It’s not like I haven’t been out of the country (Jamaica! Mexico! Bahamas! Puerto Rico!) nor am I unfamiliar with other cultures having grown up in Miami.  But traveling is simply not the same when the destination is another continent, truly foreign.
People get all up in your koolaid…and will probably cheat you.

Luckily I had already been stalked by stall vendors in Jamaica by the time I went to Istanbul, otherwise I would have been completely surprised by how aggressive people were in trying to pry open my wallet.

People told me I was gorgeous.  That my shoes were dirty.  They yelled random phrases in English.  Street vendors wanted to haggle over prices before I even had a chance to look over the merchandise.  Children and old women huddled on stairs and stoops looking as miserable as possible, all in an attempt to sell me some tissues.  (So piteous!)  Others used their physical deformities to guilt tourists into giving them money.  One woman crawled on her hands and knees through Taksim Square with a bucket around her neck.  But if they weren’t giving you a performance, they were talking/pleading/yelling/demanding to get your attention.

I quickly adopted the conviction that if people yelled at me, they would not get my money.  My friend advised me that I wouldn’t be able to do any shopping that way, and while it narrowed my options considerably, I was totally ok with it.  My personal feeling was that there was nothing I wanted badly enough to be yelled at for.

In fact, I paid 5 lira more at one stall simply because the vendor was not obnoxious and let me shop.  And I paid it with a smile!

When I related my shopping travails to my godfather, he told me of his trip to Mali and how he was actually mobbed by people trying to sell him goods.

To be fair, however, only in Jamaica has someone actually tried to trick me into buying something.  (Beware the ‘carvers’ around Dunn’s River Falls!  They may want to ‘give’ you a lady figurine ‘to honor Lady Dunn’ but by the time they have carved your name in her, and your partner’s name into the man figurine, the carver tells you, helpfully, that most people ‘donate’ $20.)

No matter how much people overseas hate Americans or America, they probably love American culture.

I was completely blown away when I heard Lady Gaga in Turkey but I was absolutely dumbfounded to see guys who looked like they walked right out of “Jersey Shore” wandering around the city.  Then there was the American cover band of Turks who didn’t speak English, playing to a crowd of Turks who probably didn’t speak English, singing Sublime, Rod Stewart, and, of course, Michael Jackson covers.

I may have been expecting the Orient Express but Istanbul was a city of Burger Kings and Starbucks, in addition to the minarets.

Our trip would have been paid for if only we had thought to bring several iPads with us!

Get local.

I can’t even imagine what our trip would have been like if we had been wandering around the city on our own.  Even with a map, the layout of a foreign city can be baffling.  Not to mention that trying to figure out the transit system is probably nigh impossible.  Once you know what’s up, you can navigate your way easily, but trying to figure it out on the fly will make for a very frustrating vacation.

Also, going out with someone local will give you the opportunity to be exposed to local customs with less misunderstanding… and it will give you the opportunity to be scammed less.

I almost fell for the thank-you-for-picking-up-my-shoe-cleaning-brush-this-is-my-livelihood-here-let-me-thank-you-for-your-kindness-by-cleaning-your-shoes-and-now-that-I-am-finished-I-would-like-money-please scam.  In fact, I was reeeeeaching for the brush when my friend, a local, grabbed my hand and said “Don’t touch that.”

She also saved us a crapload of lira by making sure we weren’t charged ‘tourist’ prices.

If you don’t know anyone local, you can touch base with people through CouchSurfing who, at the very least, can meet you for a cup of coffee to give you the low down.

Let the U.S. know where you are.  

This is not the time to get all conspiracy theorist about ‘the government’ tracking where you are.  You actually want the government to know where you are, especially in the event of a natural disaster or civil uprising.

Not only did we print and email ourselves a copy of the contact information for the local consulates, but we also enrolled in the State Department’s STEP program.  (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program)

If I had been traveling to Canada, I probably wouldn’t have bothered but Turkey is home to earthquakes and riots, as well as the occasional bomb.

And speaking of civil uprisings…

Riots are not photo opportunities.

We suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a riot, a political protest gone wild, which my friend literally dragged us away from.  We sought shelter in a local Burger King and only just made it as they closed the gate to prevent being overwhelmed by a mob.

It all seemed pretty tame, other than the water cannons and riot police, and Chris and I were moving to better vantage points to see what was happening.  My friend, however, was agitated.  As Chris was getting snap-happy with his camera, she happened to mention that this area is known for bombings and there was a bomb in the city the day our plane landed.

You could literally hear the record scratch in my head.  Wha….?  Her advice was to get away from the action.  And contrary to what I have learned in every disaster and zombie movie EVER, we had moved toward what could very well turn into a hot mess.

So we have plenty of pictures but as we are not AP photographers or war correspondents, it probably wouldn’t have been worth getting blown up over.

Things are the same…

Aside from the fact that I couldn’t find any tampons (sorry guys), going to the grocery store was almost exactly like going to a grocery store in the U.S.  Sure, there is the touristy Grand Bazaar but once you get into the suburbs, it was shopping malls and an Ikea!  Granted, not every country will be like that, but be prepared to find many things familiar especially relating to technology.

(internet = internete, parking lot = otopark, erotik = erotic)

…except when they are different.

When things are different, boy are they different!  I was not truly prepared for an encounter with a squatting toilet and really should have gone over the basics with my friend before having to figure that one out.

Also, crime was a completely different prospect in Turkey than in the United States and, in fact, many people outside the U.S. view the States as dangerous and crime-ridden.  There is little to no violent crime in Turkey and you can walk the streets late at night without worry.

Will that be true for everywhere?  Of course not, but we did not have an accurate perception of the risks.  Bombs are a bigger threat then getting mugged or murdered.

Speaking of toilets… know where your toilets are.

I had not truly appreciated the abundance of public toilets here in the United States until I was away from the climes of home.  Here, you can pop into any gas station or store, as long as you don’t look homeless, to use the facilities.  In Istanbul, however, stores were the size of a walk-in closet; people did business on a patch of sidewalk; and only the Burger King was big enough to escape from the riot.

Once you did manage to get hold of a toilet, it was a pay toilet where your lira bought you toilet access (no guarantee of a western style toilet) and two squares of toilet paper.  Two squares of totally inadequate toilet paper that you were expected to throw in the trash can instead of the toilet.

Be prepared…and know where your towel is.

I may not have been a Boy Scout but I sure as heck roll like one, something that totally came in handy when facing down the toilet situation.

Me and my flushable – though I did not flush them – baby wipes were able to get the job done.  They also were a godsend on our 9 hour continent-hopping flight.

Also, having snacks on hand kept me from hangry-ness (hungry + angry = hangry) and kept me and the muffin on an even emotional keel.

And seriously, always know where your towel is.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T or don’t brag about how you have been thrown out of the Vatican.

When entering a mosque, women are supposed to exercise modesty which includes covering their heads.  This did not sit well with the American 20 year-old who was asked to button up her shirt because she was showing cleavage.  Not only did she re-unleash her assets once we were all inside, but she managed to do so while loudly and proudly proclaiming that she had been thrown out of the Vatican.

Maybe it was just me but someone who is constantly ejected from Holy places makes me check for vampirism.

But seriously, a pretty good rule of thumb for anywhere is that if you aren’t willing to follow the rules, don’t bother going.  If you are in another country, you are not afforded the rights of their citizens (should they have any) and the rights you enjoy in your home country do not apply either.

If you are thrown in prison, or caned, you have little recourse.

TSA Puts the All Caps in “AUTHORITY”

The Transportation Authority suffers the same problem that the police do; a lot of power is placed in the hands of people who aren’t always educated in what they are actually allowed to do and running afoul of said people is a recipe for disaster.  (Did I say “disaster”?  I meant JAIL.)

I was determined to avoid the porno-scanners (I won’t even take naked pictures for my husband, thank you very much!  Er, not that he’s asked…moving on.) and I knew that if I objected, it could raise the hackles of whichever TSA agent I happened to be at the mercy of.

My strategy for dealing with the TSA is really the same strategy I use when dealing with cops.  (I know, I know – they aren’t cops but being non-threatening and respectful is not conceding your rights or your ability to stand up for yourself.)

I think my downright lovely experience with my TSA agent at Dulles Airport speaks for itself: I explained that I did not want to go through the scanner and that I had never been through this process before and could I please have the pat down?

My agent explained everything she was going to do before she did it, was incredibly professional, and had great customer service.  When I mentioned that I had been very nervous about the whole thing, she let me know that she was a mother of 4 teenagers and that her mastery of no-nonsense-ness diffused most problems before they got out of hand.

I ended up requesting a comment card so that I could make sure my agent was recognized for her awesomeness and she was literally blown away; she had NO IDEA what the procedure was for compliments.  She had to call her manager over because, apparently, they only know how to deal with complaints.

It can be done; you CAN deal with the TSA and make it out with your skin intact!  Just remember to be unfailingly polite, calm, and friendly.

Put down the camera so you can see.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

- Henry David Thoreau

Leave your campsite better than you found it.

I am always asked for my secret to being so organized and clean and tidy.  The truth is everything I learned about organization, I learned from this Boy Scout motto.

It goes back to respect and common courtesy and the basic rules we learned as children.  Respect the rules of someone else’s house, even if that house happens to be a country.

The night before I had taken the overnight shift at the call center/crisis line: 11pm to 7am.  I looked forward to a blissful night of helping people in real distress and escaping from one of our regular callers.

But oh. my. god.  He would NOT STOP CALLING.

Sometimes I have ignored his call but then I feel massive stress for violating call center policy.  But how can I ensure the lines are open for a crisis if I am on the phone with this guy all of the time?  But isn’t he entitled to call the hotline?  Who am I to make that kind of decision?  But I miss so many calls!  Why am I not good enough to handle this like the rest of the volunteers?  Braain..meeeeeltinng…

So back to me and my Hoegaardens and my mile-a-minute cursing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

I was venting to my lovely friend and my super amazing husband about how much this was stressing me out when I was suddenly texted by the next volunteer on shift about this same caller.  After throwing my hands up in a you’ve-got-to-be-KIDDING-me gesture, I got down to the texting and discovered something remarkable.

I was not, in fact, violating call center policy by ignoring this caller.  It was actually an honest-to-god suggestion made by the executive director of the organization so that we could be available to people in a crisis because this caller takes up so much time.  (He has now been officially restricted to 15 minute calls.)  I had assumed that I was violating a hotline policy but in fact was using an approved technique.  [insert angels singing here]

And it was this moment, exactly this moment, when I discovered the secret to a life of freedom.

There are three four very specific emotional states that make us feel ‘unfree’ and fettered.

• Loneliness.  We feel alone in our pain and isolated from others.
• Lack of Recourse.  We feel trapped, that we have no options, and that there is nothing we can do to change or even alleviate our situation.
• Misunderstood.  We feel as though no on understands what we are going through and this can cause us to feel broken.  Misfits.
• Unappreciated.  We feel as though our contributions mean nothing, that we mean don’t matter.

It is my feeling that if but one of these is eliminated, then the intensity of stress and stuckness is dialed waaaaaay down to the bearable.

The very interesting thing about this is that every caller in crisis feels alone, stuck, and that no one understands and it’s the people who feel this so deeply that commit suicide.  This is exactly how my regular caller, though in no immediate danger or crisis, feels every day.

And it’s exactly why suicide/crisis hotlines exist: to listen, to understand, to offer resources if wanted.

For me, I discovered that I was not alone; that I had options for handling this caller in ways that I felt in integrity with, without breaking my commitment to volunteer; and that I was completely understood for wanting to bang the phone on the desk and scream when he called.

Maybe this doesn’t sound very much like freedom but the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life is a lot less than the difference between an ordinary life and an unbearable life.  Just ask anyone who is living a life that haunts the horrors of our world.

It’s taking a deep breath after drowning.

This video calls out Beyonce on her new single “Run The World” whose lyrics, such as:

My persuasion can build a nation
Endless power, our love we can devour
You’ll do anything for me

and:

Who run the world? Girls!
Who run this motha? Girls!

and especially:

Boy you know you love it
How we’re smart enough to make these millions
Strong enough to bare the children
Then get back to business

…are incredibly wrong.

In fact, I find it fascinating that a ‘girl power’ anthem is addressed to a man.

In Saudi Arabia, women are fighting for the right to drive.  (In the United States, you’ll pry our gas guzzling cars out of our cold, dead hands because cars represent freedom and independence and 15 year-olds can barely wait to turn 16 to get their drive on.)

Not to mention the horrors that are perpetrated on women around the world.

NineteenPercent  goes on to make the following, salient points:

• A better question would be – “Name the only American minority group that actually constitutes a majority of the population.” Girls. 50.7% of the U.S. population is female but sociologists consider women a minority group because of their position relative to men, the dominant group.

• There are things called women’s issues which apparently are special interests. A problem that affects half of the population of the country is not a ‘special interest’. It’s a big interest. It’s a regular interest.  [This comment really struck me.  Why are women’s interests ‘special interests’??]

• And similarly, 95% of domestic abuse victims are female.  According to that statistic, we’re not even running our domiciles, let alone the globe.

• A simple survey of reality will reveal that we don’t run anything and pretending we do will get us nowhere.  I think, not only is it not helpful, it’s actually harmful.

There is a marked fatigue in this country about discussing women’s rights; so much so that many men are looking for a return to ‘manliness’ in response to a perceived feminizing of our culture.  The truth is, however, that no matter how ‘fatigued’ we are, we are very far from an egalitarian society.

Additionally, and the video makes this point, our perception of our progress is skewed by the media and entertainment.  Why go out and advocate for change when an empowering song makes you feel like you’ve already won?

She is the quizmistress ‘best known for orchestrating the Williamsburg Spelling Bee, the nation’s most popular adult spelling bee’.  And she writes.  Brilliantly.  (Basically, she throws down the written word like it ain’t no thang.)

Photo by Bill Wadman

She authors these amazing, career/entrepreneurial articles such as “Maybe Work Life Balance Means You Should Work MORE” and “How to Make Money as an Artsy-Artist Commie Pinko Weirdo“.  (She’s one of those ‘straight talk’ people.  And do you see the awesome that is this t-shirt??)

But back to unloading stress and the profundity of parenting…

I have been baffled by the fact that my father, all evidence to the contrary, believed he was a good parent.  Especially since, when asked on a separate occasion, he admitted to being an abusive parent…as in, a child abuser.  [insert record scratch here]  Whaaa…?

As you can imagine, I started paying attention to parents in general.

I’ve seen them weeping at the idea that someone might think they were a bad parent.  I’ve seen them get belligerent when an employee attempts to stop their precious from destroying the merchandise.  Over and over I’ve seen declarations of “I love my kids – I am a good parent!”

(This also baffles me because I am convinced this is one of those classic logical fallacies; so convinced, in fact, that I have yet to bother looking it up.)

What is it about being a ‘good parent’?

I remember being both appalled and fascinated by the human condition when I took a class in rhetoric and was apprised that neuroscience has apparently determined, by looking at what parts of the brain activate in certain situations, that people change their minds based not on logic but on how they want to see themselves; they change their minds in order to construct more desirable identities for themselves or to preserve a long-held identity. I don’t know if this is always true, but it certainly does seem to explain a great deal of human behavior (and irrational beliefs about Obama’s birth certificate).

There is a good chance that whatever you are stressed about is so stressful because it threatens your identity. For instance, if someone you were dating took you to a Latin dance class — something you’d never thought about before at all — and you turned out to be terrible at it, would you stress out? Not so much, right? Because that doesn’t threaten the way you want to see yourself.

All the defiance and defensiveness in being unwilling to even entertain the idea of being a bad parent, to the point where parenting educators that I know won’t even go there, originating from the belief that being a good parent is core to their perception of their self-identity.

But what does this mean for people who aren’t all up in the parenting?

You know that feeling you get when you’ve failed?  That ever heavy, nauseousness that seems to well up in your soul?  The full body black hole that enervates your being when you think about what happened?  Is this a feeling that overpowers you after you’ve mangled a recipe for chicken pot pie?

The full body suck-itude happens when you trulymadlydeeply care about what you are doing, so much so that your execution of it is central to your self-identity and failing at it makes you feel like a failure.

Fail v. Failure

One is an action and one is a state of being, even if that state of being is momentary.

Our chicken pot pie FAIL! doesn’t matter unless we feel like a failure.  You know what’s crazy about this??  Life is the only game where we get to set the rules and live or do or exist however we want to!

WE decide what constitutes failure.
WE decide whether something matters.
WE decide where the goal post/touchdown/other sports thingy is.

And if we haven’t, then that means we let someone else do it for us.

(Books:  Do I love this?  Do I re-read this?  Is this a story I want to share with my children?  Does this speak to who I truly am and how I want to live?  If it doesn’t meet all four criteria then it’s gone.)

And most items I own have to fill a minimum of two functions, one of which being design, before I will bring it into my home.  Yet, still, I was accumulating some clutter.  But how?  But why?  My stuff strategy was foolproof!

Usefulness + Frequency of Use + Love + Inspiration = Yes!

One weekend as I was cleaning and organizing the Love Bungalow, I finally realized what was actually happening.

Example 1:  Jewelry

Compared to most women, I don’t actually own that much jewelry but my “frequency of use” is almost non-existent.  I have all this beautiful jewelry that I never wear.  So why has this turned into my Achilles’ heel the same way kitchen gadgets already are?

(Seriously, I have to be VERY firm with myself when it comes to kitchen gadgets.)

It came down to the “Love” and “Usefulness” portions of my equation.  Theoretically my jewelry was performing multiple functions: aesthetic and accessory.  Practically, however, I don’t actually wear jewelry.  So in reality my jewelry serves NO function except, maybe, to keep my house from floating away because it never sees the light of day.  Yet, every time I go to declutter my jewelry, I am stymied.  I just can’t do it.

But even if I can’t bring myself to get rid of it – It takes so little space!  Jewelry is timeless and classic!  What will I wear if I have a night out on the town? – why do I feel compelled to buy it all?

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Looking over my sad, lonely pieces, I noticed my jewelry has several things in common.  It is usually made of a natural stone, often turquoise or turquoise colored, and it is chunky.  AHA!

No WONDER it’s like catnip to me; it encompasses multiple things I love in one fabulous package (smooth, natural stone + turquoise + statement piece + awesome theoretical use) which, now that I think about it, also explains kitchen gadgets and my impulse buys in the home décor department.

Curb the Desire to Acquire

The process of shopping is a little like writing a news article – we’ve identified who we need to buy from, what we want to get, where we need to go, when the item is available, and how we intend to use it – except that we shoppers often skip right over why as being irrelevant.

“What do you mean ‘why’?  Because IT’S AWESOME, that’s why.  Sold!”

Hopefully without going all Merovingian on you, why is equally important, perhaps more so since who, what, where, when, and how simply identify the mechanics of, in this case, obtaining a given item.  But why?

Why is the reason we strayed from our budgets and filled our homes with more than we need.  Why lets us consciously and mindfully sidestep the marketing that intends to transform us into a zombie consumer.  Why is how we become more than we are.

Why is why.

Then it was the news.

I follow BBC World News, Al Jazeera English, and The Christian Science Monitor. Every once in a while I would check in with HuffPo, Breitbart, and Fox News to get a handle on how the hyperpartisan folks were doing.

And it was all. so. negative. Exhaustingly negative. With each awful story, I would remind myself that this was ‘news’ precisely because it wasn’t a normal occurrence. But still! The information was – practically – completely irrelevant.

And, speaking of completely irrelevant, I couldn’t escape tabloid information. (Why on earth do I know the dynamics of the Lohan family, WHY?)

According to Dunbar’s number, our brains can only process intimate friendships of about 150 people. The interesting thing, however, is that because of the way our brains process information, we don’t actually have to know those people.

Our brains cannot tell the difference between ‘real’ and ‘false’ memories and we process memories of, for example, television as an actual memory instead of a memory of us watching “You’ve Got Mail”. (Don’t hate.)

In other words, we remember the movie and not us watching the movie. That distinction is subtle but profound.

My theory, all very speculative, is that by ‘following’ celebrities the way we ‘follow’ the news, we are unintentionally including those people in our 150 people. As far as our brains are concerned, we are ‘friends’ with Snooki and The Situation. And, honestly, I don’t WANT to be friends with Snooki and The situation – even if only in my head!

Granted, this is all a supposition but what if?  It is frighteningly easy to believe we are eating real food, making real friends, and making a real difference.

The more mindful we are about the reality of life, our universe, and everything in it, the better able we are to see straight to the essence.

I like to think that’s the reason Etsy is doing so well.  And steampunk is becoming a thing.  Creating our worlds and our communities one crochet hook/pair of goggles at a time!

My living quarters have always been more about functionality than design and have often been highly Spartan.  I adopted a “Japanese minimalist” décor since that dovetailed nicely with being in college and having no money.

My personal motto was to only own what I loved and that, not unsurprisingly, meant that I didn’t own a lot.

And as much as I loved being in the Love Bungalow, it suddenly brought a whole list of “shoulds” regarding what it would take to live in that space.  We had gone from a 650 square foot apartment to a 1200 square foot home.  (Luckily, I’m somewhat of a renegade when it comes it comes to those shoulds.)

The truth is that the less stuff you own, the less you have to clean, maintain, and – ultimately – worry about.  I actually didn’t think we were all that attached to our stuff when there was a string of burglaries in my neighborhood.  Our concern was suddenly “How can we best protect our stuff?”

There are some people, however, that take the ‘no stuff’ thing to the very extreme.  It reminds me, very unpleasantly, of dieting.  Even without stuff, there is still this obsession with counting, cataloging, and endlessly discussing said lack of stuff.

What Really Matters

During my training for the crisis hotline, we did an exercise with our hospice speaker that stuck with me.  The point of the exercise was to be able to empathize people who were losing everything.

We had to write down 5 things we owned that we loved, 5 things we loved doing, 5 things in nature, and 5 people.  He then told a story, from a first person perspective, about discovering that we had a terminal illness.  As we went through the story, we had to eliminate things from our lives.

Unlike someone actually going through this process, we could pick and choose what stayed and what went.

Stuff Can Matter

What was a revelation for me was how long “fierce thunderstorms” and “crystal blue water” lasted, as well as “verdant greenery, trees”.  I have never considered myself a nature person; I am down with camping but that’s a BIG “no, thank you” on the hiking.  I don’t hunt, though I greatly enjoy canoeing.

I realized what I really loved about the Love Bungalow was the stand of pine trees just outside the backyard and that our backyard was perfectly situated for garden-growing-sunlight throughout the day.

I could experience the intangible joy of being in nature every day, something which was clearly important to me, through the existence and ownership of my home.

It became clear that the purpose of our things isn’t to own or by owned by them but, rather, how much they help us live.  It also explains why, at least for every person in that room, a person was the last slip of paper to go.

A lot of people suggest that when culling our stuff, we should ask “When is the last time I used this?” but I suspect the real question is “How does this help me live?”

I think it went from 0-to-awesome in 15 seconds but it’s probably highly offensive.  Honestly, you might want to skip this if you are easily offended and just come back on Monday.

I think the moral of this story is that if your co-worker starts to act like a zombie then you should get help, right?  Because that sounds like helpful advice to me.  You’re welcome.

Suffice it to say that food has been a struggle, it seems like, FOR-EV-AH.  (At least cocaine addicts don’t actually need coke to live.)

Instead of going into the details about my childhood yet again, I would just like to direct your attention to Morty Lefkoe’s blog on emotional eating.

It’s a freaking REVELATION.

His posts are brief but powerful and he shares what happens with his clients.  (As a de-unempowering-belief-inator?  I’m sure he has an official title  but that’s how I think of it.)  From “How ‘Non-Eating’ Beliefs Cause Emotional Eating“:

I asked her to look carefully at the moment when she realizes she is no longer hungry (after eating) and tell me what she wants to get from eating more food. What does she really want when she thinks she wants to eat?

Eating to get intimacy

She was quiet for at least two full minutes and then she said, as she started to cry, “Two things.  First eating gives me a sense of being loved and a sense of intimacy.  I feel I need to connect with someone or something.  And, second, eating gives me a sense of security, reassurance, feeling safe and secure, a sense that it’s all okay. [...]

Food doesn’t reject me.

I know it isn’t overwhelmingly mind-blowing at first, at least for me it wasn’t, but reading each entry was like stepping a little further into the ocean until finally the fullness of it washed over me like a wave to fill the quiet of my consciousness. (Yes, another beach metaphor.  I am so ready for the non-winter months.)

Morty also has another, more general, blog about eliminating beliefs which I have found equally interesting.  And, no, Morty and I are not actually on a first name basis but we should be because his name is Morty.