The only thing we have to fear is: Ourselves

When it comes to change, the only thing we have to fear is: ourselves.

1. Living with a sense of purpose helps to create happiness, but it can be a daunting task.

Creating happiness can be a daunting task. If we only had to think of ourselves, our families and our own lives, challenges in life would be easier, but we don’t live in a vacuum. We are connected, and whether we accept it or not, we are a village, complete with rules to follow regarding what it takes to be a good citizen, parent or mate.  But no one follows the rules, never did, really, and that’s a problem because we’re left to develop routines and set examples on our own. The very principles on which this country was built seem to be crumbling right before our eyes and no one seems to notice, or we’re just too busy to bother. It’s no wonder our lives are stressed.

Positive psychologists make it seem easy to achieve happiness. They suggest that we read positive books and keep positive people in our lives. They even suggest that we manufacture a “synthetic” happiness which makes no difference to the brain—happiness is happiness. But who can be happy all the time and in fact, who should be? Emotions must be expressed, even negative ones, and since we have no way of sharing negative emotions among family or friends, we eat, drink, and find ways to “quick-fix” our lives, ignoring the side effects.

Happiness begins with purposeful living and fulfilling a hierarchy of needs, so to sit and stew about what we’re unable to achieve is not the answer. We can’t eat or drink our way to happiness. Instead, we need action, commitment, and a willingness to change the way we think and behave. Changing requires that we step out of our “discomfort zone,” so when it comes to making a positive change, the only thing we have to fear is: ourselves.

2. To relieve stress caused by challenges we face day to day, we “quick-fix” and compromise our health.

Change is not easy, so we ignore our physical and emotional well-being and increase our risk of illness and death. We ignore symptoms and “quick-fix” problems through over-eating, drinking, acting-out or otherwise misbehaving. Eventually, we suffer major consequences—addiction, obesity, marital problems, and even incarceration or death. Research says that one-third of us are obese. Also, they say about 20 percent of us will face an emotional disorder or illness at some point in our lives. Yet, paying attention to our basic and emotional needs is the last thing on our minds.

Positive living is emphasized on a daily basis, so it’s not that we don’t know how to live a healthy life. We listen, but we don’t make a choice to change. If we ignore our minds and bodies, how can we hope to live the best life that we can? How can we set an example for the next generation? How can we expect to achieve happiness?

Change is difficult, but one step at a time, it is possible. First, we have to make the choice to change. Choosing to change is the first important step to purposeful living. When we make the choice on our own, we take “ownership” and in a sense, we become investors in our happiness and well-being. Once we make the choice to focus on our physical and emotional well-being, we set goals that help us live with a sense of purpose one day at a time.

3. In order to make a positive change, we need to expect resistance caused by enemies within.

Changing the way we live takes persistence. It also takes self-awareness. “To err is human.” Being aware of our humanity means being aware of our strengths and imperfections. It is important to know that humans don’t like too much change in their lives, no matter their level of discomfort, so when it comes to setting goals to achieve happiness and reinventing our lives, we can expect that the greatest obstacle to our success will be ourselves. When we feel discouraged or overwhelmed, we need to search for our enemies within and destroy them. Enemies that affect our progress toward living a happy, purposeful life include:

·        Denial. We don’t want to accept that stress can make us fat.  We feel overwhelmed, so we have a sugary treat. Then we eat again because we feel guilty about the negative choice we just made. As we gain inches and pounds, we buy bigger sizes in clothes, denying that we are gaining weight and feeling diminished when we don’t receive compliments like we used to.

·        Self-Sabotage. We consciously or unconsciously undermine our progress and destroy the hard work we have done.

·        Negative self-talk. Our brains are programmed toward negativity in order to keep us safe. This “negative bias” warns us of danger, but it can affect our happiness if not kept in check. It can also lead to depression. The brain can make mistakes, so with each negative assessment, we need to enforce a reassessment policy, refusing to blindly accept what our brain is telling us. We also need to confront each negative thought, question its validity and replace it with a positive thought. We can’t stop negative thinking, but we can make sure it doesn’t overwhelm us or affect our happiness.

·        Lack of trying. A given lifestyle might begin with circumstances, but it continues because of choices we make or fail to make. Sometimes it’s the toxic friends we keep in our circle or unhealthy foods that we choose to eat, but what we keep in our lives is a matter of choice.  For example, it’s hard to eliminate “friends” we have known for years. Likewise, it’s hard to find good nutritional foods in certain neighborhood stores. Everyone doesn’t live in privileged neighborhoods with equal access to goods and services. Some of us face issues of proximity—no healthy food choices, no good medical insurance, no doctors or hospitals nearby, no money to spend on health care. But even if it takes a bus ride across town three times a week, or car-pooling with a neighbor in exchange for help with yard work, or coordinating a community garden, healthy living can be achieved. Sometimes, it means changing friends or limiting access to toxic family members, but changing a lifestyle begins when we start trying.

Nothing worthwhile was ever achieved overnight. It takes time and commitment to change habits that might have existed since childhood, but living with a sense of purpose can be achieved one day at a time with positive actions and help from good, supportive friends. Yes, “It takes a village,” always did, and always will. But mostly it takes a willingness to change.

(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)

Pablo Neruda's poem is not yours.

In my humble opinion, Pablo Neruda excels when it comes to writing about love, but each poet has a different way of sharing what they know about love. April is National Poetry Month, a perfect month for expressing the emotion of love. Flowers begin to bloom, the sunlight lingers, stars seem brighter, and those April showers seem a bit gentler than they did a month before. Writing a poem seems harder than it is, but all it takes is an honest emotion and a quiet place to write. Feelings of love are not always similar, but when it comes to writing a love poem, honest expression of emotions is usually a good place to start.

It's not too late to write a poem about love and submit it somewhere. The poem could be something wonderful, or just a means of expression, but writing allows for the honest expression of emotions, and what stronger emotion to write about than love? In everyday affairs, we are not encouraged to write about our feelings, especially feelings of love. Instead, we are taught to hide our emotions, which can lead to misunderstandings, lost opportunities, and even emotional illnesses because sooner or later, emotions will come rising to the surface, and sooner or later they will be expressed in some way, somehow.

Why not use emotions to an advantage? Why not tap into emotions, positive or negative, and write a poem about love? With poetry, expression might begin as words on a page. As we continue to write, we make choices based on our desired overall effect, mood or tone. Eventually, we begin to write with a sense of purpose, challenging ourselves to choose words that best reflect what we wish to say and how we want it said.

Poetry is an exalted language not because of the words only but also because of the choices we make to use the "best words in the best order" for the specific situation. For example, the language used to write a letter of complaint will be quite different from the language used to write a love poem. Words used to write a satiric poem will also be different from those used to convey feelings of love. The magic of poetry is that it occupies the entire emotional system, which makes it therapeutic. It forces us to focus on a desirable outcome while our emotions are being expressed. 

Poetry is great for expressing emotions and creating a sense of purpose and anticipation, if only for the time that we write. April is a perfect time to express our love--or lack of love--and  practice using the best words in the best order to achieve a desired effect. The following poem seems a beautiful expression of love, but Pablo Neruda's poem is not yours.

  Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Short story: "Being a Girl Becomes Me"

Before it was renamed “Deep Deuce,” it was my home.  Row after row of small, white wood-frame bungalows, a sprinkling of three-story boarding houses, a corner grocery store, and a beer joint along with a sprinkling of small business located here and there. Sure, you had to search around but what ever you wanted could be found. We lived a few minutes from downtown where there was a Woolworth, a Veazey’s Drugstore, and an ice cream shop. Long after it was illegal, “separate but equal” existed. As long as this was understood, the drugstore was peaceful and quiet, just  the usual white faces staring as my mother refilled a prescription or ordered ice-cream cones for the five of us—to go.  We could order, but we couldn’t sit. A few years later, the drug store was sued because of it’s “separate but equal” business practices. By then, we didn’t want to sit. There were other places that were happy to see us.

Downtown was within walking distance, but to those in our neighborhood, it might have seemed miles away because all we knew and trusted were the streets that enclosed a one-block radius of people living, loving, and fighting day to day. My very first memory is sitting with my older brother and sister, the twins, as I liked to call them and feeling like a spider on the wall of a warm, but dimly-lit room where people were sleeping, whispering or arguing. I remember seeing my mother on her knees, her palms together in prayer every morning before the start of her day.

One morning, things were different. My father had left for work, my mother was on her knees and we three were playing quietly in one of the bedrooms, just the three of us. My baby brother at the time was asleep in his cage. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a shadow appeared and stood next to our bedroom door. I remember running and sliding underneath the bed hoping it was a good place hide. After a moment or two, I heard the floor boards creak as the shadow entered and then left the room where my mother was praying. Was it a miracle or was it the headlights from my father’s car that scared the shadow away? Our father had left his chef’s hat and apron, something every cook needed if he worked at the Pier 7.

I always thought I was two things--a boy and a mother, but much of my life I felt like a failure because I wasn’t much of either. “Boy’s don’t cry,” I always heard, and I liked to cry.  Mothers never cry in front of the children, I always heard. This I learned early on  and knew for certain, until I saw my mother cry for the very first time after she and our father divorced.

My first memory of crying was when I was three years old.  I was shamed into tears because my mother wanted me to wear a dress, but I wanted to wear red jeans and matching red jacket. I don’t remember if my bad behavior got me a spanking or not. All I remember is feeling overheated, shaky, sweaty and mad as a jersey bull—never saw one, but heard about them from my mama’s papa, as she liked to call her dad. My crying started innocent enough. I didn’t know what it meant to disobey. All I knew was, I didn’t want to wear that ugly, itchy dress.

 I recall sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room until my father came home. I remember my defiance and absolute resolve. As soon as I saw the flimsy, pink lacy-looking dress, I had started to itch. I decided then and there that I wasn’t wearing it, wasn’t going to my room, and wasn’t gonna stop crying—at least not until my father came home and saw evidence of her crime—trying to turn me into a Tinkerbell fairy or Snow White. When I heard the car pull up the driveway, but I didn’t budge.As soon as he opened the door and laid eyes on me, sobbing hysterically, my daddy opened his arms, gave me a gigantic hug and smiled. 

After he sat me on his knees, he sang me a favorite song. It was about the Big Bad Wolf. The whole time I was with my father that day, I didn’t see him take his eyes off me, not even long enough to offer my mother a smile. I just remember seeing his smiling face turned toward me, the gigantic hands reaching down to pull me to safety. My father sang nursery rhymes to all of his “kiddies,” but I knew I was his favorite because he sang the songs I liked best.

It was like that, my daddy leading the way and me following, stuffing freshly dug fishing worms in my jacket pocket or stepping into his boot prints just to see how big they were—at least, until the divorce and he moved away. I was ten years old. I remember standing on the corner with the others, watching his tail light blink to signal a left-hand turn. At the time I thought my father would return home late at night, just like he always did, just to sit the four of us kids on his lap, tell us a bedtime story, sing us a song and send us off to bed. It was impossible to sleep. I just wanted him to hurry home so he could pick me up and give me a hug like he always did when I felt afraid, and on that particular day, I felt very afraid. It wasn’t something you told anybody unless you wanted to feel like a girl.

I never considered how my mother must have felt—waiting in the bed for a husband whose arms were full of children. Never understood why she insisted that I wear dresses that always itched, always made ruffled sounds, had weird names like taffeta, gingham, and dotted swiss, and never failed to get ripped, causing me to get scolded or spanked. At thirteen, I was as tall as any boy but they didn’t treat me the same anymore, so I tried on a dress or two. I stopped climbing trees, started hanging around the house, and even learned how to cook because my father was a cook.

I finally forgave my mother for trying to turn me into something sweet and prickly because I decided she was trying to prepare me for days like this. Now, after all of these years, I have to admit she succeeded, and when I look at myself in the mirror, dabbing perfume behind my ears adorned with shiny gold earrings, I’m so glad she did. I'm not man enough to thank her, but being a girl becomes me.
(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)

Women in the Military: What Rapists Don't Understand

You've come a long way, baby, to get where you've got to today,” was a popular slogan back in the 1970’s. Today, these words are understood and appreciated. When we look around today, we see female Supreme Court justices; CEO’s and now head of the U.S. Secret Service. We see women in top-ranking military positions and sometimes wonder how they did it. Women hold prominent positions in every walk of life. Yet, women are still not appreciated by males who insist on inequality. In the workplace, especially in our military, women face grave injustices as they struggle to become officers or begin civilian careers.

In the general civilian population, domestic violence seems to be more prevalent but how prevalent would it be if we didn’t hear from the likes of Dr. Phil or Dr. Drew? But there are no spokesmen for women in the military. Today, one in four women will be sexually assaulted in the military. An estimated 19,000 sex crimes take place each year. Many of those abused are males, and these incidents happen in the same proportion as in the general, civilian population. For women, however, the rate of sexual abuse in the military is much higher than in the civilian population. According to a discussion on National Public Radio (NPR), military women have said, “You don’t only have to worry about the enemy; you have to worry about fellow soldiers.”

What is it about equality that these abusers and rapists don’t understand? Equality means exactly that—being equal, and equals don’t molest or abuse each other because they cannot. Yet, some men in the military and in the general civilian population walk with a sense of entitlement which assures they are “entitled” to have anything or anyone and do anything without consequences. Some even joke, “Rape is part of the job description” (NPR).

But how can it be? Women perform many of the same duties and excel in their work positions equally with men. They come home exhausted after a long day’s work, just like their male counterparts, and they probably work harder than many males to complete certain tasks. They might even endure more negativity on the job because some men still feel a woman’s place is in the home and the military is simply no place for a “dame.”

Despite excellence in the workplace, the old adage still holds true: “A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.” Her day doesn’t necessarily end at the end of the work day. She never knows when an assault might happen.

If a woman in the military finds herself isolated, she has much to fear. A woman is not safe in her workplace or in her neighborhood after hours.

For many women who are targeted and become victims of officers and comrades, it’s a matter of eternal damnation—damned whether you do or don’t because while rape is a dehumanizing crime against a fellow soldier, “whistle-blowers” are hated by all, and the military is just not the place to be hated. Whistle-blowing might be the right thing to do, but it’s not the smartest thing.

Reporting abuse, violence, or even rape is looked at with suspicion and it’s often difficult to prove. Too often, the woman is blamed and humiliated, so when a female soldier is targeted and violated, she is often on her own. Once she is alienated, she becomes a target for even more abuse by males. She has often heard stories of women who talked, and most are no longer part of the military, so she is even more afraid to talk.

In cases when the abuse is reported to a commanding officer, the usual suggestion is that the woman keep quiet, even if her superior officer is another female. This increases feelings of helplessness and victimization. Diminished self-esteem, feelings of helplessness and alienation assures she will become victim of more sex predators. She is often raped multiple times by a superior or by different individuals as she seeks alternatives, resources and support.

Because not all women become targets of abuse, other women often doubt the validity of the victim’s story. Also, they often seek to disassociate themselves from someone so weak and helpless. But women victimized in the military are usually professional and accomplished in their duties and have hopes for a great career. They often need their jobs, lack viable alternatives, or have much to lose. They often come from dysfunctional family support systems and feel that the military is their best chance for success. Because of their vulnerability and desire to keep their positions, they easily become the ones targeted. Other women in the military might avoid a victim of abuse or rape due to fears of retaliation by male counterparts.

Women in the military need mentors, but all too often mentors do not exist.

The military is presently addressing the problem of abuse, rape and violence against women among the ranks, and women are becoming less afraid to help a “sister” in need, but women in the military need to become mentors and maintain a network of support. Whether in the military or on civilian jobs, too many women are standing by, silently watching their sisters go down fighting without lending a helping hand. Women are to be commended for the progress they’ve made, and yes, women have “come a long way.” But it’s not far enough, not in the military or within civilian communities.

I sometimes wonder who is to blame for such abuse and denigration of women in the military and why, even in the present day of equal rights under the law, women are still persecuted because of their desire, willingness and ability to work side by side with men. When will America say, “Enough is enough” to men who still don’t understand or refuse to accept the contribution that women make in the military and in the world? 
(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)