Paulosophia • Paul E. Martin's Personal Blog •

She Cried And I Cried.

July 26, 2019 By paulosophia in Blog, Life, Personal, Philosophy Tags: my life, philosophy

Last week I trudged through Terminal C at Dallas Fort Worth airport. Our plane broke down. We were headed to DC. We sat in a 95-degree airplane on the tarmac, for three hours. They returned us to the gate. I rushed to see if I could grab another flight; I had an important meeting on Friday morning. The lady at the gate — head down, typing — mumbled, “Go to American Airlines Customer Service at C25.”

I am rushing to C25. I’m zig-zagging through hundreds of other stranded travelers. I looked up and I saw this woman, crying. Not just kinda crying — like, crying. I first noticed her when she was about 15 feet in front of me, walking in my direction. She had dishwater blonde hair. Shoulder length. Wearing a black blouse, she looked to be in her 40’s.

I got that “I wonder what’s wrong?” thought in my head. You start feeling sad inside; it always happens when you see a person crying in public. If a baby is crying it can agitate you. But when an adult cries, you just immediately feel for them. You know what I’m talking about.

It would have been completely awkward to ask her what’s wrong. Especially given that we are all rushing around a hot airport. We were all going somewhere. It’s not like she was alone on a park bench or something. Even then, it would still be weird for a 54-year-old man to interrupt some woman, crying alone on a park bench. But not as weird as it would be in a crowded airport, while she’s rushing to get somewhere.

After I passed the crying lady, and while I was feeling that “I wonder what’s wrong?” feeling, I thought about this yoga class I took a few years ago. At my studio, after class ends, you lie in savasana. You are instructed to be quiet. You are instructed to lie still for a least a few minutes. (I always stay longer than anyone else, for at least 10 minutes, because when else do you ever get to lie on your back in a public place in total silence without people think you are a freak, unless you are at the park or the beach or something?) First I heard just sniffles. Then you could hear really soft crying. Then, that sound of someone holding back tears — it’s kind of a gasping holding your breath sound. Deep breaths. Clandestinely, I peered out of the corner of my right eye. I saw her. She was on her knees, in an upright position, facing the front mirror. I watched the whole thing. Then, she started this slow, pathetic sob. I don’t mean that she was pathetic; I just mean that deep sobs are such a sad sound that it can leave you feeling pathetically hopeless. Especially if you’re in the same room alone with heartbroken woman, but you are a 50-something male and it would be awkward to interrupt and try to help.

I passed the crying lady in the Dallas airport, and then I just prayed a little prayer for her.

Physicalists would like to reduce crying to a physiological state of affairs, in the same way they do with pain. “No such thing as pain” — there is only the firing of c-fibers. To the physicalist, everything reduces to the physical: only atoms exist.

But crying and pain must be more than mere physical activity. Maybe physicalists want to reduce all human emotion to physics because they are afraid (another phenomenon they reduce to physics lol) of the powerful reality of human emotions.

We all feel sadness. We all feel pain. So, sometimes, we cry. That subjective experience of ours — itself — cannot be explained, scientifically. You can’t view the experience of feeling sadness under a microscope.

My flight to DC was canceled. I arrived the next day. Took 27 hours to get from LA to DC. I missed my Friday morning meeting. I went for a run. I ended up standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

And I cried.

I cried because he stood for truth and justice. I cried because our nation today doesn’t seem like it stands for truth and justice.

I’ve been told that I seem aloof or hard on the inside. But I’m a crier. My mom was a crier. Her father was a crier.

My father seems hard on the inside. He is a crier.

I don’t know why crying should be embarrassing.

You don’t really ever see men crying in public. You really don’t really ever see men cry at all.

Throwing Mom In The Trash.

June 13, 2019 By paulosophia in Parenting, Personal Tags: my life, parenting

I don’t go to Starbuck’s too often. I do when I travel, though. I think because Starbucks feels familiar.

It felt familiar in Saint Louis last week.

It felt familiar in Louisville and Fort Collins and even in Sydney a few weeks before.

And don’t know of any coffee houses for locals that compare to my local, Kean Coffee.

I think Kean has the best coffee you can find. The owner, Martin Deitrich, was awarded this distinguished coffee lifetime achievement award. From the International Guild of Coffee. (I’m not sure if that’s the name of the guild but his award was a really big deal and he told me they’ve only given like 9 of them, ever.)

Anyway, I don’t want to write about coffee right now. I want to write about… waste. And guilt. And ethics — what should one do?

I hate wasting stuff. But not as much as mom. My mother has a scarcity mentality. Or, she had it before the stroke. She spent her life trying to save and conserve stuff. She didn’t waste anything. I’m not even kidding. She would rewash those cheap plastic cups. She saved those wires they put on bread bags. Her mother, my Nonna, would rewash those cheap paper plates —the white ones that always had stains on them after use.

Mom was always walking around the house turning off lights in every room.

One time I walked in and found her on the dining room table. Literally standing up — a 70-year-old lady swaying around — removing half of the bulbs in the chandelier. To “save electricity.”

She could have killed herself.

I’d hate to live that way if I’m honest. I am most certainly a conservationist, but not her version. I don’t lose sleep over the fact that Americans are the most wasteful people on the planet. I think Mom did. I even think her scarcity mentality about waste could have led to her stroke.

A few years ago, she was doing a wedding. She was a florist. As a part-time thing. And she had all these white five-gallon buckets for the flowers. Like 20 of them. And after she made all the bouquets, there were all these empty buckets in her garage, half-filled with water. I saw her carrying one of them into the back yard. They were pretty heavy. Each one probably had three to four gallons. And one gallon of fresh water weighs over 8 pounds.

So I ask my 70-year-old mother who’s lugging this 30-pound bucket of water, “Mom, what are you doing? Do you need help?”

Mom didn’t ever really like help with things. She was kind of a martyr in a way. So I just jumped in to help her because I didn’t want her to break her back.

In her garage was a sink. So I grabbed one of the buckets. I went to empty it (in the obvious place where anyone would empty a bucket of water). Mom intervenes: “Don’t waste the water, you can use it to water the plants in the back yard!”

She was serious and emotional. Scarcity mentality does that to you. I’m not even kidding, it can make you almost crazy.

Three to four gallons of water costs way less than a penny. And there was no drought; we were past that. So I’m like, “Mom, seriously, a gallon of water costs about $.001 cent!” I can be pretty logical sometimes and as I get older I’m realizing that sometimes emotion can dwarf logic. But I wasn’t thinking about that, I just didn’t want to carry all these buckets to the back yard to save an entire penny.

And then she, in the martyry way of hers, grabs it out of my had, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” and she starts lugging it away so she could live by her scarcity mentality

“Okay Mom, I’ll conserve that water!” I didn’t have to, but the thought of watching her would have made me feel really guilty and I hate feeling guilty, especially when it comes to my mom. I think most sons don’t want to feel guilty for letting their moms down.

When I go to Starbucks, when I travel, I always ask them to not give me a plastic lid. But it’s not not in the spirit of my conservationist mother. I like to drink coffee and everything else out of the glass or cup. Those lids get in the way. I don’t use straws. Not because of my mild conservationist proclivities and mom’s indoctrination, but because I just prefer to sip out of the cup. It tastes better.

Last week in Saint Louis, I told the barista, “No lid please,” but then she quickly slipped one of these sleeves on the cup. I almost inturrupted her effeciency. But she pretty much had it already slipped on so I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of customers that’s always so picky about every little thing.

But while I was drinking my grande latte with an extra shot and whole milk (why would anyone ever drink nonfat milk?) I kept thinking about that sleave.

And the Starbuck Lady on it.

And I felt the Starbucks Lady’s eyes were Mom’s eyes — glaring at me, with that guilting look of hers, the one she used when I didn’t want to save her that penny.

Don’t you dare dare throw away this sleeve.

I stressed for 10 minutes about this utterly insignificant first world problem — or not so first world problem. Me and my overthinking — or not over thinking — about this shred of recycled paper.

Two simultaneous thoughts — “Don’t disappoint mom who is staring at me and “This sleave is utterly insignificant to the issue of global waste.”

I finaly stand. I returned the sleeve to the barista: “I won’t need this anymore.” She shoots me an “oh brother” look.

I felt I did the right thing, the barista did not.

But mom matters more.

No Failure Of Nerve

June 6, 2019 By paulosophia in Uncategorized

Students on the streets of China, soldiers on the beaches of Normandy.

We celebrate their nerve this week. The nerve of true radicals. The nerve of true heroes. The nerve of those with guts — ones with the audacity to believe THEY could face down power, tyranny, and genocide.

These radicals, at different places and times but united in cause, stared into the eyes of brainwashed minds — and their bullets— and screamed, “No you won’t!”

They knew some things matter more than self-preservation — truth, justice, liberty for all people, freedom to worship, freedom of the press.

As we celebrate them — dead and alive — let us also recognize that no society is too far from the return of those insidious IDEAS — xenophobia (the fear of “others”), nationalism (“Make our country great at any cost”), tribalism (“My political party is good and the ‘other’ political party is evil”), propaganda (The use of blatant lies and deceit to brainwash the ignorant), and relentless attacks on the free press & institutions of accountability.

Bravo to those heroes. And bravo to those today — those who, in solidarity, have the nerve to speak-up and prevent history from repeating itself.

More Poor Amongst The Rich, And Rich Amongst The Poor.

May 15, 2019 By paulosophia in Parenting, Relationships, Religion, Teenagers Tags: my life, parenting, teens

I’m in a meeting with Royal Family KIDS’ National Directors from around the world: Ghana, Namibia, Poland, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, the UK, Australia. All work with children of trauma.

The stories I’m hearing of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Orphans living in Lord Of The Flies institutions with teen ringleaders bartering young girls like chattel to get drugs.

In some countries, there are no child protective services to keep the children safe. Refugee children living in tents. Children walking hundreds of miles with parents trying to seek asylum in safe countries. Four-year-olds wandering the streets.

But in the midst of hearing these realities, my mind drifts back to my own home.

Mostly what I’m thinking about are the millions children of privilege, “protected” by parents believing them too good to fail, stressing external success at all costs, shielding them from the painful realities of the real world. The facade of the “top university.”

Making sure their children stay away from “problem” children whose poverty or lack of education or broken home or blue-collar parents won’t lead them upwardly toward “success.”

Making sure their children spend more time on teams or with tutors or with coaches or in safe church youth groups — “safety,” versus the danger of a holistic life. Worse, the parents who will at all costs give their hight schoolers free reign to alcohol as long as they secure their desirable university.

Keeping them away from the poor kids. The neglected, abused, abandoned.

I once had a choice to send my own children to the local public school where 70% of the children were English learners from south of the border. Poor kids. The other choice was protecting them through homeschooling, or the local private school with all the children of rich white families.

I went to an expert for advice: A professor friend from UCLA who was on a panel of the UC Board of Regents, dealing with undergraduate education in the UC system. He was educated at the most elite private schools in France and did his Ph.D. at Oxford.

“Send them to the PUBLIC school. The diversity and dissonance and culture and language and the diverse sociological and economic standing will educate them far more than anything else.”

We obeyed; we tried the public school.

For one whole month.

Then I chickened out.

In any case, off they went to private and charter schools.

It could have been because I liked the status of sending them to the “better” schools, if I’m honest.

I was guilty, too. I wanted everything to be certain. Especially the well-being of my children. I want to “protect them,” too.

But I’m realizing that what we think is best, often isn’t. The brokenness of humanity and close proximity to pain and grief is perhaps the greatest education of all.

Richness has a poverty about it, poverty a certain sense of wealth.

“Never Expected Any Of This Attention…”

April 30, 2019 By paulosophia in Spirituality, Uncategorized Tags: relationships, spirituality

I’m not into quick fixes. I don’t trust them. The answer to tough questions is never a simple answer. I’m especially leery of self-help techniques, the memes you see on social media. Like “Think Positive Thoughts” or “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”

No. It’s not true. Really bad stuff happens even to people who do good things — look at Jesus or his followers, or Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve been talking to my staff about this really smart author named Seth Godin and we’ve been reading a book of his called Lynchpin. He thinks that no matter how mundane your job might be, there’s always a way to add creativity and genius to it.

Human beings, Godin believes, are not cogs in a wheel. We are not machines. During our discussions at staff meetings, I would always refer to the people who work at toll booths. They take your money then they push a button so the gate does up so you can proceed on your journey.

People who work at those booths are human barriers, keeping you from going where you want to go. And most of the time, they have little to nothing to give. They act like cogs in a wheel.

I’m leaving Chicago’s O’hare airport and I’m in line at one of those booths — not a toll booth, but at the Enterprise Rental booth. Same thing as a toll booth — a person holds the power to push the button to let you through.

And I meet Camilla. You’ve got to watch this.

Even though I’m not into quick fixes, there was something about this lady that touched me deeply. Didn’t seem to be a quick fix, seemed to be a woman who was a Lynchpin — adding creativity and value and genius, even to a mundane job.

After I shot the video I asked Camilla for her email address. When I returned from the trip, I sent her an email. And she responded with this.