Learned: Fats Domino was still alive but is now dead. Same deal with Robert Guillaume. Fats was of Haitian descent. Robert wasn’t; he just adopted the name Guillaume because it is William in French and his real last name is Williams. He had a son who died of AIDS is 1990. The flight attendant who snack-shamed me a couple of years ago still works the same route on Virgin American. She was nicer this time, but still showed signs of passive-aggressivism. Looking at your phone while crossing the street in Honolulu became a finable offense today.
3. NPR. Row 3 on Virgin America flights. Uber Drivers. 3.
Seems: Like I really messed up my back while packing to come home. Like I have a nice apartment when I come home to it clean. Like I’ll need to take it pretty easy today.
New Habit(s): (I now have to fill this in every day to see what sticks.) Continue letting go, especially of significance and anxiety. Seek out opportunities for REHAB. Look at what I wrote for new habits last time. Copy and paste if you can’t remember. Allow excitement. Look at Game, calendar daily. Have breakfast. Kneel for the National Anthem until the police are sorted. Have days where I don’t buy something. (Recognize online shopping is a habit, not a pure necessity.)
Accomplished: Travelled home and made it. Unpacked almost completely. Enjoyed being home.
Thinking about: Brother struggling with Cancer, going in for another chemo treatment today. Parents supporting brother struggling with Cancer.
Q: Could you list your top 3 shouldn’t be’s and then instantly be with the reality of them? (3 things you resist as they are, declare and be complete.)
My Answer to that:
1. The President. Would need to give stuff up endlessly, so not a powerful yes unless I say “because who I am is empowering effective leadership.”
2. Natural disasters. Accept them well these days, it’s the aftermath/response that hooks me. Can I go to nothing and just be with it, including imagined suffering. Yep.
3. Racism/Supremacy. I do acknowledge and accept it is wherever it is right now. I want to be on the big team to move us, the human race, out of it. Will take some ongoing getting to nothing, as I get not all humans would like it to go the way I see is possible.
Video: https://youtu.be/E4q5j8KLOvo +bonus https://youtu.be/84w6qZMa3hE
Reading on hold, but: “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” by Ibram X. Kendi, and “A Wall Between” by Anne Braden, and soon will listen to “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Also reviewing “A Thousand Words for Joy” by Byron Katie.