Changing perspectives can make us better people

My mother was a kind and generous woman.  She was extremely generous with her time, participating in her community, volunteering, working with support groups, and making friends everywhere she went.  She was the sort of person you could share your deepest feelings with and know she would respect your vulnerability and protect your secrets. She was comfortable anywhere and with any sort of person.  She wasn't condescending towards those who were less clever, or less fortunate than she was.  She was just... genuine with them.  This post isn't really about her, though. This is about how, through her, I learned an important lesson about perspective.

Mom and Dad lived in Vermont for a while in the mid-90s, and like she always did, Mom made friends with long-term residents of a motel Dad and her were managing.  One of her friends, I'll call Dee (not her real name), isn't the most intelligent woman in the world.  I'd be surprised if she tested at average mental ability. She'd always worked at menial jobs in kitchens or laundries.  She was working as a housekeeper at the motel, and also living in an upstairs room with her common law husband, who cut firewood for a living. 

I've always thought of Dee as a simple woman.  Simple as in uncomplicated.  Her life isn't cluttered with concerns about much outside of her small life.  Her children live in different places, and she's traveled to visit them, but the travel didn't seem to make much of change in the smallness of her world.  Travel was necessary to see her children, but once there, she was just as isolated, and content to remain that way.  Truthfully, I've felt a bit protective of her in a distant way, and a bit condescending towards her.  We don't have a lot in common aside from a shared love for Mom.

I still see her three or four times a year, and have done since my parents moved to Florida around 1997 or so.  She lives in the town where I work, and walks to my office occasionally to check in with me and reminisce about Mom and her now-deceased husband.  I always greet her warmly, and stop whatever I'm doing, admittedly more because I know Mom would want me to and I'm trying to be kind, than because I'm all that interested in the ensuing conversation, which revolves around people I have never met mentioned as if I shared regular holiday dinners with them.

Dee's life has been difficult.  She suffered an injury at work many years ago that left her suffering from chronic back pain.  She's on disability, lives in a shabby apartment with rent subsidies and fuel subsidies, and gets by on Medicaid (she's not old enough to qualify for Medicare or Social Security, not that she ever paid enough into SS to get much of an annuity once she's old enough).  She doesn't really get adequate health care.  Her husband left her nothing.  She collects bottles and cans to supplement her meager income, and sometimes splurges on playing bingo in the hope of getting a bit more cash.  She has a cell phone that she got as a hand-me-down from one of her sons, but it doesn't work very well.  Still, she's glad to have it.  Her attitude always remains upbeat.  She doesn't really complain much, or at least her complaints are mildly stated and rarely the focus of her conversations.  Mostly she talks about how her kids are doing, about her grandchildren, and how she wished she could see them more than she's been able (she can't drive and can't really afford to travel unless one of her children pays).  She talks amiably about things she hears at bingo, or how people in her circle are doing.  She talks about Mom and how much she misses her, and how much she misses her husband.  She invariably talks about some meal or other Mom cooked for her, and how she never could get the same great food out of her own stove.

During one such conversation with her recently, she was talking about how she's diabetic now, and the doctor wants her eating more protein and less carbs.  I'd offered her some suggestions (as I'd been down that road before), and asked her about what she could buy.  She mentioned being able to get this or that thing at the grocery store for some nice price because it was on sale or whatever. 

I asked "Have you found much at the food shelf? Or is it mostly carby stuff there?"

Her response was "I don't usually go there, I don't want to take food away from people who really need it."

This was spoken very matter of factly.  The conversation flowed on around, but this simple statement stuck in my head.  I've been thinking about it off and on for months now and it never fails to give me pause, and flummox me.  My initial reaction was absolute astonishment that she doesn't think the food shelf is for her.  But this gives way to my really examining my assumptions.  When I give to the Food Bank, it is because of the people like Dee in my life.  The people I see who are struggling so hard just to survive every day.  People who are one or two missed checks from being on the street or having to sleep on someone's pull out sofa.

It never occurred to me that she might not see herself and her situation in this light at all.  I remember her mentioning giving away her gloves to a woman she knew who "really needed them".  Then myriad other little sprinklings of generosity that Dee has mentioned to me over the years, and I realize, she actually sees herself as very fortunate.  All around her, she knows people who have it even harder than she does.  She has a roof over her head, adequate food, the chance to see a doctor when she's sick and some basic chronic health care, enough clothes, chances to see people she likes, and opportunities for playing bingo.  She'd like to have a computer so she could play solitaire on it, but she's not sure she'd be interested in access to the internet.

Who am I to pity her?  To feel sorry for her, or wish she "had it better"? 

My world is much larger than hers.  I travel internationally for pleasure, and to be exposed to other people and cultures.  I read world-wide news, and rage at the inhumanity I hear about in the world around me.  I know how much I have, compared to how little she has.  I wish for her the same pleasures I know in playing with my dog and cats, on my land, snuggling my husband, or having friends over to a large holiday meal that I've prepared in my fancy, extravagant kitchen in the house that my husband designed and made possible through careful financial management.  I wish the same joys for everyone I know and love or care about.  They seem simple to me.  Almost rustic in a lot of ways. I'm not, afterall, a jet-setter.  I prefer being at home most of the time.  I like knitting by my woodstove that is burning wood my husband harvested from our land.  And yet...

I am humbled by her simple generosity.  Her unpretentious acceptance of how well off she is.  Her belief that there are people worse off than her, and what's more, her ingrained attitude that it is part of her responsibility in this life to help those people.  Her heart is so very big.  Her love for the people around her just shines through everything she does.  I finally see what my mother loved so much about her.

I am still processing the implications and realizations about who I am and what I think is important that come from this, but one thing I know for sure is that Dee's attitudes humble and challenge me.  She twists my perspectives around without even realizing it.  I re-learn this lesson every so often, but it bears re-learning:

My perception of things is not the only one, and it is not necessarily the "right" one.

Being polite is not just something for other people to do

A recent youtube thing that's gone around is a voicemail from a young woman who was asked to leave a movie theater because she was texting.  She complained repeatedly that the staff had not been polite to her, all while cursing at whomever it was she imagined as listening to her message.  It seemed clear that this young woman could only see the offense done to her, and had no ability to see where she, herself, had fallen very short of the standard she was expecting from those around her.

This is a double standard I see/hear about online a lot.  People rant about how rude someone is for pointing out to them when they're being rude and asking or expecting them to cease their rude behavior.

Being polite isn't something that only applies to everyone else.  It isn't a standard that only other people should strive for.  It's so easy for us to only see how someone else is acting around us, but we can prevent a lot of stress by looking at how our own behavior might be the actual source for the rudeness we see in the world.  If we consider that we might be the one who was rude first.  That our behavior might not be as polite as we want to pretend it is.

Of course, we can't do that until we stop denying that we are being rude.  Sometimes this can be difficult.  Some of us don't like the be "to blame" for things.  We will engage in some complex contortions of justification to avoid being responsible for the behavior that has been construed as rude or inappropriate.  The most common reaction when called out for this sort of misbehavior is to accuse the person pointing it out of being rude.  It's a deflection, an attempt to dodge the reality of being caught "misbehaving" and it's an immature response to an unpleasant situation.  This is why a child will often lie about having been the one to break a lamp when they're standing there holding the pieces and they're the only person who was around in the first place.

It is a sign of maturity to be able to accept when you've behaved in a less than appropriate or preferred way (even if it was done unknowingly), and to respond politely when someone points this out to you.  Especially so if you apologize and cease the behavior.  Perhaps for some people, part of the reason they respond so negatively to being called out is because they aren't behaving that way unknowingly, they're just hoping to get away with it.

The thing is, we're all citizens of this world.  We have to live with each other (unless, of course, you happen to be a hermit living in a cabin in the isolated woods reading my words via satellite or the local 3G network).  If we want the world to be a better place, if we want it to be less rude, we need to look at ourselves first.  Our own behavior is the only variable in this complex formula of human interaction that we're able to have a modicum of control over.  For our own sake, and for the sakes of those around us, we should work harder on maintaining that control.

Of course I'm not saying "don't ever do anything fun" or "never dance to your own drum".  That's not what this is about.  It's about showing other people around you some basic courtesy because it's the mature thing to do, and it makes things better for everyone, including you.

Finish the socks!

Many times during our lives we are told to act now because tomorrow might be too late.  It's a lesson we relearn over and over because it's so easy for the day to day tasks we have to complete to interfere with the things we feel are really important.

Last May (I think it was), I started working on pair of socks for my grandfather.  Over the years he'd made me so many gifts with his own hands, and I realized I'd never made him anything of significance.  So I decided to knit him a pair of socks.  Now socks can be tricky, but I was doing alright until I got to the part where you turn the heel.  I couldn't get it to come out right.  I kept coming up one row short from where the instructions said I should be.

I casually contacted several of my knitting friends who are much better at knitting than I am, but it never occurred to me that I had a deadline for this project.  I had a vague notion of having them completed in time to send to him for Christmas.  Most of my friends were busy, as was I.  I attended a wedding overseas in the summer, then in the early fall I celebrated my own 20th wedding anniversary with a vow renewal.  Then of course the holidays loomed.  So I never really got someone who could help me with the heel turn and gusset instructions I wasn't understanding very well.

Unfortunately, my grandfather died in mid December.  So I'm never going to be able to actually give him the gift I had been working on for him.  He knew I was making them because I'd asked him about colors he'd be willing to wear.  I still haven't finished them, (though this weekend I should be able to, I'm attending a knitting retreat and we're having socks workshops throughout). When I do finish them, I'll wear them myself, and think about my grandfather.  I'll remember all the lovely gifts he made for me.  It'll always be on the bittersweet side, though.  Because these socks should have been keeping his feet warm, not mine.

Grampa had simply always been.  He was strong, healthy, hearty.  He lived in his home on his own after Gramma died. He drove himself to church and the senior center for meals every day.  He was 93 when he fell in the bathroom and broke his hip.  It took him an hour to drag himself to the phone, but he managed it.  He was in the hospital for around two weeks, but the broken hip was really where it ended.  He was ready to go, and this was how he would have wanted to go.  But it still rocked my world.  I'd often thought "Grampa is very old, he probably won't live much longer" but I never really thought about it seriously.  He just always was.  He'd been there my entire life, and it never really made it into my brain that he was, eventually, leaving.

My own parents' fragility had seemed a whole lot more real to me.  They declined slowly, and much earlier than Grampa did.  But all this seems like excuses to me.  I'm not happy that I didn't ever get the socks to him to enjoy for the short time he had left.

So I'll wear them, and remember him, and keep him alive in my heart, but every time I do, it'll sting a little bit, as well.

So... today's lesson is: Finish the socks!

Edited to add: I finally finished the socks on Saturday, March 12, 2011.  They are soft, and warm, and I wore them as bed socks Sunday night.  They were very comfortable.