On Learning to Fly

This last Wednesday marked the one year anniversary since I signed up at Docudharma and next Tuesday it will be one year since I posted my first essay. So I think a little reflection is in order.

Its been a great year and I’ve learned alot! I appreciate everything…including the “aha” moments, struggles, laughter, music, and poetry; but most of all the conversation.

I thought I’d celebrate by taking another look at the very first essay I ever posted here. Not just out of nostalgia, but because it is perhaps the best job I ever did of capturing my goals for participating at Docudharma.

You see, I’m still working on learning how to fly.

Here’s an interesting take on the history of black/white relations in the US from Ampersand at Alas! A Blog.


I think this cartoon makes a powerful statement about how the game is played these days. But its all about climbing over each other to get to some destination where the table has already been set by the guys in charge. I was reminded of all this by a comment keres made in a diary at Booman Tribune. Here’s what she said:

And I would argue that to dismantle partriarchy you would need to dismantle society in it’s totality, and start over. It’s no good just letting women in as “pseudo men” to societal structures so long formed by and to men’s wants and desires.

Our societies are not “OK”, except for the sexism, racism, heterosexism, ablism, etc. Our societies are intrinsically those things – they cannot be removed without a complete revisioning of the social compact. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, in an apartriachal society would look, sound, or feel even remotely the same as to what we have now.

Thinking about all of this today took me back to a book I’ve had on my shelf for years. Its one of those things that I read a long time ago, and as I read it again this morning, the meaning went to a whole other level because of the things I’ve learned lately. The book is hope for the flowers by Trina Paulus. It is formatted like a children’s picture book, but the message is aimed at all of us who are beginning to realize that there must be another way. Here’s the publishers synopsis:

“Hope for the Flowers” is an inspiring allegory about the realization of one’s true destiny as told through the lives of caterpillars Stripe and Yellow, who struggle to “climb to the top” before understanding that they are meant to fly.

In the story, Stripe and Yellow see all the other caterpillars climbing to get up to the top of the caterpillar pillar. So, reluctantly, they join in. First they learn that its hard to step on and over others if you’ve actually looked them in the eye or (heaven forbid) talked to them. Then they learn that at the top, there’s actually nothing “there.” As you can imagine, they finally realize that their destiny is to leave the climb, make themselves a cocoon, and become butterflies.

So as we continue to hear solutions to the “isms” of our day, let’s evaluate whether they are simply tools for teaching “others” how to climb, or if what they are really talking about is learning how to fly. Here’s Paulus’ tag line on her book:

a tale – about life partly about revolution and lots about hope.

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  1. and thought wow almost the same paradigm could be used to explain class relationships in this country. Suddenly that same argument is being used to justify legacy admissions to universities while trying to downplay forms of equalization class/gender/race.

    We have similar class relationships in Canada but we don’t have that legacy thing for schools now we probably actually do and it is just unofficial. But when somebody in the US explained what it was my reaction was WTF, why do the rich need extra help getting into university. Class dynamics in the US are so damn obvious and yet we play this silly game that it doesn’t matter.

    Anyway sorry I got off topic, that cartoon is spot on.

  2. When I started here at Docudharma, my goal was very simple and mundane – to make myself write an essay once a week.  I felt it would be good discipline.

    Of course it turned into more than that.  But frankly, it did start with that discipline, of making myself write once a week, that simple.

    NL, your writing has consistently challenged me to re-examine some of my deepest beliefs and the very way I think.

    It has changed the way I write and changed the way I think, in a way that makes me grateful to you.

    I think one of the worst feelings in the world is that of being caged, of encountering something you can’t understand, it won’t go away, and you have to deal with it, having no tools, no understanding.

    Sometimes I forget that all the tools I use of reason and logic and emotion are just that, tools.  To “fly” takes a real leap, to transcend the conditioning of this world.  I have come to feel that transformational change is upon us.

    No conclusion to this comment, just a bunch of random thoughts.

  3. While we were interviewing candidates for Manager I asked them what the hardest question was to answer in their other interviews and a few of the candidates (all white) were honest and said staff asked them how they would handle race relations.

    I hated the answers I got though: 1)I treat everybody equally and 2)I would try to be fair.

    My answer would have been: as a white person I still have quite a bit to learn so I would probably make a lot of mistakes. I am counting on the honesty of colleagues to tell me when I am being racist but I am worried people would be afraid to speak up and tell me that. But I also have two pretty outspoken  long time friends who are Managers who would tell me I was because they have in the past and some people I supervise who have know me long enough they would pull me aside. So. I really have an advantage in that arena. I am sure it must be a serious pain in the ass for those people to offer me “teachable” moments as if they don’t already have enough to do in their lives.  

    • kj on September 7, 2008 at 17:54

    that came from a tough old nun from da Bronx

    When you take a leap of faith

    you must believe

    there will be something solid for you to stand on

    OR

    you will be taught how to fly

    I think that might go along with the quote from Keres above. When the time comes for the leap, it’s either fly, or land somewhere new. The times this has happened for me my standard joke has been, “Well, I must be flying, because there isn’t anything below!”

    Often longed for a more secure life, but that hasn’t been the gift living has offered. No words of wisdom, other than, i’ve learned to quickly shed what isn’t necessary on the flight or in the new place and treat each moment as a chance to start over. That is the gift, I think, the constant renewal, the opportunity to break the bounds, even the bounds I hold dear.

    Sigh.  LOL

    it’s one of the reasons I hope Mr. Obama takes office in January.  I want to see some big bounds broken by Barak.  lol  big ones, great big ones.  ðŸ™‚

  4. where the future is leading us…..but we still have to walk down the road to get there. We still have to climb every hill and slog through the mud in every valley and negotiate every pothole.

    Iow, we have to overcome all of the obstacles to get ‘there.’ In part, to learn from the obstacles how to be the people that are able…and worthy…to be ‘there’ when we arrive. There are (as far as i know) no shortcuts.

    We are NOT however, required to climb over each other to get there. In fact, that impulse is one of the obstacles.

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