Eating Supper Off a Mirror

Dear Friend and Reader,

MY MOTHER ALWAYS SAID to me the three most sensitive subjects to talk about are religion, politics and music. She instructed me to never talk about these things with people unless I was ready for a scream-out. Now, I am pretty deft at choosing friends that don’t get worked up about stuff like that: call it an affinity for intellectualizing, but as I get older and I begin to witness more conversations than I actually find tasteful to participate in, I’ve realized that my mother is right. Strange as it may seem, the three things she mentioned have something in common: mind control.

The last debate between McCain and Obama and the balooning economic bill have placed what we think of as power and who we would like as leaders into the forefront. It’s crucial as the final weeks before the election unfold, that each of us come to the personal realization that how we see the world around us is how we see ourselves.

What we find beautiful, ugly and dangerous is influenced by our minds. It is with our minds that we make our choices. It is with our capacity to reason and get carried away by emotion that enables us to interact and learn from this world we are in. I say this because the election is coming up and each and every one of us has our own personal vote that we can spend in any way we like — supposedly like our money. How we place our vote, like how we spend our money, is a reflection of what we value in the world.

About once a month my partner’s mother invites us to dinner and we are obliged to comply. We go to the house, get sniffed out by the two dogs and stand around in the kitchen for about 20 minutes before supper is ready. Then we go into the dining room and have a seat.

The wallpaper is a kind of floral striped affair in tones of pearl and bone. The crystal lamp lights are dust free as are the tops of the curtain rods. Witnessed by the collection of hand-painted ceramic song birds in the curio and the dogs who beg for what gets dropped “by accident” onto the floor, the conversation inevitably turns to one of two things: politics or the government.

That’s kind of a joke I just made. Politics and government? Isn’t that basically the same thing? As the discussion between my partner, his father and his brother climbs up the scale towards explosive, I always wonder to myself what it really is about politics that gets these men so upset.

I found myself sitting at the table fantasizing about knitting in a quiet place while three men with the same basic cheek bone structure yelled at each other about the origin of money with as much passion as I might expect to find in three friends duking it out over the superiority of one guitarist over another. Ironically, I doubted that anyone in Washington was getting that animated over the banking situation. I also doubted if anyone was getting that upset over the media’s waning coverage of the Iraq War. (Pop Quiz: How many Iraqis have died so far? Don’t know? I don’t know either…)

I realized that the sentiment that was animating these men was the idea that this was really something that has to do with their basic survival. They were acting like if no one agreed with what they were trying to say, they were in danger of suffocating. There was a sense of fear lingering above the table as the words and breath floated upwards, that if no one agreed spot on with their theories, then no one had their back. There was a definite sense of me against the world at that table and I could sense that even though they were talking about something that had nothing to do with them personally, it involved every fibre of their being.

A certain level of validation was being sought out by each of them and when they weren’t getting it, there was anger. Where was this sense of danger and imminent doom coming from? If the government and/or the money system suddenly disappeared tomorrow, what exactly would transpire? And then I realized something: I was thinking from my own stand point.

The standpoint of a woman who has a goal of self-sufficiency, who hardly goes the grocery store, who grows her own parsley and black beans, who makes her own socks and who bakes her own bread. If the government ended tomorrow, the biggest deal for me that I can see is… jeez I don’t know. The government doesn’t really do much for me other than make sure I drive the speed limit. I’m pretty sure that the government itself doesn’t do much for my partner’s father or my partner either, except spend their money. But politics is something entirely different.

Politics is what makes me assume my partner’s father is going to sit at the head of the table. It is also what gives my boss the cue of having the last word in a discussion. Politics is that thing that people use to govern themselves. To a certain extent, there is no government but the government of the family. The community we interact with is what finally decides our role and our purpose. It’s what supplies us with the resources and the impetus to go on our personal journeys. I wish I could have told the men that as they were palming the air and fisting the table.

Better yet, I wish if I had said that, they would have listened and heard. To some extent, their disappointment and worry over the state of the world is a projection of their fear that no one has their back, not even their kin. Part of the process of voting for the new President involves imagining what it would be like to have each candidate as a Father Figure.

Part of the sweat we’re losing over our current economic decay is the result of the image of wealth as power is diminishing at a breath taking rate. We are coming close to fingering the illusion to death and every day it takes a conscious effort to believe in it. I wonder, if the dollar bill had a pair of wings like Tinker Bell, would we wake up every morning and clap to revive it?

Case in point, every time you get a paycheck, there is a percentage of that check garnished automatically to the government. For many of us growing up at home, when we sat at the table, the person who was the head of the family got the biggest portion of food and no one asked why. Am I suggesting that maybe they didn’t deserve that extra chicken leg? Not at all, but I am presenting the image because I feel there is a parallel here in the role our parents played in our lives and the role we expect the government to play in our lives.

I am going out on a limb by saying what comes next, but I feel that we may indeed be better off with a different attitude towards power in our lives. This has to do with family conditioning as well as with the government and the law. Both of them amount to the same thing in our personal lives: they only have as much control over us as we allow them to. There is so much work to be done in discerning what exactly that means, that it will extend far beyond November.

I know that while I sat there watching the debate, I kept thinking to myself what it would be like to be face to face with each man: who I would rather talk to, who I would be intimidated by? I really like Obama. He is also the same sign as my Dad. Is it a coincidence of projection or the skill of pattern recognition?

It’s a poignant realization when you find that all you know and all you perceive comes from you only and not some outside force. It can also be disheartening to realize that many of the perceptions and habits in this world come from hang-ups born in the past.

How do we take the wisdom we’ve earned from past experiences and apply them to the future while still leaving room for things to grow and surprise us? Most importantly, how many of us know our minds well enough to understand where our decisions come from? Our anger? Is it really possible to hate a man you have never met before? Is that fair to the other man? Or is the physical distance between us and them filled by the ghosts of former experience? And if so, is it simply giving the bogey a different pair of shoes?

Tough questions. But then, the heart of the earth is made of stone and fire, right? And saying we are “grounded” is the same as saying we know what direction we are headed in and are aware of our circumstances.

Merry Met,

Genevieve Sophia