What A Difference _____________________ Makes…. This past year my life completely changed. I believe that the present is a manifestation of the past and indicates what will probably happen in the future. I love studying contrasts and developing principles of cause-and-effect from them. To help me do this on this last day of 2014, I have created a little exercise from the song “What a Diffrence a Day Makes,” popularized by Dinah Washington, so that I can do my own version. What a difference _____________________ makes…. What a difference a day (or 2 days) makes…. In the past 2 days I have packed 7 heavy boxes with vinyl records, VHS tapes, CDs, and cassette tapes, previously owned by Jack Chinn, and shipped them back to Boston. A few of the tapes contain Bhakti’s voice when she was 8 years old, talking to her father, who was stationed overseas. I also cleaned out and helped organize, with Bhakti, the bedroom that Bhakti used to sleep in. It is once again a functional bedroom! What a difference a week makes…. In the past 9 days my partner has met my mother, my sisters, my uncle, and my grandfather. I have in turn met her father, sister, brother, sister-in-law, and niece. What a difference 7 months makes…. Yesterday, December 30, I celebrated being with my partner for 7 months. We had dinner at a great Italian restaurant, then we spent time in a wonderful Jacuzzi at our hotel. What a difference a year makes…. This time last year I felt despair, hopelessness, and futility because I concluded that 20 years worth of work did not produced the results I wanted. Now, I have a new partner and all the friends I could ever want What a difference 10 years makes…. At this time in 2004 I was feeling a sense of futility with politics and personal disconnect in my environment. I had met a lot of great new people on the campaign trail, and I had reconnected with a lot of people at my 10-year high school reunion, but I still felt that few people knew the “real” me, the intellectual and spiritual side of me. I had just spent 5 years writing essays every day and sending them out to people via email, hoping people would read the essays and form a community around them with me. I decided at the end of 2004 that this didn’t work, so I needed to meet people in physical spaces, not merely online. I started to teach 5-6 classes per semester in 2005. Now, I can write whatever is in my heart on Facebook (which was in its infancy in 2004) and post pictures from my life. I feel seen by everyone in my life. What a difference 20 years makes…. In 1994 I lived in a different world, a different reality. There was such a thing as “objective reality”, or “objective truth”, which people talked about as “Truth with a capital T.” I had concluded in 1992 that the course of my life had gone awry because I had deceived myself about the truth of myself and my environment, so I set out in the last two years of high school, then in college and graduate school, to discover Truth with a capital T, orient my life around it, and develop all of my relationships around it. People perceived “objective truth” at that time, also called “intrinsic value” because our media environment created a structure that pointed to “objective truth.” Very few people had access to technologies to produce books, pictures, and music, then distribute them widely. There were gatekeepers for everything. If I wanted my thoughts to be known, I had to get published. If I wanted to be seen, I had to go on local or network television. If I wanted to be heard, I had to go through a record label. Everything that happened in our lives was a national, or even international event. I concluded from these phenomena that there was a collective consciousness seeking objective truth, which was revealed in a best-selling movie, book, or album, even a top TV show. I wanted, at that time, to create a best-selling something – ideally a book. 2014 demonstrated that we live in the opposite world. Every person now has access to production tools to create books, pictures, music, and video, then distribute them widely through the Internet. There are still gatekeepers of national best-selling books, blockbuster movies, hit albums, and top-rated TV shows, but those gatekeepers matter less. Instead of there being an “objective reality” or an “objective truth”, there is only my perception and how many allies I can find to agree with my perception. Consequently, we have moved from majority-rule to competing groups. 20 years ago, we all agreed that racism was bad and police brutality was bad. The majority ruled. Now, in contrast, I can think racism and police brutality are bad, and I can find allies who agree with me. Other people can think racism and police brutality are justified, and they can find their own allies. We all have equal access to publishing books, videos, and music to support our side. There are no longer any gatekeepers to prevent unpopular opinions from being expressed and finding allies to support that opinion. So now, we all have to make individual decisions about what opinions we support and who our allies are. We must make these decisions on a daily basis and the alliances are constantly shifting in complex ways. The 20th century was much more simple because we could not do this. What a difference my partner makes…. Finding my soul mate is winning the lottery of life. I used to put all of my energy into maintaining my marriage, then finding another partner after my divorce. Now, I have lots of surplus energy because I never again have to think about either finding a partner or maintaining my relationship with my partner. I have occasional disagreements with my partner, but our bodies communicate together better than our words communicate. My level of trust in my partner is so complete that I can bring up very old issues (and past traumas) so that I can finally heal them. My partner does the same with me. We hold space for each other to heal and grow together. What a difference ____________ makes…. I can go on with more - my kids, my job, my family, my education, etc. - but I will stop for now. What a difference 2014 has made in my life and the lives of all the people I know and love! Feel free to share your own version of what a difference _____________________ makes….
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 18:02:26 +0000
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