Sunday, December 25, 2016

A Dream from my Dark Side

Merry Christmas, 2016

I guess my last post was about my decision to lose weight.  I'm happy to report that I have lost 15 pounds, and my A1C has started to come down.  I have every intention to keep losing weight.

This post is not about Christmas or weight loss though.  It's about me, and how I've been feeling for a while now.

It's about a dream I had last night.  Disclaimer: I watched the BBC movie The Hollow Crown: The War of the Roses yesterday evening.  A dark tragedy, about wealthy, powerful men waging war against family members for power gains.  Fascinating historical account by Shakespeare, done with awful, bloody visuals balanced by great acting and rich. lovely sets.  It's about Henry VI, who came to power at the age of  9 months, after his father was murdered.  He grew up, and married Margaret, a princess from France. Various uncles became engaged in the War of Roses, at a time when England had close ties and sometimes actually ruled France.  I only include this because it so directly related to my dream in terms of visuals, and also in terms of the feeling of the tragic waste of  humanity at the beck of  self-aggrandizing, self-serving, wealthy world leaders.

In my dream, we (several people, but I'm not sure who else other than me) were sitting at a long table in a throne room similar to one in the movie.  There was another table at right angles to the one where I sat, and that one was filled with powerful men dressed in long robes and capes like the actors in the movie.  They were making many false claims (like the fake news we have been subjected to during the recent presidential campaign.)  Everyone in the audience was somberly nodding, even though (I'm sure of this but I don't know how or why I know it) we all knew the claims were ridiculous.  Someone even said that England didn't really exist.  I reacted derisively (obviously believing that I still had a right to free speech) and the closest nobleman at the other table pulled a gun and aimed it directly at me.  He told me to be respectful or he would kill me.  I didn't doubt him, so I shut up, but seethed.

The images from the dream were vivid, and still linger even though it is hours later.  My outrage and fear still linger also.

I've had a few hours to think about it, and I realize that the outrage and fear have been part of my emotional reactions ever since Trump won the election.  Outrage because to me he seems like such a narcissistic, entitled, out of touch bully, despicable because of his own words, during debates, interviews and on twitter.  Fear because of his impulsive, uninformed foreign policy/nuclear arms race statements this past week.  I'm terrified because I believe he could easily end life as we know it.  In this country and around the world.

I know others disagree with me.  I've been told he will surround himself with experts.  I know that there are built-in checks and balances in our government.  But there is NO indication that Trump will listen to anyone.  His arrogant belief in his own "smartness" is belied by his immature, hateful lashing out at anyone who disagrees, criticizes or even questions him.  His narcissistic personality allows him to create his own concept of the world, with himself at the center, and he firmly believes in his own judgement and ability to manage all contingencies.  He's even managed to convince others, but I'm not convinced.  I'm afraid.

I remember being anxious during the Bay of Pigs incident, without really understanding anything about the politics except that Cuba, a communist country, had nuclear missiles pointed directly at us.  I remember the horror of the John Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr assassination, and the murder of Robert Kennedy.  Those deaths were tied to individuals rather than an ideology, but the world seemed very unpredictable back then.  The attacks on 9/11 left me feeling really vulnerable, not only the nation, but personally also.  It is an unsafe world, overrun with fanatical hatred generated in the name of religion.  Religion is supposed to bring comfort, love, understanding and peace, not to create chaos.  The safe, cozy illusions of my childhood have been shattered.

Ever since 9/11 I have been waiting anxiously for another shoe to drop.  Trump seems like that other shoe.

And now I'm still afraid of those fanatics, both foreign and homegrown, who hate the U.S. and our freedoms.  But worse than all the rest, I fear the leader of the free world, our own elected president.  No wonder I am having dark dreams.  



Happy New Year, everyone.  I hope 2017 proves that my fears are exaggerated and unfounded.  I really want to be wrong about this.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Control in Life

A year ago, I wrote about Tom turning 70.  Now I'm 70 also.  

I found out last week that my A1C is 6.5, so I am prediabetic.  When the nurse from the doctor's office first called to tell me, I was really upset.  I have neuromas in both feet, a pinched nerve in my neck from stenosis caused by osteoarthritis, and a hip that bothers me more days than not, also from arthritis.  I felt, at first, that this sugar issue was just one more age-related problem that was going to make my life more difficult.  I was pretty upset for a couple of hours.

Then I did some research, and realized that this is a potential problem that I can actually prevent if I address it now.  I need to lose weight - it will help my hip and feet issues also.  The nurse suggested that I "might want to lose some weight, so watch the carbs," but she didn't make a big issue out of it, and I didn't talk to the doctor.  But I decided on my own that I want to try to lose weight.  So I am trying to eat smaller portions, cut out some carbs, increase my walking, and avoid sweets.  In the first 3 days, I lost 3 pounds.

I'm announcing it here, because I want public accountabiltiy.  My plan is to use this blog as a journal, to encourage myself to lose weight, and also to journal about other things as well.

Like control.  I've been feeling blue this winter, partly because of the feet and hip and neck pain, but also, I realize now, because those things seem so out of my control in many ways.  

Control has been an issue for me since I was 15.  That year, toward the end of the school year, my father announced that we would be moving from RI to IL.  His company offered him a larger territory, potentially a lot more profitable.  I was about to graduate from my grade school, which went from first through ninth grade.  In RI I would have started high school, which starts in sophomore year there.  In IL, high school starts with 9th grade freshman year.  So I ended up as a transfer student in a situation where all the kids my age had already been together for a year, and they all knew the lay of the land.  I had to leave the friends I had known all my life, and my cousins who lived across the street in RI.  I was devastated by the move, and I had no control over any of the decisions being made around it.

In college I studied English and Psychology.  I developed some ideas about how perceptions about our own ability to control situations in our lives impacts us.  It starts in infancy, which is, of course, all about learning to control our bodies and the actions of people around us.  The terrible twos happen when a child has mastered enough to be able to walk and communicate a little bit, and they want to control the world around them.  We encourage some of their efforts, and tantrums ensue when they want to control something that we cannot allow them to control for many reasons, their safety as a paramount concern.   Their perception seems to be that we are just thwarting their attempts to control things.  This leads to some interesting battles between parents and children.

Throughout life, our actions and responses to events are the only things we actually can control.  Most relationship issues are about control and compromise.  Sometimes we excel at something or are given authority in a job that gives us the perception that we have some measure of control.  

A perception that we have lost control or cannot exert it because of other people leads to feelings of anger or fear.  Childhood has waves of anger and fear caused by our inablilty to control everything.  The adolescent years are complicated by bodily urges which we are forced to reign in.  The striving for independence that began in the first year of life becomes intense.  Later teen years can become filled with strife if parents are not ready to relinquish more control to their maturing kids.  

Control again becomes an issue when we perceive in mid-life that we actually have had very little control in life.  Buying a long-wanted car or having an affair are things that we can control, and for many people the compulsion to do something like that becomes very hard to resist.  

So here I am, at the threshold of old age, being impacted by my ability or inability to control things.