•MULTIVITAMINSSo, what did you do yesterday to help someone else? Yesterday I took the time to line up the shopping carts in a store where I had been shopping. There were half a dozen carts parked this way and that near the cart stall. So I just put them in an orderly line. Who would be grateful I'd done it? I don't know. But it must have been someone's job to do that and now they would have to. And I was grateful that I had the time and the energy, the physical ability, to do it.
•Tylenol
•chapstick
•Small sewing kits (like they give at hotels)
•Small shampoos
•Deoderant
•toothpaste
•toothbrushes w/caps
• Q-tips
•small bars of soap
• zip lock bags so people can keep their soap and tooth brush clean for future use
• thick socks
•Fabric bandaids and first aide items like packets of neosporin/triple antibiotic cream
•nail clippers
(keeping nails trimmed short cuts back the amount of dirt and bacteria that gets under them. Yuck. And also protects toe nails, etc.)
•hard candy/ cough drops
“There are just a few of them, and I think they’re pretty simple,” he said.
The rules were sent to the Obama Foundation’s mailing list after the speech. Obama wrote:
1. Listen to the people around you
“Share your stories with one another and try to make a connection. If possible, find someone who’s not like you—who doesn’t look like you, think the way you do, or share the same set of experience as you—at least on the surface.”
2. When you disagree, don’t be disagreeable
“Real change comes through persuasion and openness to others. Have a point of view, be rooted in your experience, and don’t be afraid to share—but listen and be open, don’t be partisan. This isn’t about politics; it’s about our civic culture.”
3. No selfies!
“You can’t have a conversation with someone when you’re busy looking at your phone or trying to get a picture. Shake hands, really connect.”
4. Have fun
“This work is hard. It’s full of frustrations and setbacks. It can be lonely—but it doesn’t have to be. Know that there are other people who share your frustrations and your joy in the small successes—and how those small successes can turn into big ones.”
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/character-strengths-and-life-skills/what-is-courage# defines courage this way: What is courage?
Courage is the ability to do something difficult even when there's risk. Courageous people do and say what they think is right despite opposition.
Kids build courage as they mature and take on more challenges. As kids increasingly grow up online, often in very public ways, courage is an important asset. It gives kids the confidence to be themselves, risk their own social status to stand up for others, and share their work even in the face of criticism. Some kids like to take bold action to test their courage; some kids take it gradually.
You can help kids develop courage by encouraging them to take calculated risks, supporting their individuality, and allowing them to "fail" safely -- online and off.
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"And I know opportunity isn't equal. That life isn't fair, and sometimes it's not even remotely kind. I know that sometimes gigantic barriers get in the way of that perfect dream we see in our future. But one thing that will never change in this world of ours is the fact that we need and deserve all the happiness, success, love, kindness, and joy we can get our hands on. So don't let your self-doubt stop you; whatever you want . . . you already deserve it" Jes Baker, Things no One Will Tell Fat Girls, A Handbook for Unapologetic Living.While being fat, or loving someone who is, may not be part of your life history, this book has wisdom for everyone. And the above paragraph in particular speaks to us all.
All women?"Yes," he said.
How many women have you met? "Hundreds," he said.
How many women exist in the world? "Probably millions, he responded.
So really it is all the women you have met are stupid, right? " Well, yes," he said
Where did you meet these women? " In bars," he said.
So all women you met in bars in stupid, is that it? " Yes," he agreed.
So what if you began to meet women in other places, might there be women who aren't stupid?
He had to agree.
In the face of the white supremacist violence and President Trump’s reaction to it, fear, anger, and condemnation of others comes naturally to me. What is more difficult—perhaps for many white people like me—is a willingness to examine the extent to which my daily thoughts and behaviors support the racism I adamantly oppose—in others.
Yes, I’ll go on a protest march. Yes, I’ll attend anti-oppression training. I’ll write to politicians. I'll take to my social networks to show my solidarity with all the other people who want desperately to root out racism—in others.
To what extent am I willing to examine those parts of myself that are like the people I feel so angry toward? Here’s why I think that’s important: What racism I can find close to home and within myself—as scared as I am to see it—is what I have the most power to root out straight away.
This is why I was so intrigued by a Facebook post from the black, queer Buddhist teacher and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Lama Rod Owens writes:
“It seems like if we are really interested in ending white supremacy, white people should focus more on loving themselves instead of trying to love me. The violence emerges from the ways self-shame and apathy are bypassed in attempts to use love towards me as an argument trying to convince me that you are not ‘that kind of white person.’ As long as you cannot face yourself and love even those ugly parts, you are indeed that kind of white person, and I will be left with the work of trying to love what you cannot bear to witness.”So what might be an ugly part of myself that Lama Rod suggests I should love? What do I need to see in myself to avoid violence emerging?
As it happens, I read Owens’ post while backpacking with my 12-year-old daughter in Thailand. One day, we were traveling in a van with other tourists of various nationalities, including a middle-aged Indian husband and wife. We had conversed a fair amount during the day and become quite friendly.
A lifetime of living as a white man in a white-privileged world has left me with occasional unwanted ugliness.
After a stop, when we were all getting back in the van, the husband took the seat my daughter had been sitting in, on the front bench. This worried me because Bella gets carsick easily, especially if she can’t see out the windshield. I felt irritated with the man, but what was more uncomfortable for me was the rising “ugly part” of myself, as Owens calls it. I called the Indian man “entitled” in my head. I had made up a whole, completely unverified story about how he had worked his way out of poverty and had become rich enough to travel and now expected to be allowed to take whatever seat he wanted.
But, of course, I knew this story was based on nothing but introjected stereotypes based on Indian ethnicity and nationality. There was no evidence for the story, nor do I believe such a story would have arisen had he been a white European.
Even more uncomfortable was to see in myself that this “entitlement”—that I imagined probably clashed with another person’s entitlement—was my own. I realized that my life history and experience—countless occasions of getting exactly the seat I wanted—made me feel, on some level, that it was my right for Bella to get the front seat if she needed it.
I’m not saying that my stereotypes and the so-called clash of entitlements are foundational to me or my value system, or even more than passing ideas in my stream of consciousness. I am saying that a lifetime of living as a white man in a white-privileged world has left me with occasional unwanted ugliness.
White people don’t tend to do much about racism when it is comfortably out of sight.
Some of my anger and frustration at the recent actions of white supremacists come from having to acknowledge the parts of me that remain unloved, as Lama Rod Owens would put it.
This is part of why—and it’s important to acknowledge—white people don’t tend to do much about racism when it is comfortably out of sight. Now we have stopped being comfortable, as white supremacists force us to look at them and their attitudes.
So I must look at myself.
If I leave my ugly parts unloved and unseen, if I refuse to examine the white supremacist within me, I have no way of understanding the white supremacists around me. For example, my own racist moment with my Indian friend was actually motivated by genuine concern for my daughter, perverted by conditioned and introjected racism.
Can that suggest something about where the white supremacists are coming from? Perhaps some of their ugly behavior too comes from concern for loved ones perverted by years of trauma and lifetimes of societally conditioned racism. Of course, I condemn their actions. But a little understanding and love for myself—as a flawed white person—and a little for the people—not the behavior—might allow for some space to reduce hatred.
Meanwhile, I, and lots of progressive white people like me, are left, as Owens says, to learn to love what we cannot bear to witness within ourselves.
