First Day

 

Control

Life resists that we attempt to exert our control upon it. We can try to order things as much as possible only to be even more shocked and dismayed when we are regularly thrown curve balls. 

The serenity prayer of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr asks that we be endowed with the following gift: 

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference." 

This should be seen as the pinnacle of human wisdom and regretably I have never known of anyone who has achieved it. Some people I have known have come closer than others. 

Surrendering the ego is certainly part of the secret which allows humility to more take its place. It becomes easier to relate to the experience of someone else and we stop judging them. 

Envy also falls away since we come to understand that underneath the public personna of every human is someone suffering the same existential angst. 

This balance point isn't about lying on the ground and waiting for a building to fall on us. It is instead about moving forward in quiet and confident resolve knowing that our fate doesn't belong to us. We just trust that our impetus to do good will be its own reward. 

We count on there being a purpose to all things that we may not fully understand and find joy in the openness of being surprised. 

We can relinquish control with confidence and wait for the universe to find us in our serenity.

Baked in

Increasing our IQ points doesn't make us nicer or better people. If anything it can potentially make us more complicated and prone to over analysis. 

Analysis paralysis. 

Humans can create narratives for their lives and sometimes stop there which can be both good and bad. 

Some skip the headache of asking the deep questions but then potentially suffer more consequences through the lack of introspection. 

On the other you have people who delve into nook and crannies of issues. They think before they leap and often more readily avoid major missteps but then suffer through overthinking the possible outcomes. 

In other words, there is no perfect under any circumstance because our imperfection is naturally baked in. 

Perhaps the optimum is to exist somewhere in between and know when to stop just at the right spot every time.

Good luck with that.

"Let them eat cake"

Even if Marie Antoinette never actually said "let them eat cake", the message from the French aristocracy was still about the peasants making due for themselves somehow. 

Today we are facing our own global crisis where wealth inequality has become so grotesquely obscene that FIFA is selling a $33,000 top ticket for people who fly in to matches on their own plane. 

"Eat the rich" slogans are found plastered in various places and recently MET gala attendees were met with slurs by angry New York protesters telling them to f'ing pay their fair share. 

Globalization and Neoliberal policies got us here and the unbalance is going to go off like a bomb. As soon as the more ardent, dimwitted and illiterate voters wake up from Trumpism there will be a reckoning there which hasn't been seen since the great depression. 

We got rid of jobs by the millions due to automation and efficiency objectives that now have more people than ever panicking about how they can afford to live day to day. 

The repair for this should be obvious if the world ran on the common sense principles of fairness and intelligence. Instead it runs much more liberally on greed and stupidity than is good for our health. 

The US will pay the price first (inflation is outpacing wage increases) followed by nations who toy with excess just a little less.

Therapy

Whether or not you need gender therapy as a transgender person depends on many factors. 

How old you are when your egg cracks certainly plays a huge part. In addition there will be aspects regarding your personality and family history that could greatly impact your psychology and ultimately decision making. 

Not everyone undergoes a full medical transition which is the goal of a minority of transgender people. However there are other partial forms of transition such as social which may still benefit from psychotherapy. This is to remove mental road blocks or simply help to clarify the steps one needs to take and place them in an organized sequence.

Knowing the difference between need and want can often be the biggest hurdle since the reality of decisions made haven't always been weighed properly. We may come to a crossroad and then imagine the steps without considering their full impact. 

At its worst, gender dysohoria can be a beast with every transgender person suffering it at different levels of intensity as well as types. Therefore there won't be one blanket approach to grappling with it. The stronger it is, the more it will be a good idea to seek professional help. 

Even social transition can be a scary proposition when one considers all of the variables involved. 

In the end I think that therapy is recommended for transgender people at any age. Youth need the guidance because they lack maturity and older people need help with self-acceptance, trauma, internalized transphobia and planning issues related to the logistics of their lived history. 

Being transgender is hard enough and the support of an experienced gender therapist can only have us answering highly pertinent questions before we embark on a particular path.

You don't need to go into all the crevices of the avaliable science, but at least understand the self more fully to determine how you need to live.

The Shadow

According to Carl Jung, the shadow represents the traits, impulses, and desires deemed socially unacceptable or even immoral. It is what lies suppressed underneath the ego. 

He proposes that we perceive our own shadow traits in others which can then lead to contempt towards them. It is not our evil side, but instead a receptacle for repressed creativity, desires or unfulfilled potential. 

Since our social conditioning can dictate which parts of the self are acceptable, the formation of shadow tends to have its origins there. This is when we first learn to suppress instinct.

Jung proposed that to become whole we must face and ultimately integrate the positive aspects contained within the shadow.

Ignoring it risks allowing it to grow larger and having exert its will via our unconscious mind.

My work on the shadow primarily involved dealing with vestiges of repressed rage after many years of living life in absence of full authenticity. It is my last piece of cleanup on the psyche.

Everyone has their own shadow.

They Come and Go

On the path of life we pick up people along the way and then we sometimes let them go. 

This is almost inevitable as we travel distances and take on new challenges. We grow apart not only geographically but in mindset such that the created bridge is no longer one we cross. 

I sometimes think about how those overlaps have helped forge who I am; how their input influenced me and how my own energy left a mark on others. 

Those people may have taken us outside our comfort zone and served as lesson for the future. We retain what we admire in them and reject the things we are no longer able to accept. Maybe we didn't like ourselves when we were with them. 

We mourn their loss sometimes and then release each other to the winds. 

No experience in life is wasted which is the moral of the story. Those people helped convince us that ultimately we are our own best resource. 

We confirmed that no one can help us more than ourselves.

God's sense of irony

The only other transgender person at my mother's birthday party was her 15 year old boyish-looking great grandchild Frannie (known to friends as Frankie). We eventually managed to chat through the cacophony of the cavernous restaurant during which he told me of his future plans to transition to male. 

He understands that he is young wanting to wisely do things through the guidance of an expert gender clinic like the McGill University hospital program which first saw me in 2007. 

His mother is not very accepting and later waved away my polite input as we disbanded for the night. Her child has been showing persistent gender non conformance since before puberty and his conviction as he spoke to me showed me he is not just playfully toying with expression. 

If my generation used denial, avoidance, coping mechanisms and compromise to get by, Frankie faces many less roadblocks despite the current backlash by certain governments which includes the one to the south of me. 

Thankfully, in Canada we are as accepting as they come particularly in Quebec where mavericks of every stripe have thrived under the bohemian influence of French European culture. (we won't talk about our mirror image opposite Alberta). 

How ironic then that the initially least accepting faction of my family (my brother's large clan) got the lion share of LGBTQ contingent. Two sons fully out as gay, one hesitant to come out and one transgender grandchild. 

If that isn't God's sense of humor and poetic justice, I don't know what is.

Trouble

America is currently in deep trouble. 

With the latest Supreme Court decision regarding redistricting of electoral maps, the GOP will now take a scythe to all the states they control and eliminate as many democratic seats as possible. 

This is because they have no interest in democracy but instead hold a drastically different vision of the country; one which involves pushing back the tide of what they see as an invasion of cultural progress they despise. 

This battle is for the soul of the country and not what is best for what is increasingly a marginalized electorate that is losing the affordability crisis. 

As the empire crumbles in on itself you will see more desperation from people who feel they have nothing to lose. The more affluent will consider leaving for safer places while those who cannot may begin to enact vengeance on a country they don't feel cares about them. 

The Trump crime family has enriched itself immeasurably during their hold on power which is a first in American history and a sign that things have devolved to a point the founders would have dreaded to their core.

Add to that the isolationist economic policies, and you have a situation where the US will be left out of global alliances which aim to stabilize economies and return some levels of prosperity to people struggling.

As the world remakes itself for the next global era, America risks disarray by falling prey to misguided cultural division and enriching an already fat cat upper class that doesn't believe in fair taxation.

In other words, they're in deep trouble.

Lacerations

Michel Courtemanche is 61 and a well known Quebecois comic. I watched his very frank interview during which he shared his personal battles with substance abuse, jealous rages and his eventual diagnosis with bipolar disorder. 

He states unequivocally that he now knows how to live and wants to be left alone. He has learned how to rely on the self and no longer seeks life company. 

This is something which today I comprehend viscerally. We get to a point where we understand ourselves too well and know how to meet our needs without compromise. 

Michel has been burned enough times by now to know what is good for him. 

Such admissions are rare because celebrity interviews can sometimes be superficial and bathe liberally in the saccharine. This hour-long discussion (en Francais) delved deep into the humanity of a comic we may have been tempted to think had it all. 

He had achieved fame and wealth at a young age but something inside was unsettled and needed mending. 

His life lessons resonated with me because no one fully escapes the lacerations that life provides. 

If we are lucky they can convert themselves into deep knowledge of the self.

Learning

When we get older we have already experienced many of the life ups and downs that are now permanently registered in the memory. We understand the consequences of decisions and can anticipate the pros and cons much in advance. 

It takes experience to learn how to live. 

As I watched my exuberant and large extended family last night, I thought about the victories and missteps some of them might make; the upcoming marriages, babies and newfound relationships that excite until they no longer do. 

My prize for the evening was that my son came which was a victory on his way back to a place he wants to be. We fall, we get back up and do it all over again because we must. 

It is the only way to learn.