Tag Archives: volunteerism

weaving safety nets of compassion

{31 January 2010}

“Have compassion for everyone you meet even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners,or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.” –Miller Williams

it’s been raining and raining and raining in california this week – there was a ten day period where we got something like nine inches of rain. it made me grumpy, and reluctant to run, reluctant to get up, generally reluctant. i’m a sun girl. but mostly it made me grumpy when the basement portion (ie, the bedroom) of my apartment flooded. since monday it’s been an adventure of mildewy moldy carpet, loud roaring dehumidifiers (and grumpy neighbors), muddy-footed contractors, and a lot of head-scratching. fingers were pointed at the water heater*, but really i think the foundation is cracked and groundwater somehow managed to well in. a LOT of ground water.

none of my stuff was ruined (clever of me to put all my furniture with legs in the basement room, wasn’t it?), so it was mostly just a week (and another week coming up) of hassle and inconvenience, treking back and forth from B’s place, living largely out of my car, looking a little disheveled, dressing in whichever t-shirt and jeans were cleanest and most readily at hand.

the handyman finally agreed, on day 6, that the carpet really was ruined, and pulled it out and promised to replace it with hardwood floors next week. the landlord agreed to adjust my rent. B has put up with all my whining with amazing patience and my arriving at his place after midnight, like a storm cloud. zeke is lonely, stuck at home where i can’t sleep. i go home to pet him for 20 minutes at at time, till the smell of mold and/or cold from having the windows open chases me back out.

anyway, the point of this post actually is that once again, life has a way of putting things in perspective. my car just looks like i’m homeless**. i’m not actually. i have lots of options, lots of safety nets still available to me. i sometimes think about how the difference between me and someone on the street or living in a shelter isn’t as much as it seems. it’s two things: one big (or a series of smaller) life-disasters, and a safety net. that’s the difference: the safety net. i have a community of family and friends who will pick me up and dust me off when disaster (even minor ones) strike. it’s the people who don’t have safety nets that end up in trouble. the disasters may be minor — flooded apartment, lost job, unexpected illness. but bouncing back from them, when you have no one to fall back on, sometimes becomes impossible.

i’ve been volunteering at the SF foodbank once a month and it’s a reminder to me to appreciate that i have a safety net. and more than that, to appreciate the generosity of the people who make a place like the foodbank run. they are creating a safety net for complete strangers. services like free meals*** help close the gap between minor disaster and life-derailing disaster. we all need safety nets. but it takes an act of compassion to create safety nets for total strangers.

*which, as it turned out, was nurturing a little farm of mushrooms under its warm damp belly. i knew there was a reason i opened the water heater closet on the first day i arrived, looked at that unfinished, spider-inhabited dark corner and slammed it again in horror.

**backseat contains: oranges, box of wheat thins, duffle bag of tshirts and jeans, shirts and slacks hung on hangers, running shoe and a pair of heels. necklace and earrings hanging from the review mirror, extra sweatshirt, coat, hat, gloves, newspaper and unread mail in the front seat, iphone charger dangling from the cigarette lighter, wrappers from starbucks commuting breakfasts on the floor in the back, running clothes and aikido gi and laptop in the trunk…

***South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer dug himself an impressive hole last week comparing hungry people with stray animals. his lack of understanding about the interconnectedness of community (ie, we all sink or we all swim) betrays him to be the worst possible kind of person to be holding public office. but what i find chilling is how it betrayed his complete lack of compassion.

stretching.

{16 December 2009}

i’m a big believer in the “do something that scares you, just a little, every day” adage. i started taking that seriously that a few years ago, and, without wanting to get all preachy or nuthin’, it has made all the difference.

but since i moved to california, there’s something or other in my new job that scares me every day. which means that i’ve not really needed or wanted to pursue other, scary activities in life. working half the evening, then coming home, cooking dinner, writing or zoning out over some tv and knitting, kinda sounds great to me most nights. when the sun was up later i’d go for a hike after work if there was enough light (there isn’t these days, with the winter solstice less than a week away).

but working long hours and hanging out with the cat isn’t really a way to make friends and build a life here. a career, perhaps, but not a life. for a while i was running with a women’s running group, but it closed up shop in october. but with the end of the year coming up rapidly, i was running out of time to do several of the things i had promised myself i’d do this year.

last week i finally checked out a dojo where i think i’d like to train: Aikido of Berkeley. walking into a new dojo, walking in new anywhere, is incredibly hard for me, i’m so fucking shy. but going to class the first time at Shinjinkai was one of the hardest, and best, decisions i ever made. so i went. i’m going to check out another dojo or two, but i’m pretty sure this is a place i’d like to train at.

next on the scary-to-join list is volunteering with One Brick. if you don’t know about One Brick, check them out — they are in the Bay Area, Chicago, DC, New York, Minneapolis, and Seattle*. the idea is that they make it easy for people to volunteer their time – one evening at a time, no long term commitments, and after every event, folks go out for a beer and hang out. do good work, hang out with other cool people. good deal, right? and it was. my burning awkward shyness aside, i did chat with interesting, nice people while we repackaged several hundred pounds of raisins at the SF Foodbank, then went out for Vietnamese food afterward. it made me miss Chicago, where i already had friends and a life and a place and a community, terribly. but it’s not going to get better till i suck it up and find some communities of my own.

next week: going to the community center pool and swimming for the first time in 8 months. i’m not a good swimmer. and gyms are intimidating. but i will persevere, intimidating gym!

*hey, i just realized that i know people in all of those cities.

do stuff for your new president

{17 January 2009}

those of us in the theatre industry rarely get those three-day weekend monday holiday things. if we’re lucky enough to get a day off at all, it’s usually on a monday, in which case the fact that banks and post offices are closed is just plain inconvenient.

which is why i’m stoked that my tech schedule is giving me sunday and possibly much of monday off this week. whoo! and then on tuesday i will be celebrating the day that everyone has been anxiously awaiting by attending a friend’s inauguration brunch, aptly titled, “Ditch Work For Your New President”. tuesday morning = pancakes + barak obama? yes, please.

in the mean time, obama has urged everyone to consider MLK Day to be a day of national service. so if you’re lucky enough to have the day off, please consider volunteering for a community event. there are services events like helping out in shelters and food pantries, and also a lot of drop-off events, so if you don’t have a lot of free time you can still help out by donating an old coat to a shelter or coat drive, give blood to a blood drive, food to a food drive (i’m starting to get a drive theme here…), etc.

so go on, thank your lucky stars for a three day weekend, and go find a service event in your hood.