No Thank You

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I am still trying to make sense of this holiday. In the past few years, people used Facebook as a platform to show their gratitude for all the good things they appreciate. It was almost annoying, all those #blessed people humble-bragging, not because I was jealous, but more because they seemed so trite. This year, I kind of missed all the thanking. I am still wondering where all the thankfulness has gone, and why. I have come to a conclusion that makes me sad.

This year, we have replaced gratitude with fear.

The world has had its share of tragedy over the past month. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut. Boko Haram wreaking havoc in African nations. Distrust of the police on one side and protesters on the other. And shootings. All the shootings.

It’s difficult to know if it is as bad as it sounds or if the media is just putting a negative spin on the state of the world. We used to live with hope. We used to try to see the glass half-full. We used to believe we could make our world a better place. Honestly, I worry for my children and the future, not for their personal safety, but because this gloom and doom view that is so pervasive leaves everyone feeling depressed.

Frankly, we are afraid of the wrong things. What is the chance you are going to be the victim of a terror attack? Are you really concerned about being shot by the police? Do you think that Syrian refugees are on their way to destroy the American dream?

 

 When you live in fear, you become the victim you were afraid of being. The level of fear we live under is killing more than joy. It clouds our judgment. It jaundices our world view. It ramps up everyone’s anxiety, but also their anger.

When we get over being scared, we switch to anger. We don’t want to feel this way. We want someone to blame. The cops. The terrorists. The refugees. The politicians. The media. And each other.

I have to work at optimism. It doesn't happen organically. I realize my life is pretty damn good, and I sweat the small stuff regularly. I am fighting the blues that all this bad news brings. I try to make do with cat videos and weird news stories, to find something to make me smile on a grey and hopeless day.

Here’s a thought I’ve been stuck with: I kind of wish everyone was a reform Jew. Working on being the best person you can be. Treating others with kindness and tolerance. Taking care of the world around us. There’s a whole lot of good going on there, and not so much of the condemnation that’s prevalent in other beliefs and religions.

I look at my husband, who thinks organized religion is the cause of most of the world’s problems, and I think he’s onto something. The terrorists kill because they want the destruction of Israel and western Judeo-Christian values. People don’t want refugees because they are Muslims and therefore potential terrorists. Americans forget what American values are, and Christians lose sight of Jesus’ message of love. That doesn’t even take into consideration the eastern religions, but even the Buddhists are attacking Hindus.

How do you stay positive?  I try to focus on my daughters with their lives ahead of them. My children, all children, are the future. We are giving them a world where active shooter drills go along with fire drills and tornado drills. We are giving them a world where they are scared of the police, not because they don’t want to get in trouble, but because they don’t want to die. We are giving them a world where a peach doesn’t taste like summer anymore and delicate flaky flounder is rarely on the menu. We are giving them a world where they need to decide their careers before they even hit puberty and must compete against each other for a college degree they can’t afford.

I don’t have any answers, just observations. I’d like to see our politicians care about more than elections. I’d like to see food, medicine, and insurance be less about profit and more about people. It’d be great if we can stop expanding and consuming and exploiting. We could all do with a little less voicing our opinions and a little more self-reflecting. How about we do a little less hating and a little more loving. It’s worth a try, because what we are doing now sure isn’t working for us.

Stay Inside the Lines

Look, I get it. We are all under tremendous stress. Balancing work and family. Taking care of homes and cars. Paying bills. It’s all we can do to make it through a day, let alone plan for self-care. We should all be meditating and sleeping at least eight hours and doing yoga and just being present, in the moment, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Well, I made time for that a few weeks ago. My friend MH posted a thing on Facebook about an adult coloring workshop. For $10, you could go to an art studio and have some snacks and maybe a glass of wine and just color, not like Paw Patrol or Barbie pictures, but real designs with lots of little spaces for color to go. I looked at her post and thought, hmmm, that might be fun, especially with MH. I asked her if she was going to go, and she said she wasn’t sure, and she asked me if I was going to go. It turned into one of those I’ll go if you’ll go scenarios. We had a date.

I told my sister about our upcoming plans, just in casual conversation, and she was like, you need a workshop to color? She had a point. I pretty much mastered coloring about forty-one years ago. I even worked on my technique a bit when my girls were little. I pointed out it was at an art studio for a fee, so they had to call it something. Workshop was just as good a name as any.

The night arrived, and MH and I rode together downtown and grabbed a quick bite to eat. I had stashed a bottle of wine in my car, since coloring when you are an adult means you get to drink. We drove around trying to find the art studio, which was in an old house in a sketchy part of town. I overthought the part where I hoped my car wouldn’t be stolen or burglarized, and then I thought about how much I needed to color. Like an adult. We decided to leave the wine in the car. The whole thing sort of begged for sobriety.

I don’t know if you follow the news much, but there have been a few studies recently about the benefits of coloring. According to some researchers, you get the same effects from coloring as you would from meditating. It’s all the rage now. You can find a whole variety of intricately patterned coloring books at Barnes and Noble or online from Amazon. Hell, I even saw a weird little Reader’s Digest version of an adult coloring book in the grocery store checkout line today, which is how you know it’s time to stop.

MH and I went inside and were pleasantly surprised to see it was a real art studio with real art on the walls and the smell of paint heavy in the air. We found our way downstairs to a room with folding chairs and tables on which boxes of markers, crayons, and colored pencils were arranged. On another table against the wall were stacks of coloring sheets like you would see in a preschool class, only instead of sheep and apples and shit, they had skull designs on them. Seventies music played softly in the background. At one of the tables, two women were coloring intently while carrying on a very loud conversation. One of the women had brought her own coloring set, a very professional assortment of crayons and pencils and pastels. She took her coloring very seriously.

We signed in and were greeted by the hostess/artist in residence. She looked artsy, with her skull t-shirt and messy grey bun and very friendly smile. We settled in at the other end of the table away from the loud talkers. We felt awkward, unsure if we should sit near them but not really wanting to but then feeling bad like they would think we didn’t want to sit near them. We didn’t verbalize this, but rather communicated it through a series of facial expressions and eye contact.

We got down to coloring business. A few more women showed up and filled in the empty seats around the table. I noted that there were no men present. Men would never attend a coloring workshop, at least not any of the men I know, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t admit it. Hey men, you should, because the whole place is crawling with the ladies. Except they were all pretty much bat shit crazy.

How do I know this? Well, as the wine poured and the crayons scribbled, the other women began to play an elaborate game of top that. You know how someone will tell you about a bad day and then someone else tells how their day was worse? That’s how the game is played.   It’s not an official game, it’s more of a subtle dance of human nature tweaked with a smattering of ego, or, if you are the winner, grandiose narcissism.

These women took the game very seriously. One of them told how she had just traveled to China, so another one had to explain she lived in Nepal and lived off yak milk or something. That one also turned out to be a nude model, which was another detail we didn’t need to know. Another one commented on her failed marriage, which prompted someone else to tell us about her brother’s suicide. MH and I began to color faster.

More wine was sipped, and then the woman with the professional coloring kit looked at me and realized she knew me. We are both members of the Chosen people, so apparently, we really do all know each other. She started asking me all these questions about my temple, screaming them at me from across the room. It went on long enough for the rest of the tragedy parade to stop and observe this tangent. MH kept her head down and colored furiously, wearing down all the points on the new crayons.

“This isn’t very relaxing,” I said to her. “I think this might be harder than meditating.”

“I know,” she said. “I have to get this right. This is really triggering my OCD.”

I stopped trying to make it look good and just started filling in all the white space. The hostess walked in the room carrying a bowl of snack mix.

“Here, eat up, ladies. I would but I’m gluten free,” she said to the room.

“Of course you are,” I whispered to MH.
“I had a waffle two months ago and I still have a rash,” she overshared, and then she pulled up her shirt so we could all stare at the angry boils on her trunk.

I finished my skull, sat back, and quietly said to MH, who was still hard at work,” Done. Should I start another one?”

 

MH normally has a sweet little southern voice that is reminiscent of hummingbirds sipping at fragrant honeysuckle. She answered, “NO!” with Satan’s own larynx.

The rashy gluten-free hostess drew names from a bowl for some door prizes. I won a skull ornament. I was hoping to win the jar of little clay teeth that sat on a shelf, but that was actually for sale. MH decided she would finish hers at home. She gathered up her jacket and purse, announced she needed to get home to her children for bedtime and whatnot, and we skedaddled out of there.

On the car ride home, we sat quietly for about five minutes. Then MH said,” What the fuck was that?”

“Oh good, I thought it was just me,” I laughed. “Next time you feel like coloring, just bring your coloring book over to my house for a play date. I’ll have some gluten-free snacks for you.”

“There won’t be a next time,” she said. “Coloring is too much pressure. All those lines and spaces that need to be filled up. Too much pressure. That wasn’t relaxing and peaceful at all.”

“At least we weren’t the crazy ones,” I pointed out.

 I don’t know what MH did with her skull page, but I hung mine on the fridge because that’s where all art should go. That way, every time I opened the fridge, I could remember how adult coloring isn’t like meditation, but being with friends is.