Happy Thanksgiving

Although I am working today, and England doesn't know it's supposed to be giving me a long weekend for turkey and shopping, I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. 

I know times are hard for me, and for many.  Despite this, I give thanks to my family and friends who are always behind me, supporting me, and wishing me the best!  

The one in which I am still emotional over

It's been a little over two weeks since that little thing called our election happened.  My election night tale, from across the pond, included a lot of crying. Which should come as absolutely no shock to anyone who knows me.  After all, some claim, I once cried during a Sally Jesse Raphael show. To that I answer: I plead the Fifth.  

I cried a lot on this election day, finally out of happiness and not disappointment.  I cried because the beauty of all those very different looking people from across the country coming together in Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and all those other places I didn't see, to celebrate what I can only describe as a Super Bowl win for the whole country.   I cried because the country made history in the best kind of way, by doing something that seemed impossible before this night.  I cried when I saw all those people waiting to vote and wanting to actually be part of something, and I cried when thinking about how important youth (which, according to who you ask, I may or may not still be part of) were, and how engaged they became. I especially cried when looking at those Kenyan people, who truly live in a different world than most of us in the so-called developed world do, and their jubilation at the role their country played in making this president, and I cried at the symbolism, because I always cry at symbolism, of those two countries, Kenya and U.S., working together to make a president. I cried when looking at that beautiful new first family, because what has always made America the "land of opportunity" is this idea that all can be American, despite background, wealth, or color,  and at least at this moment, that felt true. 

I cried because in 1998 one of my college professors asked how many of us thought a woman would be president in our lifetime, and about two of us (including me) raised our hands.  And while a woman didn't win this time, I believe it will happen in my lifetime. Because in the lifetime of my parents and grandparents, Black people were systematically kept from voting, and now a person who would have been kept from voting is president. And while racism is most certainly not dead, it did sustain a blow that will hopefully one day lead to its death. I hope that there are little kids out there from households in America that are a little different from our own, who believe they too can be president one day, even if they are Muslim, or gay, or marginalized in other ways. And I will know that racism, and its twin, intolerance, really are on death's doorstep when that little kid becomes president in 2048, and we can point to 2008 when things began to change. 

 I cried at John McCain's speech, which was gracious and humble, and I was reminded why I  once liked him.  And I cried during Obama's speech, especially at the part where he talked about humility, because we all could stand to be a bit more humble in our lives. 

I know there is much work to do in the country, and that one man can not fix it all. Expectations are exceedingly high, and I suspect it will take exactly one week from inauguration for the punditry to began in on all he is doing wrong, and I will know life is just where it should be. But right now, I'm focusing on the moment, and the joy of it.  

Here are two videos, the first is of the coverage on the BBC that I watched, calling the race (and I am sorry the video is so bad, but for some reason this is all I could find). I doubt I will ever be able to watch this clip without crying for the rest of my life. The second, from Obama's speech, reaching out to those that didn't vote for him.  It so markedly different from talk of political capital to spend, and I hope for all those that didn't vote for Obama, it helped assure them that he wants to work for you too, since, as he famously once said, there is not a Red America or a Blue America, just a United States of America. 

Video 1:

Video 2:

(my favorite part starts around 8 minutes in)

Hope

I am pretty speechless right now, at 4:07 am in the morning, in London.  But, I am crying and in a bit of disbelief, because I think part of me was always afraid that it would all go wrong.  But it didn't and there is something to be said that our country now has its first non-white president, when 50 years ago many non-white folks were actively kept from voting.  And I think wherever you fall on the ideological divide this is progress in the best kind of way.  

So, this is what I have now: Happiness, tears, and hope.  

My current mantras

The first, by way of my flat mate Nicole (who has been wonderful at encouraging me to stay positive and listening to me when I have bad days) who gave me a little bookmark with this on it; the second by way of my Mom (who has always been wonderful and supportive of me in many ways, including listening to me when I have bad days).

DON'T QUIT
By: Anonymous

When things go wrong

as they sometimes will,

When the road you're

trudging seems all up hill,

When the funds are low

and the debts are high

And you want to smile

but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As everyone of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow--

You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure

turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you can never tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst you must not quit.

To me, I take this as some comfort in these hard times for me. This endless struggle to find gainful employment in something that is at least somewhat enjoyable to me is taking its toll, financially and emotionally. This poem, with its assurances that something just might be around the corner is helpful. My sense of quitting, in the current situation, is just giving up because it has gotten a little hard. So, I'm giving it the old college try, and if it doesn't fall into place the way I want it to, it won't be for a lack of trying. And at that point, it won't be failure, it will be a growing experience. An experience in the worth of trying when it gets hard, and being open to other paths that one doesn't realize exist. Maybe my way is in London, or maybe it is someplace else. I know that right now, I want it in London, and I need to know at the end of the day, I did my best at trying. I've never done so well at trying at things that are hard for me, so it's about doing that. But it is also about learning to recognize failure that comes from lack of trying, and a different kind of "failure." And that's where the second "mantra" comes in.


THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE
By: Joan Chittister (a really cool nun who always has such great and calming things to say)
If there is anything that strikes terror into the soul of the sincere it is fear of failure. To be a success in something marks the measure of our worth. It gives us honor on the street corners of the world. It gives us stature among our peers. It gives us a sense of invincibility. But one of the central questions of life may well be how to tell success from failure.

It’s not so simple a task as we are inclined to think, perhaps, at the first toss of the question. Failure, we know, is unacceptable. We do a great deal to avoid it. We do even more to hide it. But the real truth is that there is a great deal of failure in all success: Winning pitchers lose a good many baseball games. Scientists can spend their entire lives mixing the wrong compounds, writing the wrong formulas, testing the wrong hypotheses.

The problem is that there are two faces of failure, one of them life-giving, the other one deadly. I have seen them both.

The first face of failure I saw in the life of an internationally recognized writer who, first intent on being an English professor, studied at Oxford but failed. I gasped at the very thought of it. But she spoke about the loss of those years and that degree with a laugh and a toss of her head: “Luckiest thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “Otherwise I’d be in a small college someplace teaching writing. As it is, I’m doing just what I’m supposed to be doing.” I thought about the remark for days. Here was a woman who knew the place of failure in our eternal quest to be ourselves.

The second face of failure I saw in a woman with great musical talent who, discouraged by the difficulty of her early studies, dropped out of music school and never studied another thing in her life. She died disgruntled, underdeveloped, and trapped within the boundaries of the self.

Clearly, failure may, in the long run, be the only real key to success. The first step to becoming what we most seek may well be indifference to dashed hope and perpetual disappointment and the depression that comes with reaching for guinea gold and grasping only dust.

But if that is the case, then we must develop the capacity for failure in a society that glorifies success but gives short shrift to the forging of it. We must learn to recognize, to value, to prize all the endless attempts it takes to do what we want to do but which for us is still undoable.

So, I'm taking both of these writings with me each day, not quitting, and also learning to "recognize that prize of endless attempts at trying," without feeling like if it doesn't work the way I want, I did something wrong. Not that this is easy nor have I perfected this quest that amounts to a peace within myself that I've done what I can do. But I am getting there and feeling more confident each day, even within many moments of doubt, that it will work out, somehow, in the end.

[if you want to read more of Sister Joan's stuff, go to http://www.benetvision.org/]