The Door That No One Held

I sat in a café this rainy morning with my coffee and my thoughts wandering the way they do on slow Sundays. One stroller after another rolled through the entrance, and every single time the parents wrestled with the door on their own. People walked past them, eyes glued to their own worlds, their dopamine machines (for anyone reading this in the future, I mean their phones), never pausing to help. It felt strange. A little heartbreaking. Almost surreal to watch.

I kept wondering if this is what happens when the pace of life sinks its teeth into everyone so deeply that we forget how to look up. Maybe this is what capitalism/technology/a post COVID world has done to us, piling so much on our backs that we forget the softness of small gestures. Or maybe technology has wrapped us so tightly inside our own heads that we do not even see someone struggling to push a stroller through a doorway.

Would this have happened 10 or 15 years ago? I do not know. The world and the people in it seemed so much more accommodating, so much more empathetic. Human. I remember a slower world. A world where doors opened more easily because people noticed one another.

COVID did something to all of us too. A quiet hardening. An invisible distance. I sometimes ask myself if we lost something during those years and never got it back. Something as simple as noticing.

And here is the truth. I never saw any of this before I had a baby. I never noticed how awkward it is to hold a door with one hand while steering a stroller with the other. I never felt that tiny sting when no one helps. Motherhood opened my eyes to the weight of these little everyday battles. Now I see them everywhere.

So here I am, sipping my coffee, asking myself a list of Sunday morning questions. What is happening to us. Why we are drifting farther away from one another. Why something so small feels like such a mirror of who we are becoming.

No answers yet. Just the questions. And this delicious vanilla latte.

-Rome

Self-realization

“Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.” -Carl Jung

This is America

 I know I’m not the only one cognizant of the declining empire that is the U-S-A.

This isn’t about promoting divisiveness.

This is about one’s own autonomy steeply declining in the name of geopolitics.

The bandwagoning effect of people who don’t ask all the questions and make it about red vs. blue, democrats vs. republicans, is what’s wrong with this broken system. A system intentionally pitting people against each other so we don’t achieve self-actualization. So we’re so mired in misanthropy we don’t even feel the rug being pulled from beneath our feet....

Hustle Culture

Nowadays, the anti-hustle culture rhetoric has permeated in social media forums and real-time conversations alike. 

People now refuse to glorify working 25/7. It's unhealthy, they say. It's toxic, they add. Work-life balance is key!--they protest.

The part that confuses me about the anti-hustle culture rhetoric is that it can seemingly smother a culture that is still rooted in deep mental health and addiction issues. Saving dogs and plants, posting your latest kale salad and oat latte recipe, stretching and meditating for the Gram, and criticizing others for failing to make the same priorities in their lives and lifestyles has become the norm. 

We have found ourselves in a society where one-upsmanship does not so much revolve around working ungodly hours, anymore, but about working on out-me-timing others. Pictures of cars and lavish trips are now replaced with content surrounding massages, candles, yoga, meditation, climbing rocks, and similar "me-time" activities. 

Indeed, perhaps the society that is promoting the work-life balance rhetoric is also creating a society devoid of professional responsibility and financial accountability. I agree that the hustle culture mentality can potentially be toxic to one's physical and mental health---but so is glorifying a lifestyle that may not be attainable or sustainable for others. Imagine being depressed because you can't have your massage today. Imagine feeling lesser-than because you couldn't make your instagrammable Zion hiking trip that you've been planning outfits for the past few months.

Telling a working professional who strives to achieve to provide for themselves and their family that what they're doing is wrong and too-much work, is like telling someone who is a Coachella fanatic to stop attending music festivals, because it's too-much fun and play. 

Too much mental healthy goodness rhetoric, can also be toxic. Because it's unintended effect can be attempting to rework or rewire another's brain and shame them on what they're apparently doing right or wrong. 

Perhaps this is why the candidates I interview at my firm take their phone interviews at the coffee shop--because coffee is life and takes priority over making a good, professional impression to your future employer. That oat milk latte better have been worth it, Ashley!

Every person's definition of ambition and professional/life success is different. It has to be. My definition of work and play ought to be different than yours--unless one of your favorite pastimes is blogging and talking shit about the anti-hustle culture rhetoric, too. 

Consider the fact that a lot of people around you are a product of immigrant parents and guardians who hustled and worked ungodly hours to provide a better life for their kids. Perhaps we simply repeat what we know, we're hardwired to. And perhaps, identifying our own mental health issues makes us realize that it's not all about work. Now we have the resources and money to understand that sometimes you just have to live a little. But, at what cost?

Anyway, I'll end here. I'm late for my weekly facial.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

"Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast and the taste is... fleeting. So, you  end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers..." - From the X-Files

Amal Clooney and the Armenian Genocide

Amal is everything. I'd like to note how amazing it is that Kim Kardashian has been a celebrity for however long she has been and has half-heartedly (or assedly- pun intended) mentioned the Armenian Genocide (or the denial of) but to no avail (as in heeding mainstream public recognition).

And IN swoops/glides/floats Amal Clooney to layeth the smackdown on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Learn more about it by reading the The Armenite article and watch her eloquence and all that is her goddessness emanate in this 6 minute clip (ok I'llstop). ‪#‎genocide‬ ‪#‎armeniangenocide‬ ‪#‎amal‬ ‪#‎is‬ ‪#‎magical‬

-------

From the Armenite article: "Now, rather than being relegated to the annals of media blips and nonstarters, the Perincek v. Switzerland case has generated widespread media coverage about the Armenian Genocide and its denial from the most unlikely sources including BuzzFeed, Cosmpolitan, People, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and even from ribald celebrity gossip blog Perez Hilton. When we last checked, the BuzzFeed article alone had been viewed almost 200,000 times."

Read more: http://thearmenite.com/…/amal-clooney-european-court-turk…/…

Inspiring Quotes and Things to Help Promote A Stronger, Better Version of SELF

----"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable." -Socrates

---"How Bad Do You Want It?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsSC2vx7zFQ

---When Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit-ups he did, he replied, "I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That's what makes you a champion."

HeforShe Campaign

There's always going to be a naysayer about anything trending wink emoticon ..and since I am a feminist.....

So the ‪#‎heforshe‬ campaign Emma Watson launched calls for a "mere" pledge to be committed to "gender equality" which then begs the question-- what happens to those who are gender nonconformists (or those battling gender dysphoria) and how do they fall into this?....and then you add a backlash from the colored women communities who are "condemning mainstream (white) feminism" and suddenly that united (feminist) front we all so wished we had is now inconceivable because of these divergent views.

The HeforShe movement is as strong as the number of clicks it gets, and you're making a difference by hashtagging the shit out of the movement. Taking a backseat approach via a virtual mouse-click is as effective as dumping ice water on ourselves to fight ALS, but I guess a movement has to start somewhere; and I'm glad a Harry Potter actress can bring these issues at the forefront seeing as she is doing more than her not-so-feminist counterparts i.e. the Beyonces (ily tho) and katy perry's who start and end the conversation with "I'm not a feminist but....." ‪#‎lawd‬

My 3-cents:D

Close Her.

There is no greater way to greet a new month of the ever-growing new year than by a feeling of utter listlessness, pangs of confusion, and moments of self-deprecating? self-reflection.

Excuse me while I attempt to further burden my unconscious through the melancholic harmonies of a (fleeting) cerebral (and impending myocardial) infarction.

Pardon me while I pour myself a glass or three of wine

I can't help but be inspired by those people who have this sense of enlivening resilience and determination about them to do anything and everything they set their mind to.

Just today I met this very unique man: a charmer, an entrepreneur, MD, JD, (insert any other occupation/credential you can think of). Post med-school/residency, and after over a decade ingrained in the healthcare field, he decided to enroll himself into law school...thrice. Needless to say, after both med-school and his third and last attempt at law school, this doctor was knee-deep in debt with an MD and JD-in-hand. This man became both a practicing healthcare physician and attorney and sits as chairman at a top-tiered hierarchy of everything healthcare-law related here in Los Angeles.

While I do believe one's degrees or credentials isn't necessarily a predicate or defining measure of one's worth or intellectual prowess, I do always appreciate people who take another stab at the wonderful world of academia-- whether it is to further one's career or to lessen-the-unfortunate-blow of one's own intellectual shortcomings, I always appreciate a head-strong, determined academic. Financially, mentally, and physically speaking, it takes a toll just to get a single degree. Clearly this doctor's path was not so easy.

When I asked this doctor which practice he preferred, he said he enjoyed being a physician far more than, well, pushing papers (fine..I may or may not have misconstrued what he said about what it *really* means to be a practicing attorney ;) ).

When I asked this doctor what made him decide to pursue two very different and challenging careers, I thought he'd say something along the lines of how it was his deep-seated childhood dream to become a money-making, power-house hot-shot, dotting "i's".. crossing "t's"... and saving lives. I then took another moment to realize that this thought-process was likely a manifestation of all of my deepest and darkest desires. Lol what?

His answer: "I did not know what to choose, I couldn't decide, so I chose both."

While some of you (and by "some" I mean my sum total one Facebook reader: hi mom) may think the moral of this very long-winded story is that you can do anything you set your mind to or that some other relevant cliche applies here...

I'd say the true moral of the story is: being indecisive isn't so bad. =]

The Paradox of Our Time

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill."

By Dr. Bob Moorehead
"The Paradox Of Our Time"

I always wonder

"I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on Earth. Then I ask myself the same question." - Harun Yahya

Oakland Community Builders

One of my former students from Berkeley just emailed me to let me know that my UCB community organizing class inspired her to pursue labor organizing.. so much so that she's now officially going to work as an organizer-in-training at the UPTE Local in NJ.

Best e-mail of the year. 

The Root Of The Problem

In China today: 22 children and 1 adult injured in knife attack versus
In the U.S.: 18-some children and 9 other people shot dead.

"That's the difference between a knife and a gun...guns don't attack children; psychopaths and sadists do."

While I disagree with the article's notion that there is "nothing to be done," I do believe that gun legislation/control isn't the answer and we certainly should not reinvigorate the anti-gun movement. Sadists, psychopaths, the mentally disturbed, etc. will always find other ways to wreak havoc-- much like the knife-murderer in China. Let's think of other practical and more efficient solutions, perhaps community-wide strategies that can help support people and foster growth, positivity, and effective communication and openness amongst members of our respective communities. I believe that's a far better approach than instituting laws that don't really deter a (mentally incapacitated or troubled) criminal.

Instituting gun control and infringing upon or limiting our "democratic" right to bear arms at the hope of *potentially* deterring these criminals seems sort of...counter-intuitive? What's to say that these criminals don't find alternative methods to harm: bombs/grenades, poisoning/chemical weapons (we all can't forget the Anthrax scare), and we can even stretch it as far as to include the pervasive act of bullying that has subsequently lead to hundreds and thousands of suicides every year. Our society's mental and physical desensitization to caring for others, of camaraderie and open-communication is what is preventing mass-murdering criminals from growing up in loving, caring, supportive environments. All I'm saying is-- gun control might not be the answer, and to restrict or forbid possession of such will only likely open the floodgates to alternate measures.

The Buddha

"The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both."

Remember remember the SIXTH of November
Of voting and feeling distraught
I see no reason why this election season
Should ever be forgot...

~r

Bittersweet

“Finishing a book is bittersweet. You spend days getting to know the characters. Learning their nuances, their faults, their loves, their lives. They become your friends, acquaintances, enemies. And after the story ends, you miss them. You look for them in your own life, wonder where they’ve gone, you forget that they aren’t real. You fall in love with the hero and dream of him at night. The strange girl becomes your best friend. Their heartaches become your heartaches. You laugh when they laugh. And cry when they die. Eventually you realise they aren’t a part of your world, you were just briefly visiting theirs.” 

~

a half finished book is, after all, a half finished love affair 

Is it really in the eye of the beholder?

Ever since she was 10, Nadia begged her mother for an operation to pin her ears back so that her peers at school would stop bullying her and calling her Dumbo for her "elephant ears." Read the article here. Four years later, a charity provides Nadia with a free otoplasty, but they don't stop there- adding on to the laundry list of corrective, elective surgeries rhinoplasty and mentoplasty, all totaling $40k. 

At the risk of sounding insensitive, my initial reaction to this was disappointment. Want to deal with the psychological effects of bullying by resorting to surgery? Fine. Join the 90 thousand other teens who went under the knife for cosmetic surgery in 2007. But, courtesy of a charity foundation, deciding to add on a bucket list of multiple corrective and cosmetic measures to fit a certain mold of aesthetic "beauty" defined in the eyes of our American culture and society is..well-- sad.

                                                                                                                         ~Ro

Colorado gunman

We moved to Colorado just a year or so after the Columbine High School massacre; post-shootings, high schools and middle schools all throughout the state began employing metal detectors, all students were prohibited from wearing trench coats and sagging/baggy clothing, gun control measures were taken via federal and state legislation, and bullying and adolescent/teenage psychopathy stood at the forefront of issues that were *finally* being acknowledged and addressed. Over a decade later, a 24-year old med school student and gunman kills 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. Read about it here A pre-meditated killing, as the perp entered the premises, gas canister in one hand, firearm in the other, equipped with a bulletproof vest and gas mask. Where do we go from here? What more can we control and regulate? Where and how else shall we be imposing security precautions? What the hell is going on?