Tag: James Baldwin

Hello Again

First, I am going to trinkle these new “gems” I found onto this pile of life’s thoughts/reflections/wisdoms which is called Adulting – Second Half:

“A lot of things broke my heart, but fixed my vision.”

Marriage argument motto: “I have nothing to win, everything to gain and everything to lose.”

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin

“Those mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” -Najwa Zebian

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Buddha

And from a really good movie, Jay Kelly:

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.” – Sylvia Plath

“Italy. What is it’s fatal charm? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places lost long ago.”

I’m sorry for a longer than usual absence, readers. The latest flu really got me. (and no, I didn’t get the flu shot, so maybe something to consider. . . .) I just finished one of those wonderfully cheesy, fill-my-eyes-up, 2025-year-in-review videos. It was honestly pretty compelling. These videos always remind me of just how much happens in one year.

Lately, I’ve been observing our human nature to sweep entire years as “good” or “bad.” We often take one monumental event that happened in any particular year, either to us personally (tragedies such as deaths, job loss, or happy things like new homes, graduations or babies being born), or out in the world (think politics, wars or ends of wars, natural disasters or major scientific discoveries) and we make one or two of those major events, the basis for our entire judgment, of an entire year: Good or bad. Then we pronounce blanket statements like, “I just can’t wait for this awful year to be over!” or “I’ll never have a year as good as this one.”

And yet, the video I just watched featured unbelievable Cinderella stories in all different sports, political shockers from both major parties, wildfires and floods and the rebuilding of communities, cultural phenoms, medical achievements and so, so, so much more that collectively happened in just one year, in our lives on this Earth. A year is not entirely “good” or “bad.” Isn’t it often the case that we sometimes look back at our “bad” years and we actually feel thankful for them? In retrospect, they were “good” years because they forced our hands. They brought more of ourselves and our own individual needs and desires and insights, to the forefront of our awareness. We experienced more, and thus we, in turn, became more complex, more interesting, more human.

Years are made up of our moments. There are a lot of moments in our years. One time one of my friends asked me this common phrase when I was being a bit tragically dramatic: “Did you really have a bad day, or was it a bad five minutes you milked out all day long?” Even our worst days, have sweet moments. Even our worst years, have lovely days.

The beauty of keeping a daily journal, is that you have a record of the moments – the “good” moments, the “bad” moments and a record of the days – the “good” days and the “bad” days. As a person who has consistently kept a daily journal since 2013 and has saved my calendars since 2008, I can tell you that most days are just a conglomeration of mostly banal, routine moments, with a few notably “bad” moments and a few strikingly “good” moments sprinkled on top – even on vacation days, even on tax-filing days, even on mammogram days, even on birthdays.

Sometimes I think we get a little bored with our everyday routine moments, and that’s when the stories play in our heads. That’s when our inner narrator starts turning annoying moments into horrific days. We all say we want “peace”. We all say we want “calm”, but the truth is, we often don’t know what to do with peace and calm. We get restless. So we stir up our inner pot to create drama and intrigue. Our stories of what happened are usually much more interesting than what actually happened. Aren’t we humans annoying?

Maybe the answer is to turn our inner label makers off. Days don’t need to be labelled. Years don’t need to be labelled. All experiences teach us something. We can integrate these experiences without the narrative. Our lives are not performances. Our lives are our moments, our days and our years. And we have the ability to live fully in each one of these moments, if we give ourselves permission and freedom to do so.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Lens of Love

I’m about to write a post that is touchy and that might get me some flack, but I’m going to write it and I welcome any comments and insights. Last night, I rented a movie called If Beale Street Could Talk. Although the movies is based on a story by James Baldwin, it was written and directed by Barry Jenkins, the same writer and director of Moonlight. I didn’t like the movie. I found it slow moving and I found it hard to connect emotionally with the characters. I found the characters to be extreme, unbalanced, unrealistic and less than believable. But here’s the rub, I went into watching the movie, really wanting to like it. Why? Honestly, because I am a white woman and the movie is played by a mostly black cast. The movie depicts the unfair treatment one man faced when being wrongly accused of a crime, due to the vengeance of a racist police officer. The movie takes place in a city neighborhood mostly inhabited by black people.

I don’t believe that I am racist. Everything in my heart, soul and mind knows that racism is wrong. So, I have to ask myself, is it racist to want to like a movie, before even seeing it, because it is telling the story of the struggles many African-Americans face (struggles, that as a white woman who has always lived in upper-middle-class, mostly white neighborhoods can’t even begin to understand)? I don’t go into movies with mostly white casts, thinking, “I really hope that I like this movie.” I either like the movie or I don’t. But even at this point, I struggle to admit that I didn’t like If Beale Street Could Talk. I feel like I should like the film. I feel like by admitting that I didn’t like it, that I am perhaps not cultured enough to truly understand the greatness of the film. I feel like I am thinking way too much about this one movie. And all of the above statements, make me question my own personal views. If I am truly not racist, than every movie I watch would be judged the same way. I shouldn’t give any more thought to one movie or another. I either like the movie, I don’t – end of story.

I have these same struggles with my views on sexism. I am woman, for goodness sake! Of course I am not sexist! So why is it that I feel guilty about our choice of companies for our renovation project? We had three sales people give us quotes. Two of the sales people were women, and one was a man. We went with the man’s company. I am a woman who wants to support other women, but we honestly liked what the man’s company offered and designed, versus what the women’s companies offered. If I were truly not a sexist person, though, this thought wouldn’t even cross my mind, correct? If there is no sexism involved, whoever’s offer is best is what you go with, right? My husband and I both felt most comfortable with the man and his company. Did my husband relate more to the man? If he did, would that make him sexist?

I hope that my honesty hasn’t offended anyone. That is not my intention. I like to learn and grow and see things from all different perspectives. Perhaps the bigger issue here, is that I think and analyze just too damn much. I don’t know.

When my youngest son was a little boy and we lived in a different state, his best friend was black. His best friend’s parents were two older white people.

“Does J. ever talk about being adopted?” I asked him.

My son was aghast. His mouth dropped open. “J. is adopted?!?!” he asked.

My son then told his other friend in our car that J. was adopted.

His friend was aghast. “What?!? How do you know?!?”

“My mom told me,” my son said.

Maybe if we told our children less, we could be as wise as they are, without definitions, fears, intellectual arguments and smugness. Maybe we could learn again to just see the world through the unfiltered lens of childrens’ eyes. That lens is the only lens that matters – that lens is the lens of Love.