Who am I? This is the eternal question, if you ask it from a certain spiritual perspective.
Given that people are very politically divided these days and assume that if you happen to hold one opinion, you’re a Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist and if you hold another opinion more on the Left, you’re aligned to Communism, it’s tough to simply hold a meaningful conversation without a string of knee-jerk reactions. Well, my opinions don’t rest in one “camp” even though it might be more comfortable for critics to take swipes at my work by lumping me into one corner vs another, as though life was just one giant prize fight.
Life didn’t come with a User’s Manual. We’re all doing our best to figure things out and we should be doing this figuring together in conversation.
Maret’s Background
To sum “me” and my opinions up, I’ll have to lean on the wisdom of Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodore Seuss Geisel:
“Think left and think right, think low and think high, oh the thinks you can think up if only you try.”
Dr. Seuss
Heterodox Thinker
I was taught from a young age not to blindly accept what I was told, but to challenge it until one of two things happened: I knew it made sense or I knew it was wrong. “But the teacher SAID,” was a phrase my father loathed.
“Just because the teacher said something doesn’t mean it’s true,” my father would reply. And then I’d be forced to analyze what the teacher had said and determine if it were true. It was the same at the dinner table. My father would play the “Devil’s Advocate” in a discussion which, I will admit, became rather tiresome because after a while, we all understood he didn’t believe was he was saying. He was just trying to fire up our thinking neurons so that we didn’t grow up to be blind followers.
What I Believe
It’s simple, really. I believe that democracy, while not perfect, deserves to be protected and that each citizen has a responsibility to do just that.
I believe that men and women should have equal rights – but this doesn’t mean that I think men and women are the same. Each human being is influenced by a number of factors, including how they live inside their bodies.
I believe that a healthy society protects its children from predators and outside influences that harm their development.
I believe in the right to free speech because, without it, our precious democracies die.
I believe in communicating honestly and our politicians and the media owe this to us.
I believe that the informed opinions of all citizens are valuable, no matter how much money a person makes.
I believe in the power of the human spirit to know what is right and what is wrong, and to rise up in defiance of what the mighty and powerful want us to do and think.
Do you know what you believe, and why?
I have long been a voracious reader and processor of complex information. My career for many years was to aborb vast volumes of technology information and spot patterns to help companies fix their issues. Over time, I came to build strategies to help strengthen large-scale, highly integrated yet fragile technologies. My brain just works that way.
With Not Your Donkey, I use these skills to help you become aware of the patterns affecting our communities and our countries, often unknowingly. You don’t have to agree with what I say but, if you don’t, tell me — and tell me why. I read and welcome all of the comments at Not Your Donkey.
The Victim Card?
I don’t play the victim card because it undermines the human spirit. I will say, though, that I do — first-hand — understand many of the challenges that people face in our world. I’m the daughter of a child refugee from Stalin’s Mad Dream and when I was very young, we hardly had enough money for food. My parents often went hungry, and I clearly remember those days and witnessing them being hungry. I started working when I was 16 (though my first formal job was at 9 years old, picking cherries.) I was a single teenaged mother with no education. I still have no university degree but I was raised to be an engaged citizen and to do this, I had to read, be informed, discuss various topics, and take a stand. I have attended more than one protest in support of basic freedoms that politicians are too quick to dismiss.
At times, I have been a volunteer at old folks’ homes and to help women in prison. For many years, I was a foster parent in an effort to help girls stay out of prison.
Plus I have been fabulously poor and fabulously rich. Rich is a much nicer. Having said that, when my first child was four years old, she began to suspect we were poor. Walking through a blizzard on our way to the subway, she kept whining that she wanted to take the car. “We don’t have a car,” I said calmly as the cold wind whipped snow into our faces and we trudged along.
“Wait!” my daughter said and stopped in her tracks, tugging at my arm. She stared straight into my face and asked accusingly, “Are we poor?”
“No,” I said calmly. “We’re rich with love. We just don’t happen to have any money right now.” That satisfied her four year old mind and we continued our march through the snow.
Why do I share this? Because I knew, even as a young mother, you don’t put poverty into a child’s brain. You don’t make them feel hard done by, less than, a victim, or hopeless.
Children deserve to believe in the power of their human spirit. We all do.
That’s why I write.