One Red Hot Country Mama!

Some people hold anger against their parents . How can you blame them? It is almost a mantra in psychology – it is not your fault, it is your parent’s. In my opinion, influenced by my years of meditation, I believe this can be painful because anger at anyone has an adverse effect on you, not the person who you are angry at. Also, practically, it feels much better to have a good relationship with parents.

I am reading an excellent book by Vancouver Doctor Gabor Mate called When the Body Says No – The Cost of Hidden Stress. He calls the shortfalls of parents part of a "dance of the generations".

If a parent’s loving feelings are constricted, it is only because that parent has himself or herself suffered deep hurt. In my work with drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, I treat many substance-dependent men and women. Hardened as they are – with their criminal records, their continued drug-seeking, their HIV infections and their harassed and socially marginal lives – the deepest pain they all have is about the children whom they have abandoned or who have been taken from them. Without exception, they themselves were abused or abandoned in childhood.*

So, basically he is saying that in the case of these Vancouver addicts, they were bad parents because they had bad parents and it goes on forever up the generations. He goes on:

Parenting, in short, is a dance of the generations. Whatever affected one generation but has not been resolved will be passed onto the next. Lance Morrow, a journalist and writer, succinctly expressed the the multigenerational nature of stress in his book Heart, a wrenching and beautiful account of his encounters with mortality, thrust upon him by near-fatal heart disease: "The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my gradfather’s violence, and inside of that box (I suspect, but do not know), you would find another box with some such black, secret energy – stories within stories receding in time."

Blame becomes a meaningless concept if one understands how family history stretches back through the generations. "Recognition of this quickly dispels any disposition to see the parent as a villain." wrote John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist whose work threw scientific light on the decisive importance of attachment in infancy and childhood.**

I find this "dance of the generations" is a really good way to think of anger at parents and could bring a lot of people peace. Now let’s see more psychologists talking about it and diffusing the blame game.

* Pg. 211of this edition
** Pg 216

I have been working with the tourism industry in Toronto lately, and in some of my research, talk has turned to how Toronto does not have an identity. New York, Miami, Chicago – those are destination cities with a distinct feel – but Toronto… not so much.

It is a shame that even people who live in Toronto don’t know that we are the 5th largest city on this continent – in order it is: Mexico City, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, TORONTO! Yet, Torontonians only start loving their celebrities when they are accepted in LA, or the latest hotel restaurant when it is loved by Film Festival starlets.

The usual pattern of Marketing for tourism is first to make it popular locally, then regionally, then nationally, then internationally. But, unfortunately for Toronto – things first have to be accepted internationally before we will accept it ourselves. Like a low-self-esteem person, Toronto is looking for approval from the outside before finding it on the inside. Let’s raise our self-esteem and enjoy our beautiful city!

I was listening to CBC’s The Current this morning, and heard a very interesting story about pornography in society (scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you can hear the whole story). They were interviewing Robert Jenson, the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. He was talking about the $10 billion pornography industry, which makes more than ABC, CBS and NBC together and its effects on men and women.

Generally I am not against all porn, but I do not like the extreme versions since they are very degrading to women and I worry about my nieces and nephews learning about sex through it. There are also some ugly racial stereotypes shown in porn – the submissive Asian female for example. Some of the men I know have said that since they did not have much guidance from parents or sex education, they thought of porn as a kind of training vehicle for sex… which is scary considering some of the degrading-to-women and racist stuff that is being portrayed. According to Jenson, the fastest growing segment of the porn market is the extreme and violent kind.

There is no doubt that porn affects our sexual imagination. What does this mean for men who are using porn as a ‘training vehicle’? What does this mean to women who see porn? Jenson’s conclusion at the end of the book is to simply "end" being a man, and start focusing on what it means to be human. He says that the whole construct of being a man including the ideas of conquest, control, aggression and violence are too difficult to reform – so instead he wants to start from scratch. Given the gender crisis we are in, he says he wants to do away with the rigid notions of being a man or a women, he wants to focus on being a human being instead. Sounds good to me.

My friend and I went to see the Dalai Lama while he was in Toronto this week. Both of us have read a lot about Buddhism and it often makes its way into our conversations. So – most of what he said was consistent with what we had already learned about and a good reminder. My friend and I both reject organized religion because so often they include parts that don’t agree with our ideas about accepting others, equality of the sexes and a too narrow view of what God is. Nonetheless, we both enjoy learning about different religions to get the best part out of them.

So – when the Dalai Lama said that it is best to follow our traditional religions instead of converting it gave me a mixed reaction. Firstly, I was pleased, since he could have used the audience of 30,000 people in Toronto to try to convert people to his faith, but he didn’t. He encouraged us instead to stick to our own faiths – whether it be Christian, Jewish, Muslim etc. (don’t forget, we are in Toronto here so likely just about every faith is represented ). But, I was also disappointed. What about the people who reject their own traditions or who have a tradition of rejecting traditions such as my case, where my Dad was an atheist and I am an agnostic?

Well, he said that people who are secular, actually have the freest life of them all, since we can choose any parts of any religion that we want. So – instead of thinking about having a sole supplier of religion, I can go shopping for the parts of it I believe in and parts that I don’t.

So – I thought about my different sources of spiritual inputs that I get every day. A bookshelf full of ideas on different religions and spiritual concepts; giving generously to charity; connecting with friends and family; meditation and yoga practice; personal development courses where we share our experiences. So – I guess it isn’t the simplest route in the world – but shopping for spirituality seems to be the most free option, and the one that works for me.