Long-Winded Apology (All about ME!!!)

Over a month ago, when the shit hit the fan with Aidan back at our old school, I sat up nights listening to 10,000 Maniacs (oh, oh, oh, what's the matter here, I'm tired of the excuses everybody, uses, he's your kid, do as you see fit) and Suzanne Vega (my name is Luca, I live on the second floor) and writing really bad poetry.

I don't post ALL the crap I write up here.  My poetry is really bad.

I was also reading the Wicked series by Gregory MaGuire which discusses, among other things, the nature of good and evil and the role of individuals in resisting the state.

This was unintentionally bad timing.

Then the Julian Assange story came out on TV here.

That one still has me feeling a bit ambiguous.  Has he done some good?  Sure.  Is he brilliant?  Undeniably.  But is he also working from a broken inner core of bitterness?  Uh, even the documentary seemed to think so.

Would he have been able to do more good - say, Bill Gates good, funding a global research and relief organization that is bringing some positive change to the world - if he had been able to work from an inner core of peace?  Who knows. 

I do know that part of what has been bugging me the last two weeks - and I do apologize for this - is not doing anything about some of the terrible things I see happening to children around me. 

I turned that guilt into anger.  Like Julian Assange.  He was angry that the Australian government did nothing to stop his Aryan supremacist ex-step-dad from abusing children.

So that even as I was getting messages from God (via Neil) telling me that He had it all under control, I was still feeling guilty.  Julian would be so mad at me for not making MORE waves.

Someone even whipped out the old classic for me.  Have the courage to change what you can, the serenity to accept what you can't and the wisdom to know the difference.

I don't think anyone has ever called me either serene.  Or wise.  Let's friggin' change things then.  I'm gonna save the world,!

And I'm Catholic.  And German.  And American.  I mean, where will the guilt stop if I don't speak up and do something about the evils around me? 

Oh yeah,  I've just stopped breastfeeding the baby too.  Now I'm listening to Pet Shop Boys..at school they taught me how to be so pure in thought and word and deed, it didn't quite succeed....and Black-Eyed Peas...people dying and children crying.  Oh yeah.  I got a whole post on that one.  I'm telling ya, you haven't even seen the really angry stuff!

All of a sudden I feel like a teenager again, full of self-righteous anger and energy and ready to take on the world.

I'm telling you man, not a tattoo on me, but I'm a bad mother-fucker.  (Look, I even typed a really bad word!!!  More on WHY I have to do that every now and then in another blog...I learned why at a writers' conference...really)

It took a text from a friend telling me I had hurt her feelings with what I had written to make me think about all this again.

Did I want to offend someone?  Yeah, I'll be honest, a bit.  But not my friend.  I want to piss off the establishment, rage against the machine, you know dye my hair pink and go punk.

Do tell me it's not all just the hormones. 

But then I thought, well, if I offend the very people I want on my side, then I'm not really doing any good. 

Well, first I thought, if I offended my friend my writing couldn't have been very good, because she missed the point (the intended sarcasm and self-belittlement) I was aiming at the establishment.

Which establishment?  Not quite sure.  Take your pick.  Who is it that allows social inequities in general and abuses to children in particular to exist?

THAT establishment.

Which is really very much bigger than my old school, this state government, any state government at all.

Funny, I've been doing a lot of running lately too.  Really running.  I thought if I tired myself out enough I would get away from the thoughts of injustice and inequity and the pictures in my head  and the ways that I could change it all and......I'm pretty fit now.  I think I'm going for 10 kms next weekend.

By Friday I thought, this is ridiculous, I am so wound up and so angry, and really, is it all just the hormones coming back because I feel like I did when I was sixteen, let me try yoga.  (What I tried as a sixteen year old wouldn't work, too many kids, not enough time to recover!!!)

Om.

Although I did run 5 kms first.

Om.

Stretch and bend.

Om.

Stop thinking about THAT and focus on the twist.

Lengthen the spine.

And then I felt it, just for a teensy moment, the barest millisecond, a glowing warmth (that was not a torn muscle!), a presence, a message from the universe.

"Don't worry Christine,"  it said.  "I got this one."

And somehow it came to me  - midpose - that all the injustices in the world aren't my problem to fix.  That I don't have to feel guilty about not doing anything about them.  (Give up GUILT?!  But what would I replace it with?!)  That all I have to do is worry about my life and my children and take it from there.  Give up the control over anything but MY OWN circumstances.

This all sounds so familiar.  Maybe if I repeat it enough I will finally get it right.

The feeling I had - for a barest of a flicker - is that the universe is just fine the way it is.

Oh.

You mean, I don't have to do a damn thing about any of it?  Give up the guilt and the anger and the need to do something about it?  And it's not quitting or selling out?  What a relief. 

Thanks, friends, for the texts and emails and the messages.

Max Ehrmann said it best in his poem, Desiderata.

"With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world."

I wanna be able to write like that.

And it won't come from a core of anger.

Namaste.