Month: July 2020

I have difficulty with scarcity. Scarcity is not my friend and I am not sure what the basis is. It isn’t clear to me where the trauma lies in my life that has made me as sensitive to scarcity as I am. I don’t think that I have a strong desire or concern to acquire much beyond what I have. I don’t rush out to get new things. But I am anxious about running out of things that I routinely use. One of those things I normally rely on is the kind of food I eat.

This is on my mind today because I made my first early morning trip to Cub since the beginning of March. Two items that are part of my routine are distilled water for my CPAP and imitation crab for salads. I like to have them available and neither of these items are carried by Trader Joe’s, the one grocery store I go to once a month.

I am very aware of their scarcity. Every morning when I refill the reservoir on my CPAP machine, I think about how much distilled water I have left. I feel the sensation of scarcity in my body. My mind goes to a quick review of how much is left in the container. A friend of mine has consistently gotten two gallons of distilled water for me when she goes to Cub and I request a refill. She is a reliable supplier. Yet,I have a deep concern about my scarce distilled water.

I haven’t figured it out, but there is a deep unease about being dependent on others to make adequate distilled water available to me. The feeling of scarcity has a deep hold on me, and I cannot see the roots of it all. Today, my solution was to give myself permission to venture out into the COVID world and visit Cub early in the morning. I brought home four gallons of distilled water. Those four gallons are strangely reassuring to me, but it is more reassuring to know that I was able to do it, and can do it again sometime in the weeks to come.

I also brought home a good supply of imitation crab and an assortment of other items it is nice to have in my pantry should I need them. But none had the same hold on me as being able to bring home the scarce distilled water. Nothing else motivated me, almost irrationally, to show up at Cub at 7:15 this morning.

The roots for this anxiety about scarcity are not at all clear to me. My family was poor and we lived a life of scarcity, but there was nothing I would call painful want or need. We had an adequate supply of food. While I learned not to waste food or anything else, it hardly seems like I experienced anything traumatic because of our normal experience of scarcity.

So I think about my current, on-going relationship with scarcity. I try to keep a moderate supply of items, particularly food, that I want to have on a regular basis. I am a little surprised about the satisfaction I feel about my adequate supply of food. I am grateful that I have the option of maintaining an adequate supply. But I am still far from becoming a friend of scarcity.

No one really knows for sure. However, I like to dwell on the notion that we all share intimately in the vast ocean of air we call our earthly home. We are air breathers, and it suggests to me a close connection I have which I might otherwise never notice or might even ignore.

Air is made of so many molecules that they might be considered almost limitless, or certainly not measurable. Each breath I take brings in and sends out so many molecules of air that only an advanced theoretician might be able to estimate their number. Perhaps someone has actually done that, and I am sure that it is a very big number.

The breath I take in is also constantly mixing with the air around me. The shifting wind whisks those molecules of my breath off to many far and exotic places. The vast sea of air that forms earth’s atmosphere is constantly moving. The molecules of air are constantly being mixed with a turbulence that may be invisible to my eyes, but it is something I can nevertheless know and often feel with my skin.

The air I breathed yesterday might well be t in the nostrils of someone in Wisconsin today. Because of the constant movement of air, space puts no practical limits on my breath except for the upper limits of the atmosphere. Neither does time put many constraints. The breath I took a moment ago might well contain molecules I once encountered as a young boy.

That same breath might well contain molecules of air that were in the lungs of ancestors I have never known. Air is such a biological, real world connector. It brings all breathing beings together in one common encounter. We are all connected by the air we breathe. I cannot sustain an illusion of being separate as long as I breathe out and breathe in.

I have been told that I am constantly sharing the same air once inhaled by the likes of Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare. Just by breathing, I am connected with all the beings who have ever inhabited this earth and once drew molecules into their lungs.

This causes me to have a snarky thought. I wonder if the white supremacists are aware that every breath they take connects them intimately, inside their bodies, with countless People Of Color. Those they despise have shared breath with them countless times. They are so very connected. with those they would hold at a distance.

Air is but one way I know I am intimately connected with all beings, and ultimately to the stars from which we originate into which we return. However, it is a nearly tangible expression of the links of existence that joins me to everything. Air is just one expression of the network that joins all things, it is an example of the manner in which living things are connected. It is a connection that we ignore at our peril.

Besides the sharing of air, there is more to this network, but I like to remember frequently how each breath I take binds me intimately with every breath ever taken. I breathe in and I feel the intimate oneness with every being that has ever lived or ever will live on this planet of ours.

Living white, I have been a prince all these years and hardly knew it. I have lived in the ancestral home of my parents and many others who were just like them. I’ve had a general sense that I was a prince. Something made me special, and I was better than those living outside. But it also has seemed so normal and nothing out of the ordinary. Being white has simply been who I was. It has been so easy being white and being a prince.

Now it isn’t so easy being white. I thought I liked being a prince, but now I’m not so convinced. I notice that when I assert that I am white, even in small ways, I suck the air out of the room. I take the air others need to breathe. Non-white people have a harder time breathing just because I am acknowledged and recognized as being white. The prince gets a bigger share.

As I search my memories, I realize how, even though I was born a prince, I was also taught what it means to be a prince. As a young person, I was taught what it meant to be white, and I absorbed that lesson in my muscles and bones. The lessons were deep and lasting.

I learned at an early age that those non-white people smelled funny. They used vanilla to cover their offensive body smells. It was something I would notice when I rode the bus, just as I was taught to observe.

I remember learning that the non-white people made everything unclean by coming into contact with it. As a prince, I needed to be careful that I did not come into contact with anything they might have touched. They themselves were unclean, because that is the way they were naturally. In addition, they were the ones who did the dirty jobs. As a white youngster, it gradually became obvious to me, and I absorbed my lessons well.

As a youngster, I learned that we were white, and the non-whites were “other”, they were not of the same princely lineage. Mostly they were dull and not too smart, although there were some who were exceptional. Some of them could be jovial, and they were occasionally a form of entertainment for me. Mostly, however, they were a source of caution and fear.

By the time I became an adult, I was intimately aware that being a prince was more than having white skin. Being white was something that penetrated my whole body and it was an awareness that flowed through my veins. My whole body responded to non-white people with an awareness that signaled that I was different, I was special. It was like an aura that surrounded my presence. With no effort at all, I had learned to carry it with me at all times. Those who were like me, routinely reinforced my identity as white. We all liked being princely.

Now I am in the uncomfortable situation of learning how to become less white. I feel like I am trying to answer the question of whether the leopard can change its spots. My body constantly reacts to non-white people by reminding me that I really am a prince. My head has to learn and absorb new realities. I have to become aware of new history that explains the foundations for my being a prince. I have to remember the lessons I wrongly received as a youngster and that my white companions constantly reinforced.

My heart and my body have learned the princely lessons very well, and they constantly resist my attempts to become a little less white. Apart from experiencing fear, tension and anxiety, being white has been a fine princely role. But I know it is time to give up that role. It is time to let non-white people breathe.

It is time to give up the pain that accompanies the deep feeling of being separate. The myth that we are separate has been the cause of a wound that I share with other white people. The more I surrender the princely assertion that I am white, the closer I get to closing the gap I feel between me and all the others. Perhaps my body will learn that I may be special, but no more special than others.

Perhaps if I no longer call myself white I will slowly stop living white.