The point is to notice how much more complex and human a real person is than the initial thoughts we have about them. This is one version of being in the moment–just noticing everything about a person without judgment.

Perhaps the hyper-vigilance occasioned by PTSD propelled me to dealing with things this way. And I can see, as this discussion continues, that what one person calls “holding lightly” may, strangely, resemble what another person calls “taking seriously.” Vive la difference de la meme chose!”

Hekate

I have been teaching women’s studies for the past few years and the feminist in me has a visceral and negative reaction to such bumpers stickers and signs as the one that inspired this post. And, yet, if I am to ‘hold my laws loosely’ and maintain my commitment to acts of kindness and love for humanity, I want to, and must, find a ‘positive’ way to react to misogynistic, negative, hateful speech. This makes me think of some the recent hate crime committed against the U of O Pride Center. Awful, ugly, hateful speech was used to hurt the Pride Organization and to send a message to all people who affiliate with that organization (gay or straight). The Pride Center’s response was to first contact the necessary ‘powers’ that be, but then they organized positive, empowering rallies and marches. They did not hold on to their anger (at least so it seemed from media reports, newspaper interviews and facebook posts), but acknowledged its presence and turned the energy into an opportunity to spread positive opportunity for the community. It is possible that a rally to celebrate ‘fat chicks’ might be difficult to orchestrate, but this positive act would certainly fly in the face of the person (I will resist my bias and urge to assume that the person driving that vehicle in Portland was male) who responds to his or her own emptiness with hurtful bumper sticker messages against women. But it would be a way to spread nurturing environments in response to this hateful message.

Over the last 4 decades I’ve have the opportunity to work as a Youth Worker in an interracial neighborhood; as a telephone resource operator in a rural poverty program; as director of a group home for adolescent boys with autism and other intellectual disabilities; as a clerk in a “New Age” store dispensing various “positivity” products and finally, as a city transit bus driver. I also spent a few months backpacking and hitchhiking around the Pacific NW.

I met a lot of people who were scary and abusive. But I met more people who were generous, who were frightened, who were dealing with enormous hardships, who were humorous and enormously courageous. From them I learned to stand up to bullies without starting a war.

When someone called (calls) me a bitch and I look them in the eye, smile and say, “Right on, best bitch in town.” or “That would be me,” the whole interaction changes. They are generally at a loss for words. So I can ask them why they thought I was a bitch. Or how they would feel if someone said that to their mother. Occasionally, these interactions have led to real fellowship. None of them has led to further hostility. (And I was always shaking in my number 10’s when I started these conversations.)

For a while when I was a city bus driver, it was the fashion for teenage boys to board the bus wearing tee shirts that proclaimed, in the largest type: “SHUT UP BITCH!”. It’s hard to describe the jolt a female driver experiences, imprisoned in the driver’s seat with a job that can’t be lost, when confronted with this . The first time I saw it, I was cowed, made no eye contact and slunk (insofar as it’s possible to slink in a driver’s seat) away from the encounter. By the time it happened again I was prepared. I took the fare and asked the boy what the shirt meant to him. He was nonplussed and didn’t want to talk about it. But I persevered, assuring him I was interested in what it meant to him. He told me he thought it was cool. I asked him if he wore it around his mother. He admitted that he didn’t. Then we talked about a bunch of other things, in quite a friendly way. He never wore the shirt again in my presence and we were friendly whenever he was aboard. Happily, the fashion was short-lived.

During the Vietnam war, a comedian whose name I forget, said: “If you want to end war and shit, you gotta sing loud!” I took that to mean that if you wanted to change things, you needed to have the courage to do scary things, even when it might cost you something. I think it’s still true. So come all you fat bitches and dirty antiwar cowards and liberal country spoilers and lift up your voices. Let’s sing a new song and sing it loud!
Hekate”

PS. Tony, I’ve been thinking about my aversion to “holding thoughts lightly.” That phrase continues to be aversive to me. I realize it is a reaction to a lifetime of people telling me I take myself too seriously–people who were intent on keeping me coughing up way more than I received or who depended on keeping me subordinate to their desires. (The experience of far too many women.) So when someone tells me to hold my thoughts likely, there is not a snowball’s chance that I will take that advice.

Also, I realize that I believe and experience the exact opposite to be the most effective way for me to deal w/ life. (Lots of pathways to glory, maybe…) I experience that taking my thoughts and feeling seriously as signals of underlying, misunderstood or forgotten experiences and looking to discover where they come from and what they mean to me results in my increased understanding, freedom from pain and enlargement of empathy to myself and others. It’s a bit in the way of your thesis that the “no fat chicks” guys, for example, feel one down and crappy. Many roads lead to Rome, and, if Rome is where you want to go, following the road that gives you the best experience is perhaps, the best way to proceed.

Lots of love, not to mention admiration and respect. Hekate