Hard Decisions

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to Premier Christy Clark. I cc’d my MLA, Ralph Sultan. The letter was in support of BC teachers. Mr. Sultan replied with an articulate and well thought out three pager in which he highlighted the issues facing BC’s education system. I respect Mr. Sultan and would vote for him if he belonged to another party. Below is an excerpt:

Teachers in today’s world have a tough assignment. Classes of varying size tend to be further complicated with students of markedly different capacities. … Extremes of intellect, emotion, or behaviour, at both ends of the scale, are manifest. The challenge of teaching such heterogeneity is great…

As if that were not challenge enough, teachers today are commonly expected to fill the voids in upbringing among students who present themselves with inadequate norms of civic behaviour, socialization, discipline, and concentration—or even basic nutrition. … So when teachers exclaim that there job is hard, we should respond ”Yes!” And thank them for their efforts to maintain our society.

Does the solution simply boil down to more money? I don’t think so. But if society decides to allocate a larger share of our collective resources to the education of our young, then society must be prepared to dig into its collective pocket book to pay for it. This means higher taxes. …

…It is my observation that my constituents want to hang on to their money as much as possible.

It is that last sentence, however, that says it all. Governments only have as much power as they are given by the people. Unless they are a dictatorship or have a tendency to stuff the ballot box, local representatives have to please their constituents to remain in power; without the authority given to them on Election Day they have limited capabilities to make change, good or bad. And therein lies the key. We live in a democracy; if we want change, it is up to us to push for it.

But it’s not just about making our voices heard.  We have to be willing to make hard decisions and, indeed, sacrifices to safeguard the potential of success for future generations. As Mr. Sultan implies, a higher quality of life for all citizens is not cheap.  Someone has to pay the toll.

As a retail clerk I hear people complaining about taxes every day. Then something interesting happens: they get into cars and drive on roads and highways; they pass soccer fields and parks, drop off books at the library and gaze appreciatively at the beautiful flowers bedecking some street corners. On arriving home they are guaranteed a system where clean water runs in and sewage runs out.  Their kids go to public schools and on summer weekends, the beaches are cleaned and guarded by city personnel. All this is maintained and paid for by  municipal and provincial taxes. If they get into an accident their health care is heavily subsidized and while gas prices are high, we still pay less than what we would if its true cost included environmental damage. Our taxes pay for our standard of living.

If we truly want to support teachers, it must be made clear to our government that we are willing to pay for it. Cutting elected official’s salaries and forgoing superfluous infrastructure (i.e. BC Place’s retractable roof) is not enough. It still comes down to limited funds and hard decisions about what we want to prioritize and what we are willing to do without. Do we care enough about education to take money from some other sector or pay extra taxes? Does industry care enough? Are we willing to pay more now so that our kids will live better lives and, hopefully, figure out how to get us out of this mess we, and previous generations, have created?

The same goes for the Enbridge pipeline. I, along with many folk, do not want it. But are we willing to make the sacrifices necessary to cut down on our oil consumption so to make the need for more pipelines, oil carrying trains, supertankers and deep sea oil wells obsolete? Yes, we need the federal government to seriously look at cleaner energy sources but it isn’t happening today and most certainly won’t be in place tomorrow. If the pipeline does not go through are we willing to make the necessary changes in order to reduce our dependency on cars, planes and other combustible engines? Can we reduce our love of plastic; polyester and synthetic rubber (running shoes, tires) to name but a few oil based items? 

David Suzuki sums this up this last argument nicely:

Our choice is between ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence about the human contribution to climate change and pollution or changing our ways and reducing carbon emissions and fossil fuel dependence. It's about whether to join the green economy or pin our economic hopes on an increasingly risky industry. It's about the kind of country — and planet — we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.

We need to make decisions, and we need to take action. Our future, whether it is our children's education or the air they breathe, is counting on it.

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Trusting Self; Trusting Life

It is interesting the things I take for granted. One of them is a rich inner life. My interior landscape abounds with colours, shapes, sounds and feelings: ancestral voices and heart-felt emotions; vivid hues and textured imagery. With my imagination I am never lonely and, while at times I may doubt the veracity of my sensations, I generally know how to describe them. It is so much a part of me that sometimes I forget that not everyone has this connection or ability.

Take my father. While a fine and capable man he is also one of his generation and culture. A taciturn Swede of aged years he is a man more used to physical deeds than explanatory words. The expression of inner feelings, emotional and visceral, do not come easy if they come at all.  

Over the years, with my near chronic need to discuss such things, he has become more adept. It is not uncommon (although prompting is still in order) for him to acknowledge that yes, indeed, he can feel sad or angry, happy or lonely. It is still difficult, however, for him to find words for somatic sensations. Here’s an example: For a couple of years now my father takes a rest midway through our walks. He states fatigue. No problem. But then I got curious.  Why can he do water exercises for an hour but find it hard to walk for half that time. I began to ask questions. Turns out he was not so much tired as in pain. He just didn’t know how to express it. It took several more conversations and just as many days to get a better feel of what was happening for him.  It was by no means easy for either of us but we got there.

This inability to describe one’s body sensations is called alexisomia. For most people, as with my father, it is due to never learning (or practicing) the skill but for others it may be reflective of past trauma. There may be a history of shame or fear; distrust in the body or a tendency to dissociate. In any case, whether it is a lack of skill or a history of abuse, I have learned one must go slow when introducing this new form of expression.

It took my father time and energy to talk about his pain in a way I could understand. I don’t know the all the reasons for this but I do know that if I pushed too hard he shut down. I had to pace my questions, be gentle in my approach and validating of his responses. In other words, I had to create safety for him to learn this new way of conversing with his body. Then again, isn’t that the way in learning any new language? You only have to try talking rapid fire English to someone who doesn’t speak our tongue to see the distress on their face. Not knowing a language, or anything for that matter, can feel unsafe and stressful. We learn best, work most effective and have the deepest curiousity when there is safety.

As a BodyMind therapist my session work relies on safety. It is a prerequisite for healing but also a necessity for learning the language of the body. And, to become adept at this language, one needs a sense of trust in who they are and what they feel. Trust needs safety and safety breeds trust. This trust not only helps us when we seek help to alleviate pain (as with my father) but it also helps validates our emotions, gut feelings and heart openings. In self trust we are stronger and healthier if only because our body and mind are in cooperation rather than struggling the never ending (and useless) conflict between logic and emotion.

With my clients who have difficulty in expressing their physical sensations I start slow. If touch is safe for them, I may place my hand on their foot and ask how it feels to have my hand there. Is there pressure or heat; coolness or something else? I may ask what happens to that feeling when I take my hand off or compare it with the other foot. And so on. If touch is not safe, I may ask the client to notice their foot as it touches the floor or how their hand feels as it rests on their thigh and go from there.  Eventually, as safety increases, we focus more inward.

Learning the language of the body reminds me of French class way back when in grade eight. Our first dialogue was Bonjour Guy, ça va? Ca va bien, merci. Et toi? Those first few words became the foundation (if not the fodder of silly jokes) for learning French—words I have never forgotten and ones I always end up reverting back to when I try to converse some four decades later. It doesn’t mean I became fluent (I certainly did not) but it does give me a measure of safety. I know how to begin a conversation in French and that gives me some reassurance. The same goes for our body. We need a beginning, a few tools to build a foundation, a way to say hi and find out how we are doing to begin the process.

Trusting one’s body increases one’s sense of safety. The more one feels safe the more they trust. This trust extends outside the body. We cannot trust life until we trust ourselves, and that begins with knowing how we feel inside.

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To Legalize or Not ...

A new prostitution bill was recently introduced in Canada's parliament. The proposed changes are based on the so-called Nordic Model used by Sweden and Norway. Supporters say it will support women in getting off the street by penalizing the clients. Critics argue that is does nothing to protect sex trade workers from violence.

Although I lean towards regulated legalization I do not feel we are approaching the sex trade from the right angle. Instead of looking at prostitution from a judicial perspective, we need to first address the key issue: violence against all women regardless of their profession.

CBC’s Daniel Schwartz provides a brief summary of countries with varying approaches to the sex trade. From New Zealand’s highly regulated legalization to Spain’s unregulated legalization, and Canada’s proposed criminalization of the clients (not the workers), critics from each region say that women, especially those that work on the street (i.e. not in brothels), are still vulnerable to violence.

The common denominator with the above mentioned countries is that the vast majority of sex trade workers are female. Violence against women in this profession will not decrease until we put more effort in stopping violence against all women.

I write this from Canada. I feel very fortunate in my birth place. I could have been born in Nigeria and risked being kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder; in South Africa where every four minutes a child or woman is raped, or in India where it is a mortal liability to be a lower caste woman.

But am I so fortunate? Violence against women in Canada may not make the international news on a regular basis but can we forget the fourteen female engineering students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique? The 43 women (the majority being aboriginal) missing from The Highway of Tears; or Angela Wilson; Wendy Landry-Beaudry; and Thi Tam Nguyen, to name but a fraction of the women assaulted and/or killed in Canada every year. And this does not even include the RCMP report (published in May) that found “there has been a total of 1,181 reported cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women over the past 30 years. Even the RCMP were shocked.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation states that:

• Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.
• 67% of all Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted.
• On average, every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. 
• On any given day in Canada, more than 3,300 women (along with their 3,000 children) are forced to sleep in an emergency shelter to escape domestic violence.

Why so much violence?

The Canadian Women’s Foundation and others believe it is found in gender inequality. I agree. That inequality starts from day one. It is in our language, our culture and our work places; it is in the confused messages sent out daily by caregivers, educators and employers. Canada is a place where boys are still encouraged to be rambunctious and assertive while girls must remain young ladies; where dressing sexy is sanctioned by mass media but judged by society as a sign of loose morals; where women leaders are deemed bitches when they show their mettle; where in 2010 there was still a gender income gap of 19%; where women make up only 3% of the top CEOs; where the RCMP is facing a sexual harrassment class-action suit; and where females of all ages are called girls, by definition, immature. (see Do Not Call Me a Girl)

To stop violence against women we have to start by teaching our children that violence is not only wrong but that inequality does not make for a better society.

We need to teach our children:

• That language is not benign and words do hurt, control, and help create biases and discriminatory practices
• A respect for others that is founded on a sound respect for self
• Comprehensive sex education that emphasizes healthy boundaries and informed consent
• No means no
• That sexual identity and preferences are not categories to be used in moral judgment
• The majority of religious texts were written centuries ago and that many of their lessons and morals regarding gender roles were made for a society that no longer exists. (This is not even mentioning that many passages are taken out of context and were probably never meant to be as sexist as they now sound.)

This list is by no means conclusive. I invite you to add to it in the comments.


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