In so many ways, I don't know who I am. Iran.

Once I might have said "I am an independent woman."

Now, I wonder "Who is this I?"

Is it my body, spirit, soul, mind?

Take any piece away and am I not "I"?

Not so sure, anymore.

Also not sure about being separate from anyone else or everyone else. I do feel suffering when I think about children (especially) being hungry. I cry for others suffering. I jump for joy when good things happen. I worry about being a random bunch of atoms randomly interacting with other random atoms. I have watched many births, some deaths. What is the body thing about? I have experienced losing my spirit, betraying my soul, mini bouts of insanity. Or were those the moments of breaking through to ultimate reality?

When we took drug in the sixties, many of us were trying to reach the outer limits, to have a mystical experience. Some did. Sometimes we just got more fucked up, more lost. Most recovered.

The "am" part, I can't even fathom.Am I stuck in samsara? Am I here for a reason? Do I have a great purpose? Did I accomplish it at a young age and the rest of my life is just hanging out? In moments of clarity it all feels perfect. I do know that I endlessly meet the people I am supposed to meet. I think every encounter is important. Is that my mind just playing games?

I assume that all my readers have been here before and beieve me, it is not my first time.

About the "independent" part, what can I say. It matters little that I raised my kids and supported us for a lot of years. It matters little that I bought the house and car and all that stuff and fixed it all and kept the show on the road. I am 100% dependent 100% of the time. I never even got any good at growing my own veggies. I tried making everything from scratch in the good old hippie days. I even spun silk to make wicks for beeswax candles. But, oh ya, the bees and the silk worms...even the fruits and the veggies, does it all come down to the bees?

My ideas of independent were fully based on where I was born and what generation and who my parents were and my education and economic status. Even my ideas of independence were dependent. I rest my case.

About the "woman" part. I have noticed that for many people, age wipes out a lot of gender distinctions. I am speaking energetically. I often don't get any different vibe from seeing two old guys talking than I get from seeing two old ladies interacting. Sometime in old couples, I look twice to check which is the man and which is the woman. What's that about? Probably hormone levels. Can't say.

A lot of my "I" is about likes and dislikes. I like warm weather. I don't like meat. I like dogs and cats. I don't like rats and snakes.I don't like wars. I don't like oppression or repression. I like a good story but I don't like being lied to by my government. I like fine china and I don't like mugs for my coffee. (a lot of silent suffering caused by this). And none of this matters a drop when things get "real" like at births and deaths and meeting love and confronting hurt.

For the most part, my happiest moments are when I am doing something useful for others. Shrinks can have fun with that, but I think my deal is that is when I forget myself for a bit and in doing so, connect with the non-I, I am more real. Meditation in action.

Train your kids to respect their elders, with any luck you will be in that position one day.

I have a lot of confusion about being older. I, myself, have a groaning, sinking feeling when I get behind a large group of grey haired tourists coming on a bus from the cruise ship. Oh God, this is going to be slow. Why do thy travel when they can hardly walk? Then, if I get talking to one of the old dears, I often find that they have had extraordinary lives and are still really interesting. But because they are clumped together, it is hard to get to who they are.

One thing that I have experienced is that when I travel, I am offered help everywhere I turn. Young guys, even gang bangers help me hoist my bags. People take my arm and help me cross streets, (Think Bangkok during rush hour, I need help or maybe courage.) If I am lost, a small crowd sometimes gathers to get me going in the right direction. If I am hot and sweaty, I am offered a glass of water.I am asked again and again how my life is. I always get a seat. Always.

In the USA, my experience is often different. Not always.Texas guys pull their weight, often with remarks like,"Please Mam, let me assist you. My mother would shoot me if I wasn't kind to a woman in distress." I can accept that. In a rough neighborhood in Richmond, CA the African American kids opened doors for me, carried my shopping bags. Turns out that a lot of them had been raised by grandmothers who deserved and demanded respect. I'll take that.

But, on a Bolt bus filled with college kids in Seattle, I had to ask for help getting a bag in the compartment and I got laughed at by the college kids and then helped by a French woman. I really have little pride, but I was sorry for those kids. I am sorry for the isolation that is their lot in life. To be fair, I don't think it is an unwillingness to step up. I think it is an obliviousness to others who aren't in their circle.

If it is a form of egocentric behavior, it could be retrained. There was a day when everyone threw trash out the windows of their cars in the United States. Most have been trained not to do so anymore. There is always hope.

I think more and more young people from our country need to travel. Getting out of your comfort zone is a brilliant way to learn about yourself. If we are ignorant about ourselves, we can't not be ignorant about our society and the world. And as the good Buddhists tell us, ignorance is one of the great causes of suffering. Amen.

The Joy in Watching Kids Fail.

When I was teaching second grade in a Waldorf School in Massachusetts, I had a very small class of very bright students. Often we had extra time towards the end of the day, in part because they we so quick about things like room cleanup and other things I had scheduled.

We had two very special ways we filled this time. One was that I told "The Boys Story". This was an epic story with a cast of thousands that I made up as I told it. Basically it was an adventure story about some English boys who's clubhouse on the river had torn apart in a flood and the  boys and Sarah, a friend, were washed away on a bit of flooring that held together.

I think ultimately that we had more than 200 episodes. Epic. This, however, inspired the great failure: the raft. When we went for walks during the school ay, we first had to cross a small stream. Often this became the whole adventure. Have you ever witnessed how much kids like to create dams? How much conversation and consultation and energy and co-operation can go into making a three foot dam on a tiny stream? Amazing, really.

But some days we actually got across the stream and all her temptations and went through "the deep dark forest". So named by the kids who got very serious and vigilant while going through this stand of cedars. They looked out for gnomes and fairies and tried to leave no footprints. (We had had lessons in tracking by Richie, a Tom Brown tracker).

When we arrived at our secret place (a little beach that was popular, but not during school hours) the class decided to make a raft to get to a small island. This became a project which endured for months. Hammers and nails and rope and hinges and colorful cloth and all sorts of stuff started to come in their lunch boxes. They told their parents that we were making a construction project. Each time they worked on it, they had to clean the beach and hide their work. It was important to them that this be a great surprise.

I watched as they foraged for wood and supplies. They actually found a wealth of wood from drowned treas and rotted old buildings. Yup. Everything they used on the raft was pretty much rotten. It was their project. It was their ingenuity and their activity. It got bigger and bigger. They finally brought some wheels from an old carriage to help them move it.

As it came near completion, they decorated it with Water color! flags and drawings, pieces of finger knitting, a few balloons. Then they invited their parents for the launch. "Oh shit" I thought. But, it was their pride. We marched proudly over the stream and through the deep dark forest. The class dragged out their opus and put in in the shallow water and got on it. And it sank.

And they laughed. And soon the parents laughed except for one dad who wanted to rush out and buy them a raft. Te kids didn't miss a beat. All they way back to school they conferred like highly paid consultants and figured out that they couldn't use rotten wood next time, that maybe they could cut small trees of branches and maybe they could find some inner tubes to put under it.

I loved the whole experience. To this day, they can probably all teach the art of raft making. They learned by doing. They failed and no one felt badly. We had a great time. Who ever got the idea that failure was bad for kids?

All Time Winner: Dumbest Remark This Week!

In the USA, this is a momentous challenge. I mean sifting through so many dumb remarks, and ugly remarks, and mean racist remarks, it is hard work. But the thing is that from my sketchy Buddhist training and my good Catholic girl upbringing, I know that the wrath of karma will be upon me if I get down and dirty. So, I will be pedantic.

The comment that has so brought me to the brink comes frequently when I comment about disliking so much of US foreign policy. I have this strange notion that war doesn't bring peace, that killing doesn't win hearts and minds, that invading and conquering doesn't seem to work very well for anyone involved. "So, if you don't like what we are doing, why don't you get the hell out of here? Love it or leave it."

Yes, well, there are a few problems with this rational solution to dissent, probably obvious to anyone with a few functioning brain cells. 

Before I talk about certain core ideas of a a democracy, I might mention that there is probably no country in the world that would say, "Come on in, Jules. We welcome 72 year old American refugees without much money." In fact, loads of other countries have stiff immigration policies. Since only 30% of US citizens have passports, what other countries do or do not do is as mysterious to many as the Second Coming. Opinions abound and yet...

That is certainly one problem with "Love it or leave it.", the other is this idea about our supposedly God given right to freedom of speech. ( a lowly right next to the right to protect your toaster oven with a assault rifle) and the even stranger idea that it is the job of someone who lives in a democracy to be educated and have thoughts and ideas about what is being done in our name with our money. I consider it to be a serious responsibility.

I know there are a lot of folks who wish the Civil War had never been fought and good old slavery still existed. I know there are plenty of people who wish we were still killing those Vietnamese who put our freedom in so much danger. One way or another we still manage to make slavery happen (the millions of prisoners working in jails for $.20 an hour for Mastercard and Visa) and we still make imperial wars (too many to count right now) and I still have the idea that speaking out against injustice and torture and indiscriminate use of torture and terror is my duty as a citizen.

And so, back at you, to those who don't like something about our crazy country (the President, for instance), is "Love it or leave it" really your best shot?

The rush to the bottom. Just get out of our way!

It occurs to me that we could benefit hugely from a department to examine how other countries are doing things better than the USA. I am a natural born heretic, I know. But I see a trend that perhaps could use some tweaking one of these days.

I see, for instance, that for a couple of hundred years of European presence in the country, we were pretty singly focused on killing Native Peoples and animals while great cultures around the world were having their Renaissance and creating the great cathedrals of Europe. While we were eating squirrels and wearing deer like cave men, the finest silks ever made were being produced in China. While to Ottoman Empire was cultivating science, we were intentionally spreading smallpox and fitting up slave ships.

I do admit that we always seem to have excelled at killing and environmental destruction with some competition in the past from, say, the Spanish and the English and Genghis Khan. It is a hard competition to qualify because so many creative efforts were utilized. We liked scalping, tar and feathering, lynching, We liked individual enterprise, such as paying anyone to kill Indians, to catch Africans, to slaughter buffalo. We especially specialized in Puritan righteousness which gave a full guarantee that God was behind us. We made our own version of the Inquisition.

My stumping point this morning is this question of how we have come to believe that we are the only act in the world and we are the best at everything and how it is unAmerican to look to successes and innovations from other countries to find solutions that work for our problems.

I guess that pretty much all empires rule by self inflicted Divine Right.We do. We have the Divine Right to invade anyplace on earth to further our needs. We have the right to pollute anywhere, to kill anyone. But what we don't seem to have is the right to say that another country is doing a lot better in medical care than we are or even making better strides with renewable energy or keeping Monsanto from invading their food chain. This causes big trouble. What if, for instance, Iran had a handle on the homeless problem? Could we send a delegation to study and adopt their solutions? Not on your life. What if South Africa has a simple, pure and working voting system such as one person, one vote? Could we emulate that? Are you fucking crazy? We have created the most archaic, most expensive, most surely cumbersome hodge podge of a voting mess that could be imagined, but we know we are the best and some even "know" we are the only democracy.

This is the stuff of decline of empires. The rush to the bottom. The head in the sand. The writing on the wall. And the line that we hear that we can't afford education, feeding our people, housing anyone, well, it is abundantly clear that we have enough. We chose to spend our treasure on incarcerating millions, on insane military invasions, on guns. This is our choice. We, obviously have enough money. How else could we spend trillions of dollars fucking up other countries?

I think we desperately need a department of open minded souls investigating how other people do things right and bringing the safe, sane, reasonable solutions home to us, no matter where they come from. We are not God. The rest of the world sees this. It is time for us to get with it.

And actually, from personal experience, it is a great relief to finally stop pretending to be God. A very great relief.