Real World vs. First World Problems

At the gallery yesterday, I was speaking with a friend who was on her way to volunteer at a free clinic. She and I do not share political views, but we do share an understanding of what she calls the modern American "do whatever you want" parenting style is netting us in social consciousness. Now more than ever, some of us are giving more than our share to charities, our families, and society while others complain that there is never enough money, stuff, time, etc. for "me", the emerging people-eater of greed that has nothing to do with socioeconomic status.

For example, we discussed the necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, that is plaguing our local youth, a little-known problem that has prompted one pharmacy to give away free antibiotics. "Is it poverty, education--?" I asked my friend. "Probably lazy parenting," she shrugged. She is echoing what I heard from our pharmacist and our nurse practitioner who examined my son after a physical injury that included a nasty cut on his foot (resulting from a teenage pool party fail that predictably followed "hold my root beer"). The PA warned my son about keeping the cut clean and taking preventative measures to avoid the flesh-eating bacteria their office keeps identifying and treating for after minor cuts turn rogue. My son had one reply, “You sound just like my mom.”

So I wonder if our parenting, which is now blamed for flesh-eating bacteria, is another casualty of a culture of First World Problems. "My parents came straight home from work, changed for a party... Guess it's the Dominoes app & my Green Dot card for dinner again!" What may hide in this origami of internet memes is a quiet truth: teenagers who are continuously talking to their friends via recently-upgraded computers and smart phones may be exchanging only an occasional text with their parents. When do such parents engage in a meaningful conversation with their kids?

My son is 17 and doesn't drive yet. We had a terrible car accident over three years ago, and he's taking Driver's Ed to feel the confidence that has eluded him after staring down death across the dashboard of a Benz. As a result, we take him to school, pick him up after school, and he does his homework, indie game designing and the requisite gaming from my gallery office every day. This arrangement has permitted us a lot of interaction. Turns out he's quite a salesperson when I step out to an appointment, and it's nice to have his IT expertise in-house. But mostly, it's just nice to have him with us, along with our gallery Corgi pup. On Saturdays, his friends stop by the gallery to pick him up for parties and mall rat missions, and he occasionally tutors a girl from his school whose parents own the restaurant a couple of spaces away.

So he gets to take part in real life with his family every day. And he gets parented by me personally every day. We even share Internet memes as a family. First World Problems are always good for *lolz*. My kid knows the difference between a problem, such as trending flesh-eating bacteria in an affluent Florida resort, and a First World Problem, such as "my mom is sick of me losing my cell phone and has replaced my (broken) smart phone with a disposable, pay-as-you-go phone." Or real pain, such as a long-distance relationship in which a couple talks more on Skype than in person" and First World Pain, such as "my mom says I have to wait a whole week for the money to buy that extra RAM I want to order from Newegg to soup up gaming on the custom computer I'm building."

I can testify that sometimes it takes being a parent to learn to recognize the difference. And perspective. Just as entrepreneurs must delay gratification to build a business that will provide us with a payday, so society must pay it forward to our kids to provide them with a future. We have to train them how to bathe properly, wear clean socks (to avoid Zombie Apocalypse-grade rotting flesh), and look for signs of others they encounter not being able to afford soap or socks. We have to teach them to share out of a grateful heart.

For me, the best way to accomplish this might be through spending time with my son and identifying teachable moments when living by example produces conversations about why we volunteer with a literacy program and donate gallery goods to silent auctions. It may be allowing him to experience delayed gratification through making him part of the family budget, instead of sacrificing our financial reserves every time he begs for an iPad or Xbox upgrade.

Parenting may require learning an emerging language, in my case programming (yeah, right!) and purchasing TV shows from Amazon instant digital that we can watch and geek out over as a family (i.e.:  Fringe, Firefly, Revolution). Parenting in our family includes using the Panini maker as a lesson in self-sufficiency (my son has asked for his own to take to college--it's the new, first world version of the hot plate).

Am I gloating about my good parenting? Hardly! I did a decade of it as a single mom and live with constant regrets. But we do listening to feelings and second chances in our family. Real world problems exist, just usually not between my son and me. And when they come, we know how to solve them with compassion.

That's what's missing in this First World where running out of battery juice and having the wrong phone charger can be allowed to ruin our whole day and keep the focus on ourselves. We need compassion, we need to discipline ourselves to look up from texting our kids and be still with them so that they have their needs for belonging met at home. So that we notice, or they show us, when cuts aren't healing right or real emotional wounds are causing them real pain. So that we can teach compassion by example. Every day.

If x, then why?

It's kind of awesome to sit here and listen to my son crack up at Minecraft gags on youtube. I'm working tonight, doing the writing, marketing, sales, accounting and such. He's hanging out and taking over when I need to run an errand. My husband is out teaching an ESL evening class, so it's just us. 

I'm also listening to lots of sounds downtown that indicate the start of the season, including a couple of new business owners, elderly Italian men, gabbing out back. The "woo" girls stayed home, so the wine bar and restaurant voices drifting across the avenue suggest ordinary conversation. 

This is the perfect night to hang a couple of internal memos in the office. The first one is a clever reminder that I'm so grateful to own my gallery space and have my son hanging out here. We have a rather geeky way of honoring that relationship with humor.

Why do I own a gallery? I am an artist, and believe artists were born to a particular role in society. Jeff Goins has come up with a reminder that he says you are welcome to print and hang, as I did. It's the Artist Manifesto, artfully rendered. Enjoy!

When in Oddity, Wear an Odd Tee

Thank you to all Veterans for fighting for our freedom. I still miss some of you a whole lot...

Today was one of those days... You know, a Monday. So I wore black. And read a lot of funny stuff. 







Here's what I found for myself: 

Source: thinkgeek.com via Mermaids on Pinterest

< And my son wants this Linux Cheat Sheet one.

Source: thinkgeek.com via Mermaids on Pinterest

And to further celebrate Monday, I have reminded myself of this, oddly enough...

And I gave this thank you card to my husband:

Hope your Monday was better than mine, but also hope this brought you an odd smirk or two... ;)

Time, As Viewed From Down Here On Earth

Time. The Watchers, or Observers as they are called in Season Four of Fringe view time as something through which to mark events… But what about typical humans? We watch Dr. Who and contemplate time travel. It’s intrinsic to our existence to experience its passing, and remember the past, wonder about the future…

But time cannot be stored up, we cannot be in debt with time, how we spend it is a moment-by-moment decision. We cannot promise time with accuracy, because each moment is a surprise when it arrives. We are used to that surprise, perhaps, until a car almost takes out our entire family by running a red light and feel lucky to be alive.

We cannot count on any moments but this one, although by playing the law of averages we still do. We plan a future, just in case. Some of us strive spiritually to live as if this moment is our last, while most of us are planning fiscally to live approximately 80 years.

We save money in case we might not have enough in the future, or to take a trip somewhere in the future. We cannot save the time to go on that trip, we simply bet on being alive to do so. If we are not alive then, perhaps we will have enjoyed planning and saving for the trip we didn’t live long enough to take.

My grandmother saved money her entire life to take trips she was too sick to take in her retirement. She wasted her future by smoking cigarettes, the doctors said. But that’s not true. We cannot count time that has not arrived as ours. We can only live each moment in a way of wellness that allows a better chance of wellness if there is a future for us.

If we plan a trip, we are setting a goal, gathering supplies, saving money, getting tickets, telling our associates not to expect us at work during the week of the trip… but the time we are targeting is but a wish. We wish and hope for the time, but cannot know for certain we will be able to make the trip.

So what is time but an existential state? It’s not a guarantee. It can only be spent as it arrives, it is priceless in that it cannot be borrowed, saved, sold or earned. We plan on it, but there is no insurance we can buy that will give us time when time runs out. It has its own way no matter what.

Even God will not tell us what our time on earth is to be for each of us. This keeps the spiritual process of time in its proper perspective, perhaps. One moment at a time, we decide how to live. And that is the truth of time. We can live as if we have many years to use, but time cannot be stored up and preserved.

Again, despite our plans, each moment arrives as a surprise to us. We pretend not to be surprised, because we are great philosophers in our own minds. However, if we are living in reality, will we not recognize that each moment is a gift, and that we have the opportunity to make a decision about what to do with each moment--?

What will I do in this moment? The awareness of its value to me is suddenly overwhelming. No wonder we stopped wondering at each moment as it arrives, or we might get nothing done but feeling grateful and praising the beauty of everything we encounter. And would that be a terrible way to live?

So how many moments should we praise? One moment every ten moments? One moment every ten hours?  Some of us only praise God in a moment when we think we are going to die and we don’t die. We are all going to die, we just don’t know when.

How can we praise every moment of every day? Perhaps by praising each moment in the subconscious part of ourselves, or somewhere on the tip of our focus, somewhere in our awareness… And if we live in that praise, how grateful might we become?

What a relief to let go of the disappointment remembered in the past and the fear often anticipated in the future, and just feel grateful in this moment. I desire mindfulness of the blessing of this moment as my meditation. In our family, we say we love one another when we part company, even for what we think will be a few moments, because it is uncertain whether we will get the chance again: 

“Just in case I don’t get another moment to say it, thank you, I love you, I appreciate you. I’m so glad I was in this moment with you.” 

Darling, Stop.

Darling, I’ve detected
A serious leak in your dignity.
Stop your face,
Go look in the mirror.
Imagine if paparazzi
Were following you,
This would be
The front cover of the gossip rag.

This hag you’ve become indicates
You’re letting it all in.
Stop letting it all out
Out loud.
Stop. This. Leak.

Go into your room,
Take it to the Supervisor.
The rest of us are quite incompetent
In such matters, I assure you.

Have some class,
Shining your ass will only serve to give
Those who keep files on you something new
And incriminating.
It’s intimidating
What they do with those files—
Miles and miles of files
On women who lose their cool.
They paint us fools.

Don’t let them see you bleeding out.
Don’t shout.

Instead, kneel beside the bed,
Lay your forehead along the edge
And breathe out the pain.
Rage if you must, then listen.

All that stuff you let in
From the world,
Push it out,
And let in the peace.

1) Release.

2) Peace.

Hold up your hand, let’s practice.
Stop. Just say it.
"Stop."
Stop to the manipulators,
Space invaders,
Mind raiders…
Say, “Stop!”

Draw the line,
Expect respect.
Dole out compassion in such a fashion
That they come to you with humility,
And you get to keep your sanity.

Then
Say this to them
As I’ve said it to you.
It’s easy to do.
(And contagious, too.)