I hope she's happy

I wondered what became of Shania Twain's young drummer and so I did some research. 

Elijah had become Elia which I knew; a progression which took her from androgynous youth to clearly female presenting. Then suddenly she disappeared. 

I then came upon a GoFundMe page which was about collecting funds for her completion surgery and suddenly the mystery was solved. An anonymous benefactor had offered her the remaining needed funds and in 2022 she had the surgery at age 25. 

There were some entries from her about the relief and her lifelong battle with gender dysphoria. She wrote about battles with depression and anxiety and mention of a suicide attempt. 

I hope she's happy.

Patient

Mark Carney wisely took his time and didn't panic. 

Now, as the US and Canada trade talks resume, that strategy will pay off because Americans are hopping mad about affordability. Not just the price of gas but the price of everything else. 

Turns out that having an economically illiterate idiot as your president isn't good for your country. Tariffs have been like tying an anvil to your neck and dropping anchor.

If Trump takes a hard line against Canada and increases tariffs on Canadian goods, that decision will be combed over with a microscope. Average Americans will blow a fuse and with good reason. 

The deals Carney made with other countries in the meantime bought him time and removed the pressure of needing a quick deal with the buffoonish American president. 

He's got a better hand because he played the patient game.

You've been warned

Mood control can be more challenging when we aren't as busy as we used to be. We have removed major life distractions and haven't fully replaced them. 

I warn people about retirement in that once the vacation mindset is over, there will be a period of instability where we seek to cement an identity outside of our previous existence. 

Of course this depends on what each person does for a living. However, regardless of whether it was passion or not, it likely occupied much space and distracted us away from full self discovery. 

For older transgender people this period risks being even more magnified as they may have left unresolved issues on the table because life got in the way. 

Thus for a time we will be more apt to oscillate emotionally until we reach a new baseline. 

Overthinkers, you've been warned.

The ego

Humility isn't about destroying the ego but about making it more subservient to our needs. 

Today more than ever, people will fight with a fervor fed by the courage of anonymity on social media platforms. This is because the ego cannot take a hit by admitting we might be wrong. We have liberalized knowledge with alternative facts to suit our needs. 

We say things with confidence as a substitute for understanding topics. 

Researching gender variance over the years taught me this very well. People will create scripts for themselves and lock them into place without too much questioning. This goes for some gender variant people as well as their haters. 

We can apply this phenomenon to almost any area of human affairs.

Truth becomes of less importance than carrying a simple narrative in our heads which serves our purpose. Either that or complete disinterest in digging further.

The earth is flat and that's all there is to it. Just make sure to say it with confidence.

Light

Being kind doesn't take much effort even if we assess that not everyone deserves it from us. 

Sometimes we see behaviour or body language that makes us recoil from someone but then we don't know what is going in inside their head. 

If we are in a good place there is no point in matching their energy and sometimes a smile will disarm what we have determined to be sourness. 

Life isn't easy but we can bring light into the dark crevices with our positive energy.

Tribal

We humans do things in reverse. We want to know who we are by checking off boxes to see if we belong. This is because we are social animals in search of a tribe. 

This is all well and good but there can be a dark side to this approach. If we seek identity through comparison we risk forcing ourselves into schemas that end up being antithetical to identity and individuality. 

In other words we could end up in a cult. 

At the highest levels, finding  commonality is obvious. We are humans with certain basic tenets which govern our existence. However the more we drill into the details the more difficult it becomes to shoehorn ourselves into neat tribal groupings. 

We do this not because it feels perfect but because not belonging feels infinitely more scary. It is the way humans have behaved for millennia 

As I have aged, the concept of being in a pack has appealed to me less and less. Therefore I stay at a higher level and remain in areas which unite us through our common humanity; the themes which elevate our best qualities.

After that, a personal identity can be found through our introspection rather than via seeing what someone else does.

Full maturity beckons.

Grievances

David Brooks says we live in an abnormal time and he is right.

The problem is that the structure we had built since the advent of the industrial revolution has crumbled. That world had spawned an entire ecosystem which had impacted every facet of life. 

You could argue that it peaked in the 1950's when a large middle class benefited from a system that ran like a well-oiled machine. Even people who worked in blue collar factories could raise families mainly on a single salary. 

There was a social order created which demanded expectation but also provided predictable safety. 

By the early 2000's the destruction was all but assured. The financial crisis of 2008 and COVID made sure to punctuate that the model we had known was over. Every aspect of life has been put into question and is being reimagined in a world of extreme wealth disparity. 

The tonic we need according to Brooks is a return to kindness, fairness and moral clarity. We took an off ramp towards individualism and never found our way back to trying to help each other. 

Social media became a breeding ground for toxic stupidity that we are now trying to cleanse from our collective consciousness. It turns out that stupid people are baked in whether we like it or not and they're not afraid to use it.

As Trumpism and the culture of perennial grievance fades away, we will need to find our way back to each other because we have little choice.

No magic fix

The reason that transitions can sometimes feel dissatisfying is because life in general can feel that way. 

We hit speed bumps constantly and may think that treating our dysphoria was going to solve everything else. 

Far from it. 

Living authentically doesn't fix everything in your life. It just helps you with an unresolved and important piece which was left unattended.

Grace

Ben Sasse is a former republican senator who at age 54 is dying of pancreatic cancer. It started in the pancreas but has spread to his entire body and is now at stage 4. He is receiving hospice type care with possibly not more than a few months to live. 

I watched an interview with him lately conducted by The New York Times and what struck me was his demeanor and composure. This man had come to terms with his mortality in an impressive way. 

There was undeniable peace and acceptance there which cannot be faked.

Sasse had been a moderate who had faced attack from both sides of the aisle. No doubt this makes him even more impressive since it shows conviction carries more weight with him than partisan allegiance. 

Unsurprisingly he wasn't MAGA.

He sat there answering questions with sometimes self-effacing humor; the bloodied blotches on his face the result of the harsh medication he takes to reduce the size of his tumors. 

We are offered grace and dignity in our most challenging life moments and if we choose to accept it, it can radiate from our very pores; bloodied or otherwise.

Santa Rosa

 

Miscalculation

Empires crumble largely by their own hand. They overextend themselves with a hubris fed from the fumes of their own self-satisfaction; their own exceptionalism. 

The American right wing placed its bets on a man who would help them end wokeism and return the country to some mythical Valhalla where segregated drinking fountains were the order of the day. 

It was a massive miscalculation. 

The Trump crime family will be looting the treasury on their way out the door and even likely avoid prosecution for their crimes. In their wake will be left millions of disenfranchised Americans whose lives will have been made much worse in the process. 

For much of the rest of the world America is now a pariah nation full of stupid people which is difficult to argue with. 77 million voted for a malevolent moron and almost 90 million couldn't be bothered to vote at all.

George Carlin used to joke about thinking of the stupidest person you know and then realize that half of humanity is even stupider than that.

I earnestly wish he had been completely wrong.