Take Me With You

My desk, right now:

Pages full in my TMWY-Journal: 22. It holds my Mondo Beyondo List.

Diapers changed in the last 48 hours: A gazillion. If not more.

People sick in our household: 2.

Hours of sunshine in the last 5 days: 8.

Fresh snow: ca. 20 cm.

List No. 2 – Things that make me happy

1. Making pretty things with my hands (like meals, toys, art etc.).

2. Browsing through old photographs of my family and friends.

3. Music. Always music.

4. Playing with (my) children.

5. Photography.

6. Calling old friends. And new friends.

7. Writing and receiving old-fashioned letters. On real paper.

8. Giving presents. I love the whole process: The thinking, the shopping, the wrapping, the giving.

9. Travelling. Seeing the world.

10. Singing.

List No. 1: Things that scare me

Taking the clue from NoApathyAllowed (via hula seventy), I will share some of my obsessive list-making with you in the coming weeks. Here is the first one:

1. Not feeling in control.

2. Losing my family and friends.

3. Parasites.

4. Losing hope.

5. The sudden movements of insects.

6. Failure.

7. Somebody sneaking in on me. It *always* works.

8. Going to the basement in the dark. Don’t laugh.

9. Turning 40 and thinking I should have done things differently. (I still have time).

10. Following my dreams.

Impatience in politics

Obama has just lost his strategic majority in the US Senate. He has lost it due to a phenomenon that can be described as “political impatience” – one year into his presidency, the majority of voters felt that he didn’t deliver enough.
Now, I know it’s too late and all, but I just wanted to say that my research shows that transitions like the ones Obama has been trying to achieve take a long time. Look at the Middle East – the conflict there has been going on for 40+ years, and has influenced the societies that are part to it in a profound way. My research shows that today, dominant strands in Israeli and Palestinian discourse tend to securitize everything that has to do with “the other”, regardless the “objective” threat. In other words: The societies which are involved in this longterm conflict have developed “frames” through which they perceive reality, and these frames hinder any effort to achieve peace. Now, changing such frames is a longterm project; in addition, politics has not even started to pay attention to this part of conflict psychology. Why then expect the one American president who finally puts a real effort into solving this (and other) longterm conflict to succeed in a year?
We (and by that I mean the “Western” states especially) have developed expectations and a sense of urgency which we apply to practically everything, but which are less than helpful in most cases. Political impatience of the kind that robs a beacon of hope of his political space of manoeuvre should have no place in a global society which, at its core, aims at solving conflicts and major global issues like climate change.
Instead, we should learn to embrace the longterm, and to extend our attention (and support) span. Otherwise we will continue to live in a self-fulfilling prophecy.