Follow the dominoes

- America elects Reagan and the UK Thatcher both huge advocates of Neoliberalism and trickle down economics (a myth). 

- Globalization and increasing tolerance for mergers creating monopolies. 

- Jobs move overseas and wages begin to stagnate. 

- The divide between rich and poor starts to skyrocket in earnest as the rich control and manipulate markets. 

- Conservative leaders try to mask the problem by ramping up the culture wars 

- 2008 financial collapse followed by COVID in 2020

- America elects a blithering idiot twice to assuage the people who are desperately falling behind. 

- It fails miserably 

I like movies

Movies provide us a condensed version of life. They make us cry, laugh and commiserate with the characters because, when done well, we can deeply relate to what we see on the screen. 

Over those two hours we cannot fit all of the subtleties that real relationships experience over the course of years. That mental progression and growth is left on the cutting room floor lest the movie extend to well past the patience of the audience. 

Great movies make us think about where our own lives have excelled or perhaps gone slightly wrong. We are inspired by characters we wish we could be like or incensed by their capacity for cruelty. We pat ourselves on the shoulder for being better than that and walk away relieved that our lives aren't all that bad. 

However, we are far more complicated creatures than a movie script allows and we tie a ribbon on the story as the music swells and the final credits roll.

Every day

Every day that we are alive a new tiny piece of the puzzle regarding the mystery that is you emerges. The combination of life experience and reflecting leads us to some new morcel of insight. 

If you are older you have hopefully mostly stopped caring about what others think and have plunged into your own psyche to discover who you are; perhaps who you've always been but were afraid to be. 

People will believe who you tell them you are the caveat being that you need to believe it too. There is no fooling the self because that would be pointless and blatantly transparent to others. 

I see people asking questions publicly like "am I this? how do I know I am that?" 

If we are asking someone else we've missed the point have we not?

If you don't know then they most certainly won't know either.

Connection

Fear of vulnerability is almost universal and if we have been wounded before, it will be even harder for us. 

However, having the capacity to be vulnerable is the only way to make deep and meaningful connections. 

Being your true self warts and all in front of another person requires courage. We expose our fragility and they do the same building a bond which transcends our sense of individuality 

It is a thing painfully rare to possess. 

I have understood this over my lifetime as I have reflected on the way I connected with people. I had not let them in completely but instead focused on fulfilling a designated role I didn't allow myself to fail at. 

That leaves less room for vulnerability. 

Many relationships function at a level that avoids people being genuine and true to themselves because that requires self-knowledge and more importantly love of self. 

We need to get to the core of the person that exists below the surface; under the hurts and the programming received during the formative years. 

No easy task.

The simple habit

 

Quiet

Retirement requires an entire remapping of our psyche. We have spent decades working under a familiar model which may have been far from perfect but became reliable. Suddenly that disappears and forces a reflection on meaning and purpose. 

I tell people it isn't about hobbies or keeping busy. Quite the opposite; it is about being able to live more deftly within the necessary quiet space and comprehend yourself more fully. 

If we cannot live with the quiet it is because we are escaping something. 

We are closer to our mortality and that should be enough incentive.

Hair today

At age 63 I am letting my hair grow out so I can, after decades, finally ditch the use of wigs. Right now it's an experiment because with age comes thinning and patchy areas but I am cautiously optimistic. 

I am not looking for long hair but rather a short feminine style that is low maintenance. 

By the end of this year I hope to have something that works and then decide whether to colour or leave it with its natural progression into increasing gray. 

Fingers crossed.

Wildcard

The wildcard on the identity and expression axis is expression. You can randomly choose 100 men and 100 women and each will dress, gesture and behave differently. 

However, the vast majority will be monolithic in their response regarding their gender identity. 

Therefore the first question to answer is "who you are you?" followed by "how do I express that identity?" 

Reversing that sequence makes much less sense since expression doesn't govern identity. In other words, identity is the fixed portion and expression is the variable. 

Thus identity must somehow be decided via the tandem of nature and nurture. These forces have a say in how a person develops an innate sense of self which will include gender identity and sexual orientation; in theory, both immune from attempts at conversion therapy. 

For this to happen both gender identity and sexual orientation must contain elements of biological predisposition which means that neither can entirely be a product of social construct. 

Only expression is the true social construct since people can wear or behave as they desire while their core identity remains unchangeable.

Copium

There are YouTube videos of local news stations for US border states featuring stories on the drastic drop in crossings into their region by Canadians. 

The segments cite political tensions, exchange rate (which is the same as during the Biden term) and generally rising costs as reasons for the decrease in visitors. The comment sections are full of statements from Canadians such as this one: 

"It's your idiot president threatening our sovereignty geniuses!" 

The frustration is palpable and I feel bad for US citizens and businesses I visited over the years who didn't ask for this. 

However, I think this is the necessary evil which will be required to reset things in the US. 

It will need to get worse before you can properly rebuild.

A full face

Gender variant youth don't require secret lives. This means that the spectrum which has always existed between expression and identity is for them an open book. 

Whether they transition or not simply depends on the existence and intensity of their dysphoria.

They avoid what could have been years of therapy down the road plus provide transparency to potential partners right from the outset. 

Self-acceptance doesnt need to be delayed and their variance matures along with them in a healthy way rather than remain stunted. Thus, gender variance now has a full face in society where its various shades are exhibited without people even bothering to notice. 

Two mornings ago on a busy metro platform I briefly locked eyes with a tall and serene GenZ who seemed to perfectly straddle the line between male and female.

Perhaps they were in the process of transition or not (their own long hair nicely framed their face) however it didn't matter. 

Either way, no one cared.

Looking around

Too much focus on the self can be unhealthy; just as much as not enough can be. 

We want to find a balance between being an asset to others while not abandoning our own psyche; probably one of the most difficult things to do in this life. 

Focusing too much on the self can lead to narcissism where that excess energy would be best served in being of service to others. When we have a personal riddle to solve we can turn it into an endless cyclone of energy which prevents us from looking outwards at the bigger picture. 

I feel that getting rid of much of our self-conciousness is a big part of the answer. We stop dissecting how people perceive us and are then more free to calmly look around.