It's Not All About Me?!?

I just finished reading "Overcoming Life's Disappointments" by Rabbi Harold Kushner.
My review?

Well, it was a disappointment.

I was expecting something along the lines of his "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," but I did not get it. First, the book uses Moses as an example of someone who faced disappointment after disappointment. Fair enough. But I just didn't feel like he managed to make the connection well enough between Moses and my good self in 2007.

Second, the book is a bit sexist. Not in the overt "oops I've dropped my pencil, Miss Tattersall, could you pick it up for me?" way, but in the "most men (and some women) singlemindedly pursue career goals..." Or, "For the most part, men's dreams center on success in business, women's dreams on fulfilling relationships..." Really? I just don't buy that. All of my guy friends have or want a fulfilling relationship, and I certainly didn't go out looking to become Mrs. [Man's First Name] [Man's Last Name] just because I was a woman. I wanted both, which most of my male generational cohorts do too. So--as you can see--he just sprinkled these one-off, throwaway sentences throughout the book that kept jarring me out of his narrative and making we think about Rabbi Kushner himself, his political views, and (more likely) the demographic of the congregation he leads. The book could have been written without the constant "(and some women)" caveats thrown in.

There were two things I did get out of the book:

1. A good discussion on Daniel Levinson's notion of "the tyranny of the dream," in which he discusses the need for people to loose themselves from the tyranny of their youthful dreams. When we are just starting out, we have a mental plan or perhaps just a nebulous idea of what we hope our life to be. In order to be truly happy, we must free ourselves from our previously-held dreams that may not have come true, and replace them with new ones.

2. A reminder that the events in life are not all about you: "When something bad happens, we feel singled out by fate. We are convinced that everyone else out there is happy and healthy and only we are suffering." But the way to overcoming our disappointment and pain in whatever loss we have suffered is to see that heartbreak is what connects us all, that almost everyone has experienced something sorrowful, and that we are not alone, not special because we suffer, and not the only person who has or will contend with losing the conviction that she is in control of her life. That really spoke to me, about getting to a place where you deal with your own disappointments by helping others through theirs, by letting go of the need to control every aspect of your life (it's hard, y'all), and recognizing that sometimes sh*t just happens--to you. Not because you deserve it. Not because you didn't have other plans going on at the time of the sh*t occurring. But because that is just life. Or, as Rabbi Kushner so beautifully put it at the end of the book:

If you have been brave enough to love, and sometimes you won and sometimes you lost; if you have cared enough to try, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't; if you have been bold enough to dream and have found yourself with some dreams that came true and a lot of broken pieces of dreams that didn't, that fell to earth and shattered, then you can look back from the mountaintop you now find yourself standing on, like Moses contemplating the tablets that would guide human behavior for millennia, resting in the Ark alongside the broken fragments of an earlier dream. And you, like Moses, can realize how full your life has been and how richly you are blessed.

Or, as Leonard Cohen wrote: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Always Do Sober What You Said You'd Do Drunk.

That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Thank you, Ernest Hemingway.

I'm sitting here at NIH getting my red cell transfusion and realizing that Ernie's admonition applies to illness as well as inebriation.

When I was really sick in December/January and doing all that scary advanced directive stuff, I (I'm not too proud to admit) was bargaining with God like he was selling trinkets at a flea market. You know, the usual stuff you say in some ludicrous belief that God gives such a rat's ass about you taking old clothes to Goodwill that he'd facilitate your recovery so you could go do it:

"If I get to go home, I will never {insert random not-nice thing here} again."
"If you help me get better, I will actually join a temple and formally commit to being part of the community."
"If you give me the strength to get better I will never again claim fatigue or full schedule as a valid reason for not doing something I ought to be doing."

The urge to bargain with God is such a strange phenomenon. Especially when, even as I was in mid-bargain, I knew that this was not how it all works. I knew, even as I was making nonsense vows left and right, that God does not "let" you live because you promise to stop saying "F*ck" so much. God doesn't "let" you die because He wasn't convinced by your vow to help little old ladies across the street more often. We all know it doesn't work like that. And yet, when crisis hits, our (or, at least, my) first urge is to launch into full contractual negotiations with the Supreme Being:

E (hereafter referred to as "the Supplicant") agrees to indemnify and hold harmless God (hereafter referred to as "the Deity") against loss or threatened loss or expense by reason of the liability or potential liability of the Supplicant for or arising out of any claims for damages. The failure by the Deity to require performance of any provision shall not affect the Deity's right to require performance at any time thereafter, nor shall a waiver of any breach or default of this Contract constitute a waiver of any subsequent breach or default or a waiver of the provision itself.

Yes indeed I was bargaining with God like a union shop steward.

I've come to realize lo these past few weeks, however, that the exercise in bargaining is less a conversation with God and more a conversation with ourselves, in which God is the long-suffering friend letting us yammer, or the therapist who is saying, "Hmm. And how do you feel about that situation? Help me understand why you feel it is important." I think it is the human impulse, when disaster strikes, to take stock of our lives to date and determine for ourselves where we feel we could do better. We then turn that into divine negotiations in the wishful-thinking belief that, a la Defending Your Life {Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, 1991), that if only we can prove that we'd do it better next time, we can get another chance to do just that.

So the upside is that I got better and got to go home. The "down"side is that I now have to keep all the promises I made to God (myself?) back in December, and let me tell you, it is a hassle with a capital H. :) I've joined the temple. I've called friends to apologize for previous bad behavior. I've given others forgiveness that I'd been denying them. I've mopped and scrubbed my house (please God, don't let me die and have people think I kept such a nasty-looking house!). I've started behaving and living like what I claimed to believe about God is true, ie, that God is good, that faith is a good thing, that every single one of us--including me, sick or not--is responsible for tikkun olam (repairing the world). It's damn busy days in the aftermath of shooting my mouth off, let me tell you.

I'm just hoping that all of my "feeding the hungry" and "going to temple" activities will sufficiently distract God from the fact that I still say F*ck too much.

Oops! We Did It Again.

A great piece reminding us that just because there are no "plans" for war with Iran, doesn't mean that we won't go to war. Even though we're sending additional aircraft carriers to the region and are setting up special task forces, we have no intention, per se, of getting into a war with Iran.

Yeah. Kind of like how your boyfriend "didn't intend" to sleep with that woman; he just took her to dinner and invited her back to his place. The end result was a total surprise to everyone involved.

Right?
TPM: Gates and Iran

Save a Penny, Earn a Penny

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer Thu Feb 1, 8:56 AM ET

WASHINGTON - People once again spent everything they made and then some last year, pushing the personal savings rate to the lowest level since the Great Depression more than seven decades ago.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was lower than a negative 0.4 percent in 2005 and was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.

But not to worry:

The 0.7 percent rise in personal spending was the best showing since a similar gain in July. It followed increases of 0.5 percent in November and 0.3 percent in October and reflected solid spending by consumers during the Christmas shopping season.

Consumer spending posted a solid rebound in the final three months of the year, helping to lift overall economic growth to a rate of 3.5 percent during that period, up significantly after lackluster growth rates in the spring and fall.

So what we have is a situation where the majority of middle-class Americans are saving nothing of their paychecks, and then we're happy that "consumer spending posted a solid rebound." Yes, ours is an economic policy that celebrates when citizens spend money.

This headline grabbed me, a self-admitted economics moron, because it came on the heels of a TurboTax commercial that irritated the hell out of me. It was a man doing his taxes (so easily! without breaking a sweat!), when his wife comes in and asks how it's going. He shows her the screen featuring their tax refund amount, and she smiles, laughs and hugs him. Happy, happy days. All the things they can do/buy/own with that refund money!

Helloooooo?!!! That money is THEIR money! It's not a gift from the IRS! It's their money that should have been in their bank account getting interest for THEM! Until I met the babydaddy who explained this to me, I used to be one of those people who was delighted at my big ol' tax return, never thinking, "Oh my lord, that is $600 that was not in MY account this year working for ME. That is $600 I did not have in my account to pay my student loans and reduce my interest payments." I still know people who pay off Christmas gifts with their returns, or worse, buy more stuff, and I wonder, "Do you even remember what you got for Christmas in April?"

As the article pointed out, the last time our savings rate was so low, we were in the middle of the Great Depression, so people had to dip into savings to survive. What's our excuse in 2006?

When I Think of Peace, I Think of Rush Limbaugh

I checked and re-checked this to make sure it was not a joke. It is not a joke. My friends, we are witnessing the zenith of self-delusion. I wonder why we don't also nominate Geraldo Rivera or John Stossel? I guess they're feeling prickly about Al Gore's nomination, huh?

February 1, 2007
Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos
Chairman,
Norwegian Nobel Institute
Henrik Ibsens Gate 51
NO-0255
Oslo, Norway

Dear Dr. Mjos:

Landmark Legal Foundation herewith submits the name of Rush Limbaugh as an unsolicited nomination for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

We are offering this nomination for Mr. Limbaugh's nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all mankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. We fervently believe that these are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world.

Rush Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host in the United States and one of the most popular broadcasters in the world. His daily radio show is heard on more than 600 radio stations in the United States and around the world. For 18 years he has used his show to become the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today. Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law -- and it is fitting the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations.

Thank you for your thoughtful and serious consideration of this nomination. Should you require additional information, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,



Mark R. Levin
President

SOURCE Landmark Legal Foundation

Latest Bambina Bon Mots

Mama: How many legs does Henry the Octopus have?
Bambina: Too many!

Mama: Bambina, mama has to go potty; I'll be right back.
Bambina: Mama not use little potty. Mama use big potty. Mama have big bum.

Mailman: And how are you today, sweetheart?
Bambina: Me have bagina!
(After a discussion about why boys stand up to pee and mama and Bambina sit down/what makes a girl not a boy, etc. She apparently couldn't wait to share the news...)

There are more, but I think I'll have sufficiently emotionally scarred her when she reads that last one as an adolescent, that my work here today as an embarrassing mother is done.

The Day Has Come

I never thought I'd feel this way, but I simply cannot conjure up any interest in writing anything political these days. It all just seems to be a retread of stuff I've written or linked to before. Bush-as-Megalomaniacal-Emperor, Fox News spitting on journalistic practices, Senator Making Stupid Remarks, and always No End in Sight to the War in Iraq.

I think that perhaps I'm just burned out on the topic, perhaps I'm feeling too hopeless that any of it will get resolved. It takes a very special president to cause this level of political disillusionment. Even at the height of the Clinton stuff, where I was disappointed in him for allowing a personal weakness to create political weakness, I never felt like the whole country was on the wrong course like I do now. I'm sure that most conservatives didn't even feel that way, being that Clinton was being appropriately (in their eyes) pilloried for his sins. Where is Bush's come-to-Jesus experience for his sins? Where are all the Republicans and their concern for "honor in the nation's highest office" now?

And where are our Democratic leaders for a new generation? They're the inmates running the asylum. And why are we still allowing the "eminence grises" to dominate the headlines? Old schoolers like Biden, Kerry and Dodd should follow the example of Ted Kennedy (yeah. I said it. Ted Kennedy). Think of him what you will, but Ted Kennedy shows up, does his job, comments on issues relating to his job, and then shuts his mouth. It's taken him a while to get there, but he's learned that he is most effective when he is seen to be handling the business of the people of Massachusetts and of those impacted by his committee memberships. The man does not congratulate Barack Obama on being "clean" and he does not make ill-timed "jokes" about the military. Nor does he run for president--again--because he's got some new exciting perspectives since he last ran in the 80's. He does not dominate headlines when the party needs our agenda to dominate the headlines. Gentlemen, go ye and do likewise. Be the Ted your party needs you to be. But in any case, just Stop Talking.

As you can tell, I'm so disillusioned that I can't even put together one original thought about the state of our nation. Except to say that I feel kind of like we are coming apart at the seams, like we are entering a millennial version of 1968 where it just all feels wrong in our hearts, our heads and our guts.

I just keep hoping I'm wrong.