Tag: control

The Tragic Tale of Twenty-Two Bears

It pains me to write this so hard on the heels of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, but the only way I can get this horrible story out of my head, it seems, is by putting it into yours.

Our National Parks have a very checkered past. Our efforts to “tame” nature often had disastrous results, and then later, as philosophies changed, our efforts to restore nature to its original state were often just as bad. This very topic, the fight over the best way to control nature, is the subject of a new book, “Engineering Eden” by Jordan Fisher Smith.

I haven’t read the book but I’m looking forward to doing so. I heard the author discuss it on the radio. He was a park ranger for 21 years, so he speaks about the parks with a great deal of experience and authority.

One of the stories he told was about something that occurred at Yosemite back in 1973. It seems a tourist was in the back country and came across the corpses of 22 bears at the foot of a cliff. There were adults and cubs, and some of the bodies where caught in the trees. Three of them were skinned.

The tourist informed some reporters, and it was discovered that these bears had been killed by park rangers and tossed off the cliff so that the public wouldn’t see them. The three skins where used in an exhibit. The park officials eventually admitted that 200 bears had been killed over the past 12 years in Yosemite alone.

This was their awful solution to a bear “problem” that had been created because humans had habituated them to our food. You can see a lot of historical photos of delighted people hand feeding bears out of their car windows, or gathering around the dump sites to watch the bears eating our garbage. Naturally that caused the bears to become a nuisance. The park policy was to try to relocate the bears, but often they’d be back to their original locations before the rangers could even drag the bear trap back to the capture site. So as a last resort, they’d get the cliff treatment.

I looked all over the internet for more information on this story, and I only came up with this article from the New York Times archives. You’d think that there would have been enough shock and outrage to cause a bit more buzz, but it was 1973. People were much more apt to look the other way back then.

There are now policies in place to discourage the feeding of bears, and there are lock boxes at campsites for food and garbage, and the open dumps no longer exist. Even so, I can’t stop thinking about what it must have been like for that man, out in the wilderness, simply wishing to take in some gorgeous views, and instead coming across that grizzly sight. (Pardon the pun.) It must have been horrifying. One can only hope that the park service has evolved since then, even if the bears haven’t.

Bear

It Takes All Kinds

I used to work with someone whose anxiety came out in the form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). On really bad nights, she’d actually walk up to the bridge on the roadway, on the dotted yellow line, because to her way of thinking, encountering a 4,000 pound vehicle was vastly preferable to walking on the germs of the sidewalk, or stepping on the places where tires had touched the roadway (because, she reasoned, most tires had gone over road kill at some point).

I felt sorry for her. I really did. It must be exhausting to live under the weight of such stress. Her world was full of illogical rules that she absolutely had to follow, or disaster would surely strike. For example, under no circumstances could she wear her glasses into the bathroom. And all her dirty dishes must soak in bleach for at least 12 hours.

I also worked with someone who was a compulsive hoarder, which is also considered by many to be part of the OCD spectrum. To see the way he lived was heartbreaking. I’d say 90 percent of his home was full of garbage and useless junk. And he’d come to work and just take the place over. He wasn’t comfortable unless he was surrounded by possessions. In fairness, though, he’d take all his stuff with him at the end of his shift. That must have been tiring, too.

It was always scary to see him walk into the roadway to retrieve something that had fallen off a passing vehicle. It didn’t have to be anything of value. It just had to exist. If it existed, he had to have it. That bridge had the cleanest roadway on the face of the earth, despite what the OCD lady thought.

Actually, that’s probably not true, because for some reason I’ve worked with quite a few bridgetenders who were OCD and/or hoarders in my career, so there are probably quite a few picked-over bridges out there. I have no idea why these types of individuals are attracted to this job, but it seems to be very much the case.

Maybe it’s because as a bridgetender you tend to have more control over your environment than you do in a lot of other jobs. You work alone. You have your own way of doing things within a narrow field of requirements. And the job is, for the most part, predictable. (Except, of course, when it isn’t. But those are stories for other days.)

And maybe there’s another way of looking at this. You actually want bridgetenders to be all about the rules. The safety of the traveling public depends upon bridgetenders not cutting corners or getting too complacent. And if you have an anxiety disorder and yet still have to earn a living, it’s probably better for all concerned that you work alone.

I’ve never met a bridgetender who wasn’t unique in one way or another. The same could definitely be said about me. As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make a world.

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Gilding Your Cage

All too many of us find ourselves trapped in situations not of our own making. Untenable working conditions. Desperate poverty. Bad marriages. Unsafe living conditions.

By all means, if you can get out of these situations, move heaven and earth to do so. But each of us has our own story. Some of us are stuck, pure and simple. I get it. I’ve been there.

One of my favorite books is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I’m not going to lie. It’s kind of depressing. But in the end it’s also unbelievably inspiring. Here’s a man who survived four Nazi death camps. The reason he was able to get through it with his sanity intact is that he assessed what he had no control over (which was practically everything), but then he realized that there was one thing no one could control but him: his mind and his spirit. They could starve him and torture him in countless ways, but they couldn’t dictate what he thought. That’s pretty powerful.

Most of us aren’t nearly as trapped as Dr. Frankl was. We have even more control than he did. Even if your work life is a nightmare, you can go home and make your living space special and unique to you. Even if you are poor, you can create. You can learn. You can explore the world around you. There’s always something. You just have to look at your situation with a clear eye.

I’ve found that I’m much happier when I focus on what I have instead of what I want or can’t have. So, what can you do with what you do have? What can you change? What can you control?

Hold onto those things and make them as amazing as you can. No one can take the ability to do that from you. It’s yours. It always was. Don’t ever forget that.

Gilded Cage

Hands at Ten and Two

When learning to drive a car, one of the most fundamental lessons you are taught is to view the steering wheel as if it were a clock, and place your hands at ten and two. Pretty basic. Pretty obvious. You’d think.

Unfortunately, many people fail to apply that lesson to the wider world. Keep your hands on your own steering wheel, not on someone else’s. Steer your own life. Don’t try to dictate to others what they should or should not do or say. Don’t try to fix the messes that you didn’t create, especially if the mess creator doesn’t think it’s a mess. Don’t try to think for someone else.

If you find yourself saying to someone, “Don’t be like that,” then you are trying to drive their metaphorical car. In my life, people have attempted to get me to be more girly or outgoing or turn me into a conservative, but nothing short of a sharp blow to the head would cause those things to happen. I marvel at the amount of energy that others have wasted in trying to get me to be someone that I am not.

Yes, it can be a little scary trying to navigate in a world where every person has his or her own route and destination. It may seem terribly random to you. But while you’re desperately trying to manage all the vehicles around you, you have to ask yourself, who’s driving yours?

The best way to maneuver through chaos is by keeping your eyes on your own route and doing the best that you can to get there safely. Let the other cars take care of themselves.

traffic chaos

M.A.D. — Mutually Assured Dysfunction

I have a distant acquaintance who is a very self-destructive alcoholic. Watching him is like witnessing a train wreck in slow motion. And it’s even more tragic because when he’s off the sauce, he seems to be able to lead a very successful life. Alas, he’s almost never sober.

A couple years ago he met an absolutely gorgeous woman and they’ve been together ever since. She does not have a drinking problem. At first I really wondered what she could possibly see in this man, but now I think I have it figured out.

The evidence is plain to see on his Facebook page. He never posts on his own page. Not ever. But she does, almost daily. And it always seems to be about what they’re doing together, and how happy they are, and lots of heart icons, and invariably a photograph of the two of them in each other’s arms, in which she is beaming ecstatically and he is quite obviously three sheets to the wind, complete with drool.

It’s really kind of pathetic. He’s all about the booze, but it seems she’s all about the control. If you need to be in control, what better partner to have than a man who’s in a completely passive stupor all of the time? She is clearly calling all the shots. And every Facebook post has this underlying message: “He’s MINE.” She couldn’t be more obvious if he were the fire hydrant and she were the dog.

They are completely intertwined in their own codependent universe. As long as she’s in control, he can drink. And as long as he drinks, she can be in control. It’s almost as if two parasites are feeding off each other. But surely such a system cannot sustain itself forever. It completely lacks protein.

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The Life Penalty

As sick as I am right now with the head cold from hell, death sounds very appealing to me. Please put me out of my misery. Please. Sure, I know that in a few days (God willing) I’ll be feeling better and my attitude will change. But right now, I’d dearly love to shuffle off this mortal coil, wrapped in flannel and wearing bunny slippers.

That’s also how people who are suicidal feel. At a time when every single aspect of their lives feels totally out of their control, their mortality, or lack thereof, may seem like the only choice they have left. That’s a short-sighted view and one I disagree with, but there you have it.

Call me crazy if you like (and a lot of people do) but I am completely opposed to the death penalty. Not for moral reasons, although there are many of those. Not for financial reasons, although there are tons of stats out there that show that it costs more to put a human being down than it does to lock them up and throw away the key.

No. The reason I oppose the death penalty is that dying is easy. Life is what’s hard. Especially a life behind bars without the possibility of parole. That’s why people refer to death as being taken out of their misery in the first place.

Most murderers and serial rapists and the like are all about dominance and control. Putting them in a situation for the rest of their lives in which they don’t have control over anything would be hell on earth for them. They are also usually under the impression that they are the smartest people in the room, and now they’ll be surrounded by fellow idiots. Torture. Imagine being condemned to a life with no future, full of boredom, frustration, hostility, violence, ignorance and helplessness. I can think of no more apt punishment for a psychopath.

I know that the families of victims often think that the death of the perpetrator will bring closure to them. I can’t even pretend to understand what they are going through. But I will say that I used to long for the death of my abusive stepfather, and when he finally obliged me, I felt… nothing. Nothing at all. The damage still had been done. Death will not negate the atrocity that was visited upon you. Death cannot bring your loved one back. Nothing can do that.

I could talk about the racial disparities that are related to the death penalty. I could discuss how it has been proven not to be any type of deterrent. I could blather on about how people have been put to death and then have been found to be wrongly accused, which makes murderers of us all. You can get plenty of information about these things on other web pages. But what I will tell you is that if revenge is your thing, then death isn’t the worst punishment. Life with no freedom and no potential for joy is.

Life Penalty

[Image credit: seattletimes.com]

You Cannot Put an Ocean in Your Pocket

I heard that saying the other day and my gut reaction was, “What kind of crunchy granola bullsh** is that?” I mean, it sounds very Eastern, very Zen, and I often love that sort of thing. I’m open-minded. I’m spiritual. I’m philosophical. But for Pete’s sake, there are limits.

But then I sat with it for a few days and realized that it’s actually sound advice. It’s about letting go. It’s about not trying to control everything. It’s about letting the universe unfold as it should.

I think the biggest mistake many of us make is gripping the steering wheel of life so tightly that our knuckles turn white and we don’t enjoy the ride. The destination will be the same, but there will be a great deal more stress along the way. Loosen your grip. Take a breath. Let it be. Don’t try so freakin’ hard.

Let the ocean do its thing. The waves will crash on the shore whether you want them to or not. The tide will rise and fall. You really can’t put an ocean in your pocket. The concept may sound fairly obvious, but what’s really insane is that so many of us try to do it anyway.

ocean

One of my favorite works of art:

  “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai

Sympathy vs. Empathy

The other day I witnessed something awful. I was working on the Fremont Bridge here in Seattle. It’s 30 feet off the water. Right next to it is the Aurora Bridge, which is 170 feet off the water. Before they put up the higher railing on the Aurora Bridge, the only bridge in the world more known for suicides was the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Fortunately the higher railing has reduced our statistics dramatically, but some people are extremely determined.

It had been a really good day at work. The end of my shift was fast approaching and I was looking forward to going home. Then I heard the sirens. I looked up, and there, standing on the thin, fragile railing, 170 feet above the canal, was a teenaged boy. He stood there, motionless, as the fire engines and police cars gathered around him. They didn’t get too close. Several officers were trying to talk to him, but he wasn’t acknowledging anyone, as far as I could tell. He just stood there, on the brink of death, gazing off to the horizon.

And I felt like a bug pinned to a display board. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. All I could do is quietly say, “Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, oh God, please don’t do it.” My heart was pounding. I felt sick. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life.

I’ve been a bridgetender since 2001. This isn’t my first rodeo. But in the past I’ve only experienced the aftermath. I’ve either heard them hit (which is a sound you’ll never forget), or I’ve heard the fire engine race up and them coax the guy down. This time I had a front row seat for the most pivotal moment in someone’s life, and I couldn’t do anything to help.

Then a woman came running up the sidewalk, her arms outstretched. An officer stopped her just short of the boy. He still didn’t move. He stood there for 30 minutes. It felt like an eternity.

Then, thankfully, he decided to climb down. But to do this he had to make a 180 degree turn on that railing and squat down. That was the scariest part for me. I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it suck if he changed his mind and now he accidentally fell?”

Eventually he got down and they were able to get him in the ambulance. They drove away and reopened the bridge to traffic and everything went back to normal. Sort of. But meanwhile I was nauseous from the adrenaline dump. I went home to an empty house and had no one to talk to about it. Oddly I was ravenously hungry, but was so sick I couldn’t eat until the next day, after having had several nightmares.

Post Traumatic Stress. That’s a problem. Because it won’t be the last jumper I witness when I work on this bridge. All my coworkers have seen several. And they say it’s worse when they actually jump, especially when they hit the ground or a building instead of the water. Clearly, I’m going to need some coping skills if I’m going to deal with this on a regular basis.

So I decided to take advantage of my Employee Assistance Program and see a counselor. I had my first appointment yesterday. We talked about suicide and what it means to me personally and what it means in general, and she gave me several things to think about.

She said that some people are in so much emotional pain and feel so out of control that they take the control of the one thing that everyone can potentially control—their death. It’s an awful choice to make, but some people may think it’s the only one they have. Others are under the influence of drugs and are making irrational choices in general and this is just another one of those irrational choices. She also said it was normal for me to feel sympathy for this person’s pain and confusion. That’s a very human reaction.

Then we discussed the difference between sympathy and empathy, because that’s what I clearly have to work on. Here are the definitions:

Sympathy [sim-puh-thee]

noun, plural sympathies.

  1. harmonyoforagreementinfeeling,asbetweenpersonsoronthepartofonepersonwithrespecttoanother.

Empathy [em-puh-thee]

noun

  1. The intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

I have always taken pride in the fact that I’m a fairly empathetic individual. I can put myself into other people’s emotional shoes and act toward them accordingly. This is a skill that not everyone possesses. I get frustrated by insensitive, oblivious people. But it never occurred to me that sometimes empathy is not the best thing to have.

Because, you see, I took that young man’s emotional pain into my body. I mean, I really felt it. And because of that I had to deal with it in the aftermath, kind of like having to expel poison. Not good.

So my homework, probably for the rest of my life, is to learn to not take people’s pain on board. It’s okay to feel sympathy, pity, sadness for that person and what they are going through, but I really need to not take it into my soul. It isn’t mine. It doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t have to take ownership of it. What a concept.

Wish me luck.

IMG_0329

Sunrise, a boat race, and my view of the Aurora Bridge from work.

Territorial Disputes

One of the best things about having two dogs is that you learn a great deal about the concept of territory. The alpha dog spends a lot of time defending his turf, and the beta dog uses up a great deal of energy demonstrating that he knows he’s not in charge. “I’m just a submissive visitor in your land, sire. Please don’t hurt me.”

Even though it may not be as blatant in humans, the concept can be quite similar when you encounter a hostile individual that for some reason you have to get along with. For example, if you are being trained at work by someone who resents your very existence, there are many ways to handle it, of course, but my thought process is as follows: This person has been a grumpy old troll for years, and nothing I do or say is going to change that. There’s really no point in wasting energy by getting into a confrontation with someone like that. The situation will remain the same. So I let them pee on their psychological fire hydrant until they get it out of their system. And usually after that we do fine.

While this person has now forever lost all my respect, I never show it, because I am crossing into their land. There will be taxes incurred. It’s best to just pay them and move on.

And yes, it galls me to have to put up with someone’s crap, but the older I get, the more I realize that I have to pick my battles. I have very little energy to spend on territorial disputes. I’m much more content letting others be the landlords, if it’s all that important to them. I just nod and say, “Yes, sir, whatever you say sir,” knowing full well that they have absolutely no control over my opinions or my thoughts, so in the end, my inner territory is completely and utterly mine.

I used to kind of feel sorry for beta dogs. They seem to be constantly picked on. But now I actually feel more sorry for the alphas of this world. It must be exhausting to have to spend every waking moment trying to control everything and everyone around you. Especially when all of us puppies tend to wander around the yard willy nilly the moment your back is turned. It has always been thus.

alpha

On Being a Unitarian Universalist

For most of my life I was without a spiritual home. My mother was a member of the Congregational Church, but I can only remember setting foot inside one a handful of times as a child. As devout as she was, as a single working mother her time and energy were limited. I remember her trying to get me to go to Sunday school one cold Connecticut winter day, and we walked about a block and then turned back. It was too cold and I was too resistant to the idea. I think my mother gave up on the concept for me at that point.

Even with my limited experience with Christianity, I knew it wasn’t a good fit for me. It just never felt right. It didn’t feel logical or like a valid part of my everyday life. It always seemed out of date and based on the knowledge of the world as it was 2000 years ago. We know so much more now. What did the words of Jesus, however wise they might have been, have to do with a world in which we’ve walked on the moon and can talk instantly to someone on the other side of the planet?

That’s the thing, though. In many religions, including Christianity, I do find pearls of wisdom. In many ways that only adds to my confusion, because I’ve also seen the dark side of religion. The intolerance. So many religions assume that theirs is the only way to salvation. If you don’t believe exactly as they do, then you’re not one of the chosen, and you’re going to hell.

I can’t subscribe to the notion that a Bushman of the Kalahari, for example, who follows the religion of his parents, is condemned to hell by virtue of the fact that he was born in the “wrong” place, to the “wrong” people. I just can’t buy it. And if it is true, it’s not something I want to be a part of.

Why does my spiritual path have to be the only right one in order for it to be valid? That seems too simplistic to me. There’s too much variation in nature for there to be no room for a variation in philosophy.

So I cast about aimlessly for many years, feeling kind of alone in the wilderness, until finally I found Unitarian Universalism. In this conservative religious world of ours, I find a liberal, all-inclusive church to be a refreshing change indeed. The UU Church believes, as I do, that there are many paths to the divine. On any given Sunday you might find yourself amongst UU Humanists, UU Christians, UU Pagans, UU you-name-it-they’ve-got-it.

For me, most of all, Unitarian Universalism seems to be a place where people who have experienced mainstream religion and have been turned off by it, but still want community and fellowship, can find a home.

And lest you think we’re some lunatic fringe group, here are some Unitarians, Universalists, and UUs you may have heard of:

  • Presidents Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft
  • Writers Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Horace Greeley, Ethan Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Sutton, Herman Melville, E.E. Cummings, Margaret Fuller, and William Carlos Williams
  • Other recognizable names include Paul Newman, Rod Serling, Adlai Stevenson, Linus Pauling, Paul Revere, Arthur Schlesinger, Albert Schweitzer, Daniel Webster, Pete Seeger, Frank Lloyd Wright, Neville Chamberlain, and Clara Barton

So what is a typical service like? There isn’t one, really. We often discuss various religious philosophies, cares and concerns, current events, or basic concepts about everyday living. Here’s a list of topics that were discussed in various UU churches recently:

  • The Communion of Life: Climate Change and the Unitarian Universalist Response
  • How Do We Know?
  • The Neurobiology of Compassion
  • The Road Not Taken
  • Moderation and Balance: An Islamic Perspective
  • America’s Religious Experiment
  • The Origin of Love
  • Questioning
  • A Glimpse Into the Heart of Terror
  • Joining the Drum Circle: Ancient Rites
  • Celebrating Community
  • Ground Hogs, Possums, and Mockingbirds. Reflections on the human need for control and certainty in a world where there is little of either.
  • Effective Altruism: Saving Lives from the Comfort of your Desktop
  • The Hidden Face of the Divine Feminine
  • The Adventure of Forgiveness
  • Lies My Government Told Me About Immigration

One thing that can be quite disconcerting about a UU Church is that rather than adhering to one dogma or creed, rather than being expected to conform or walk in lockstep with all the people around you, we UUs can’t seem to agree on ANYTHING. But the beauty is that we respect each other’s right to disagree. Here is something we all agree on, however. The seven UU Principles.

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person.
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
  • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Because most Unitarian Universalists find it unpalatable to recruit people, or risk being perceived as trying to convince people to change their ways, you won’t hear much about our religion. Not from us, anyway. We are loathe to cram anything down your throat. But you are always welcome to come to a service and form your own opinion. To find a congregation near you, go here.

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