Deliberate Thoughts

As I drive I often think how inconsiderate we are. For instance why is it that we fail to signal when making a turn or changing lanes? Is it so much of an effort? What is it? Is it just laziness or is it as I suspect that we are just so self absorbed that we just don’t give a damn about anyone or anything except what is going on in our world?  I know that I have to stop myself from getting angry and not take it personal when someone doesn’t signal when if they had, I could have proceeded on my way. It’s hard not to take it personal though because it is happening to us but it’s not really because had we left the house sooner or a minute later that driver would not have crossed our field of vision. It still pisses me off and there are times when I want to castigate the miscreant but am helpless to do so. I just have to let it go. 

And those drivers that when approaching the intersection seem to speed up way past the limit when we are making a turn in front of them. If they were driving at normal speed we make the turn well in time before they have to brake. I see this all the time and they get indignant and blow their horn so as to make their hostilities known to us. I know I have been guilty as well when the turning light interval is gone I continue with the turn holding up the oncoming lane that has been waiting for the turning arrow to go dark.  Only today the light turned green for me  and if I had proceeded a second sooner I would have collided with the driver making a left running the red light. Somehow I think that more egregious than my inconsiderateness of extending the turning light but we are all in such a hurry to go nowhere most of the time. Yes there are times when we have a genuine need but those are very rare indeed. 

And my biggest pet peeve is the smoker who likes to throw his butt out the window and not use his or her ashtray. God do I hate that. The road is their garbage can and it galls me that people think they have some inalienable right to flick their butts out open windows. A filthy habit to be sure and one that I can pontificate endlessly about since I do not smoke. And those that litter may be the worst of all as I wonder what their house looks like. 

Rocks and Hard Places

Women sometimes ask questions they don’t want the answer to.  They probably get enchanted with the question. It’s our job as men not to put ourselves between a rock and a hard place.  The truth might leave us with a slap in the face and a lie brings on eyes lit like a ferocious fire.  What to do?  A question with a question is the way to sidestep these queries. Something like: I know you have a good reason why you are asking me that, would you mind telling me what it is?  If she says: I just want to know. You can stop take a deep breath and tell her you love her and say that if she really needs an honest answer, that you need time to think about it because you know that it’s obviously important to her.  She might not like that response but she will respect you because you took the time to think about it and just didn’t fire off an answer you thought she wanted to hear.   

The Real Man Up

I think that a man transitioning into the world of spiritual awareness is not quite as big a stretch as one might imagine. Since men have been accustomed to being alone with their thoughts since the dawn of time, providing any key that will unlock the door of isolation is not only welcome and needed but also essential if men are to maintain their masculine identity.

Because what is it to be male in the 21st century?  The rules have certainly changed through a number of factors.  Gender neutrality, political correctness, women’s liberation, equality between the sexes and simply the change that technology and time have effectuated emasculating men and what were their traditional roles were. Even the media continues to man bash us and propagate the notion that we are just imbeciles in pants.  The question becomes what is it to be masculine and is it necessary anymore?

That of course is a debatable question and quite frankly not for women to answer. We as men must decide that in order for us to flourish in the world modern we have tasks to undertake that we have never considered before. One of those ventures is in the realm of spiritual awakening. When we begin to be put in touch with our feelings as our female counterparts seem to have first dibs on, we need to take a page out of their range of emotion file and give it the manly technique of never making it a tool to manipulate people but an acumen that allows us to become fully male unencumbered by the constricts of the now conventional wisdom that we are mainly here for just one thing. I for one am tired of hearing the new age phrase of “Man Up” because it is so one sided as a way for women to use us one dimensionally. When we take on becoming spiritually aware we take that ploy away from the world at large.

The Epidemic

I remember a friend of mine who owned the first cell phone that I ever saw back in 1983. It was a DynaTAC 8000x made by Motorola. Even the name sounded like it weighed a ton.  It actually weighed two pounds and measured 13 inches x 1.75 inches x 3.5 inches versus for example the RAZR that weighs a mere 3.5 ounces measures 3.9 inches x 2.1 inches x 0.5 inches. But it cost $3,995 (almost $9,000 in today’s dollars) and its nickname was “the brick”. And it had a measly 30 minutes of talk time before it needed a 10-hour recharge. Just imagine that subscriptions were 12.4 million in 1990 and last year they were 4.6 billion. 

Who’d a thunk that a clunky invention like that would become the pervasive life force that it has become today.  I until recently could not understand why we needed Internet access on our phone when our laptops or desktops were available at home or in our office. Someone knew something and the profit for the cell carriers that have remained is obscene and is  only surpassed by the Oil companies and of course their gouging of consumers is a another story. 

What is my point here after the history lesson? What is now a seeming necessity has also become lethal like DWI and probably has the addictive powers second to maybe nicotine. You think not? Certainly we have seen while driving a car in front of us veer off slightly as the motorists head seems lowered not focused on the road. That’s because he or she is texting an extremely important message to a loved one or family member. Of course I am being facetious here because in the world of instant gratification even e-mails are not quick enough for our insatiable desire to communicate electronically. It has even put our face-to-face relationships in jeopardy because as you sit in restaurants and other eateries you see people sitting across from each other not talking but busily tapping out communiqués that preempt live conversation. 

Everywhere I go virtually everyone has a cell phone in hand at the ready. What is alarming too is that people are not only putting others at risk while driving but even crossing the street, entering buildings or simply walking down corridors the head is down focused on what is transpiring on their cell phone. I find it amazing that people walk as if they had their eyes closed and if I don’t have my head up I will walk right into these people. 

Talking on the cell phone while driving without a hands free apparatus is well documented but with the added feature of texting the danger is elevated to egregious levels and its an epidemic that not only threatens lives but places innocent drivers at risk as well. 

Of course there is less danger on foot or to a lesser extent when we are sitting on our posteriors but just like the Walkman, which began this pandemic of isolation, the cell phone threatens relationships to the breaking point. 

The Women of Spin

I have grown past the diaphanous tights stage that some men might find alluring in a spin class. Maybe that’s because I am more serious than ever about my fitness, maybe it’s because too many of the females in class have become my friends and I am just too uncomfortable looking at their physiologies too closely any more or maybe because I am a sexagenarian. (No that’s not it) Now some may say reading this: “Yeah Right”. Well I am sorry you feel that way but that is the truth.

 Having said that however, I can still admire some of the near perfect forms that are the Women of KSC. Take the Queen herself. Today still sporting the tan from her Mexican trip her décolleté painted with a glistening sweat was like animated apollonian art. She made me think of the Empress, Michelle Corso whose only fat lies in her big toe, the instructors at Equinox are like rarefied air. And they inspire me to recapture the form I had as late as age 45. I am determined one day to lift my shirt in class and thank you all for getting me back to a fitness of a 40 something.  

My Personal Statement Revised

This is a great opportunity for a man of 60 years old to get more acquainted with himself and connect with others in a way that will resonate with people of any age and hopefully any walk of life, ethnicity or gender. When I became a sexagenarian it was probably the most significant emotional and spiritual event that I can recall because it gave me a vantage point that I had never considered because I live my life to the fullest yet only day to day. One of my major shortcomings is not having had a plan. I used to make goals but I think my accomplishments have come through osmosis as it were rather than a concerted conscious effort on my part.  

The best place to start is where am I now. I am about to complete my second undergraduate degree in Psychology from an online University called Argosy. I have been attracted to how the mind works for the better half of my life. My regret, which I have left by the side of the road, was that a career in Psychology is in essence my unlived life.

  I am determined to avoid the world of stagnation and despair that my 82-year-old father lives in.  My remaining years I hope will be characterized by the word that I have learned in my psychology studies and that is generativity. I have so much to offer succeeding generations merely by the life I have lived. Whether it be through my life passing through military college, a major weight loss of 75 pounds, a running career that included 17 marathons, life as an alcoholic and one in recovery for 21+ years. But my best work I think came in the 13 years as a Step dad, which continues to bedevil and inspire me. 

Let me take the reader through my life presently and work backward.  I am currently in the role of financial advisor, which has been my main source of income for 30 years. About 12 years ago I came upon a methodology that allowed me to enter my clients lives tabular rasa or clean slate. It provides me with the best perspective because I do not have a particular agenda and I approach them from the nurture side of life. In this way it allows me to connect with them on a social and emotional level. Fortunately I can incorporate the benefits of objectivity with the subjectivity of my personality.  I have always held the belief that financial advising is not about the numbers it is helping people live their lives and in their money rather than be locked out of it only to see the eroding forces take it from them without their consent. 

Woven into my professional life, about 13 years ago I married a woman with three children from her previous marriage. They were young adults of 13, 18, and 23, so some of the problematic parts of step parenting bringing up children were never encountered. However it took a yeoman’s effort on my part having lived without any children of my own to submerge my selfish ego and allows the egocentricities of young adults to blossom and grow with as little interference from me as possible. My relationships with all 3 have been for the most part satisfying although there were times in the beginning that I would say to my wife: I didn’t sign up for this. She calmly and collectively told me that I had but that did not ease the emotional turmoil in those first few years. The most salient point I taught myself was to wait one day. Waiting one day whenever I was upset about any perceived wrong my stepchildren had done me. This singular strategy kept me out of arguments with my wife, my stepchildren and my own inner turmoil.  It was not easy by any means because when I felt threatened my natural reaction was to react and right what was the perceived wrong. However, I quickly learned that if I was to stay in this relationship and I did it would mean that I would have to craft responses instead of power driven arguments if I really wanted my children to understand and comprehend who I was. I had little problem distinguishing myself from their biological father because he was actively engaged outside their life, which presented it’s own problems because there were times that especially my stepson would act out on me because of the absenteeism of his dad. Their father and I had a few skirmishes at first but I quickly learned that although I would win each battle I was losing the war and so I disengaged from any and all attacks on my wife’s ex-husband.  

About a year ago I started to blog about my exploits being a step dad and that has helped me vent some of my frustrations when to air them publicly with my wife would only have ended in hurt feelings or placing her in the proverbial catch 22. I have tried to be more than fair in my writings. My friends tell me I have gone too far in accommodating my stepson in particular but he sees it in a different light as do I now and we are getting along famously now. God it only took 13 years but I am grateful nonetheless. 

Also woven into my current working life and tenure, as a stepparent has been my life in recovery from alcohol and drugs for the past 21+ years. I have been fortunate in never having relapsed in that time. This too I have been blogging about in what I call: My Life After AA. These writings are my own experience and they have been reported to be a didactic source to my readers and quite frankly to me as well. This writing capability has extended itself into 13 blogs that I write on a regular basis. I of course am seeking to be discovered by some editor and maybe one day I will be. My writing is experiential in nature and I have been told that I am able to capture within my writing, emotion that normally would take pages. I just know that like my life, my writing is not scripted and it arrives nascent, or Faulkneresque as some have mused. 

I will stop here lest I get too verbose. I would like to share that my experience in taking psychology has been a rich experience also not without it’s challenges as there were times when as Frank Sinatra said: I thought of cutting out, but my heart just ain’t gonna buy it. I feel that even past middle age I have a lot that I can offer as practitioner in a therapeutic practice in some humanistic way. My concern is just what to do with my degree and as I am reading the current assignment in my ultimate class of Advanced Psychology some of those questions might just be answered. The current professor may have the answer in her title and I will endeavor to seek out her advice in helping me move to the next step postgraduate.  

The Murder of Kitty Genovese

Catherine (Kitty) Genovese was brutally murdered on March 13th 1964 and it  can easily  be attributed to the concepts of  diffusion of responsibility and the bystander effect which made for great headlines in the New York Times but if one digs deeper into the story it was not 37 or 38 citizens of Kew Gardens New York that watched, listened and did nothing while ‘Kitty’ was attacked not once but twice, it was more like 6 or 7. And although some accounts made out that she was attacked 3 times it was just twice and the second was in a foyer virtually out of sight of these apathetic bystanders. 

After this story broke many pundits including the clergy called the incident an example of moral lethargy and the very respected Mike Wallace dubbed his story “The Apathetic American.”  It made for great press and the inhabitants of the tiny hamlet of Kew Gardens were vilified and many moved away and were characterized as callous, immoral and chickenhearted. Extreme examples always seem to be the tactic the American press and media use to make their stories sensational and melodramatic. The New York Times article painted Kitty’s murder as an urban horror, which it was but mislead the public as to what actually occurred.  Books, articles, songs, scripts and even songs were inspired by the false betrayal of how 38 witnesses watched their neighbor die. The Times based their story on a false police report, which later reported the discrepancy, but it was too late. 

It would seem that people didn’t want to get involved because some thought it was a lover’s quarrel even though in reality Kitty was in a committed relationship with another woman. Psychology studies that were spawned since the murder came to the conclusion that it was not callous indifference that kept neighbors from intervening but it was linked to confusion, uncertainty, fear and misapprehension that caused people not to pitch in this emergency.  

There was much good that came from this tragedy in that the 911 emergency telephone system was launched which in effect gave anonymity to those that otherwise might not get involved and the understanding of human psychology was greatly expanded. In a twist of fate the erroneous report in the Times was rather ironic in the fact that almost 50 years later the murder of Kitty Genovese is still being talked, read and written about (Rasenberger, J., 2006).