Warrior One

OK, I don't want to give anyone the impression I actually practice yoga. So not the case, alas. But seeing how long it's been since I felt like saying anything on the blog, I thought I'd take a suggestion from a book I reading right now Downward Dogs and Warriors, to give the blog a little boost. (Also, JMax delivered the beer last night, so I have to give him the blog address and I figure I ought to post something, y'know, current.)

OK, so here's a suggestion for journaling related to the Warrior poses that Zo Newell writes in the book:

Reflect and journal on a time that you came to the defense of a righteous cause or an innocent person. Invite the emotional qualities of that experience into your practice of the warrior poses. Keep the experience in mind while practicing with softness in the eyes and openness in the heart.

Where, for you, is the line between laziness and intelligent inaction? Where is the line between intelligent action and thoughtless rage?

This is harder than it looks! (the journaling, I mean, not the pose) What I come up against is the difficulty of finding recent examples of coming to someone's defense, which is quite disheartening, really. When I was younger, I was quite the crusader, but of late, I've sidelined myself, and I definitely do not seek opportunities to be righteous. Apart from taking the dog to task for snapping at the cat (or the cat for taking a swat at the dog), I just don't do a lot of this on a routine basis.

I'm ambivalent about whether it would be good to develop this more or not. I suppose if it were always done with soft eyes and an open heart, I'd be more trusting of it, but look at the media folks who are making a living from "righteousness." [I'll spare y'all my "Lou Dobbs is an idiot" rant for the time being, but be warned that from time to time I find myself in a waiting room or lobby or someplace where he's on the TV, and you're likely to hear about it then.] And don't we TV-addicts get our righteousness-fixes from watching programs like Medium or Heroes or Bones or even CSI? (TMI, again, this time about my TV habits, but, hey, it's a blog ferpetesakes.) Dedicated professionals investigating wrongs in pursuit of justice, that's our defense of the weak.

And reality just isn't so simple. I have yet to think of a single thing I can do or say to "defend" Rachel (or her mom). And the best example of my coming to someone's defense I can think of just wasn't this sort of thing. Here it is anyway:

I'm "in charge" (ha) of an assisted living with a kindv lame actitivies program and to try to kick a little life into it and lead by example (not that the activities director was going to see it that way, but whatever), I set up a trip to Montgomery College to see Maryland Youth Ballet's Nutcracker. The Son of one of my very elderly and disabled residents calls me and asks if it would be OK or if I think his mom would even be able to enjoy it if he went with her to this event. The lady requires 24/7 one-to-one care and he'll have the caregiver come, too, but he'd like for her to be able to go unless I think it's a bad idea. I said I think it's a wonderful idea and that even if she can't really see the dancers all that well, she'll hear the music, and she'll be out to the ballet with her son and the time spent with him doing something special will mean a lot to her.

This lady doesn't have a lot of energy left to expend interacting with people in the ways they're most used to, but she's still sharp enough, and she loves to be around other people and experience what's going on. It's one of the unfairnesses of the assisted living world that such people tend to be excluded from things by staff who think they don't contribute enough to the milieu and "aren't really getting anything out of it anyway", supported by marketing people who want to make sure potential residents' families don't see "too many wheelchairs." This was the kind of treatment this lady and her family had come to expect. Coming to her "defense" just consisted of affirming the rightness of her being supported and encouraged in participating in an activity in her community.

Writing about that does give me that strong feeling to work with in the pose, but interestingly, it also gives me a feeling of needing to be cautious. I'm aware of some pretty strong negative feelings toward individuals who disregarded what this lady may have wanted, as well as toward the industry (for lack of a better word) and how for-profit so often in practice turns into against-resident, but we're all supposed to just play along with the way it is, because it's how we make our own livings, after all, and if we don't market, market, market, we could wind up unemployed waiting for Westat to get that hospital's IT department's clearance for remote access to their medical records system. (sigh)

It's not really journal material, I guess, but the two questions about laziness vs intelligent inaction and intelligent action vs. thoughtless rage are valuable considerations when faced with a decision about rising to someone's defense.

I'm less keen on rising to the defense of a righteous cause or ideal, but culture change needs to happen. Bob invited me to a meeting on July 14th, but I'm hoping to be coming back from Bethelehem, PA that evening. More on that later....