Inigo Montoya's Lessons in Honor

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

I have watched The Princess Bride so many times that I have lost count. Originally I watched it because my sister had a thing for it, so at Christmas we would watch The Princess Bride and Dr. Zhivago. I categorically refuse to watch Dr. Zhivago anymore - don't get me wrong, it's a great movie but seeing it twenty times wastes too much Kleenex and kills too many trees. I suppose I could just let the tears run down my face but then my clothes get wet. Or watch naked, but we won't go there.

Buttercup and her prince charming, Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, fight against the evil Prince Humperdinck, his dastardly minions, huge rats, the fire swamp, the Pit of Despair and the prince's nefarious plot to kill Buttercup on their wedding night. Buttercup has despaired of ever seeing Wesley again and has agreed to wed the prince, not knowing he plans to kill her in order to accuse a neighboring kingdom of murdering his bride and thus justifying a war. A lust for power. Although, what guy in his right mind would kill the lovely Buttercup? Obviously not in his right mind. Must remember that.

Although Buttercup, Wesley and Humperdinck (sounds kinda crude doesn't it) are vastly entertaining, I find the character of Inigo Montoya the most engaging. Mandy Patinkin was so cute is the eighties. And he makes a lovable hero, avenging his father's death at the hands (or digits) of the too-many-fingered minion of Humperdinck. Stopping at nothing to fulfill his pledge to his dead father. He is driven by passion, by justice and by the child he once was who adored his father. He is driven by his sense of honor, a word that seems to have no or little meaning in society anymore except in the most negative sense (ie. so called honor killings, disgusting). I'm also not suggesting that vengeance is a good idea because that leads to a vicious cycle of reprisals and more destruction.

Honor is a code of ethics one lives by. Honor is having personal integrity about who you are and the actions you take. Honor is about taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. Honor is having a standard and not abandoning it just because it is inconvenient.

There is not enough honor in the world today. It seems to be dog eat dog, with little concern given to what is right or honorable. Todays children need to learn about honor and personal integrity but not many people bother to teach their kids this. Do the parents have no personal integrity themselves? No, I don't necessarily think so. I think parents are so busy trying to make things work financially that they throw money and things at their kids to substitute for time with their children. Understandable, in a way, but not so understandable in another.

The school system does not set a child's moral compass. That is the job of the guardian or parent of the child. I know that in most families, both people have to work. That is a simple reality in our world. Those who can afford and want to have one parent at home are fortunate. But that doesn't mean that one can abandon a child to the school system, X-box, iPod or the Gap for Kids and hope they learn what they need to know. Parents must take an active role in shaping their child. I'm not talking about programming any child down to the last iota of brain cell. I'm not talking about smothering a child with endless rules and regulations. Kids need to be kids. But parents need to be parents.

Parents need to instill in their children a personal code of conduct, a personal code of honor. A realization that everyone is a part of a larger society that must work together to succeed as a whole. That keeping your word means something. Your word is your bond. This all sounds old-fashioned to some, but if you can't rely on people not to lie to you, not to cheat you, not to try to steal from you, then you end up with the society we have today--severely dysfunctional and driven by greed. Just look at the current economic crisis. Caused by the greed of the few to infect the entire world with financial malaise.

We need more Inigo Montoyas in our world and fewer politicians.

I'll get down from my soapbox now.

Labyrinthine Love and Life

The book I'm currently writing has a reference to the Chartres Labyrinth in France. So I went looking for one in the city I live and I found one! The other day, according to tradition, I walked the labyrinth and I started thinking as I paced the path. Uh oh, you're thinking, she's contemplating again!! Horror! Run, run fast, run far far away!

But since you're still reading, I'll assume I'm not scaring you and shall continue. :) The labyrinth is made up of four sections and it loops closer to the centre before moving away from it, out to the far reaches of the structure. And it occurred to me that the labyrinth is a metaphor for life. And for love.

At first, I followed a straight path until I was almost halfway to the inner sanctum, my goal, a six petal rose. The path forced me to detour around the circle, closer and farther away from the centre. Close, so tantalizingly near to my goal, only to be led in another direction. Such is life. Such is love. 

We always seem to be on a path in our lives, one that takes us closer to ours goals and then moves us away from what we want. A pushmi-pullyu sort of animal. Dr. Dolittle has never seemed so profound. 

Life can be a maze with dead-ends and wrong turns leaving you lost and alone. But life for me is a labyrinth, one path, a circuitous, winding road that gives us some of the things we want--love, home, hearth. But it also leads us away from what we what, only to have teasing glimpses of our goals.

I suppose I could have just run to the centre, ignoring the path, but what would be the point?The path teaches one patience. The path teaches one wisdom. The path teaches one discipline. The path teaches one about life. Running to the centre would have cheated me of the journey, the process of reaching my goal.

When I reached the centre goal of the labyrinth, the six petal rose, I walked into each petal and did a little spin, celebrating the fact that patience had won out over impulse by walking the path.  It took me 20 minutes to get to the rose. I then left the rose and followed the path out of  the labyrinth, again winding closer to and further away from the petals.

When I left the labyrinth, the only thing I could think was, "I will be back."

Salsa Confusion

I went to my first Salsa Practice yesterday. It's a group of Salsa enthusiasts who get together once a week to practice their moves. Or their non-moves, as in my case, or maybe confused movements is a better description of what I was doing yesterday.

The practice session doesn't include lessons, it isn't a meet market--people are just there to dance, enjoy themselves without any pressure and learn from the different partners they dance with. Rank beginners, like myself, intermediate level dancers and those who really know what they're doing. At each new song, people switch partners (I let anyone I danced with know that I am a beginner, just so they understand that I don't know what I'm doing).

And despite being spun off balance a few times, stepping on my partners' feet and bumping into them at inopportune moments, I had fun. I went to a Salsa nightclub a few weeks ago and the night-clubbers apparently only want to dance with people who know what they're doing and look really good doing so. I am not one of these people. Too much pressure and snobbery for me. 

I just want to learn to dance Salsa.  I don't have a partner with whom to take to lessons, I can't afford private lessons, so Salsa practice is a wonderful way to accomplish what I want to learn. I'm assuming, of course, that I am not totally uncoordinated and will catch on, like everyone tells me I will, in 5 to 10 sessions. I practice the basic steps at home, but the spinning thing doesn't work well without a partner - I overspin without someone there to stop me. The kitchen counter or a chair don't work well as partners.

So maybe, just maybe, in a couple of months, I won't be spinning off-balance, stepping on feet and bumping into my dance partners. What surprised me the most was that the numbers of female and male dancers were pretty well even. I had originally thought that there would be a bunch of women there, but no. Fairly even numbers and everyone was friendly and understanding and the men knew what they were doing. 

I don't know if anyone else has tried to drag their significant other to dance classes, but I used to do this, only to discover that if the man doesn't know how to lead, then I can't follow and I try to lead. Which only irritates all concerned.

So yes, I am very happy if a man knows how to lead and lead well. I am a feminist, but somethings just work better when you don't try to lead. I don't want to lead--I don't know what I'm doing. And the rules of hand-to-hand (contact??) dancing are that the man leads. Some feminists will argue that the rules of dancing need to be changed, but I am not one of these. I don't want to change the Bible so that God is referred to as a woman. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me in terms of feminism is gender equality before the law and in society. Domestic abuse (although either gender can be abused), prostitution (ditto), equal legal rights, equal working rights, freedom from sexual harassment etc are far the more serious issues that feminism should deal with. Not dancing. 

It's dancing for God's sake, not war.

A Cobbled-Together Life

Life is like a box of choc-o-lates. (Sorry for the plagiarism from Forrest Gump). You never know what you’re going to get—the yucky ones, the not so yucky ones and the ones you LOVE. My favorite is the cherry centered one with the actual cherry and the gooey syrup in it. And I think, maybe ol’ Forrest had a point.

Life comes at you at the speed of light these days, the good, the bad and the ugly and sometimes I think, “This wasn’t what I had planned”, or “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, or “What am I supposed to do with this situation/person/dilemma/success/failure/illness/health?”
I was on the subway today, staring blankly out the window as the train stopped at each station as I made my way downtown. Staring at all the different tiles lining the subway walls and floors and stairs. All cobbled together into a single, pulsing organism that moves people from one end of the city to the other. The life of a subway system. All walks of life, all types of people, with a common goal—to get through this day and onto the next. Busy, busy, busy. Confused, bewildered, scared, focused, successful, unsuccessful, worried, happy, sad. A kaleidoscope of humanity, like a kaleidoscope of types of chocolates in a box.

The chocolate you take a bite of and spit out because you find it disgusting. The chocolate that tastes like a bite of heaven. The chocolate you eat anyway, even if it isn’t your favorite, but hey, it’s chocolate! Everything cobbled together into a single box for your dining pleasure.

In a cobbled-together life, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You don’t know if your trip to the store will be a pleasure or a pain. You don’t know if someone is going to walk up to you and change your life. You don’t know if a bus will hit you as you cross the street to get to the other side (no chicken jokes, please—I know, I know, I just handed that one to you, what ARE you going to do?) You don’t know. We only know what we have experienced in the past and the moment that is happening right this second. Now. While you’re reading this.

I think we all like to plan our lives to a certain extent. To have security. To have a home. To have a way to make a living. But life can’t be entirely planned, some of it yes, but not all of it. Your entire life can change in a single second, that’s all it takes. One second to change where you are going, to change your focus or to change yourself. To change the flavor of your life.

Sometimes to truly live, you have to totally let go of everything familiar, throw yourself off the metaphorical cliff and hope for a not-too-bumpy landing. (Please don’t throw yourselves off anything dangerous, I couldn’t take the guilt.) And you discover what you can do, what you can accomplish, what you can dream. A heady, exhilarating feeling.

You, just you, are a box of chocolates all on your own—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad. A group of people is a box of chocolates in and of itself—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad. A world of people is the “cornucopia of awesomeness” box of chocolates—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad.

No one is completely perfect. No one is totally good. No one is wholly bad-to-the-bone. We cobble ourselves and our lives together to fashion it into a lifetime of adventure, a lifetime of sorrow, a lifetime of discovery, a lifetime of happiness, all intertwined together. We, each of us, have many lives to live in a single lifetime. We, each of us, have untapped resources we are as yet unaware of. We, each of us, cobble together a life to live.

Make sure your cobbling creates a box of life that you can love and can be proud of.

Why??

This is normal?? This, this disaster, these consequences, this life is normal?? I don’t know about you but I have asked myself these questions any number of times. I guess what I am really asking is, ”Is this fair?”, “Did I really deserve this?”, or, “Why does everyone else seem to have such a normal life?”

It’s a child’s question, really. “Why is the sky blue, Mummy?”—“I don’t know, dear, it just is.”, or, “Why is grass green, Mummy?”—“It just is, dear.”, or, “Why do I have to go to school, Mummy?”—“Everyone has to go, dear.”

Things just ARE. Yes, there are logical, understandable (by human standards) answers for some questions and some answers you just have to take on faith. No one understands everything. Hell, we understand so very little in the grand scheme of things. We have barely scratched the surface of what it means to be human. We don’t understand ourselves, we don’t understand others, we don’t understand the world and we don’t understand the universe. Why, why, WHY??

I have a hard time with “why” because I want to know why about everything. I have a hard time just accepting an answer – I want to know what went into the answer. This urge to know why is wonderful at times and a hellacious trial at other times. And sometimes, I just want to shout out (maybe on my balcony—I can be a deranged Juliet), “Okay, I’ve had enough. I know that adversity builds character, but I have enough character now to last me a number of lifetimes. Can I please just get on with it?”

But howling won’t help me. Not much, if at all. Actually, when I become angry about something/someone and I vent, I just feel worse afterwards. More angry, more guilty, more out of control than before. It’s a cycle that feeds on itself, spiraling into a fire-breathing dragon. I have tried meditating through it, breathing through it, talking myself down out of my anger. But I’m still mad.

I have to experience things for myself. It’s a part of my “why” problem and not accepting answers without question. I’m just lucky that when someone (probably one of my parents) told me not to play in the street, I stayed off the road. So at least I don’t have to learn “everything” first hand. Although it does come in handy for a writer.

Trying to put things into perspective is probably the most helpful thing I can do and trying to treat myself like my best friend would. I know I can’t control everything—least of all, anyone else. I can control the things I do but I can’t control how my body and mind react, not instantly anyway. My pulse speeds up, I start jiggling my foot up and down jack-rabbit fast if I’m sitting, the flight/fight instinct kicks in and off to the races I go. But I don’t want to go to the races. I hate the races. I want to go back to being calm and philosophical. Relaxed. Breathing slowly. Simple stuff.

Beneath all the fancy clothes, makeup, haircuts we have, beyond the technology we possess and our so-called superior lifestyles, we are still cave people, hunter-gatherers. Driven to huddle beside our primordial fires to keep the wild beasts at bay. Defending our little clans with clubs against marauding invaders who would steal our resources, our peace of mind, our security. I guess some of us (who, me?) are just more primitive than others. Reacting to negative or positive stimulus as though they are imminent dangers. That’s how humanity has survived for, what it is, 100,000 years or so?

I am learning to slow down my reaction times. Instead of a knee-jerk, shoot-from-the-mouth reaction, I'm backing away mentally to think about what is really happening. Is this reaction warranted by the circumstances? Am I blowing things out of proportion? What are the facts versus what am I feeling? Do the facts support/qualify the feeling? Giving myself the space to pick and choose my reactions while still assertively reinforcing my personal boundaries.

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” This is a quote from some ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, I think. He isn’t advocating suicide or killing people who don’t contemplate life. He is saying that the “cost” of living life is too great not to examine it in detail. Sort of like buying a house without having done a house inspection before plunking your hard-earned cash down. Your life shouldn’t be a lemon you bought for a bargain but now want to return. The cost of life, the responsibility of life, is too high if you don’t know who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Making life, through examining it, worth the costs of living it. And that means not driving myself crazy with “why”.

Know thyself, goes the saying by the Oracle of Delphi from two thousand or more years ago - I don't know the actual date. I think it’s an important saying. Knowing yourself will help you live the life you want to have. Shaping and crafting your life into something that is pleasing to you.

It’s the only life you have.

There. Now I feel better. I’m not even going to ask “why”. It’s a gift and I’m accepting it.

Silent Words, Silent Worlds

Imagine if you will...GMail and its chat capability. Not what you were expecting, was it? Hee, hee. Gotcha. Anyway, I shall continue.

The person you are emailing suddenly shows up as a glowing green dot saying that you can reply by chat. You are so startled that you end up "chatting" by accident. Yes, Google has taken over your life and is directing it, or so it would seem. They said it would happen eventually. :) The future is now. If Google could come up with a way to wash all your clothes, dry them and put them neatly away, that would be great!

It comforts you, in a way, to know that your “pen pal”, for lack of a better word, is on the e-mail server at the same time as you. A tenuous, but real, connection. Looking at that little green dot doesn’t seem like much in the whole scheme of things. But it means worlds to you. You both know that the other is on GMail at the same time and probably thinking of the other person. An unsaid link, a silent communication, a mute message all in itself, saying, “I’m thinking of you.” Even though neither of you says anything, the nothingness is charged with meaning.

"Nothing" has never meant so much.
"Nothing" has never been so eloquent.
"Nothing" is…something important.

Sighhhhhh. Just a thought.

A Rose

Poem by Galaway, Inner Tennis

When We plant a rose seed in the earth,
we notice that it is small, but we do not
criticize it as “rootless and stemless”. We treat
it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment
required of a seed.

When We notice that it is small, but we do not
criticize it as “rootless and stemless.”
we treat it as a seed, giving it the water and
nourishment required of the seat.

When it first shoots up out of the earth,
we don’t condemn it as immature and
under-developed; nor do we criticize the buds
for not being open when they appear.
We stand in wonder at the process taking place
and give the plant the care it needs at each
stage in its development.

The Rose is a rose from the time it is a seed
to the time it dies. Within it at all times it contains
it’s whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the
process of change; yet at each stage, at each moment,
it is perfectly all right as it is.