Perspective.
So much in life depends upon perspective. Perspective is shaped by so many things. Our backgrounds, beliefs, childhood, parents or lack thereof, travel, education, health, religious or spiritual beliefs, economic status, race, ethnicity, gender....all these things shape who we are and how we view the world. One of my favorite quotes from my favorite book "To Kill A Mockingbird" centers around the idea that you can't really judge another person until you've walked in his/her shoes. At the end of the book, Scout observes this as she stands on Boo Radley's porch and thinks about how he saw the neighborhood, her brother Jem, her friend Dill, and herself. Just as poignant, is the observation Atticus makes about the perspectives of both Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson related to how each saw the other. It's important that Atticus is the one relaying this perspective, there's that word, because as a lawyer, he has to think about every one's perspective on a given issue to really get inside the head of that person and understand what makes that person "tick". It's hard to be an effective advocate if you don't understand "why" someone acted the way he/she did or does. Thus, perspective is an important part of empathy for other people and their life story.
Perspective is also important in shaping our own world view, and dare I say it, our mental and spiritual health. I am reminded of this all the time by my son Max who has a very "glass half full" perspective on his own life, in particular but not limited to, how it all relates to academics. Let's say Max were to get a 12/20 on a quiz. Max's perspective would be that he got more right than he missed. He would be optimistically dismissive of the fact that 12/20 does not lead to a good letter grade, by deciding that it is clear he did better than if, on the flip side, he missed 12 and got 8 right. One is tempted to become frustrated by this perspective, and let's just say that two people in particular, his parents, have succumbed to that temptation. However, upon reflection, one might think about how corrective one should be about that perspective because in some ways, it is rather healthy. It is about approaching life from the Monty Python perspective of "always look on the bright side of life" and it is perhaps a healthy survivalist approach to living. Like all parenting encounters, if one is willing to learn a new perspective, sometimes the padawan can teach the master. Maybe it is healthier to view life as essentially rosy rather than looking for all the deficiencies.
When Lydia was ill and dying, it was tempting to view things from the "woe is us" perspective, and of course, I went there. But I didn't linger there too long because I knew it was a dangerous place to be, and if I could look at things from the right perspective, I could see that life is never "fair" and that illness, and even childhood death, have been with us since the beginning of time. Thinking about all the parents who lost children in the Black Death, or the Spanish Flu epidemic, or Hiroshima, or Syria, provides one "perspective" that one is not being singled out for misery in life. Suffering comes to us all in some form or some manner. It is part of life. Keeping that perspective allows one to stay on the "glass half full" side of the equation.
So, perspective is important in how we view ourselves and how we form empathy, and as a result it is important in helping us get along and navigate this thing called life. I've thought long and hard about the recent election, which to me was a very difficult election that challenged my conscience in a myriad of ways. My perspective, my conscience, and who I voted for was unique to my particular set of experiences and values that didn't have to make sense or find a repository of agreement with anyone else except with me. I think this election cycle was a good lesson in perspective in that not every one's perspective on life or politics is exactly the same, because as noted above, everyone is coming at issues from his/her own personal beliefs, experiences, and life circumstances.
If we are to understand and live with one another, we have to try and grapple with understanding all perspectives and not be dismissive of any set of experiences. I try to surround myself with friends of all races, backgrounds, religious convictions, economic circumstances, and national origins because, in part, I want to understand and be empathetic to what different people feel and think. It's part of developing basic human compassion and as a Christian, I believe it is something I am particularly called to try and experience. If we only view the world through myopic lenses of our particular perspective, we can never truly empathize with the very personal experiences of others, and we become cold, distant, humorless, and heartless.
During this season of Christmas, we are challenged I think to try and bring the love of Christ to others...this means stretching ourselves and refraining from judgment. How we reach out, how we help others, is not by bringing them round to our own perspective, but embracing them with love that respects the unique Christ-like nature, or the inner Buddha, whatever you want to call it, of each person. Christ's disciples were a rather motley crew of fisherman, carpenters, tax collectors, and even prostitutes. Christ's perspective was one of embracing each individual person, right where he or she was. The church I attend has a beautiful statue of Christ's Crucifixion front and center above the altar. At the foot of the cross, are St. John, Mary Mother of God, St. Mary Magdalene, a Jewish priest, and a Roman Centurion...all of whom formed a cross section of first century Roman Judea and yet, they stood together at the foot of the cross.
May you each view the world as glass half full, and may you each reach out to embrace the other as your brother and sister.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Monica
Monday, December 26, 2016
Monday, July 4, 2016
Re-booting Happiness
I'm a huge believer in taking something bad and trying to turn it into something good. I don't always succeed at this endeavor, but nevertheless, I keep trying. I think a good word for this endeavor may be re-booting. When something bad happens on your computer, and it freezes up and is just "stuck", you turn off the computer, and you re-boot it, in hopes that by re-booting it, the freeze up, the bad thing that happened, will disappear, and your screen will re-set itself. And all will be well.
July 3rd has been a date for us that has been steeped in meaning for the last twelve years of our lives. Actually, a bit more than that when you consider that we received the referral of Lydia somewhere around May of 2004. We received the photo you see here of the little sweetheart with Brooke Shields' eyebrows, and a pensive look just before Mother's Day in 2004. Since that time, July 3 has always been and always will be Lydia's birthday. When we traveled to China in July of 2004 to get Lydia, we were unable to spend her first birthday with her. Instead, we were stuck at the White Swan hotel watching a mega-badminton tournament and dreaming of the time two days later when we would hold our daughter in our arms.
So, the next year, on July 3, was kind of a big deal. It was the first birthday we would get to spend with Lydia! Her first birthday with a forever family. And we celebrated big with a birthday party in the park with family and friends, balloons, cake, gifts, games...you name it. And so each July 3rd was special, because we knew that Lydia had spent that first day being abandoned somewhere...alone, sweating, hungry, thirsty, and we hated to think of how that first birthday played out.
Then August 15, 2008 hit, and Lydia was diagnosed with leukemia. Six months later she was dead. And then her birthday rolled around. Anyone who has lost a child will tell you that there are two horrible dates: the day the child died, and the child's birthday. One is horrible for the loss you feel in thinking about the fact that it is the day the child died, and the other is horrible because a birthday is so full of promise, hope and happiness....all extinguished when the child is dead. It is also horrific because as each birthday rolls around, another milestone is passed...first, she would be 6, and then 8, and then 10, and then, as for us this year: 13. And the years will stretch on, and it will be impossible to imagine her at 40, when I am 71. What would she have become? Would she have gotten married? Had kids? All the the hopes, dreams, all your wishes for your child...gone. And so that birthday just sits there, waiting for you every year. It looms ahead and it looms behind. You never forget.
Fast forward to this year. As those of you know who have been following Lydia's carepage, I converted to Catholicism this year after a long journey home, a journey that really started when Lydia went to preschool at St. Mary's. Mark had been baptized Catholic as an infant in Japan. Once, I became Catholic, as two then-Catholics, we had to do a convalidation of our marriage. We could have filed some paperwork and sent it off to the Vatican, but we decided that we would like to re-boot July 3rd for our family. We asked Father Joe if he could arrange it so that we could do a marriage ceremony in lieu of just paperwork on July 3rd, thereby turning Lydia's birthday into a celebration of our marriage, our family and our commitment to one another, and re-booting the day so that it would not just be associated with something sad, but something happy, something joyful, and something that rose from the ashes of Lydia's death.
If there is some time in your life, or a moment, that is weighing you down, and you don't know how to get out from under the weight of that moment, a re-boot is a good way of turning something negative into something positive. It's like reclaiming happiness from the depths of despair, as Anne of Green Gables might say.
Henceforth, July 3rd will not just be a time to think of Lydia, but to think what we have re-claimed from the depths of despair.
God bless,
Monica, Mark, Max, Sarah-Grace, and ^^Lydia^^
July 3rd has been a date for us that has been steeped in meaning for the last twelve years of our lives. Actually, a bit more than that when you consider that we received the referral of Lydia somewhere around May of 2004. We received the photo you see here of the little sweetheart with Brooke Shields' eyebrows, and a pensive look just before Mother's Day in 2004. Since that time, July 3 has always been and always will be Lydia's birthday. When we traveled to China in July of 2004 to get Lydia, we were unable to spend her first birthday with her. Instead, we were stuck at the White Swan hotel watching a mega-badminton tournament and dreaming of the time two days later when we would hold our daughter in our arms.
So, the next year, on July 3, was kind of a big deal. It was the first birthday we would get to spend with Lydia! Her first birthday with a forever family. And we celebrated big with a birthday party in the park with family and friends, balloons, cake, gifts, games...you name it. And so each July 3rd was special, because we knew that Lydia had spent that first day being abandoned somewhere...alone, sweating, hungry, thirsty, and we hated to think of how that first birthday played out.
Then August 15, 2008 hit, and Lydia was diagnosed with leukemia. Six months later she was dead. And then her birthday rolled around. Anyone who has lost a child will tell you that there are two horrible dates: the day the child died, and the child's birthday. One is horrible for the loss you feel in thinking about the fact that it is the day the child died, and the other is horrible because a birthday is so full of promise, hope and happiness....all extinguished when the child is dead. It is also horrific because as each birthday rolls around, another milestone is passed...first, she would be 6, and then 8, and then 10, and then, as for us this year: 13. And the years will stretch on, and it will be impossible to imagine her at 40, when I am 71. What would she have become? Would she have gotten married? Had kids? All the the hopes, dreams, all your wishes for your child...gone. And so that birthday just sits there, waiting for you every year. It looms ahead and it looms behind. You never forget.
Fast forward to this year. As those of you know who have been following Lydia's carepage, I converted to Catholicism this year after a long journey home, a journey that really started when Lydia went to preschool at St. Mary's. Mark had been baptized Catholic as an infant in Japan. Once, I became Catholic, as two then-Catholics, we had to do a convalidation of our marriage. We could have filed some paperwork and sent it off to the Vatican, but we decided that we would like to re-boot July 3rd for our family. We asked Father Joe if he could arrange it so that we could do a marriage ceremony in lieu of just paperwork on July 3rd, thereby turning Lydia's birthday into a celebration of our marriage, our family and our commitment to one another, and re-booting the day so that it would not just be associated with something sad, but something happy, something joyful, and something that rose from the ashes of Lydia's death.
If there is some time in your life, or a moment, that is weighing you down, and you don't know how to get out from under the weight of that moment, a re-boot is a good way of turning something negative into something positive. It's like reclaiming happiness from the depths of despair, as Anne of Green Gables might say.
Henceforth, July 3rd will not just be a time to think of Lydia, but to think what we have re-claimed from the depths of despair.
God bless,
Monica, Mark, Max, Sarah-Grace, and ^^Lydia^^
Monday, April 4, 2016
Transformation
As I completed my journey to the Catholic Church, my journey home, I did a lot of thinking about the teachings of the Church, the idea of natural law, and the relationship between secular and religious laws. These are not easy questions. They are questions very much at the forefront of our national debate. This type of thinking prompted me to ponder the reasoning behind various laws. In law school we often talk about the public policy behind this or that law as a way to argue the merit, or demerit, as the case may be, of a given law. Why was the law enacted? What was Congress’s intent in passing such a law? Who is supposed to be protected by the law, and what if any, unintended consequences, were created by the law?
Our legal system is very complex. It wasn’t always so. In the good old days, there weren’t law schools. People didn’t spend years studying the abstract idea of how to be a lawyer. They went to undergraduate, and then apprenticed themselves to a practicing attorney, got out their Blackstone’s and a volume set of the state legal code, and went to work. Today, the life and law library of a lawyer is much different. There are state codes, federal codes, tax codes, administrative codes, rules of civil and criminal procedure, and even rules of superintendence our state supreme courts promulgate. There are local rules for each court in which you practice, and local procedures and policies that are often unspoken. There are rules for mediators, rules for guardians, rules for guardian ad litem, and ethical codes for attorneys.
Despite, or perhaps because of all these rules, nothing much can function without lawyers these days. It now takes a team of lawyers from a myriad of fields to advise even a mid-sized business. Lawyers are afraid of being sued by clients and other lawyers. Lay people sometimes break the law without even knowing it. Some use the fact that enforcing all these laws is increasingly difficult. They take advantage of the lax enforcement to work the system. We have so many laws, ethical codes, bullying codes, codes of conducts, trainings and the like that it literally blows the mind. Every time we think we solve one problem by passing this or that law, another problem shows up. Yet somehow people seem to think that more and more laws, making this or that illegal or unethical, is the secret to changing behavior.
As a lawyer, I’m going to challenge that notion. Yes, law can be a help to change the way people live, but ultimately, things can only truly change when people’s hearts are transformed. We can make abortion illegal, or drug possession criminalized, we can make this or that group a protected class; yet ultimately, real change cannot occur unless people’s heart are transformed, because with each new law, there is a new way to skirt the law, bypass it, find the grey area, or just downright ignore it.
I’ve often heard older attorneys talk about the good ole days, when deals were done with simple contracts and a shake of the hand. While some of that does seem the stuff of legend, it now seems that only an airtight, throw everything in but the kitchen sink, type of legal document is sufficient for even the simplest of real estate home sales. No longer does a person’s word mean you can count on them. For the most part, you better have something in writing, documented via email or text, or somehow provable, or you can forget about the person ever admitting to this or that exchange.
My point is: we don’t actually need more laws. We need people to be transformed. When people let go of greed, personal ambition, jealousy, the acquisition of wealth, and behave in the true manner of Christ, laws aren’t needed. When people don’t lie, you can count on their word, and an iron clad contract isn’t needed. When people respect life, you don’t need strict laws about when you can and can’t have abortion. When people value marriage, you don’t need complex case law on divorce and child custody. The problem isn’t a lack of law. It is a lack of humanity, and a lack of thinking about something other than your own wants. It seems to be the fate of human beings to always want more, to never be satisfied. As long as we look for love in all the wrong places, satisfaction will be fleeting, effervescent, and will leave us with an unquenchable thirst, or maybe as Shel Silverstein said “the itch we just can’t scratch”.
In this mixed up crazy world full of hedonism, instant gratification, and mass media, we are called to a higher transformation in which we eschew those earthly things for the call to love one another as He has loved us. No law can truly prevent a behavior. Only a true transformation of the person can prevent certain behaviors. Not even a religious or ecclesiastical law can force certain behaviors. That kind of transformation can only occur internally, and only through free will. In this political season, it’s important to remember what politicians can and can’t do. They can’t transform people’s hearts; they can’t remake a person through divine mercy; and they can’t legislate morality. Don’t put your trust in another human being to fix these things. There is only one thing that can truly transform someone’s heart, and that is the grace and the love of God.
As I completed my journey to the Catholic Church, my journey home, I did a lot of thinking about the teachings of the Church, the idea of natural law, and the relationship between secular and religious laws. These are not easy questions. They are questions very much at the forefront of our national debate. This type of thinking prompted me to ponder the reasoning behind various laws. In law school we often talk about the public policy behind this or that law as a way to argue the merit, or demerit, as the case may be, of a given law. Why was the law enacted? What was Congress’s intent in passing such a law? Who is supposed to be protected by the law, and what if any, unintended consequences, were created by the law?
Our legal system is very complex. It wasn’t always so. In the good old days, there weren’t law schools. People didn’t spend years studying the abstract idea of how to be a lawyer. They went to undergraduate, and then apprenticed themselves to a practicing attorney, got out their Blackstone’s and a volume set of the state legal code, and went to work. Today, the life and law library of a lawyer is much different. There are state codes, federal codes, tax codes, administrative codes, rules of civil and criminal procedure, and even rules of superintendence our state supreme courts promulgate. There are local rules for each court in which you practice, and local procedures and policies that are often unspoken. There are rules for mediators, rules for guardians, rules for guardian ad litem, and ethical codes for attorneys.
Despite, or perhaps because of all these rules, nothing much can function without lawyers these days. It now takes a team of lawyers from a myriad of fields to advise even a mid-sized business. Lawyers are afraid of being sued by clients and other lawyers. Lay people sometimes break the law without even knowing it. Some use the fact that enforcing all these laws is increasingly difficult. They take advantage of the lax enforcement to work the system. We have so many laws, ethical codes, bullying codes, codes of conducts, trainings and the like that it literally blows the mind. Every time we think we solve one problem by passing this or that law, another problem shows up. Yet somehow people seem to think that more and more laws, making this or that illegal or unethical, is the secret to changing behavior.
As a lawyer, I’m going to challenge that notion. Yes, law can be a help to change the way people live, but ultimately, things can only truly change when people’s hearts are transformed. We can make abortion illegal, or drug possession criminalized, we can make this or that group a protected class; yet ultimately, real change cannot occur unless people’s heart are transformed, because with each new law, there is a new way to skirt the law, bypass it, find the grey area, or just downright ignore it.
I’ve often heard older attorneys talk about the good ole days, when deals were done with simple contracts and a shake of the hand. While some of that does seem the stuff of legend, it now seems that only an airtight, throw everything in but the kitchen sink, type of legal document is sufficient for even the simplest of real estate home sales. No longer does a person’s word mean you can count on them. For the most part, you better have something in writing, documented via email or text, or somehow provable, or you can forget about the person ever admitting to this or that exchange.
My point is: we don’t actually need more laws. We need people to be transformed. When people let go of greed, personal ambition, jealousy, the acquisition of wealth, and behave in the true manner of Christ, laws aren’t needed. When people don’t lie, you can count on their word, and an iron clad contract isn’t needed. When people respect life, you don’t need strict laws about when you can and can’t have abortion. When people value marriage, you don’t need complex case law on divorce and child custody. The problem isn’t a lack of law. It is a lack of humanity, and a lack of thinking about something other than your own wants. It seems to be the fate of human beings to always want more, to never be satisfied. As long as we look for love in all the wrong places, satisfaction will be fleeting, effervescent, and will leave us with an unquenchable thirst, or maybe as Shel Silverstein said “the itch we just can’t scratch”.
In this mixed up crazy world full of hedonism, instant gratification, and mass media, we are called to a higher transformation in which we eschew those earthly things for the call to love one another as He has loved us. No law can truly prevent a behavior. Only a true transformation of the person can prevent certain behaviors. Not even a religious or ecclesiastical law can force certain behaviors. That kind of transformation can only occur internally, and only through free will. In this political season, it’s important to remember what politicians can and can’t do. They can’t transform people’s hearts; they can’t remake a person through divine mercy; and they can’t legislate morality. Don’t put your trust in another human being to fix these things. There is only one thing that can truly transform someone’s heart, and that is the grace and the love of God.
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