What do you really value

It was one of those October days that you wish wold never die. I did my yoga, while, I still can, out on the deck of my studio (trying to remember to call it that) and, once again, reminded myself why I love that discipline so much – it makes me feel with all my senses – I can smell the aging leaves and whiff of Cam’s cigarette. I hear the train, birds peeping, the wind lifting the leaves, the train in the valley, the long approach of traffic. I see a red-tailed hawk, and the yet green trees, the deeper blue of the sky that occurs in fall. I feel my feet on the soft rug, the air touch my chest, the bruises form the weekend on my buttocks, the twinge in my left shoulder that comes on with too many nights of poor sleep, and the luxurious stretch in the muscles – like a cat. I taste a metallic twang from the slight sinus infection.

Sitting with my mother in the Chinese restaurant in Trenton it seemed to me that the essence of being human (we were discussing “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck) is balance, striking the happy medium. “Moderation in all things.”

I can’t recall who said that, but much of our life is figuring out what is the happy medium when others have gone on before us to try to lead the way. Trouble is that the happy medium seems to be all in your perspective. Did Mother Teresa consider herself extreme? And is it extreme to listen to your muse and miss the housekeeping. What if your culture values the beautifully kept and appointed house or the nineteen courses, three day prep time, meal, or the clothes that cost thousands of dollars, drachmas, francs, and untold hours to assemble? That leads us back, inextricably, to what we value in our lives. What do I value? Clean house, yes, but farther down the list, still I want a clean house, so I pay someone to keep it relatively clean for me. Fame, seems to be a requirement of our culture, money, yes and no, children, yes and no. What is it I want?

To be published, to have written. Yes, and time for creativity and play and good food and sex and hanggliding and travel. I don’t think I value money for prestige, more for what it can do – security of a sort, travel, the little day-to-day thingies that we suddenly perceive we can’t exist another moment without. I value literacy and language and fairness. I am the child of a child raised on the egalitarian spirit that ran across the nation during the Great Depression, that leveled so many of us. Made us all poor, all equal, all having to understand the day-to-day tribulations of our neighbors because we were all (at least the plurality of us working and farming people) in ‘it’ together. When I was growing up in the military, we were all poor together, except we weren’t really poor only by today’s standards, or some more elite’s. See, the thing is, when everyone around you is poor, and you aren’t starving or naked, you don’t ever know you’re poor.

We were all young families starting out, with multiple children, and hand-me-downs were de rigeur. Mothers learned to get by on what the man brought home. Made do with soups and stews and what we got off the local markets. Or you went hunting or fishing or bought things in bulk and put them up or raised them and did the same, or bought a side of beef with your brother-in-law and split it. Shoes got passed down and coats, none of it was really worn out, mended or shortened. We grew too fast. And, since all of us shared clothes and ‘made do’ it wasn’t any kind of hardship. I liked that time and miss it. Too much TV, too much consumer culture exposed to ur children, to ourselves. So, back to balance.

One person’s balance might involve religion and how much time ot devote to it and their own life, their families' lives. Another might want all the outward accoutrmenets of wealth, but get in over their head in debt. One of us might spend all her time pursuing sports,never reading.

And my writing. Why is my nattering of any more import than another persons? We so value our own individuality, our own ‘voice.’ Trouble is that, from space, we probably all sound like the see-sawing of the locusts. Each singing his or her own song that sounds very like the rest. The few about us worth listening to get drowned out. The few with a real original thought disappear in the crowds. And why is my nattering any more of importance than that of some poor girl in a the slums of Rio de Janeiro? Maybe it is the whole of our voices going on for ages that actually is of import. Maybe it is our own individual song weaving in with the others of our era that matter, the blogs, and diaries, the columns and newspaper articles, the very focus of our individual attentions that matters. Perhaps the topics that we write of, as a group, make up what is human in the first part of the third millennium.

Individuals are now all-important and we expect our governments, not just to protect our borders, our families, but our individual selves, even if those selves are so widely disparate as to defy easy listing. I am a human, female by genitalia, androgynous by thought (and testing) and preference, a thinker with a more or less intact brain, by luck and genetics and upbringing and parentage. I am a desultory writer, genealogist, bisexual (with a strong heterosexual leaning), a feminist, a liberal (by American standards), a pro-democracy advocate, a believer in the infinity of our rights so long as ‘my fist doesn’t hit your nose.’ An Emergency medicine-trained doctor, somewhat computer literate, deliverer of babies, lover of literature, a pilot of hanggliders, a practitioner of yoga, a walker, and international traveler, curious, but also very selfish. A talker and listener. I am, thank god and my teachers, literate! Employed, not homeless, in debt, not a parent (not my choice), divorced once, currently involved deeply with one man. Friend to a handful of people, devoted to animals both furry and otherwise, daughter, ex-wife, lover, niece, teacher, ACLS instructor, semi-German speaker, educated in some Latin, lover of history, sci-fi writer, futurist, ecologist (well, attempting), journalist, gardener, chef, driver, swimmer, ex-surgery resident, occasional darts-player, German beer advocate and swiller, skier, hiker, surfer, sailor, snowboarder, bike-rider, enemy to a few, poet, wine-collector (and alleged connoisseur.)