In my last post, Are You Sleeping Through Life?, I suggested that many of us, including myself, often move through the day in somewhat unconscious ways. Now clearly I don’t mean unconscious in a clinical sense, but more as a reference to moving through the day with an insufficient level of awareness.

The lack of awareness to which I refer can be evidenced in a wide range of behavior, from driving while distracted, to losing focus while working on a project, to daydreaming during a meeting. Each of these is fairly common, and we usually get by relatively unscathed.

However, there’s another layer to this that might be worth exploring: how aware are you of the gift you are being presented in the form of someone you just don’t like or simply can’t stand?

(While I used the term “enemy” in the title of this piece, I realize that not all of us actually consider ourselves to have enemies. If you happen to be one of those, you might consider substituting the notion of someone you have difficulty getting along with for the term “enemy.”)

One of the major lessons I have learned in my own personal and spiritual development has been that other people can reflect to me aspects of myself that I need to address, or lessons that I need to learn.

Abraham Lincoln had a lot of great wisdom to impart, an example of which can be found in this quote attributed to him: “I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.”

What a fabulous insight. What is it about another person that can stimulate such strong internal reactions that we would say we don’t like the person, that they are upsetting to us, or that we just can’t stand to be around them.

Sure, I know that some people can be difficult to be around, sometimes for no more reason that they are just, well, different. Someone once suggested that in the world of music, there are 12 major keys, and 12 minor keys, each of which has had a symphony or other major work written for it. However, if you were to put major and minor keys into the same phrasing, there would be considerable conflict and unpleasant sounds.

Perhaps it is so with each of us as humans. But what about those people we find irritating because of something more than style or personality?

While my memory will be faulty here and I surely did not take notes at the time, I recall attending a lecture by Bucky Fuller in San Francisco many years ago. Amongst many things he shared during his tenure on the planet, here are a couple that stand out for me:

Take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don’t hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, no matter how offensive or eccentric to society they may seem. . . You and I didn’t design people. God designed people. What I am trying to do is to discover why God included humans in Universe.

One of humanity’s prime drives is to understand and be understood.

I don’t recall which of these were central to this particular evening, but you get the drift. When he finished speaking, the audience was invited to engage in the dialogue via open microphones around the auditorium.

One gentleman took the mic and proceed to tell Buck that he was full of beans, didn’t know what he was talking about, and had no basis for his point of view. Bucky paused for a moment, looked toward the speaker, and replied, “Thank you.”

As Bucky turned toward another person, the gentleman raised his voice and repeated his denunciation of Bucky and his thoughts, a bit more firmly. Again Bucky paused, looked squarely at the speaker, and replied, “Thank you.”

Once again, Bucky turned to another and, once again, the gentleman raised his voice, repeated his diatribe and offered quite a bit of angry energy to his comments, asking why he was being dismissed so summarily.

This time Bucky responded something like this: Did you not notice that I paused to consider what you had to say? I looked inside myself to see if some part of me was reacting to what you had said about me, particularly if some part of me were upset, prone to counterattack, or otherwise affected. I have found that when I am in that kind of reaction, there is typically something there for me to learn about myself, something for which I need to improve. In this instance, I found no reaction. Thus, you were simply sharing your opinion to which you are fully entitled and with which I have no argument. Therefore, “Thank you” seemed most appropriate.

Wow!

Learning to see the reaction inside of myself as feedback about me, not feedback about the other person, has been a tremendously challenging yet uplifting experience in my life. Indeed, those who present the most difficulties to me are my teachers. I don’t always embrace them as such, and yet they are gifts to my own growth and awareness.

Sometimes, the greatest challenge occurs when someone else accuses me of something, or points out a shortcoming of mine, and they are only 10 percent accurate. It’s so easy inside to just dismiss that person or go on a counterattack. And, when I look more closely, there is an element of truth in the accusation of shortcoming.

Owning that accuracy, no matter how small, can be game changing in that it points out an area where further growth and development are needed.

This notion also applies when the only thing that seems to be going on is that I find myself irritated with the behavior of another person, with their attitude, or with their approach to another. Even if I’m not the object of the behavior, attitude or approach.

When I’m a bit more on the consciously aware side of life, I can take note of my reaction, and use the other person as a mirror – someone who is reflecting to me something about me that I don’t care for in myself. In other words, when I find myself irritated or offended, it can be of great value to simply ask myself: “How am I like that? What about the other person’s behavior do I see in myself? How am I limiting myself by persisting in my version of that behavior?”

Not the most pleasant awareness to be sure, but an important one. Especially if I want to learn to live my life in greater equanimity, in greater balance, and in greater peace.

Perhaps we could edit Lincoln’s quote slightly, to read, I don’t like that man. I must get to know myself better.

More on this theme to come. In the interim, please do leave a comment here or drop me a note at my email address listed below.

***

Russell Bishop is an Educational Psychologist, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California. You can find out more about Russell at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell by email at: Russell (at) lessonsinthekeyoflife.com

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (8 PM CST)

Ahh sweet Earl Grey Revolution! Sarah Palin knew that speech like the back of her hand. The Q&A answers, however, were on the front of her hand.

Or so it appeared.

During the Q&A following her speech at the Tea Party Convention, Ms. Palin appeared to read from her hand in answering.

The following image was caught by some sharp-eyed Twitter users, notably @jryanlaw

->Tweet Photo link

UPDATE: And, via ThinkProgress, the Video:

Crib Notes? This potential presidential candidate and “movement” leader was using crib notes to answer basic questions?

This would mean:

A) That she knew the questions beforehand and the whole thing was a farce. (Likely.)

and

B) That she still couldn’t answer the previously agreed-upon questions without a little extra help.

If true, this is supremely rich coming immediately after a speech in which Palin took a shot at President Obama for using a teleprompter to read his prepared speeches.

You can bet that the President wasn’t reading scribbles off his extremities while he sparred with Republicans and Democrats in an unscripted format in his recent Q&As.

Palin, on the other hand, seems to need a cheat-sheet just to get through a contrived lovefest with a smitten interviewer and an adoring audience.

I’m no fan of the Tea Party movement – if it can be called such – but if this is their leader I actually sympathize with them.

——-

Question: Can anyone get a blown-up image of this from a different angle to confirm or disprove it?

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“Deckchairs. Titanic”

UBS is reorganizing its troubled US wealth management operations–turning three division into two. Zzzzzzz. I know this story packs enough punch to put Sominex out of business. But stay with me, because the UBS problems extend to the core of global financial reform.

An unnamed research analyst described the reorganization as follows: “Deckchairs. Titanic.” And those two words got my attention. Given a trade dispute between the US and Switzerland–the Swiss won’t rat out 4,450 tax cheats–UBS could lose its banking charter in the United States.

The Swiss are concerned. Rightfully so. Hans-Rudolf Merz, the President of Switzerland, speculated UBS could fail without US banking privileges. He estimated the cost of collapse at $250 billion. That’s a huge number for the Swiss, over half their 2008 GDP of $488 billion.

Personally, I doubt failure is in the cards. The stakes are so large, our two countries will find a diplomatic solution. A theoretical collapse would hurt the Swiss more, as measured by GDP. Ours is $14.2 trillion. But UBS is a huge bank with a spaghetti tangle of financial relationships. A collapse would roil global capital markets. It would make Lehman’s failure look like a rounding error.

Back to “Deckchairs. Titanic.” Measured by assets, UBS is the sixth largest bank in the world as of November 2009. The others, in order, are:

1. The Royal Bank of Scotland
2. Deutsche Bank
3. Barclays PLC
4. BNP Paribas SA
5. Credit Acgricole SA

It’s not until the number seven slot that we find a US bank: JP Morgan Chase. What’s this mean?

I believe the Congressional rush to limit the size of US financial institutions is myopic. That we should be negotiating international standards, because US financial health is inextricably linked to international financial health. And last I looked, overseas banks don’t take orders from Congress. That Chris Dodd’s frustration with the pace of domestic reform is a joke.

We can’t solve the issues of derivatives and leverage and short-sighted financiers until we talk to the rest of the world, right?

Norb Vonnegut

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I’ve never actually read a book by Nicholas Sparks, nor do I have desire to.

After all, his novels regularly find their way to the screen. So I feel as though I’m absorbing them by osmosis.

I don’t think I’m giving much away – no spoiler alert required – to say that Dear John is the first of the cinematic adaptations of his books I’ve encountered in which one of the two lovers at the center of the story doesn’t die. Not that true love runs smoothly – Sparks wouldn’t have an oeuvre if it did.

Sparks is a big believer in people having a moment and capitalizing upon it, even if it doesn’t last. The people in his stories always seem to be at a critical point in their lives – a decisive point – when they’re questioning everything they’ve ever believed in. They’re vulnerable, open to a connection they never had before, receptive when that one person suddenly walks into their life and changes everything.

Not that everything ever stays changed for long. Inevitably there’s a conflict – there wouldn’t be drama without conflict – often involving a misunderstanding of some sort. And then regret and, with luck, reconciliation – but not for long. Never for long, because otherwise how would Sparks make his audiences tear up at the cruel irony when true love refuses to resolve itself as happily ever after?

In Dear John, the couple that has a moment consists of John and Savannah (which is confusing because the story is set in Charleston). John (Channing Tatum) is a soldier at home on leave; Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) is a college girl at the beach on spring break.

They meet cute on a pier where Savannah, with a group of friends, accidentally drops her purse in the water. While her male companion dithers and runs down the pier to get to the shore to get to the water, the valiant John simply jumps in, dives to the bottom and rescues the purse, winning the girl’s heart.

They spend a rapturous two weeks together, though not without bumps.

This review continues on my website.

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There’s little question that the ten American Baptist missionaries from Idaho, Kansas, and Texas who illegally loaded 33 Haitian children, ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years, into a bus and tried to drive them across the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic on January 31st had “good intentions.”

It’s even likely, as missionary Carla Thomson insisted, that they truly believed “God was the one who told [them] to come” to Haiti, where they reportedly planned to install the orphans in a 45 room hotel in the town of Carabete that they were converting into an orphanage.

The notion of “good intentions” is a prized American virtue, and one many Americans expect will carry a great deal of weight when being judged on any situation, especially when it involves children. This is where the wide-eyed, bovine, uniquely evangelical, sense of prerogative, showcased so starkly in the Academy Award-nominated 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, comes into full play. There’s a sense that, to a significant number of American evangelical Christians, the world outside the borders of the United States is little more than their personal Biblical coloring book, with God in one page and the Devil on the opposite page.

In the scenario at hand, the Lord God Jehovah is just waiting for a plane load of Baptists from Idaho and Kansas to round up a group of orphaned children (in a country Pat Robertson told his followers just last week had “made a deal with the Devil”) and drive them across the border, away from their families and their decimated country, for a “new life in Christ,” possibly to be adopted by “loving Christian families.” Aside from the odious religious pretension, there’s much humanity to be appreciated in that sentiment, at least on the surface. It has a certain CBN/Hallmark Movie Channel co-production fatalism to it.

The problem is, not only were the children not orphans, the Baptists had no right to take them anywhere, much less away from their surviving parents. One of the children, 9-year old Benatine Poulimé was weeping hysterically and insisting she wasn’t an orphan, that she wanted her mother.

“I said I wanted to get off the bus,” Poulimé said, describing how the missionaries told her that she had to remain. The little girl told CNN that the Baptists loaded her onto the bus just yards from her home. “I was crying. I said I wanted to go to my mother.” The 33 children are now at the SOS Children’s Village in Haiti while aid workers try to find their parents and family members.

These missionaries–members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian Ohio and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho– had formed an ad hoc Haitian child rescue mission and called it the New Life Children’s Refuge. Like western missionaries for hundreds of years, expect the fact that they sincerely felt they were doing “God’s will” ought to count for something. Their pastors–who not only should have known better than to let them go, but who share at least equal responsibility for the situation at hand–are appealing, on behalf of their congregants. They feel that all should be forgiven, and they should be sent home to the U.S. the next plane.

“We’re waiting…and hoping and praying that the outcome will be the one that we’re looking for,”

the Rev. Clint Henry, senior pastor with the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho told CNN,

“so the team that has been falsely charged will be vindicated, and that the whole world is going to know that we weren’t here doing the things we’re accused of doing.”

Pastor Drew Ham, also of the Central Valley Baptist Church echoed those sentiments to CNN’s Dan Simon on Monday night.

“Really, at this point, we’re making a passionate plea to just simply bring our Americans home, where they belong.”

This language and tone is traditionally employed in cases where Americans (often journalists, like Roxana Saberi, or Lisa Ling and Euna Lee) are held by hostile regimes on trumped-up charges.

The trouble for the ten Baptists is this: the charges were not trumped up. They loaded 33 Haitian children into a bus, even as some of them were crying out for their mothers, insisting they were not orphans, and begging to be allowed to return home.

Furthermore, if, as it’s been reported, the desperately-poor parents of some of the children “gave” the children to the Americans, ipso facto the children were not orphans. Nor did the parents have any right to “give” them away in the first place, however tragic their own circumstances, and however understandable the parent’s impulse was to give their children a chance at a better life.

I have no trouble believing the group’s leader, Laura Sisby, when she told the Associated Press that they were

“just trying to do the right thing”

in the wake of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated the tiny island nation in January. There’s nothing I don’t believe about the genuine bafflement in the faces of the missionaries as they talk to journalists about why they were there and the shock they feel that anyone would think anything else.

“I can tell you our heart and our intent was to help only those children who needed us most,” Sisby told CNN’s Karl Penhaul.

It’s likewise not a stretch to believe that Ms. Sisby was confused and didn’t realize she and her group were doing something seriously illegal.

What seems stunning–really, stunning–is the hubris of starting an “orphan relief” organization in Idaho, jumping on a plane to Haiti, and the sheer effrontery of chartering a bus to take children out of the country without knowing everything there is to know about the legalities and practical logistics of such an enterprise, let alone, apparently, realizing that the children needed passports in order to travel.

“We felt it was a very God-appointed meeting,”

beamed Sisby as she described a meeting with a Haitian pastor who helped set up the homemade “rescue mission.”

While the desire to “save” the children is admirable, and easy for anyone with a shred of human empathy to relate to, the execution of that impulse, in this particular case and fashion, plays into the most grotesque, usually specious, stereotypes of perceived American entitlement abroad–the notion that Americans go where they want, do what they like, and take what they please, be it land, culture, or even, as in this case, children.

This perception has enjoyed an unfortunate renaissance in the years since the Bush presidency, when the notion of autonomous, sovereign nations with their own laws–let alone their own borders–has inexplicably become a blind spot in the minds of many ordinary Americans. Crossing a border has consequences, even for Americans, and when borders are crossed foreign laws apply.

In a country like Haiti, whose historical and cultural memory precludes a time when they were not enslaved, exploited, or toyed with by powerful foreigners, the “good intentions” in this case exacerbate a deep cultural wound.

Worst of all, it’s a wound that may have practical consequences, not only for the missionaries, but also for the orphans of Haiti.

What the Baptists have unwittingly demonstrated is just how easily foreigners with malignant objectives (unlike the missionaries) could land in Port-au-Prince, charter a bus, and scoop up children off the streets with or without the cooperation of their parents.

While the Baptists are clearly who and what they say they are (however misguided or ignorant) they could just as easily have been child traffickers posing as missionaries. They aren’t, but they could have been.

Turn it around. Imagine a busload of foreign nationals–or even a busload of American missionaries from Idaho–landing in New Orleans after Katrina and rounding up 33 “orphans,” loading them onto a yellow school bus, and trying to take them across state lines. Picture the popular, let alone judicial, response. Perception is everything, and this is how the Haitian judiciary will see it the situation, as a kidnapping.

“I don’t know what [their motive was]“

Georg Willeit, the spokesman for SOS Children’s Village, an aid agency working in Haiti, told Wolf Blitzer on Monday night about the Baptists.

“And I don’t know what [was] their intention. Clearly these kids did not have any papers. It’s also clear that [one week ago] the Haitian government [forbade taking] children abroad. And this happened two days ago. And it’s clearly against the opinion of the major child care organizations like SOS Children’s Village, and it’s against the opinion of the U.N. [...] I don’t know why [this] happened, but [one has to be] aware of the danger of child trafficking. And this pressure for foreign adoption [also opens] doors to people who are not as good as they pretend to be.”

“It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers,”

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told the AP on Monday.

“It is clear now that some of the children had live parents, And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong.”

Ironically, it seems likely that the very earthquake that the Baptists came to save the children from will be their own salvation. With the Haitian legal system in disarray because of the earthquake, and the prisons in shambles, Bellerive is open to sending the Americans home to face justice. The Baptists will likely be extradited home to the United States.

What the results of a trial held on U.S. will be is anyone’s guess, though it seems likely that their well-intentioned stupidity may be seen in a calmer light on their home turf.

In the end, the Baptists may soon be back home in Idaho, Kansas, and Texas, giving interviews to the Pat Robertson on The 700 Club about their ordeal; the legitimate child welfare workers in Port-au-Prince will be trying to deal with the monstrous, genocide-level loss of human life; and the children will either live or die under the murderous Caribbean sun in the holocaust that used to be their country.

If there is a further, harsher clampdown on legitimate foreign adoptions because of this case, the New Life Children’s Refuge, and the pastors of the respective churches, can take some of the blame for the needy, legally adoptable children who may never find loving homes outside their broken, devastated country.

The Baptists’ wacky misadventures in glory will have turned out to be little more than a distraction from the real work at hand—a distraction no one had time for, or could afford, least of all the children of Haiti, for whom time is literally running out.

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Park City, UT — My wake-up alarm this morning was quivering nerve endings and parched desert mouth. In the mirror stood a 5 feet 10 inch white sheet. My brain, I would soon find out, was a Southern California hillside in summer – burnt. High altitude and free alcohol is a dangerous combination turning this delightful film festival into a war for morning survival.

But duty calls, the next film — yuck! Few things on this planet can top the unpleasantness of trembling nerves and desert mouth, but a sappy love story can. Easily. Wait! This is the Duplass brothers, their latest, Cyrus. That’s different.

John, played by John C. Reilly, understates his condition when he says he is “borderline desperate.” Mug face and flabby body, social skills nonexistent and home body to the extreme, when his ex-wife announces she’s getting remarried John takes a dive like the Titanic.

Then John meets a real brunette dish, Molly, played by Marisa Tomei. To say that Molly is perfect for John is another understatement — Molly is perfect for every guy! So life for John flips from the icy waters to paradise on earth. Everything is pulsating in living color. Until, that is, Molly’s 21 year old son, Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill, who comes across like your friendly local psychotic, decides John is not good for his mother. Actually, no man is good for his mother.

The love affair between John and Molly morphs into a war between John and Cyrus. As the romance retreats, backfield tactics roar forward and soon it’s a battle to the end. A hilarious battle to the end.

Everyone in this triangle of love and hate has what you could call significant faults — the depressing John, the creepy Cyrus, the rather clueless Molly — turning Cyrus into a comical film of brutal manipulation and outright dysfunctionalism and of course love. So, does the romance between the mug and the dish survive? Or does the psycho sink their relationship?

Screenwriter-directors Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass have done it again – twisted a human relationship into a litany of crowd chuckles inter-spaced by hardy laughs with some fine insights into the human condition.. If you want a love story stratospheric above the typical love gush, check out Cyrus. It certainly got rid of my hangover.

Meira Blaustein interviewing the Duplass brothers:

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Since the world community has descended on Haiti with relief aid in response to the January 12th earthquake, I am wondering how Haiti’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities are being helped.

As one of Haiti’s most marginal groups, the question arises in response to how some American LGBTQ New Orleans residents were treated during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in 2005.

During Hurricane Katrina, former President George W. Bush’s conservative faith-based organizations – like the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and all other organizations in Bush’s “armies of compassion” – highlighted how after the storm homophobia blew in.

While seemingly invisible in the disaster, many LGBTQ evacuees of Katrina and their families faced discrimination at the hands of those conservative faith-based relief organizations because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV status.

“Tragedy does not discriminate and neither should relief agencies,” stated Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, in a news release in 2005. “In our experience during the aftermath of September 11, LGBT people face compounded difficulties because on top of the disaster, they face discrimination when it comes to recognizing their relationships, leading to even more hardship at the worst moment imaginable.”

My concern is, will many of these same conservative faith-based relief agencies that are now in Haiti transfer their homophobic attitudes onto Haiti’s LGBTQ citizens?

Ironically, homosexuality has been legal in Haiti since 1986. But few protections and provisions come with it. For example, same-sex marriage and civil unions are not recognized. It’s unclear whether LGBTQ couples can adopt children or have custody of their own children. LGBTQ Haitians don’t openly serve in the military. They don’t have an anti-hate crime bill that specifically addresses discrimination and harassment LGBTQ Haitians face on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Minimally, LGBTQ Haitians are protected under its Constitution as stated in Article 35-2 that prohibits discrimination in the workplace based on, “sex, beliefs, opinions and marital status.” And the United Nation’s International Bill of Human Rights mainly protects LGBTQ Haitians. With no queer enclaves in Port-au-Prince and other big cities throughout Haiti, many LGBTQ Haitians are left puzzled by what it means that homosexuality is legal in their country.

However, as in all repressively homophobic cultures, LGBTQ people have always found ways to express and to live out their true authentic lives. In Haiti, how openly queer you are depends not only on your class, profession, and skin complexion, but also your religious affiliation.

In a country that is predominately Roman Catholic, homosexuality is condemned. But among Haiti’s LGBTQ middle and professional classes, they find ways to socialize out of the public “gaydar” and with impunity.

For example, Petionville, an upscale suburb of Port-au-Prince of mostly American and European whites and multiracial Haitians, is where many LGBTQ people will informally gather for dinner parties, at restaurants and beaches. The well-known 4-star tourist hotel, the Hotel Montana, in the hills of Petionville that was recently destroyed by the quake, is one of the hot spots. And these queers hold positions as government officials, business people, and NGO and UN aid workers.

For the poorer classes of LGBTQ Haitians who live, work, and socialize in the densely populated and improvised capitol city of Port-au-Prince, discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender expressions is commonplace. The 2002 documentary, “Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Men and Gods),” by anthropologist Anne Lescot, exposed the daily struggles of Haitian transwomen. Blondine in the film said, “When people insult me because I wear a dress I am not ashamed of how I am. Masisis (gay males) can’t walk down the street in a wig and dress.”

But poorer classes of LGBTQ Haitians do have at least two ways to openly express and celebrate who they are – in Vodou and in Rara festivals.

Although the universal perception of Vodou is the Hollywood stereotype of an orgiastic ceremony ritualizing the malevolent powers of black magic and engaging in cannibalism, Hai tian Vodou is an ancestral folk religion that expresses an acceptance of all people of all sexual orientations and gender expressions.

With the belief that behavior is guided by a spirit (loa), gay males in Haitian Vodou are under the divine protection of Erzulie Freda, the spirit of love. And as a feminine sprit, gay males are allowed to imitate and worship her. And lesbians (madivins) are considered to be under the patronage of Erzulie Dantor, a fierce protector of women and children experiencing domestic violence. Erzulie Dantor is bisexual, but she prefers the company of women.

Rara Festivals, a yearly festival that begins following Carnival, belongs to the peasant and urban poor of Haiti. The Rara bands come out of Vodou societies that have gay congregations where gay men are permitted to cross-dress with impunity.

It is my hope that the many conservative faith-based groups and organizations that are now part of Haiti’s earthquake relief effort will not discriminate against Haiti’s LGBTQ community as many of them did toward New Orleans’s queer communities during Katrina.

And it is my hope they remember that engaging acts of goodwill are needed in the face of this natural disaster and they must be inclusive of all God’s people.

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Soho House New York Wellness Week

Day 4: FINAL COUNTDOWN

And so, on this penultimate day of January, Soho House New York’s Wellness Week comes to an end, as all good things must. But who’s to say we can’t have wellness week every week? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my happy meeting of all the excellent holistic teachers featured in these posts–I didn’t even get to talk about Dr. Alejandro Junger’s candid chat on Tuesday night, not that he needs any more press from me, or about the awesome vibrating guys from Station fitness, though I hope to feature them in the coming weeks–it’s that lasting wellness is not something you can achieve with sporadic spurts of dedication. It’s a gradual process that requires daily engagement. In the case of health, slow and steady wins the race, and this is anathema to the general human preference for immediate gratification.

Self-care seemed to be the pervasive theme, whether it manifested as administering your own belly rubs, or simply being in-tune enough to know when you need to reach out for a professional’s help. The most important thing to realize is that each of the therapies I experienced–as is true for most of holistic medicine–are not miracle cures; they simply work to fortify your body’s own functioning. But this improved state of being is only lasting insofar as you manage to keep away from doing things that actively harm your body’s ability to perform, as so many of us are wont to do when we’re in the thick of it, only to come searching for some magic pill to make the aches and pains and allergies and sickness go away. Unfortunately, none exists. And where would be the fun in life if actions had no reactions and a simple pill could make it all better? Feel free to quote me the next time I ask you for an Advil.

When I queried SHNY’s Guy Chetwynd why he and his staff chose the end of January for their first ever Wellness Week, he offered these savvy insights into our collective psychosis.

“Everyone comes off their New Year’s Eve champagne hangover with a laundry list of uncompromising resolutions: ‘Never drink champagne again.’ ‘Never eat chocolate again.’ ‘Be asleep by 7:30pm with kids.’ ‘Two hours of cardio…a day.’ And three weeks later, we’ve all slid back to our old routines, and we’re as unhealthy as ever. Wellness Week was designed to give everyone a chance to revisit the resolutions they’d made and jumpstart their health routine with a variety of healing treatments. By gaining a bit of distance, and harnessing the holistic view of the alternative therapies on tap this week, the hope is to make reincorporating some of the more manageable resolutions a bit easier.”

It’s true, the American version of resolution making seems to be an exercise in futility, if only because we are a bit over-eager to improve ourselves and end up setting unattainable goals. And so, this idea of giving everyone a second chance to do it right–of bringing everyone back to square one, just as we were beginning to let it all slide–is quite an interesting one. Out of the gate, we’re all gung ho about punishing ourselves with stringent rules for 2010 to compensate for all our indulgences in 2009. But the confines are too rigid, and it’s only a matter of time before we revert to old habits, searching again for the illusory cure-all that can absolve us of all responsibility for taking care of ourselves. Isn’t it time we inject some sanity into this crazy ritual?

The real goal should be to make small changes that can truly promote wellness because they are lasting. SHNY trail blazed a path for us this week. But to continue the healing process, we’ll need to remind each other and ourselves to come back to center as needed, to recalibrate and find where a happy medium lies, and to make ours a daily commitment as we strive to gain permanent health.

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A Miller Lite TV commercial currently airing features a young fellow unable to disgorge the word “love” to his adoring female companion. President Obama appeared plagued by a similar inability to say the word “manufacturing” in his State of the Union address, ostensibly designed to exhibit a renewed focus on jobs.

Instead of a call for revitalizing manufacturing, we heard of the need for more “production” in pursuit of exports. Coupled with the speech’s unmistakable endorsement of the status quo on trade policy – specific references to South Korea and Colombia that were impossible to miss as affronts to the industrial unions who oppose those deals — the president’s aversion to addressing manufacturing left little doubt that deference to the financialization of the economy continues to trump any hope of reinvigorating industrial employment.

The problem of failing to address manufacturing’s decline, let alone forge a national strategy to compete with China for manufacturing preeminence, is that it cheapens the president’s talk about jobs in light of the evidence:

• Manufacturing employment has fallen by 2.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

• Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October of last year, a loss of 5.5 million (32 percent of all manufacturing jobs) since October 2000.

• In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7million) than were working in manufacturing.

• Currently, 20 percent of manufacturing and construction workers are unemployed – double the national unemployment rate.

The beauty of addressing this issue rather than avoiding it is that it is a problem, like most others, that Obama inherited, as well as being one for which both parties are responsible. The president could as well urge both parties to unite in addressing the future of U.S. manufacturing as condemn their past errors.

The other virtue of taking up the manufacturing challenge is that it enjoys great favor with the voting public. In a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, Americans were asked what should be done to create more jobs in the U.S. The number one response was “keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S.”

So, why the president’s obvious reticence?

There is, first of all, the unmistakable indifference of both parties’ operatives to the lives of people in places like Gary, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan, Youngstown, Ohio and the southern corridor of metropolitan L.A. For Republicans, this is standard operating procedure. For Democrats, allegedly the party of working people, it’s elitism that slouches toward hypocrisy.

This is especially true of the current White House, where any blood knowledge of the human damage being done to the citizens of industrial America is unlikely among the Harvard Boy’s Club peopling the inner circle. Indeed, they have been among the bipartisan consensus in Washington that has championed the current trade regime that is hollowing out U.S. manufacturing.

Their unstinting allegiance to globalization as currently practiced has been the stalking horse for Wall Street adventurism in foreign markets, where labor is cheap and profit margins are irresistible, a policy front that has led to the financialization of a U.S. economy in which manufacturing’s share of GDP has been cut in half while financial services’ share has doubled.

The administration’s only nod to this reversal of fortunes has been to acknowledge the problem exists by issuing a “Framework for Revitalizing American Manufacturing,” largely a potpourri of diverse policy initiatives launched since taking office that was released late in the week shortly before Christmas, timing that suggested greater interest in its obscurity than its recommendations.

The administration’s preferred approach is to focus on the emerging clean energy sector, laudable in its own right, but unlikely to overtake the jump start already enjoyed by China and Germany, unless a commitment is made to protect the development of renewable component manufacturing as these countries have.

As Northeastern University professor Joan Fitzgerald avers in her soon-to-be published book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development:

“Absent industrial policies to develop these new industries, the desire to attract green businesses is just the latest variant on a familiar zero-sum game of smokestack chasing … If the United States wants to get serious about capturing or recapturing clean energy production such as wind and solar…we have to get over our aversion to industrial policy.”

Getting over that aversion would begin with abandoning the weak insistence that our foreign trading partners start “playing by the rules,” as the President did his speech, and practicing instead the Golden Rule of Global Competition: do unto others as they are doing unto us.

Right now China, for one, is implementing a full-blown industrial strategy that secures both their emerging clean energy industry and its markets. The faux populism toward the banks that the President displayed in his speech is no substitute for the United States pursuing policies that nurture U.S. markets and restore employment in manufacturing the products of the desired clean energy economy.

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A Miller Lite TV commercial currently airing features a young fellow unable to disgorge the word “love” to his adoring female companion. President Obama appeared plagued by a similar inability to say the word “manufacturing” in his State of the Union address, ostensibly designed to exhibit a renewed focus on jobs.

Instead of a call for revitalizing manufacturing, we heard of the need for more “production” in pursuit of exports. Coupled with the speech’s unmistakable endorsement of the status quo on trade policy – specific references to South Korea and Colombia that were impossible to miss as affronts to the industrial unions who oppose those deals — the president’s aversion to addressing manufacturing left little doubt that deference to the financialization of the economy continues to trump any hope of reinvigorating industrial employment.

The problem of failing to address manufacturing’s decline, let alone forge a national strategy to compete with China for manufacturing preeminence, is that it cheapens the president’s talk about jobs in light of the evidence:

• Manufacturing employment has fallen by 2.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

• Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October of last year, a loss of 5.5 million (32 percent of all manufacturing jobs) since October 2000.

• In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7million) than were working in manufacturing.

• Currently, 20 percent of manufacturing and construction workers are unemployed – double the national unemployment rate.

The beauty of addressing this issue rather than avoiding it is that it is a problem, like most others, that Obama inherited, as well as being one for which both parties are responsible. The president could as well urge both parties to unite in addressing the future of U.S. manufacturing as condemn their past errors.

The other virtue of taking up the manufacturing challenge is that it enjoys great favor with the voting public. In a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, Americans were asked what should be done to create more jobs in the U.S. The number one response was “keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S.”

So, why the president’s obvious reticence?

There is, first of all, the unmistakable indifference of both parties’ operatives to the lives of people in places like Gary, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan, Youngstown, Ohio and the southern corridor of metropolitan L.A. For Republicans, this is standard operating procedure. For Democrats, allegedly the party of working people, it’s elitism that slouches toward hypocrisy.

This is especially true of the current White House, where any blood knowledge of the human damage being done to the citizens of industrial America is unlikely among the Harvard Boy’s Club peopling the inner circle. Indeed, they have been among the bipartisan consensus in Washington that has championed the current trade regime that is hollowing out U.S. manufacturing.

Their unstinting allegiance to globalization as currently practiced has been the stalking horse for Wall Street adventurism in foreign markets, where labor is cheap and profit margins are irresistible, a policy front that has led to the financialization of a U.S. economy in which manufacturing’s share of GDP has been cut in half while financial services’ share has doubled.

The administration’s only nod to this reversal of fortunes has been to acknowledge the problem exists by issuing a “Framework for Revitalizing American Manufacturing,” largely a potpourri of diverse policy initiatives launched since taking office that was released late in the week shortly before Christmas, timing that suggested greater interest in its obscurity than its recommendations.

The administration’s preferred approach is to focus on the emerging clean energy sector, laudable in its own right, but unlikely to overtake the jump start already enjoyed by China and Germany, unless a commitment is made to protect the development of renewable component manufacturing as these countries have.

As Northeastern University professor Joan Fitzgerald avers in her soon-to-be published book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development:

“Absent industrial policies to develop these new industries, the desire to attract green businesses is just the latest variant on a familiar zero-sum game of smokestack chasing … If the United States wants to get serious about capturing or recapturing clean energy production such as wind and solar…we have to get over our aversion to industrial policy.”

Getting over that aversion would begin with abandoning the weak insistence that our foreign trading partners start “playing by the rules,” as the President did his speech, and practicing instead the Golden Rule of Global Competition: do unto others as they are doing unto us.

Right now China, for one, is implementing a full-blown industrial strategy that secures both their emerging clean energy industry and its markets. The faux populism toward the banks that the President displayed in his speech is no substitute for the United States pursuing policies that nurture U.S. markets and restore employment in manufacturing the products of the desired clean energy economy.

More on State of the Union

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