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Travel advice

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I was trying to find more Jewish blessings and came across this bit of interesting advice about returning from a trip. This was on the Chabad website, and is by Rabbi Eliezer Wenger. This seems like useful advice for everybody.

1. It is preferable to return from a journey while it is still day.

2. A married man who goes on an extended trip should bring his wife gifts upon his return.

3. Upon returning from a trip, one should not enter his home suddenly. He should notify his family members of his presence by either knocking or calling first.

4. One should not enter his house from a trip while he is hungry. When one is hungry, he is very irritable and may become angry quickly at one of his family members.

I took out this bit of advice because it does not apply to everybody – “One should try to get an aliyah on the Shabbos following his return.” This means that on the Sabbath after you return home, you should try to get called up to read from the Torah. There isn’t a parallel in the Christian community, as the readers are assigned and are never called up randomly from the congregation.

Master and servant

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Who is the servant? The technology, or the person who owns it?

I was in the middle of painting this morning and the phone rang. I have only one special ring and it is for my husband. This was not that ring. So it was someone else. I considered stopping what I was doing but that would mean not having enough time to finish my painting. It might also mean that my phone got covered in paint.

I don’t have the kind of life where people have to get hold of me every second of the day. It is important to me that I have my life like that. If people are having an emergency they can call 911, not me. I am not a manager and I am not a parent. I am not a caregiver to anyone. I am not anyone’s AA sponsor. I believe each person should take care of themselves and not have emergencies that I have to take care of.

So when the phone rang my instinct was to jump up and get it, just because society tells us we should do that. But thankfully I ignored it. Training can be broken.

How many of us think that we have to jump the moment the phone rings? If we are driving we feel like we have to answer it. Or we feel like we have to answer that text. The phone rules us, not the other way around.

There was a lady who is changing at the Y and her phone kept going off with texts. She looks very frustrated. Every time she would reply, her friend would reply, and then she would have to reply again. I said “Just put it down.” But she said “No, if I don’t answer immediately they begin to worry.” I said “Tell them you are changing at the Y and it can wait.”

This has happened many times. There is a no-cellphone policy in the changing room at the Y, but nobody obeys it. Even if they don’t get that people don’t like the idea of possibly having their picture made while changing, they still don’t get that they don’t have to use their phone all the time. It can stay turned off. We don’t have to be connected all the time.

It’s like I have to do an intervention with people. Perhaps we are addicted to our technology. While our cellphones makes life easier, in a way, they have made life more difficult.

While they have
in theory
made us
more connected
to each other,
they have made
our lives
more disconnected
and
we are
more disconnected
from ourselves.

Is this what we want? Who is in charge, the technology or us? We have to decide it is okay to turn your phone off. You don’t have to have it on while you’re driving. You don’t have to discuss all of your life’s business while you are walking through Walmart. Nobody wants to know it anyway. How did you survive before you had a phone surgically attached to yourself? You did just fine. People say “Oh I have to take care of my bills while I’m driving.” No, you don’t. How did you take care of them before you had a cell phone and before you could pay them online? You wrote a check and you mailed it in and it got done. Things don’t have to be done any faster these days, we have just been trained that they do.

If the technology isn’t serving you, then you are the servant.

Glasses

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I needed glasses at an early age, but I didn’t know it. Nobody knew it. I’d learned to adapt to my handicap. Imagine how much fuller my life would have been if people could have seen the signs and known to get me help.

In the meantime, I sat at the front of the class so I could see the board, and I learned to recognize people by how they walked, rather than how their face looked.

I wonder how many other things I’m missing out on. I wonder what else I am faking at and I don’t even know it. I wonder how many of us are like that, adapting, creating work-arounds, when there is a simple way through it. We think that our disability is normal, because we don’t know it is a disability, or we think that we just have to suffer with it because nobody has told us any differently. We either think we are normal and we aren’t, or we think we are unusual, and we aren’t.

I’m one of those people that needs someone to point out the obvious sometimes. Sometimes, something is so simple I don’t think of it. My head is in the clouds. I can see big things, but little things escape me.

Wonder if there are glasses for that? Perhaps I’m farsighted in life, where I’m nearsighted otherwise.

If glasses won’t help, then people can give you a cane, or make signs bigger, or you can use a guide dog.

But imagine, if you were born blind, and you didn’t know that there was such a thing as “sight”.

Imagine how the world was for Helen Keller when her teacher was finally able to unlock her mind, to let her know about words. She started to become a human being that day.

I’m constantly looking for ways that I’m blind, that I’m missing out. I share them here, with the hope that others will get something from it. Perhaps they will say “Ah! So that is what it is that I’m missing!” and their eyes will open too.

Old? Never.

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When did my skin get so wrinkly?
When did my doctors get younger than me?
How did this happen?

When did all these young people around me become bit players in my life? When did I start looking at old people for signs of what to expect?

They are “computer illiterate” or using walkers or confused all the time.

I don’t want to become them. I don’t want to be helpless or hopeless or lost. I don’t want to be taken advantage of.

I’ve read that you are only as old as you feel, and that age is a social construct. I feel it knocking on my door.

I don’t want to answer.

I think it is time to pull out my crayons and my fingerpaints. I think I’m going to defeat age by becoming a child again.

It is part of why I tutor kindergartners. I’m learning tips.

Bad addition

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If the room has a bad smell, most people will spray another smell on top of it. They will put a perfume smell on top of a stinky smell. So then it is perfumed stink.

If the place is noisy, they will turn on the TV to make even more noise. The idea is to cover up one noise with another noise.

I’m waiting at the car dealership on my car to be repaired. There is a TV in the waiting room, and it is on pretty loud. The service advisers and the receptionist are all in this same small room too. There is a lot of noise. It isn’t very peaceful.

I looked at everybody who was waiting, saw that they all were reading their books or their phones, so I asked if any of them had a problem with me turning it down or off. Nobody minded, so I turned it off. Several of them said thanks. They appreciated it, but had done nothing about it.

Now, that’s another thing. Nobody wanted it on, but nobody did anything about it.

Back to the original theme – the shop needs to move the area, or put up a barrier. Instead of turning on the TV to drown out the other noises, they need to put up a wall.

Adding to a problem isn’t the solution.

How many times do we do this – add, rather than subtract? And how many times do we have a problem with something and just suffer in silence, rather than do anything about it?

Languages

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A lot of people move to Nashville from all around the world and they speak a lot of different languages. I think it would be easier if everybody learned the same language to communicate with each other. I don’t think it would be fair if everybody had to learn Arabic and Kurdish and Somali and French and Spanish. If everybody learns the same language we are all on the same page.

However, there is a push to have all government documents in Spanish, and there are many businesses that advertise that the speak Spanish there. Not any other language – just Spanish. The people from all other countries are not included. Translating and printing all government documents in two languages is expensive, and we are constantly having budget cuts. Where would this money come from? If they follow the usual trend then people’s jobs would be cut and service hours would be shortened.

For us to make everything in Spanish is to say that the Mexicans are unusual among all the other people who move here. It is saying that they are unable to learn English. I feel it is selling them short, and that it is an insult to their intelligence. If we print everything in Spanish and we all have to learn it, then they don’t have to learn it at all.

I feel we are handicapping them rather than helping them.

How are you?

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I think everybody should have to work in retail for at least a year. Then we all might learn how to be civilized.

When I worked at a fabric store I would ask customers all day long how they were doing. They would answer me and they would almost never ask me how I was doing. One day I got really frustrated and I said “And I’m fine too thanks!” I got a really strange look. The person didn’t get that they hadn’t asked me how I was doing and they didn’t get that it was rude not to do so.

The person behind the counter is not a machine. She is a human being.

Treating a human being like she is a machine is how we are falling apart. It is how we are losing our humanity. Common courtesy isn’t common anymore.

When I am interacting with a customer service representative and they ask me how I’m doing, I’ll reply and then ask them how they are doing. They will reply, and then follow it up with “…and thank you for asking.” They are surprised that someone even asked them.

It doesn’t take any extra time to ask someone how they’re doing. But when you are going to ask someone how they’re doing you need to actually wait for the answer. And you need to look them in the eye if you are in person.

Just saying it and not meaning it is pointless. You might as well not say it at all. If you say it and you don’t mean it is just a reflex action and not a real human interaction. It is important for us to remember that we are all humans working together. If we treat each other like machines, then we will become machines. We will become less than human.

Animal logic

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How do animals know how to do everything that they do? Cats know how to give birth and take care of their kittens without another cat present to tell them how. On their own, they know how to do what needs to be done. This is important for us to think about as human beings.

We think that we have become more civilized than animals because of our language and our culture. And in some ways we have been, but in some ways we have lost quite a bit.

It is important for us to think about how animals are able to know what to do without the tools that we use to know what to do. Termites are able to build huge mounds. Each one knows what to do. They know to go outside and get dirt and bring it inside and build up walls. Each termite has its own particular task, and together they build an amazing structure. They are more coordinated and more organized than we humans. We disagree and argue all the time about how to take care of ourselves and each other and we get into wars because of it.

We should study the animals so that we learn their secret. I don’t mean put them in a lab and study them. I mean leave them exactly where they are and watch and think about them. Ants and bees and wasps do it – they all know how to work together to build something amazing. How come we have to have an architect and a blueprint and staff meetings? How come we have to have a vision statement?

We are not all on the same page. Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps the fact that we have put our knowledge and our power into books instead of tapping into the source of all knowledge and all power is the problem.

All knowledge and power comes from God. It comes down to us and we put into books but then we think that all knowledge comes from books. Now don’t get me wrong, I like books. I think books are important. But I think that we humans have forgotten that there is a source beyond books. There’s the source of knowledge that we are able to access beyond books.

We have shortchanged ourselves.

We do it when we have students and teachers. We do it when we have parents and children. We do it when we have ministers and congregants. We do it when we have bosses and employees. We do it every single time we have a hierarchy of who is in charge and who is lesser. We do it every single time we say that somebody has all the knowledge and somebody else is lesser. It is time for all of us to take back our own power and her own knowledge and tap into the source of all power and knowledge.

Each one of us has the ability to connect to our Maker and our Source and be stronger. Each one of us is strong enough to know what needs to be done and do our own part. We just have to learn how to trust that inner voice.

But of course part of it is learning how to seek that voice and then when we do hear it to actually act upon it.

Hidden in plain sight

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I think it is interesting how there are some posts that I won’t share on my Facebook feed, but I’ll still write them and post them. There are some people and situations that I want to write about that I feel won’t be received well by my friends or my family, so I don’t share them there. But I do share them with total strangers all over the world.

Perhaps it is a sign to me that I should talk to those people privately about what I see. Sometimes family or friends are doing something that I think is dangerous or stupid or counterproductive. Sometimes I can see that the direction they are going will result in making their lives even more difficult. But instead of telling them, I vent about it here.

But then again, I’ve noticed that people are unwilling or unable to heed advice when they didn’t seek it.

For a while I had a filter, where I would share posts with certain people but not others. I could block out a group. It turned out that group was either family or friends of family. Family tends to get upset when I talk about family. My brother had a real issue with it – something about family honor and pride and name. But if he was so darned interested in family honor and pride and name, he should have acted better.

I was just reporting the facts. Is it embarrassing to be called out for your repeated violations of your own honor code? His lies and machinations finally got to me. It was either my sanity and health or his “honor”.

Then there is my married family. There is quite a bit of unsettled business there, and it is ugly to watch people act like teenagers when they are in their 70s. If lessons aren’t learned when you are young, you will continue to stay at that emotional age.

I got called out for pointing out hypocrisy and lies and maladaptive behavior in my family – birth and married. I got challenged by members, saying that I should just put up and shut up and make peace. It isn’t my place to make peace with someone who has abused me. I am not in the wrong for standing up for myself.

If someone breaks into my house and robs me, I am not the person who should apologize and make things right.

Being mentally harmed by a family member, even after I have pointed out the harm and asked him to stop, is the same as being robbed. My mental peace had been stolen. But for another family member to write me and say I should make peace for the sake of the family is even more insulting, and further harms me. It says that I am the antagonist.

I was attacked for what I wrote about the church too – by members of the parish I went to, and by strangers here who thought I was being divisive and harming the Church. I’m not. I’m showing how we are damaging it. I want it to be stronger, but it can’t be until we remove the weak parts. Like all the parts that Jesus not only didn’t tell us to do, but also all the parts that Jesus told us especially not to do.

I will not be silent anymore. I was silent for many years. But now I’ve found my voice, and I will speak. The more people who try to silence me actually strengthens me, because I see it as a sign I’m on the right path. Just like in aikido, I use my opponents’ energy in my favor.

Epicenter

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When something bad happens, people like to know where it happened. They want to know how close it hit to them. They want to know if it’s going to affect them.

If your house is robbed and you’re part of the neighborhood watch, they will ask what street you are on. They want to know how close the danger is to them. They want to know if it is going to hit them next.

If someone dies unexpectedly, people will ask “How did she die?” or “How old was she?”or they will wonder out loud if she caused her own early death due to not taking care of herself. They want to know if there’s a possibility that it will happen to them. They want to know if they are at risk for the same thing.

In both cases, they want to know if they should move away from the danger.

No matter what you do, you will get sick, and you might get robbed. Asking how close it is to you only insults the other person and says “You are not like me. I’m special.” It implies that you think that you are above the other person – more blessed.

The phrase “There but for the grace of God go I” is especially insulting. If there is a tornado that goes through your neighborhood and your house is intact and half your neighbor’s houses are flattened, it doesn’t mean that God loves you more. It doesn’t mean that God gives more grace to you and withdraws it from them. It doesn’t mean that they did something bad to deserve it.

Bad things happen to people, period. Not just bad people. What matters afterwards is how we deal with it.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
– John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, “Meditation XVII”