post about how while she refrained from calculating her due date for this recent loss, she will be reminded of it regardless due to the fact that her coworker is pregnant around the same gestational age.  She writes so beautifully, “Of course I’m pleased for her. I hope it goes very well (the less to complain about the better!), because another person’s misery doesn’t undo any of my own. But I had hoped for a little more respite, not to be shown quite so close up what might have been.”  It is a post about the body moving on long before the heart is ready.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am more afraid of stinkbugs than looking like a fool.  Answer the Weekly What If.  Hey, I’m speaking in New England!  And lots of great posts to read.

I recently read a book review that discussed moral consistency in regards to our interactions with animals.  You know, such as how I’m a vegetarian, but I kill crickets.

The same week, my cousin sent me a New York Times article about guilt.  It follows several environmentalists — people who have dedicated their entire being to doing right by the environment — yet what works for them in certain situations contradicts their overall message.

For instance, one has eliminated all wasteful items from their life, such as one-time water bottles, and uses recycled materials but also uses disposable diapers. Why?  Because the cloth diapers they’ve tried leak, and they found that disposables are what works with their child.

Another is a green designer, but his profession requires him to constantly change his house in order to give other people ideas.  For photo shoots, he rents an SUV to shlep around items, and in between, he continues to use the SUV because time is tight and he can’t afford to give up the time to rent a different car.

And it sort of comes back to the idea that no matter how “well” we live our lives and try to stick by our numerous ideologies, inevitably, since all things are connected, we’re messing up something else.

A case in point, the twins wanted to walk to this event for Health Day because they had been told to walk to the event — walking is good.  I explained that walking is good when your legs are a little longer and you can walk at a good clip.  But we would have been trading sleep (one building block of health) for exercise (a different building block of health) in order to fulfill what someone else said was good to do.

They felt this tremendous guilt about it as we headed to the event (I, for one, did not.  Okay, I did.  But only because they kept bringing it up.)  We weren’t “healthy enough” because we hadn’t fulfilled this aspect of Health Day.  Somehow, getting the requisite amount of sleep and eating a healthy breakfast didn’t count in their mind because we had been given this message of walk, walk, walk (and seriously, we received a handout, an email, and a phone call reminding us to walk to the event.  They went a little overboard).

There are some who would scoff at the people in this article or my kids and say that they have no right to feel guilty.  They’ve made a choice, and they should own it and move on or change it.

In the same way that I don’t believe we should put ideologies before people, I don’t know how much we should put ideologies before ourselves.  There obviously needs to be a line or ideologies become pointless.  But where do we set that line?  Can you use disposable diapers and still be an environmentalist?  Can you wear leather and be a vegetarian for compassionate reasons?

And can’t we still feel guilt in stepping over that line, even if the line needs to be drawn for sanity’s sake?  Isn’t expressing guilt a healthy response much in the same way sneezing is when dust enters our nose?  It’s a way of cleansing out the conscience. (And yes, it can get carried too far when it turns into self-flagellation.)

Guilt doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have made the same choice over and over again, but our psychological discomfort is a nod towards what we wish could be.  Which is why I think telling people not to feel guilty or that they don’t deserve to feel guilty is sort of as helpful as that “just relax” mentality within infertility.  How is it helpful to tell someone that they don’t deserve to have an emotional response?

And at that end, does anyone deserve to feel guilty?  If you look through the comments on the post, you’d see there are a bunch of people who think that no, people don’t deserve to feel guilty.  Or, more accurately, they don’t believe the people in the article should be allowed to feel guilty.  I’m sure the commenters have felt guilt in their lives, but when they felt it, it was perfectly reasonable.  (On second thought, you might want to skip the comments.  A lot of people seemed to miss the point and only focused on cloth vs. disposable diapers.)

Guilt, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is “self-reproach, as for inadequacy.”  And that pretty much sums up the feeling.  That shame, or self-reproach, for feeling that you fell short somehow.  I’ve often felt this way over things that were either wholly out of my control, or were technically within my control if we wanted to do something detrimental for the gain (for instance, wake up early and skip breakfast in order to walk to Health Day).

I felt guilt over infertility and over not carrying the twins to term.  Yes, I felt regret too, but moreover, I felt that shame for feeling inadequate.  I felt shame for losing those other pregnancies, for costing us so much money in order to reach parenthood, for pulling us through the emotional wreckage.  I felt shame over the way my body created problems for the twins.  Do I think this guilt is healthy?  No, but I’m going to feel it (and to deny it would be unhealthy), and therefore, talking about it is like a conscience sneeze, blowing debris out of the body.

So there you have it.

Carla Cohen, an icon of Washington, D.C. and the literary world, died yesterday.  She was the co-owner of Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore which was known well outside the confines of the city.  And it was well-loved; I bought a membership because it was the sort of place where you wanted to belong.

Carla gave me my first reading of Navigating the Land of If.  My book is certainly not in the ranks of the other people who usually read at Politics and Prose — just peruse who’s coming this week: Michele Norris, David Grossman, and Condoleezza Rice.  But she knew what the space meant to me, and she had a soft spot for Josh, so she set up the event.  She was one part tough businesswoman, one part erudite life-learner, and one part thoughtful and compassionate mum-to-all.

A long time ago, back when the cafe was under different management, they named a drink after me because I spent pretty much every evening there.  I wrote a large chunk of my translation project down there.  I went on a lot of dates there.  I read a lot of books there.

The drink was a chocolate egg cream, and I’d like to virtually raise one right now to toast her.  She will be greatly missed.

So that was my news this month.

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have an imaginary cocktail and tell us what is up with your life.

Another post asking people to think before they write, and yes, I will keep writing these posts as long as I see things like this on the Internet.

A woman lost her child.

You have probably heard about this story by now.  I don’t know her personally, nor did I read her blog before his death.  What I know comes from reading her posts.  He was born with severe heart problems and lived his seven weeks in the NICU.  The doctors were supposed to do his circumcision several weeks ago, but because his g-tube surgery was canceled, the circumcision (which was supposed to be performed at the same time) was canceled too.  She was able to have the circumcision at the hospital this week.  There were complications afterward, and the mother posted about them, begging readers to be gentle with her because, in retrospect, she was regretting the timing of the surgery.  She was asking for support from her community because she was scared.

He died soon after of a heart attack; the same health problem he had been battling for seven weeks due to congenital heart defects.  A group of “activists” left messages on her blog blaming her for her child’s death, and she removed the circumcision post despite the fact that the circumcision was not the cause of death according to the doctor — the only person who held the child’s full medical history.  Without knowing the child’s medical condition beyond what was recorded online, the activists took to Twitter and wrote that this loss was entirely preventable; the result of circumcision.  Amid burying their child, the one they’ve watched in the NICU for the last seven weeks, the family was met with an avalanche of nasty comments, emails, and tweets.

There are those who believe that it’s important to stick to your convictions, no matter what.  And I can respect that mindset when the convictions are turned inward.  There are, for instance, Jews — one or two generations beyond the Holocaust — who will not go to Germany.  They cannot imagine supporting with tourist dollars a country that exterminated family members.  This personal boycott may possibly affect others indirectly, but most would concur that a personal, quiet boycott mostly directly affects the boycotter.  Others may not choose this way of processing the world after the Holocaust, but avoidance is an understandable response to trauma, and if it works for them and they’re not berating me for the way I process life after the Holocaust, I think it’s a fine example of how we can live and let live.

It would, of course, be quite a different story if that same person saw an elderly German woman being robbed and not only didn’t help, but afterward told her that she deserved it for being part of that old Third Reich Germany.  Our ideologies and our convictions are only admirable insofar as they serve as a guide for how we treat other people.  I would hope, simply as a human being, that if the person in our example saw an elderly German woman being robbed, they would set aside whatever feelings they had about the country itself, and help that woman in need.  I see nothing admirable about placing ideologies before human beings.  If it were Hitler himself being robbed, that would be a different story, but in this example, I am talking about taking your ideologies over the line, from being a personal way of navigating life to being a weapon used to attack others.

This isn’t about us.  This isn’t about whether we are for or against circumcision.  Whether we think breastmilk is the bees knees or whether we think breastfeeding is disgusting.  Whether we do or do not consume high fructose corn syrup, or support the right for people to own guns or want women to have access to safe abortions.

There is a time for reasoned arguments, and there is a time to set aside our personal beliefs and reach out to another person — human to human.  And frankly, I don’t think we need to only hold ourselves to this in times of trouble.  I would love to see a time where we don’t name call, where we don’t judge people for their personal choices, where we recognize that just because a person is living a life very different from one we would choose to live that their actions don’t negate our own.  That both can exist side-by-side because we live in this wonderfully diverse world and that saying that you’re for something doesn’t mean that you’re against something.

A blogger questioned last week my role as a community builder and she’s right: this space is not welcoming of people who conduct themselves hatefully towards other people.  So, yes, if you are going to put ideologies before people, this is not the space for you.

I’m not Christian, but I’ve always loved the saying, “love the sinner, hate the sin.”  And if you think something is a sin, but all means, go ahead and hate it with all of your heart.  But please don’t hate the sinners in this space, nor is it any better to go to your own space and attack a human being rather than attacking an idea.

This is not a new phenomenon, after all, Jackie DeShannon crooned in 1965, “what the world needs now is love sweet love / it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t call it out when we see people dragging another person down.  And my heart is with that family who lost their son/sibling.