Where’s the gray in the American Crayola Box?

 culture  No Responses »
May 052011
 

I keep asking myself this question since the US media outlets began announcing that President Obama was preparing to make a special statement.  Ironically, I was watching Donald Trump start to rip Star Jones a new one on “Celebrity Apprentice” (which I never watch), and the first ticker break came through at the bottom of my television screen.  Then my boyfriend texted me saying that he was waiting for the President to speak before he went to bed.

Obama’s announcement of Bin Laden’s death came as a surprise to me.  I knew in the back of my mind that the US government still wanted to find him, but I didn’t worry about his whereabouts or what he’d been up to.  I’ve lived in New York City for almost twelve years, so the threat of a terrorist action has been part of my life here since 2001.  I don’t let it stop my day-to-day actions, but I’m aware that I choose to make my home in a city full of soft targets.  I live just a few blocks from Union Square (a major subway hub for seven trains), and then about two miles from Times Square and Ground Zero.

Sunday evening’s announcement and the subsequent celebrations broadcast by the media left me feeling more than unnerved and confused.  I watched the reports and followed some comments on Twitter.  My colleague Bryan tweeted that he was feeling uncomfortable with the scenes of celebration over Bin Laden’s death, and he retweeted some others expressing similar sentiments.  I went to bed feeling less alone about my views, yet still unsettled by the scenes of Americans celebrating someone’s death, even if it was Osama bin Laden.

Details about the killing of Bin Laden have come to light over the past two days, and those details seem to be changing moment to moment.  As I check in with various news outlets throughout the day, I can’t help but wonder why the US couldn’t get the details clear before saying anything specific.  Couldn’t the President have announced Bin Laden’s death and then shared specifics once they were verified by multiple US sources?  I was particularly upset to learn that children were present in the compound in Pakistan as the raid unfolded.  Equally disturbing is the digital sequence created by ABC News that shows a woman lunging at Navy SEALs, indicating her “reason” for being shot in the calf.

And now the country’s leaders engage in a debate over whether to release graphic pictures of Bin Laden’s corpse.  Sarah Palin tweets that Obama should stop “pussy-footing” around and release the pictures.  In a moment when a lot of people are expressing pride about being an American, I’m not feeling so proud.  Privileged to live in a democratic republic like the US, yes, but not particularly proud of how some of my fellow citizens are behaving.

CNN and The New York Times reported today about why college-aged young people led many of the public celebrations.  The Times article by Kate Zernike cites that these young people have grown up with the image of Bin Laden as the most evil person in the world.  Hence, the need to celebrate his death on Sunday evening.  However, I was also struck by the article’s mention of Neil Howe’s comment that this generation likes to see things in polarized terms (my words), meaning that evil is evil and good is good.  There’s no room for anything in between.  In other words, shades of gray are not so prevalent in the Crayola Box of Life for this young generation.  I would take this a step further and say that this sentiment is true for many Americans regardless of age.

Seeing the gray in a situation allows us to have compassion and empathy for the experiences of others.  Over the last three days, I’ve spent time thinking about how the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 might be feeling about the end of the decade-long hunt for the man who instigated the murder of their relatives. I also think about my brother-in-law, who spent a year in Iraq with the Army reserves, once the war in Iraq began.  He and countless others have invested time and energy into protecting our country from people like Osama bin Laden.

Yet I’ve also found myself thinking about what those children in that compound must have seen and heard as the helicopters came over the 13ft walls.  Or what they must have thought as the gunfire started and people were killed.  I shudder to think that it was happening in front of them, just like the fall of the Twin Towers happened in front of so many young people here in New York City.  And then I think about the woman, supposedly one of Bin Laden’s wives, who rushed the SEALs.  Really?  Really?  Was her action out of a sense of duty to a terrorist or out of a sense of love for her husband?  We won’t ever know.  But these are things I’m thinking about, the gray moments in these situations.

A friend told me that he posted an MLK quotation on his Facebook page in response to the celebrations, and someone accused him of being pro-terrorist.  I say it again: Really?  Really?

This is what I mean about gray Crayons in the Crayola Box.  There are multiple perspectives to every story and every situation.  Just because I consider these perspectives does not make me a terrorist sympathizer.  It makes me a human being committed to dialogue and understanding.  Maybe if we tried to think through actions like celebrating Bin Laden’s death with a little more sensitivity, we would avoid undoing the positive effects of the death of a terrorist who has directly or indirectly killed thousands of people.

When we publicly celebrate a death and chant things like “Osama Osama hey hey hey goodbye” I don’t feel like we’re living up to the ideals of our supposedly superior American society.  Actually, it just makes me feel embarrassed to be an American.

Compassion fatigue? Is that a word?

 culture  4 Responses »
Mar 132011
 

Last week I was having a conversation with someone that I’ve known for over ten years, and I was telling him about an incident that happened at work.  I explained that a colleague had come to me about a student issue, and I found myself not feeling very sympathetic about the situation.  In another time and place, I might have had a different response, but I felt no sympathy at all.

Given the particular set of circumstances around the student issue, I felt far less liberal than I have in the past, and I lamented to my friend that I felt like I was getting more conservative in my old age.  My friend listened as he always does, and then said that rather than becoming conservative, it sounded more like a case of compassion fatigue.

“What?” I said.

“Compassion fatigue,” he said.

“Is that a word?”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s a word,” as he smiled to himself.

We proceeded to talk about compassion fatigue as the feeling of being so exhausted from taking care of others’ needs that the ability to feel compassion diminishes.

Bingo!

I went home and looked it up online, and found this site: http://www.compassionfatigue.org

Now, I don’t think that I “suffer” from compassion fatigue, but I do think that teaching has become so much about care giving, that it’s very easy for me to feel exhausted by the amount of compassion that I’m expected to show on a daily basis.

Does being a strong, effective educator require an endless supply of compassion? Where do the boundaries exist around compassion?  What are our own limits?

Preparing to eat some pie…humble flavored

 creativity  No Responses »
Feb 122011
 

It’s 1:00am on Saturday morning, and I should be in bed.  The alarm will go off at about 5:00am, as I’m scheduled to be on a train at 6:45am to Philadelphia, where my brother Kevin will pick me up, and we’ll head to the second half of a 24-hour play festival.

As I type this, five playwrights are up writing as well, frantically piecing together a ten-minute play that must be submitted via email to the producer of the event by 7:00am.  This madness is part of a fundraiser for Learning Stages, the theatre company that I co-founded and have worked with for 20 years.  I’ve participated in these 24-hour events before in a few different places, but tomorrow will be my first foray into acting in one of these “quickies” and my first time on stage in about two and a half years.

Given that I am writing and directing a project for NYU at the moment, I thought it would make sense to do something “easier” and just act.  That sounded like a good idea four months ago when the date was set and I committed to it, but on Friday morning when it registered that I was going to be acting in front of 200 people in about 36 hours, I suddenly had second thoughts.  I’m tired from my own process, I’m frustrated with this particular moment where I’m waiting for elements to come together, and I’m weary of the rehearsal process.  The last thing I want to do is get up in front of a group of people and have to be funny or vulnerable or whatever the playwright hands me.  I started the day in a shite mood about this, wondering how I could get out of the trip altogether.

Later in the day, I had a bit of a revelation while talking with my dear friend and colleague, Judyie Al-bilali.  She had stopped into the office to prep for her next class meeting, and we started talking over the photocopier about the show and my frustrations and lots of other things.  We got into a discussion about actors and acting and teaching and directing actors in a university setting, and suddenly it dawned on me that going to New Jersey and acting in a short, ten-minute play was exactly what I needed to do in this moment.  I needed the humbling experience of remembering what it means to be an actor.

Two weeks out from opening, and this is about the time when the pressure starts to wear on me, and the actors become easy targets for my impatience and discontent with the process in general.  They are struggling to retain their lines and remember their blocking on an ever-evolving set that’s different every day that we go into rehearsal.  It’s easy to become frustrated, sitting out in the house, my script plopped open and coffee in hand, thinking I know it all, as they flounder around, valiantly I might add, working hard to tell the stories that we’ve spent the last four weeks exploring and creating together.  The task before them is overwhelming, and the last thing that any of them need is a director without compassion or empathy.

And so it goes that I’m going to eat some humble pie in a few hours and remember what it means to be an actor, what it means to hold a script in my hand and to have to communicate someone else’s story to an audience of people looking to be entertained or enlightened about the world.  Hopefully, the experience will be a positive one for all of us involved in the 24-hour play festival, but however it turns out, I know that the experience will remind me that the actor is the primary communication material that any playwright or director has to work with, and that knowing what it means to be an actor and tell a clear story to an audience will be invaluable to me as I enter the last stages of my own rehearsal process.  Without that compassion and empathy for the actor’s experience, I won’t get very far as the director, and neither will my production.

Enough with the details. Please.

 culture  1 Response »
Jan 152011
 

One week after the shootings in Tucson, I think the media has finally hit rock bottom with its coverage.   CNN.com and other media outlets are now having a field day reporting that Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged gunman, posed in a red g-string holding a semi-automatic weapon in front of his crotch or groin (word choice depending on which story you read).  The idea that there’s even a word choice here makes my stomach hurt.

I understand that people want answers.  I also understand that we are dealing with someone with severe mental issues.  Maybe the media outlets could spare us the details on some of this stuff.  Loughner in a g-string toting a semi-automatic weapon is not something that we really need to know about.  The media has established his mental illness repeatedly; these “new details” are just adding to what we already know.  If Loughner had not shot and killed six people, this image wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow for many people.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that there a number of images just like it, and worse, up on countless Facebook pages, and those images are accompanied by thumbs up signs for “like this” and many macho comments.

Let’s allow the detectives to uncover the evidence and keep details like this for the court proceedings.  Loughner’s family has, is, and will continue to suffer.  I can’t imagine that details like this make it any easier for them.  Some compassion here would be helpful.  For all of us.  Seems like the media is already forgetting the kinds of requests that President Obama made on Wednesday evening.