My Purple Shoes

( – promoted by TheMomCat)

Okay well, there ya go, I’ve already given away the punchline! lol, but here goes.

When I was in high school we had a very small number of DFH’s in my private Catholic all girls school. We were in the thick of Watergate and the waning of the Vietnam era, early 70’s. I had my peacenik social circles elsewhere and school was just something I had to endure until I could escape to college. I wasn’t much of a rebel, having seen what little good that did my older Class of ’65 DFH sister. I guess its partly just my nature but I really don’t like to make waves, rock the boat or get in trouble. At the same time, I am resistant to the totalitarian shit. I had “fallen” from the whole religion thing way back at age 12. Mostly just tried to get by. So my solutions are largely stealth and subversion. As I have mentioned here before. So heres a story to illustrate. Heh.

Our school uniforms were a pastel shade of aqua. “Aqua sprite” was the official color actually. Certain rules applied and we were required to be in uniform and behave like proper young women whenever thusly attired. No dangley earrings.  Brown penny loafers.

I think I was in 10th grade when, well, I’ve always had lousy feet. Fallen arches. Doc told me I should wear good shoes with good arch support. Sure, okay, but this was way before the days of Nike and Reebok, so my only option was GASP the ugliest ever invented white nurse shoes. Yes. Not cheap either but they sure were comfortable, and they worked!  so my feet wouldn’t be dogtired and sore every day. So many people that I know are suffering from foot fatigue now, and some have even had to shop for Munro shoes in Australia because they just can’t find any comfortable yet stylish shoes that they enjoy wearing. Luckily for them, that site has a lot of options to choose from; I’ve seen some myself. But back then, we didn’t have many choices so we just had to get what we could. Unlike these days.

Certainly not God-approved Brown Penny Loafers though. Mmphmph.

So we got a note from the doc and  submitted it to the Principal Sister Mary Raphaele (aka “Ralph”), and miracle of miracles, I was granted a reprieve. A waiver. A license for my darling little feet to officially be Out Of Uniform ! woo hoo.

So I dyed ’em.

Purple.

This was the story that immediately came to mind when I was reading here recently… nice and book report and others, comments too. It’s always my first choice to bend, rather than break, Da Rulz.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Buddha

I think it is grand that we can have the kinds of discussion that dharma bums venture into and we go on tangents and think out loud and bounce off each other. I love that about this place. I am also thinking, with the new year, that Id sure love to see more of the new people posting essays and jumping in with their fresh views and ideas. The water’s warm.

A few days late but I came across this piece this morning and wanted to tip off. I tend to think we as a nation suffer from PTSD, as this author describes. Ive thought that for a while but this piece at alternet was well written and insightful.

{After Abu Graib} America’s sins were now exposed to the world, and to her own people, compounded by the fact that our leaders lied to us with assurances that the U.S. did not torture its detainees.

We were now completely unmoored from the safe harbor of our belief in our fundamental goodness as a nation, with no one trustworthy in charge of anything that mattered. We were utterly abandoned.

In the midst of another presidential election, we grappled with this truth. With the 9/11 attacks still fresh in our minds, we remained a traumatized people, now broken and stripped of our identity.

Snip

Such was the defeat of the American people that we allowed this to happen with barely a passing glance. This is the way traumatized people behave at the hands of an abuser — by playing dead, dissociating, or slipping into denial at the injustice that has been done to them.

Its really a good decade review, go read it. S/he continues…

Take a Deep Breath

So, here we find ourselves, on the brink of a new decade, traumatized, at odds with each other, constituencies shattering within constituencies. Just when you thought the Republican Party could move no further to the right, the Tea Party movement emerges, its adherents full of rage and convinced that their way of life will be brought to an end with the election of the new president, whom they see as foreign and threatening. And so he is given the same attributes as threats of the historical past: He’s a socialist, a fascist, a communist.

“The thoughts or beliefs that people have to help them understand and make sense of their environment can often overexaggerate threat,” reads a brief from the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “Often the individual is not fully aware of these thoughts and beliefs, but they cause the person to perceive more hostility, danger, or threat than others might feel is necessary.”

The left is no less traumatized, its various constituencies now at odds over the health care bill, with some turning their sense of threatened destruction back on the president with an exaggerated sense of betrayal.

S/he concludes with…

Untreated PTSD, according to Raymond B. Flannery, a clinical psychology professor at Harvard Medical School, can lead to “increased industrial accidents, social and community disorganization, lost productivity, and intense psychological distress. The toll in human suffering is enormous…” In other words, unless we deal with this, America’s Decade of Trauma may just be the opening act to a cataclysmic century.

I recommend we begin the new decade with a sort of national intervention, where we stop and breathe for a minute, slowly and evenly, and then review the events of the last decade, and think about how each of them made us feel. That’s what the therapists would have us do.

But wait — there’s more. According to the sages at Helpguide, PTSD therapy also entails “identifying upsetting thoughts about the traumatic event — particularly thoughts that are distorted and irrational — and replacing them with more a balanced picture.” Of course, all this hinges on admitting we have a problem and wanting to address it.

Never mind. We’re Americans. Problem? Who’s got a problem?

So… yeah. First, admit there’s a problem. I dont think we’re being overly irrational or distorted when we say we are fooked unless something gives. But balance… yeah… I remember that.

Soooooo … Now what?