JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Sounds like Mister Rogers’ song: Won’t you be my neighbor?, doesn’t it?

Imagine Reverend Fred strolling into the studio, sitting to exchange his sneakers, adjusting his cardigan and asking his young audience in his consistent theme song:

Won’t you be my whistleblower?

Then he would stop and slow himself. Whistleblower? What is a whistleblower? Well, children, you can whistle between your lips like this…

Okay, I’m getting carried away…and I do like Mr. Rogers…Last week though I ended up at Joey deVilla’s story of whistleblowing from 2003 [via Liz Ditz] and what I read haunted me with its truth.

Joey is a musical guy but this story doesn’t have much to do with blowing air between the lips to make a sound. No, this story is a cautionary tale, a word of warning but also a story in which Joey is warned about the woman he is dating. It’s too good and detailed to try to summarize so go read What happened to me and the new girl (or, “The girl who cried Webmaster”)

The blog post last section contains this paragraph

It’s true. I posted a gushy entry about New Girl, someone saw it and came forward to tell me the truth. Maybe the Blogger or Moveable Type people should print up stickers and T-shirts that read BLOGS SAVE LIVES. I’d buy one.

Blogs may save lives. But in this case, I’d say it was not a blog itself but Whistleblower, a blog reader who had the courage to meet Joey and tell him the truth about New Girl. Whistleblower’s bravery saved Joey. I imagine that fiancee Wendy is also grateful!

When I wrote Won’t you be my whistleblower? I meant it. I hope that someone would dare to be bold enough as Joey’s Whistleblower and come tell me the truth if I was making a mistake in a relationship or life in general. If I am blind or ignorant or being misled, please help me. I might not like it. As Joey did, I might hope you are wrong. But I also hope I will be open and listen.

Whistleblowing, as it is used in Joey’s post, is crucial. I believe we should help each other and keep each other from making mistakes we will regret. Gossip is not good. There’s no point in talking about people behind their backs simply to talk about them or prop up our own sense of self-worth. But there is a point in breaking through deception and speaking truth, even if that means going one-on-one with someone else, possibly even in secret, to end cycles of abuse. Like the sign above, we need to caution each other when we are taking hazardous paths; in fact, one could argue we have a responsibility to be whistleblowers and point out the risks of choices and relationships.

Whistleblowing though to me has negative connotations as a word. It sounds like an angry referee. Or like a kid calling the cops on his siblings by tattling to mommy. The eerie image of Meryl Streep in Silkwood.

What Whistleblower did, I believe, is what we should all do to each other. It’s what friends are for. It’s what we do when we care about each other and live in community together. It’s being neighbors and sharing space.

So I’d rather sing along with Mr. Rogers and say: Won’t you be my neighbor?

[written April 11]

Through the month, I’ve started to explore anger within my life, seeing the result of rage in new angles and aspects.

Coincidentally, a friend asked me if I’d like to go see The Upside of Anger with her on Saturday night [April 9]. For weeks we’d been trying to get out to the cinema one evening sans children. It was worth the effort. The acting was fabulous and intense. I especially liked the director, Mike Binder, as an actor. His monologue explaining his character’s lifestyle hit truth. Joan Allen, Kevin Costner and the rest of the cast are also strong. It’s a roller coaster ride, a bittersweet experience through outbursts of laughter and anger. But it was more than a movie to me.

The story of a woman whose husband disappeared, leaving her to raise four teenage daughters on her own, seemed familiar to me from my experiences both in childhood and motherhood. The film helped me examine my past and present. It illuminated my life and let me laugh.

I liked how the movie explored how people go forward – or don’t go forward – from the past. One line given by one character to another described life after pain as a limp. I believe in healing but I also don’t believe it is ever fully complete in this life. If we walk with a limp and with grace, we can have humility and empathy.

Anger does dominate the film. Where does anger come from? What is its source? These questions were not answered for me by the film and were only accentuated by the ending. I felt the end required another entire movie if it were realistic.

How should one handle anger? What do we do with emotions? How can families move through transition times? All questions raised by the film, and questions many people have experienced in life, especially in the past few decades as divorce has increased.

The relationship between parent and child, especially mothers and daughters is highlighted in its fragility and power. My friend Jenny has written about her feelings, the angry mother and The Angry Woman. I think The Angry Woman is something many women are afraid to be and yet hide her inside. Why?

In the movie it is easy to see how damaging and destructive parents can be. Yet there is also change and a reconciliation of sorts provided by the plot. It was refreshing to see a film that focussed on a middle-aged woman as the central character and on the emotions that come with abandonment. Anger can be expressed physically or verbally; Upside shows examples of both. Although Joan Allen’s character seems extreme, I suspect many families can relate to the story, more than they might want to admit.

I’ve read reviews of the movie that criticized its lack of action or plot. For me the film was a journey through a family, through characters as they changed in the shape of a situation. It also became a journey through myself and my experiences.

The movie contains statements what the upside of anger is, in a positive light, and I’ll save that for those who see the film. My first reaction to situations is often sorrow, sucked inward, but I am seeing anger in me as we have gone through the grief process recently. I don’t think anger is great in itself. But I think anger reveals how much love was in a relationship. If I am angry at someone it is because I had invested myself, had expectations and had poured pieces of my life into that person. Anger shows me I wanted something that didn’t happen. Anger reveals desire. It shows me what matters to me. It tells me I cared, even if I didn’t say or think I did. Anger demonstrates the power of emotion and the depth possible in the situation. Anger shows me what I want. Anger also shows me that in the midst of grief, I am still alive.

One of my favorites, this sign speaks to me of play and fun.
It also speaks to me about balance.
And blogging….I’m having so much fun this morning, I’m going from one extreme to another, from no posts, to plenty of posts…:-)

[Editor’s note: I wrote this piece on simple life April 11 but it has taken me a while to polish and post it – is this particularly ironic or simply a confirming sign of the complications of life…?!]

Yesterday [April 10] I read Jeff Sandquist’s link to Om Malik’s piece on Internet Anxiety Disorder.

Then I read the Seattle Times article titled Dialing It Down.

These two pieces created a provocative juxtaposition in my mind.

Even though I can afford to spend only a portion of my day online and on the computer, and my Internet Anxiety Disorder is not as severe as others, I feel overwhelmed. Each night I have dozens of emails to read and evaluate as well as dozens of blogposts, nevermind the fact that I could or should respond personally to these pieces in my inbox and aggregator.

Many have noticed the fact that I often send messages or publish blogposts in the early morning hours, around 2 or 3 am. Although I am trying to rest well at night, I discover that I can’t catch up on my email or blog needs completely unless I sacrifice sleep at least once or twice a week. Already in the past month I’ve unsubscribed from both yahoogroups and feeds in an attempt to simplify. I’m not sure what else I can do to combat Internet Anxiety Disorder and still stay online.

The Seattle Times article on The Simple Life described those who moved away from the city and its lifestyle to find a better way to live. Some live on Orcas Island, others near Methow Valley. It’s a tempting idea. Ted and I here on Bainbridge Island do enjoy the slower pace and rural quality of life. It is relaxing to drive past farms and forest, to be separated from city and strip malls.

However the article has an anti-technology slant. One of the people featured, Robin Woodward, is described with these words: She is appalled by how people ignore the panorama and stare at screens instead. The article makes many mentions of physical labor and farming but none of using technology for simplicity. Dialing it down implies one is not dialing up.

Two quotes I liked:

Kristi Laguzza-Boosman said they changed their simple lifestyle: “Simple living just got too complicated for me. I needed someplace more convenient where little things (lights, heaters, toilets) actually worked consistently as opposed to when they had a mind to.”

Robin Woodward said “No matter where you go,” she says, “you bring yourself with yourself”

There is no magic in the geography, to paraphrase another sentence in the article. Wherever we take ourselves, we are there too. I believe that we don’t have to move to a remote location to find simplicity within.

These two pieces, one on the craziness of being connected constantly and the other one on dialing down, may seem to say that the answer is found offline. However, I wonder why it has to be either/or.

Why can’t we use technology to create a simpler life? Must our connectedness become an anxiety disorder? How can we use technology as tools to make our life more the way we want it to be?

Perhaps we don’t need to buy a farm to escape to simplicity, perhaps the simpler life could be found in the midst of a city with a cell phone and computer. Or is that picture a contradiction?

Related link: Brian Lamb’s post on Sleep is for slackers.

For six weeks this spring, the girls and I took a sign language course and it changed us more than I had imagined. I had been trying to teach my daughters a few signs, using a book, so I was eager to enroll them in a class taught by someone fluent in ASL. Abigail and Michaela were the official students but I believe my two year old Elisabeth benefitted as much as they did. She and I sat in the back of the room, learning along with her older sisters. The teacher showed the class how to sign songs, such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the alphabet. Elisabeth has taken her time learning to talk but suddenly she started singing songs and signing too. Sentences followed. Before we took the course, she may have tried to put two or three words together but now she can string together long sentences and pieces of songs. Coincidence? Perhaps, but the instructor confirmed that sign language can help open the door for other communication.

I learned I liked sign language. I liked our teacher. Unlike English, ASL required the face and body as well as the word. Happy is accompanied by a smile and surprise by a drop of the jaw. Our teacher’s eyes and facial expression changed with the shape of her hands. ASL involves more drama and acting than other languages I have studied, because body language counts as much as the words/signs themselves. Since I like to gesture and speak with my hands, using my body when I talk, sign language feels natural to me. I want to study more ASL somehow.

Through Amba’s post A Town of Sight and Silence (on the excellent Ambivablog) I read an abstract of an Italian study that concluded: These results suggest that learning a sign language may lead to a cognitive advancement in hearing children. Not surprising! Amba also mentioned a community on Martha’s Vineyard where nearly everyone spoke sign language and a town planned in North Dakota for the deaf. I agree that ASL University looks like a wonderful link to fill my desire to continue studying.

Sign language is a way to share stories that speak through silence. However, since we started studying ASL, our house is not as quiet as it once was.