What the brown community can teach you about surviving racism

If it were the Filipino community in the U.S. that had the black experience (history and contemporary times), what would we Filipino Americans be saying to each other, publicly and in private?

If it were a single Filipino family, let's boil it down to that. Say there were two teen sons in that family, one a peaceful, productive person, the other a, oh dear, let's call it what the older generation used to call it—a "black sheep" of the family.

Say the parents were baby boomers. (I have to imagine they are because I am, and I cannot presume to know what younger generation parents might say.) I could see the father warning both sons: Walk the line. Draw no attention to yourselves. Study hard or you'll end up like your great grandparents, building the railroad, working the fields, washing white people's children's butts, not that there's anything wrong with honest labor, but it doesn't pay doctor-lawyer-CEO salaries, and people here look down on the poor, and to be poor along with being brown will be a double strike you will bear all your life.

I could see the mother saying to them: Be home before curfew. Treat women like the queens that we are. Be respectful to your elders and to people in authority. Show them they are not better than you by making yourself better—not by acting out. And if you shame the family name and we have to bail you out of jail, you can spend the night in your cell thinking about how long you'll be grounded when you come home and how long it will take to clean the toilet with a toothbrush.

Now zoom out and go wide angle.

And here is where I pause to ask myself if I might be oversimplifying or overstepping as I make conjectures about a culture not my own.

I'm wondering: What has the black community been saying to each other and to those on the extreme margins, who over decades have acted out their rage about a history of oppression and dehumanization?

Because I distinctly remember quite some time ago seeing a short clip of a young black man about to be pummeled by authority figures when his mother steps in and takes hold of him. I saw how he deflated from a puffed up troublemaker into his mother's humbled son. I saw how the cops recognized that this mother had the power in that moment over her son.

Does the black community need clearer parenting? Does it take a village? Is there a village to speak of, or is there a divide between black marginalized and black mainstream? Do they even speak to each other across that divide?

Wouldn't it be better—less fatal, for one—to start with strict parenting rather than brutal policing?

Because we cannot only say to white people, "Treat blacks like you would treat whites. I insist" and think that's the solution. We cannot only say to the world, "Love our black sons. They may grow into 6-ft intimidating figures but we still see them as cuddly." We also need to tell the other side, "If you commit crimes you color the way people view the entire black community. It's what prejudice is partly based on."

"We" are not the ones to say the latter, though. The black community needs to hear it from their own. Maybe they've been saying it all along. I don't know because I'm not in that community.

Who needs to be educated here? Everyone.

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UPDATE: It is the next day. I just viewed a video of black man pleading with rioters. "Don't burn down my business! All right, you mad at the white man, why destroy my business? Why destroy my truck? Why steal my computer? I tried to make it. I came from the ghetto like you. Could you understand that? I tried to make it."

My heart broke. 

By the way, this footage is from the 1992 riots, and it recently resurfaced. But his sentiments can't be far from those of black business owners this year.

My 40s were an awkward stage. Backtrack a little: In my 30s I began to feel legit as a grown-up. (I got through a lot of pain without running to my Mommy. Because now I'm the mommy!) That realization was my passport to adulthood—not losing my virginity or being old enough to drink or vote. It felt empowering. But almost immediately I was "pushing 40" and the menacing shadow of middle age camped just outside my tent. There wasn't time to mourn the loss of youth, it was time to fight off old age!

What happens to a woman in her 50s when she still hasn't learned what it is about her that makes her beautiful, desirable and intriguing? and perhaps an object of envy, or a threat? A woman lacking in that self-knowledge is vulnerable, and not in a good way. She's at risk. She may default to relying on men's approval and attention to be assured of her worth. But men pay attention to a woman in inverse proportion to the signs of her aging. She may compare herself to other women—dewy younger women will leave her cold; brittle older women will break her heart and women close to her age will bring up the acid in her stomach.

In fact it's this obsessive comparison with peers that slingshots a woman into angst the likes of which she hasn't felt since puberty. Friendships erode, self-esteem plummets and sanity skips town.

Fear of seeming stupid holds you back

Our youngest and I had a four-hour long phone call the last time we talked. A small part of it had to do with her not wanting to appear naive should she take a certain course of action in her relationships.

I said, "You and I, we've been valued for our brains more than our looks most of our lives. So I get it. Having people think less of us in that respect cuts close to the bone."

But many women, once we cross into our 50s, don't care what people think of us. That is, of the surface things they associate with us. Of course we care that we're seen as people of integrity, competence, stout-heartedness, all that. It's being the individuals we've grown into that we take pride in, and that hard-earned pride is an armor.

Being thought of as stupid takes many forms.

"Eccentric" was how a young co-worker at CSU Stanislaus once assessed me. Considering she was a graphic designer, and presumably creative, I chose to take that as a compliment 😏 even though I wasn't quite 50 yet.

"So silly, but so me!" was how a potential customer my age reacted to the Titania gown I sewed for our lyrical performance at the Art to Wear show a couple of years ago. She couldn't bring herself to buy it, and her husband talked her out of it with an appeal to the practical: "It's fall, and that looks like spring." As if spring would never come around again...

"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" was how my journalism professor nicknamed me, perennially tardy and always cheerful upon arrival.

And then there was "You're stupid," plain and direct, leveled at me by the Kaufman and Broad maintenance troubleshooter to whom I confessed that I'd figured out that the vent over the oven of our new home (28 years ago) had a switch that was "Off" in the middle, "Low" to the left and "High" to the right.

Now that one, when it sank in only after he left, stung. But I was 28, and me-at-50-and-beyond was another lifetime away.

The nice thing about the age I am now is that no one has called me stupid, or any of its derivatives, for a very long time. They call me "ma'am", "older patient" and such, but we can't win everything.

Downsizing my life

"I'm a minimalist."
That's something I never would've said about myself. There was a brief period of rebellion when I wanted minimalists to hush up and quit evangelizing me.

I watched several long preachy videos just now—minimalist content creators have not applied minimalism to their videos. But everything they've cut out/stopped buying I long ago gave up or never got into. I think the dividing line was when I was fired in 2009 and learned quickly how inessential most things and pampering services are apart from food and a roof over your head. Vanity, all is vanity.

Yet I still live in a house full of stuff. It's stuff I bought decades ago, when I wasn't a minimalist. It's time to align my surroundings with my mindset. Two rules I made for myself:

1) I'm gonna have to stop beating myself up for having acquired all this stuff to begin with.

2) I'm gonna have to let it all go without worrying about getting cash for it or finding good homes for it.

Breathe. Let that sh*t go.

At the start of the year a few people wrote what their "word" is for 2020. How silly, I thought. Life delights in messing up your plans.

And then I realized I have a word. It's OPEN. Those two zeroes are wide open. This is my year of emptying out. Except now I can do so without resentment.

Being open also leaves space for better things to enter my life. The trick is to trust that there are indeed better things on the way. Somehow, as trusting as I am, I struggle with this. My default imagining of my life is still painted as a non-minimalist landscape.

But the two biggest changes are already in progress.

1) I don't want to upcycle anymore. It feels almost blasphemous to the upcycling cause to say this out loud. For the last two years I haven't been amassing trunkloads of thrift store clothes and chotchkies in hopes of creating eco-friendly lovely things to sell on etsy. I've stopped caring. Nobody is buying from my shop anyway. My shop turned 10 years old but the last thing I sold was at the Art to Wear show two years ago. It is no longer my responsibility to rescue stuff.

2) I won't define myself as a dance or yoga teacher anymore. Which, in terms of stuff, means I won't be buying more leggings or class props. I mean, egad, the third bedroom that I had emptied out of upcycling stuff eventually filled up with yoga props! And now this stuff must also be decluttered. It never ends!

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There is a third area of life downsizing I'm looking at, and I'm not sure which direction to go. I could flat out decide I'm not ever returning to dancesport training, which would free me to earmark my savings for all the things I had to sacrifice when I could afford only private lessons and nothing else.

First let me observe a moment of Yay me: I have substantial savings now instead of debt. Yup. Yay me! I said I'd get out of debt in 2019 and I did. I've been collecting a small pension from my state worker years for four years, which corresponds to the number of years I took private dance lessons. Ergo, my pension and then some went straight to my former dance teacher every month. NOT ANYMORE! It's all mine now. I cannot think of a more deserving person (and in hindsight, the least deserving of it). I still have all the technique I managed to learn in four years, plus what I continue to hone in group class every Saturday.

For now I'll consider dancesport training a low priority, but I won't bump it out of my life completely. I do like the idea of heading into my 60s and 70s still fit and fierce. I see pictures of my former fellow dance teachers from the studio I quit in 2014...let's just say I've taken better care of myself, and it shows, and cutting out their kapha-imbalanced snide energies was one of the best decluttering decisions ever.

I'm a minimalist, and proud of it.

When you're angry and you know it then it's better that you show it

We interrupt regular programming to bring you this important reminder: If you've been dissed, get mad. Don't only get sad. Don't just quietly absorb as gospel truth the stupid things that repeatedly come out of seemingly rational people's mouths; you are not a sink sponge.

Depression is anger turned inward. You have a right to be angry. You have a right to express that anger. You do have a responsibility to find a healthy outlet for it, though.

"Use your words" isn't just for frustrated toddlers. We could take that advice, too. Heck, get creative with it.

How about picturing those turds who diminished you and calling them out in the privacy of your room? "You latrine-tending rotted gut pus-oozing boil on the nose of humanity, you. You're just wrong." You can say any version of this, or write it down. "You ignorant irrelevant idiot. You arrogant arseholian blight on the landscape of earthlings."

How do you know they're wrong about you? Well, do they know you better than you know yourself?

Wait, what? You're not sure you know what it means to know yourself? Oh honey that right there is where to start.

If you haven't spent your limited time on earth thus far asking the question, "Who am I?" you are practically offering up your heart as a dart board with a splendiferous marquee that says "Free target practice."

Straight up: this whole knowing thyself thing, it's work. No shortcuts. You won't find the answer on social media, so watch how much time you give that. You won't get the full picture from your mother, either, nor your (supposed) soul mate, your BFF, nor your dog, much as she worships you.

And if you think that sounds like knowing yourself is a gift so rare, why yes, yes it is.

You are not your feelings. You are not your body. You are not your thoughts. You are not your history. You are not your aspirations. You are not just your parent's child, or your spouse's spouse, or, for that matter, the punching bag for adult bullies, whether or not they mean to be mean.

The stuff you are partly made of is indestructible. But it's coated in fragile packaging. The packaging might get dinged as you travel your path. Protest loudly! Don't just sit in the dust and wait for more kicks in the gut. You cradle the Divine in your soul—would you allow Him to be disrespected along with you?

Have you ever heard of an elevator speech? It's a roughly one-minute spiel you have ready. Business people like me are told to have one in case we rub elbows (in a literal elevator, or not) with influencers. Yours you will say over and over to yourself until it fits snugly on your tongue and smoothly over your heart and when someone with blinders on opens their mouth and spews absurdity your way, you say your elevating elevator speech. And drop the mic.

You gotta write that speech. You gotta know yourself. You gotta believe what you say about yourself to yourself.

Because only then will you see that these tormentors, these gaseous malodorous detriments to God-fearing churchgoing do-gooding elders/any agers everywhere, they're unawoke. The mouth opens, the tongue flaps, but the membranes in the brain didn't get on the train. And maybe eventually you'll manage to tsk tsk and shrug them off.

You are loved beyond what you know about Love.

Not just another dance or yoga class, please

Here's the thing. I don't really want to teach yet another dance or yoga class, not the way we've always structured those classes. Because I don't want to teach people just how to dance or how to pose. Or breathe, for that matter. Or lie still and think of the moment and nothing beyond.

All valuable things, but I've taught that, and there are many, many people teaching that now, and many more on their heels training to teach that.

I want a gathering. Fairly small, with some regularity. I'm calling out (in my head, from my heart, trying not to sound like "Is there anyone out there???") to women and those who identify as feminine. Come show up, for yourselves and for this new group as yet unformed.

We would move, yes, and there would be resistance at first, frustration even, if the joints protest or the coordination isn't there. But laughter would carry us along. The surprise and delight at what it feels like to be in our bodies, to be part of this collective body, would be the point of the evening. We're setting aside the need to achieve—that's for our daytime selves.

The music would be curated as much for the message as for the rhythmic sound. The stretching and lying still at the end would be a time to reflect. I can't wait to share nuggets of philosophy from my favorite contemporary female writers. Maybe they'll want to bring an excerpt to read next time.

And then! at the very end, when everyone is loosey-goosey gooey from the feels, we'll have a thing, which I'm not talking about here, which will give them something personal and memorable to treasure and share if they wish.

So it's a book club that dances, a support group that dissects societal expectations, a dance group that dares its members to get saucier by the minute. Can we really be all that, let alone in an hour and 15? Are there people in my vicinity who want more than a dance or yoga class?

Here's the other thing: there's no clear way to promote this thing. That became painfully clear to me after my first promo, from someone who wanted to know just one thing: what kind of dance do I teach?

And in the meantime, I feel a little guilty that I'm abandoning my one loyal yoga student who came faithfully week after week. I've put my yoga teaching on hold indefinitely. I am neither called nor trained to heal with restorative yoga. If you hurt now, you'll likely hurt even more after your first few classes with me, because that's what it means to demand more of your body if you haven't been moving much, if you haven't been questioning your sedentary life. You will need to commit to pushing past the initial protest from muscles you didn't know you had. You will need to trust that on the other side you'll find a powerful understanding of the new you.

Why am I doing it this way? For me. It's what I need at this point. I need people willing to come alongside, suspend entitlement, discard inhibition, and when I say, "Jump!" or "Shimmy," not collapse in a wussy heap. If I can't find people for the kind of class I want to teach now, I won't teach.

That's the truth.

Pleasure is not a bad word

Women are wired to do for others before we take care of ourselves. Even asking God for something for ourselves may bring on guilt for being "selfish." But what if we ask for it so that WE might be in a better position to serve, to spread joy?

"Pleasure" as a word has taken on seedy connotations. (Thank you, adult toy industry, etc.) "Sensuality," same thing. It's way more than having sex! In her essay below, Danielle LaPorte takes us a step beyond the clinical-sounding "self care" to encourage us to give ourselves permission to experience pleasure. She suggests three exercises using our imagination, unlimited by constraints on time and finances.

Prioritize Pleasure
By Danielle LaPorte

"Pleasure brings you into your body—and you cannot CREATE unless you are in your body.

A lot of us leave our bodies. Definitely in traumatic situations, and also in overwhelm. We're all familiar with the phrase, "You just check out." Your mind wanders. You're not attending to your breath. You are not in your sensuality. You can't have full connection when you're not embodied… so you cannot make things that will last.

When you’re more fully here, when you are BEing… human… then you can bring in the holy. And THAT’S creativity. You’re here in your pleasure, in your body, on Earth—and that’s when you bring heaven down.

Pleasure is a doorway to the divine, via your Joy. Knock, knock.

The idea is to begin shifting your pleasure priorities, so you start doing less of what you don’t like to do, and more of what you love. Start by visualizing three ideal days (based on an exercise by Abraham-Hicks): a perfect at-home day, a fantastical away day, and a day where you just love on and save the world.

Vision 1: Your Home Day Ideal 12 hours.
In everyday life, where would you be, what would you be doing, who would you be with, what would you be eating, how would you be earning, helping, creating, living, loving in a span of twelve hours? Walk through everything that would go into the waking hours of blissdom for you. Focus on ideal and don’t worry about how you’re going to make it happen. If bliss would be “I’m working in my jammies from home” and presently you’re commuting three hours to the office, write it down anyway.

Keep your vision within the confines of space and time. Let your imagination and idealism unfurl, but… save the really impractical things like, “I wake up in Athens, lunch in Manhattan, and smoke a bedtime hookah in Rajasthan” for your Away Day fantasy. Don't worry about how it's gonna happen, okay? Just feel into the ideal.

Vision 2: Your Fantastical Away Day for 12 hours!
The next step is extravagant, fantastical, time-bending, like, if your ideal 12 would be you're lounging in Morocco, smoking a hookah, you can do that. If you want go spend the day meditating on Venus, or you want to be making love in Bali, you can be doing that. Your fantasies will tell you so much about your current reality. And in that place, what would you be eating? How would you be earning? Would you not be working at all? Would you be a nun? Would you have your own talk show? Yes. How would you be helping? I love that layer of question in both your practical and your fantastical.

Vision 3: You love on the world for 12 hours!
What would give you pleasure in terms of being of service to the world? Meditate and pray in the morning, change laws, clean up beaches, donate, chant, cheers, work in a soup kitchen, invent a global water purifier, get everyone to come together in peace and design programs for climate restoration and children adoration? Go there!"

Sometimes you really need to hear a voice

What we need is the option to post our own voices,

not just words, photos and videos. I want to hear

the love in people's voices,

the wonder and marvel,

the discouragement and heartbreak.

Our voices carry so much of who we are and how we feel. 

And this would not only open up the digital world to the sight-impaired, but give pause

to the selfie-indulgent

and freedom from self-consciousness

to the camera-shy and spelling-incapable.

If we can post in audio we might also learn

to listen better,

to use our other senses to connect.

If we can lean back at the end of a long day and listen rather than stare at a screen,

blue-light insomnia might be a thing of the past.

If we post in audio we might be more circumspect,

less trollsome, more mindful

of the admonition to only speak

if it improves upon the silence. 

If I steam my yoni will you grill your lingam?

Yoni steaming is a thing. My yogi mates and I had a detailed discussion. There might have been some guffawing, some of it from me. Later I explained what this is to Steve, complete with gestures and stepping over an imaginary pot of boiling herb-infused water. I drew my pretend sari skirt around my real-mama hips.

"You should tell them 'My husband said my yoni is already steamy,' " he said.

Next up on the agenda: Why isn't there lingam grilling? Or is there?

Understanding is extraneous to forgiveness

Turns out I don't have to understand why someone did me harm to get to the point of forgiveness. I hadn't realized I was trying to use the old route of "understand, so you can forgive" but it hasn't worked these past six months. Maybe my endless thought loops of "why, why why" were just justification for my unreadiness to forgive?

Tonight's meditation takeaway: "compassion for someone you don't understand." Thanks, Jake Murry.

Forty is old but midlife is young old age

What they don't tell you about growing older is that 40 sounds old but mid-50s is young again. In your 40s you're always comparing yourself to your past self—abilities, appearance, energy, ambition. Once you cross into your 50s you start looking around, and really seeing, the folks in their 70s, 80s, 90s...and boy are you glad you are still young. A young senior is younger in attitude and gratitude than an aging middle-ager who is too preoccupied with resisting to practice accepting the inevitable.

When politeness will do until forgiveness kicks in

I think politeness could serve a purpose. It might be a placeholder until forgiveness is ready to take its place. There's no hypocrisy in reacting with gracious calm, even when inside we're appalled.

And after that, distance could be useful, too. It could shield us from being provoked more while we process the ugliness that's been shown us thus far. The freeing thing is this: there isn't a deadline for forgiveness. It comes when it comes. If you watch for its approach you'll only end up brooding over the slights and offenses that need forgiving. You can't really keep taking its temperature, checking for the exact moment the fever breaks and you're free of resentment.

You just go about living life and delighting in what's good and eventually something triggers the memory of when you were betrayed or some crappy thing that came out of this person's mouth, but now you can think about it without gritting your teeth or calling the person some choice invective or picturing him or her in various forms of purgatorial suffering.

No, no, when you can recall it all with detachment, like a deathbed review of your own life, that's when you know. And won't you be glad then? You'll be relieved that you carried yourself with dignity, never stooping, never taking the bait. You reined in your expectations, allowing the other person to operate within their current, somewhat limited awareness of humanity, divinity, and magnanimity of spirit. You gave them no deadline to reach your level of consciousness.

You resisted the very tempting impulse to solicit sympathy via the posting of meme after meme of pseudo-wisdom or sarcastic wit that does nothing to veil the vat of stewed bitterness that used to take up space in your heart. Yay you!

Middle age and body love are not mutually exclusive

I can TBT without regret. I didn't even realize back then that I was skinny! But I love my body more now. Having a body has become so much more than fussing over surface and visual appeal.

I have trained this body to endure grueling drills, to be resilient and pliable, to win against viruses and stress. I am a warrior. I have learned when to coddle and when to talk tough to it. I am as wise as the ancients when I mother my own body.

This body moves with assuredness when I teach a room of distracted dance students. This body melts into embrace when touch and wordless comfort are needed. This body holds still on the mat, observing in silence, awakening in wonderment, unfolding in surrender.

This body suspends the gag reflex to clean out the litter box. This body unequivocally rejects an excess of sugar -- by breaking out in hives! No mistaking that message.

This body permits, nay, compels me to experience and process my emotions. It will not stay defeated. It will lie spent for a season while my spirit licks its wounds, but it is the body that will arise and move first, to exhale in ever lengthening, growly sighs, with increasing urgency until my spirit comes alongside.

This body catalogs in sensory memory the pheromones of my beloved, the perfume of my hybrid Jackson & Perkins roses, the precious pronunciation of toddler talk, the density of my Mom's flan.

It is a single body among so many, but the only one assigned to me. It is both vitally important to preserve in good health but immediately disposable once my energy departs it. Images of it will stand in for me in recall when I myself am gone.

When being nice isn't always wise

Is niceness overrated? Could I have been shielding myself with it? Am I grounded enough in wisdom now to know when to step out from behind it and return fire? If I don't return an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth in certain situations—strictly as a mirror, you understand, without the baggage of vengeance—have I wasted the teachable moment? Have I allowed nastiness to spread?

Let's say I've been chosen as the target and my warrior heart took that bullet and vaporized it: If I watch the bully walk away to find another, weaker target, have I neglected my duty to humanity? By duty I don't mean stepping in front of the next target and taking that bullet again. I mean taking Godzilla down. Before it goes on its rampage.

Is this the new lesson I'm supposed to be learning? First I learned to see what the world looks like when it's loved. Then I learned to spot where love is missing. Satya—Sanskrit for truth; to see things as they are. Now I think I'm being called to act when necessary. And my need to be nice, to be loved, needs to be sacrificed. Alrighty then. Oh, by the way—only nice people can comment. haha!

When commitment leads to mistreatment

It is the irony of (many) human relationships that the more they think they have you the less they treat you like the gem you've been to them.

The conquest is done, they have you in their pocket; on to the next chase.

The younger mistress, the new star employee, the client they're trying to land, the novelty of an untested partnership. Quite a catch. Dazzling new possibilities. More money. That air of unavailability. And the newbie won't know all their faults (yet)! They guzzle the hero worship like cold beer on a sweltering afternoon.

This is how the older brother of the Prodigal Son felt. What, no fatted calf for me, after I have served you all these years?

They've asked for your total loyalty but still lust for the next bright shiny object of their ambition. As a former 40-something bachelor acquaintance once put it, "There might be someone better out there."

Undoubtedly, there is someone better out there. Better than they are. Someone who practices gratitude, who expresses appreciation, who gives you the benefit of the doubt and never takes your commitment for granted.

Sometimes we are the neglected, the overlooked, the underappreciated locked into what started as a bond but feels like bondage.

Sometimes we are the ungrateful wretches and don't know or don't care that we are. And we are in a prison of a different sort.

The poison in friendships between women

There are subtle ways that supposed friends one up each other, and I've observed two. I'll talk about the first one. Do you have people like these in your life?
One woman found my vulnerable spot and gave me a lot of unsolicited advice. Take action now, she urged, it will only get worse as time goes on. I felt myself lose hope whenever I listened to her paint my situation in terms more dire than they really were. I told her, "If I woke up looking at my life the way you see it, I wouldn't get out of bed." She was generous with little gifts. I thought she was being thoughtful until it started to feel like every time we hung out I was her personal social work project. Some people get off on being indispensable. But first they have to convince you you're weak.
Once, she even answered for me, as though I was a child incapable of speaking for myself. I'd been encouraged to get an app by the owner of a fitness studio, and she piped up, "Oh, she doesn't have a smart phone." I said, "But I do have an iPad." Another time, someone asked me to assess her alignment in a yoga pose. This "friend" jumped right in and gave her critique before I could say a word. She is without any training as a teacher whatsoever.
I might've stayed blind to the deterioration of our friendship had she not started comparing herself aloud to me. We happened to be in front of a full-length mirror in the bathroom of a dance studio, and she noted how her thighs were double the size of mine. Now, OK, maybe this is a common thing among women friends? Not for me. Even jokingly, I don't relish being set up against anyone, least of all by someone I consider a friend. I had a flashback to the time decades ago when someone told me that women's friendships are done in when competitiveness becomes a wedge.
And you know how competitiveness starts? It starts with comparisons. Which sometimes leads to copying. Which later reveals its ugly self as competitiveness.
See, the revelation for me in all this is why I minded when another supposed friend kept copying me. No, it wasn't flattering. Despite the cliché about that. It was one upwomanship. "Anything you can do I can do better." But if we were really friends, why would you feel a need to prove I'm less? All that proves is that you feel so inadequate when you compare yourself to me that you have to one-up me to overcompensate for it.

Do you pick up every penny you find in the parking lot?

Attraction is like a penny in the parking lot: a momentary glint against a drab expanse. Some of us can walk past it; others have to head over there and pick it up. It doesn't matter if we have a full jar of coins at home or a fat bank account. There's that penny, in this moment, and what we decide to do reveals much about us. Our impulse control, our sense of enough, our weakness for infatuations, our need to possess. I'm trying to teach myself that connection is what deserves my energy, not just any attraction. If my intention is to connect, it will show up in how I relate to people. And that's how I read the way others relate to me, too. Isn't it better to be treated like a person, not a penny?

When a man thinks he got away with something...

What does a man gain when he cops a feel? A moment of titillation, some self-satisfaction, a feeling of superiority over the "hapless" female?

Tell me, because yesterday when I was standing on the platform waiting to board BART, the San Francisco adventure ahead was all I had in mind. I was barely aware there was another human being just inside the doors, waiting to exit. I would not have registered whether that person was male or female if he hadn't grazed my right breast. Not enough to bruise, but enough to get my attention. And then he did a dramatic stop-and-look-back, waiting. Everything in me rose up to make sure I was NOT going to give him what he wanted.

What he wanted was a reaction. Oh, look, haha, I "accidentally" felt you up. Now you're all flustered and pink, and you're looking right at me, and I have your undivided attention. You will remember this; you will remember me.

Except I did no such thing. I didn't look back, I didn't let on I had felt anything. It did not embarrass me—why should it? I did nothing shameful. I exist, I am a woman, I have soft, feminine body parts. They are not for general consumption. They are for me to decide who has access to them. They are for intimacy, not objectification.

When I was a girl in the Philippines it was common knowledge that you had to look out for thigh gropers every time you took public transportation. In my "colegiala" uniform, rosary in hand, wedged in tight three to a bench seat built for two, I was a sitting duck for perverts. Thigh presses against mine, and then predictable as clockwork, hand invades my space. The adult in me wants to go back in time to say to those pathetic males, "Do you know me well enough to touch me like that?" And do you have any inclination at all how a woman gets turned on? It isn't with what you're doing. Go home. Review sex education.

I send this message now to that person on BART: There was plenty of space around us as we both walked through those doors. You were transparent in your desperation. I was not vulnerable. You did not diminish me. You took nothing from me. What you gave up was your own male dignity. You showed me you cannot sustain a loving relationship that gives you enough consensual intimacy.

My body is a temple. That doesn't mean I think of myself as a a minor goddess. It means I have dedicated body, mind and soul to my Creator. The same one who created you. Do not desecrate this temple. Do not desecrate yours. There is always an accounting, buddy. You have lost your humanity already.

On the sex drive, boundaries, and labeling women 'objects of temptation'

In my dream, I am about to get into a tub. Dream dictionary says it could symbolize purification of the soul. Except...the tub is filled with melted chocolate. One interpretation for chocolate is "good health, contentment, a pampered lifestyle." It would seem that purification is at odds with hedonism. But is it really?

The day before, I'd been thinking about the Huffington Post article on VP Mike Pence living the Billy Graham rule (no solo meals with a woman not his wife, and other potentially sticky situations.) One outraged response on Twitter cast Pence's decision as disrespectful to women, supposedly reducing us to objects of temptation rather than equally competent potential leaders of the country.

My thought had been, "Wait, what if Pence—and the others who see the wisdom of setting boundaries—are doing this because they know themselves through and through? This decision is about their acknowledging that the human heart, and, let's face it, the male libido, is like a roaring lion. Better not to wander into a compromising situation in the first place than have to expend so much energy trying to get out of it, justify it, hide it, deny it, etc.

So how does this relate to my dream?

I've long formed the opinion that sensuality and spirituality are entwined. They're not flipsides, they actually arise from the same source. One is not profane, which would make only the other thing holy. (This is the bedrock of my MindersMovers with Marie mission statement.) Imagine my delight when I came across a quote that said, "Sensuality is the fire in you. Spirituality is how you handle that fire." Bingo!

People with high leadership drive also have high testosterone, I read many years ago, in an article explaining why JFK and many prominent figures were philanderers.

So here's the thing: the sex drive is a revved-up engine, and willpower isn't always enough to apply the brakes. Now, if you argue that men and women ought to be evolved enough to be alone together without falling into bed, and that men and women can be platonic friends, you wouldn't be wrong.

But that doesn't nullify the need for boundaries. Some people need them, that's all. Let's not make them (me!) wrong for needing them. These people aren't morally weak or misogynistic. Just realistic, for themselves.

And here's where I tread on possibly offending somebody: Even if you, personally, can work with/be close to a person and not have sparks fly to the point where it becomes risky, other people have a lower threshold, shall we say. We're Just So Attracted. And attractive.

Women are objects of temptation? That's not an insult. Hahaha! I should hope so! Women are luscious as well as brilliant. That's what I teach in dance and yoga, you guys! Yes, DO build a hedge around your marriages. I'd be insulted if you proclaim that I do not appeal to anyone of any gender, that I'm SAFE, that you don't need to worry about me.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

So when men hit on me, I always say, "Sure, if my husband can come."

When being the Disturbed Hibernating Bear is a temporary departure from your constant Zen self

This being married thing is sometimes awfully tiresome, especially when you remember you signed up for a lifetime. Anyone in an intimate relationship lasting longer than five minutes knows this. Often the stress stems simply from the fact that you are a person apart from your so-called better half. There is no getting around this: you are two people with separate brains, each brain infused with muleheadedness. This, despite all the church talk about being one in God's eyes the moment you say your vows. Living with another person day in and day out is the litmus test for patience, altruism and self-awareness. How much does one put up with in the name of unconditional love? How much does one give up of one's preferences? Some days you cave just to keep the peace and some days you let the steam out and scream back. Boy, does that feel good. For about two minutes. The spouse is startled into the re-realization that you are quite capable of pushback.

You wonder how people stay married. You wonder why people even marry to begin with. Don't they know what it can be like? Do they think they're exempt? Are they convinced they're exceptional and able to float above the chaos? Didn't their mothers/girlfriends/sisters warn them? (And you acknowledge with some guilt that you are partly culpable in perpetuating the romantic myth of married bliss, due to those posts when you are at the moment quite adoring of your beloved, and those posts that never get written, a sin of omission if you will, when you are at the moment regretting having said "Yes" that many years ago.)

So let's talk about anniversaries—the announcements of such on social media, the resulting outpouring of congratulatory comments. Thirty years wed, you say? The higher the number, the more we are supposed to be impressed.  Some of us concede during these announcements that the journey hasn't been padded with rose petals. We are being kind, and that kindness comes out as vague references to bumps and snags. We like to think we are not sugarcoating or whitewashing, when in fact we are, but it is called not washing dirty linen in public. This is how we distinguish ourselves from the juveniles who trumpet every dissatisfaction and slight, and change their relationship status to "It's complicated" whenever the SO exhibits a pinprick of insensitivity.

Right about now you are looking for a redeeming factor amid the venting. Maybe if this were a post on Facebook you would be tempted to write "SMH." Maybe you want to, facetiously or sincerely, (either way, infuriatingly) suggest that one could use a glass of wine. And, if you are single, you might already, four paragraphs up, have concluded that you are better off.

I wrote all of the above about a month ago, when I was particularly peeved at the spouse about something I don't even recall now. I have long since simmered down, as I knew I would, and might have forgotten about the draft had I not come across Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person in The New York Times Sunday Review.

There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.

In other words, you could be lonely as a singleton or despondent within marriage. Choose your poison. And doesn't that hold true in other areas of life? You could be exasperated as an employee or as an entrepreneur. You could be confused as a believer or as an atheist. You could be indignant as a conservative or as a liberal. You could be deprived of human rights as a citizen or as an undocumented immigrant. You could be exhausted as a dancer or as a couch potato.

The opposite is also true. You could be grateful for income as an employee or an entrepreneur. You could be devout as a believer or an atheist. You could be committed to justice no matter which party you vote for. And so on.

What have we learned here? What pithy summation can we formulate to put this post to bed? How about:

The circumstances may not have changed, but your perspective changes everything.


P.S. I'll paste my reply to Eugenie's comment, below, as I am unable to respond to it under her comment: Lovely seeing you here, Eugenie. Thank you for commenting. I felt so much better after getting all this down in writing and putting some distance between myself and my emotions. Yes, gratitude cancels out resentment.