Dreaming of Dolphins

I have awoken frustrated the past few mornings. I sorely crave direction in my life, and hoped to find some guidance through my dreams. I awake, certain I have had a complex dream, with foggy memories of very symbolic figures, but am unable to piece them together.

Last night, I had a simple dream. I was swimming back and forth between two shores. I was trying to split my time between the very contrasting banks. I was nervous, because I hate the feeling of powerlessness in the ocean's waves.

Then, I noticed I was swimming with dolphins. Sometimes I rode them, sometimes they swam alongside me, as I shuttled back and forth between the beaches. I was comforted and invigorated.

According to my trusty DreamMoods.Com:

Dolphins

To see a dolphin in your dream, symbolizes spiritual guidance, intellect, mental attributes and emotional trust. The dream is usually an inspirational one, encouraging you to utilize your mind to its capacity and move upward in life. Alternatively, it suggests that a line of communication has been established between the conscious and unconscious aspects of yourself. Dolphins represent your willingness and ability to explore and navigate through your emotions.

To dream that you are riding a dolphin, represents your optimism and social altruism.

If only, DreamMoods.com, if only!

Why is everyone whistling?

I turned on the radio for the first time in a while and was surprised by the common thread running through the first three songs I heard.

Bruno Mars

Britney Spears

Maroon 5

And, just for fun...

I miss direction most

I remember being traumatized by images of WWII’s concentration camps in elementary school. I literally felt my innocence burning away as my face would tingle with discomfort and rage. I’ve lost that physical reaction against human cruelty and have, in some ways, grown accustomed to the existence of hunger, violence, and overt injustice. Imbalance. I wish I still felt that utter horror at the concept, but I do not. All I have is some intellectual or spiritual aversion to the current reality. Maybe that’s enough. Rather than slowly watch that flutter away as well, maybe I can choose to engage.

I have started applying for jobs again. I am restless. Maybe it’s discontentment. Is it healthy?

Children endure horrific abuse daily. I have seen the rows upon rows of filing cabinets documenting the discovered cases of abuse. I have also seen children taken from the care of their families because the definition of neglect is nearly inseparable from the definition of poverty. People in my city are hungry. I have seen the anger of people who show up to food lines and leave unsatisfied. It’s real, and it’s close, and it only seems to get worse. (Cue Music)

Sometimes I think social work holds no answers to these problems. And as a social worker, I have felt myself becoming cynical trying to create change amidst competition, manipulation, aggression and other coping mechanisms that originated in people, communities, and organizations from some line of injustice or imbalance that seems to me inescapably cyclical. Which might be why I cannot see my friend community’s desire to farm land and live relatively isolated from the world as anything but escapism. I want that. I want to walk away from the cities and the islands of rural towns and find a place to hide. I want to tend to the land and my own spirit; the things I can more easily control.

But

I feel as though, at some point, despite the hurt and rage and nonsense of humanity, you have to be willing to say, “Ok, I’ll be part of this world”. Not only because it’s an illusion to assume you are not, but also because, in engaging, I have also seen the hope. I have seen strength and trust and empowerment and self-discovery and balance. It is much like the food line: I resonate with the feeling of being fed but unsatisfied. It's a frustration to hope. But watching the slow unraveling of a very complicated knot, you sometimes witness it break open in a burst of freedom. And it is freedom for us all.

"Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it."

-Helen Keller

If I may be dramatic...

I would like to take this time to reference pop culture, converting romantically intentioned songs into my new anthem regarding the rejection implicit in a job hunt.

The Do's and Don'ts of Deontology

To this point, my understanding of integrity has been based on a deontological understanding of ethics. A ‘by the book’ sense that right is right and wrong is wrong. Integrity, then, was holding steadfast to one solidified idea of what is right and good.

So during the interview process it came as a surprise to me that I was so willing to ‘bend’ myself to meet an agency’s social and religious expectations in order to be hired to do the work they do in our community. What had happened to my sense of integrity?

I find myself willing to abandon my former understanding of integrity to pursue, by broader means, change for families in need. What I mean by this is that there is enough Christian in me to pull that out if I am working with Christian shareholders who might give more to a good cause if persuaded that it was Christian-run. It is certainly without integrity that I would draw that out in certain circumstances. It is blatantly manipulative. But I have a new understanding of integrity, and it conveniently leaves room for manipulation of our current structure. It goes beyond the surface level of matching up what you say with what you do. If I’m being honest, a key tenet of integrity, I am more complex than Christian or non-Christian. Regarding the morality component of integrity, chopping things up to right and wrong behavior, I find myself leaning away from deontology towards (dare I say) consequentialism.

Do not mistake consequentialism for utilitarianism. I am not saying that we are aiming at the greatest good for the greatest number. I still concern myself with the individuals. I have always heard of consequentialism in terms of, “The end justifies the means”, and told how evil this notion is by example of war. But another way to look at this manner of thinking, and consequently our understanding of integrity, is that more than our actions, the consequences of our actions matter. The fall of social work seems, to me, to be in the fact that the field is comprised of do-gooders who concern themselves too heavily with right action, and not enough with right consequence. Social work cannot just be a call towards beneficence. It must also require nonmaleficence.

Am I doing harm in adapting to certain circumstances with the goal of obtaining the best resources possible for my clients? Am I doing harm in broadening my understanding of myself to include pieces that are relatable to others? My husband thinks so. And I greatly value his opinion. It makes me wonder if I, as a woman, have been raised to forgo my true identity (more than my husband or male counterparts) towards an adaptability that is meant to allow me to please everyone. Or maybe it’s the oldest child in me. What I do notice, and want to be aware of, is that through this entire process I shift back and forth between acknowledging with real honesty who I truly am, and compartmentalizing myself in a distancing strategy. Whatever my end stance on integrity, I hope to forgo the latter.

"Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right. The sincere man…is one who has the grace to know that he may be instinctively insincere, and that even his natural sincerity may become a camouflage for irresponsibility and moral cowardice; as if it were enough to recognize the truth, and do nothing about it”

Thomas Merton

Your Time Is Now

Don't let yourself down

Muse

You Pull, I'll Push

And Other Covenants With The Earth

Slowly I have been waking to the world around me. I lived before caught up in a mad current created by this drive for acceptance and success in the guise of happiness. I am learning to let go. Part of that process, the most grounding part of it for me, is reconnecting with the Earth. I feel richer knowing what healthy growing soil looks like. I feel more alive breathing in honey suckle and knowing that I am breathing in honey suckle. I feel more connected to where I am when I recognize birdcalls. I feel. I just feel more. But very trickily it slips into knowing. I know that when my tomatoes begin to rot on the bottom they need more calcium. I know that garlic helps my health if not my breath. I know that the gravitational pull of the full moon may help induce labor. It becomes haughtiness rather than holiness. Again, I find myself possessing rather than appreciating, which keeps me striving after something that is ultimately fruitless and an illusion.

My good friend was full term right around the full moon. I thought for certain, knowing a little something about nature, that the gravity would in fact induce her labor. A “You pull, I’ll push” kind of deal. I looked up at the moon, getting ready to crest, and spoke to it as a woman, expecting her to aid my friend in labor. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that bitch ignored me (the moon, not my friend). And I came to realize that I have this false sense of control by coming to know nature. I have felt that growing my own food and knowing the land around me offered some sense of security. But the whole reason humanity has spent so much effort detaching from nature is that it is completely unpredictable. I can add as much calcium to my tomatoes as I want this year, but l am not going to get them to produce. I have no idea what went wrong. And I can down garlic clove after garlic clove with tongue-burning fervor, but I might still catch a cold and not be able to see my new baby friend until it passes. The thing about nature that separates it from the concept of a God is that this world doesn’t give a shit about us. Nature is completely indifferent to our desires, even to our health and individual survival. Which is part of what makes it so grounding. It puts me in my place, so to speak. It crashes through my lofty aspirations like a wave crashes over a sand castle. And I realize that my life’s work is just sand, powerless in the swell of the ocean. Is the point to enjoy the ride? Or to try and build something any way?

On the Nature of Understanding

Say you hoped to

tame something

wild and stayed

calm and inched up

day by day. Or even

not tame it but

meet it halfway.

Things went along.

You made progress,

understanding

it would be a

lengthy process,

sensing changes

in your hair and

nails. So it’s

strange when it

attacks: you thought

you had a deal.

-Kay Ryan