I have been paying close attention to small conflicts
recently. On one level, they may seem
too small to even be worth standing one’s ground. It is, after all, so much easier to go with
the flow, succumb to other people’s wishes and to give ground. But, I keep on thinking about the story of
the frog that is in a pan of cold water on a stove and doesn’t notice that the
water is warming up until it is too late.
That, and I am a Taurus and by nature rather stubborn.
As an older woman, I find that certain things just feel
wrong to me. As a younger woman, I was
taught to keep things quiet and to not make a fuss. However, as a child, my heroes were Zorro,
Hawkeye and Robin Hood, people who stood up for what was right against the corruption
that was part of the normal world. They
were edge dwellers who rescued the day, people who had to flaunt the status quo
and often the law to do what was right.
As a younger woman, my heroes were Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson
Mandela who were all imprisoned for standing up for the truth. Women like Mother Teresa and Maya Angelou who
lived their truth despite overwhelming odds also informed my consciousness. So, I have always wrestled with my upbringing
of being quiet with my belief in doing the right thing and standing up for
those with less strength and privilege.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that now as an older woman, I
feel the need to dig my heels in when I see a small act that represents a
larger worldview that I don’t subscribe to.
Here is an example of one of these conflicts. My father is 92, confined to bed or a wheelchair
and living in a nursing home. He is not
overweight, nor has he diabetes. He has
a hankering for hard candies to help with his dry mouth and to give him a sugar
surge. When he lived in a retirement
residence, my brother and I kept a bowl of these candies on his dressing table
and he enjoyed them immensely. Since he
has moved into a nursing home, this freedom has been often taken away from him
by the nursing staff. One of the reasons
given is that he might choke. He has had
three swallow tests in the past six months and is not a choking hazard. He cannot have candies visible in his room in
case another resident wanders in and takes one. That is sad but it is also the reality of
communal living with people who may have dementia. On one
occasion I had left some candies in one of his drawers in an attempt to comply
with the wishes of the staff and they spilled in the drawer. A nurse took them all away and locked them up
with the medications. I had to stand her
down to get them back. I spoke with the
assistant administrator later that week at the six-week case conference and
convinced her that he should be allowed to have them in a drawer. We agreed on the exact drawer in his bedside
table. The next week some staff member
removed them each day and put them on a high shelf in the closet. The staff have taken over his bedside table
with their cleaning products. So now I
have been putting them in an empty drawer in his dresser that he can
reach. So far, so good. It seems to be working. But who knows why some staff members are so
adamant that he shouldn’t have them where he can reach them. They cite safety even though it doesn’t make
sense. Safety over freedom. That is the mantra of such institutions. Keeping the aged safe and avoiding law suites
is more important than quality of life and freedom. I would happily sign a waver that allowed him
to have the candies if one exists. It
may still come to this.
Many days, I wonder why I persist in this little guerrilla
war. The assistant administrator says
okay, but some of the staff that care for him have other ideas. It is difficult to address this sensibly
because it is done secretly. And no one
wants to poke the bear that is caring for their father. And yet, I persist because this is very
important to him. It is the last treat
that he can access on his own, the last little pleasure that could make a long
boring day a little brighter, the last bit of freedom he has to make a
choice. So, I persist because I care
about him and I value freedom in balance with safety, not as a casualty to
safety. It is a fundamental principle
that I believe in.
It is nesting season where I live and the birds are
wonderful teachers about life. The other
day, I watched eight male red-winged blackbirds chasing a crow. The male blackbirds are not monogamous. They may have six females that are nesting at
the base of cattails while they stand guard against any intruders, including
other red-winged blackbirds. But as soon
as any bird they perceive as a predator comes by, the males band together and
chase it off. In the case of a crow,
this is a good idea. Crows eat eggs. The
crow that I watched dodged and dived to escape the blackbirds but they kept the
pressure on until the crow was well away from their families. Another evening, I watched a male merlin dive
bombing a turkey vulture. Turkey vultures
only eat carrion and so are no threat to the merlin’s nest, but the merlin was
taking no chances. He definitely was
from the “the best defence is a good offense” school of thought. The vulture didn’t alter its flight pattern
one bit. It is not built for out-flying
a member of the falcon family and so it continued its peaceful soaring on thermals,
seemingly oblivious to the crazed father.
Of course, the vulture is many times the size of a merlin but then the
crow was much bigger than the blackbirds as well. Crows though are expert dodgers and artful
flyers so that crow used what it knew to escape. The smaller blackbirds used the team approach
to chase away a bigger threat. The
merlin used it’ speed and screechy voice.
And the turkey vulture just seemed to rise above all the conflict.
On another front, my business partner and I have an office
in Toronto in a renovated house. We
share the first floor and waiting area with a psychotherapy office. We have been in that space on a major street
in a good neighbourhood for the past twelve years with no problems. However, the recent tenant that we share the
floor with has decided that she is afraid of people coming into the space that
she doesn’t know. There is probably an interesting
back story to this fear but she doesn’t talk to us so it is a mystery. Somehow, she convinced the people managing
the property to install a key pad entry system into our waiting room which
would mean all clients would have to use a code to get in. This was done without any consultation with
us and was a rather nasty shock when we found out. It seems ridiculous to us that our clients
and potential clients would have to remember a code to get into our waiting
room as well as totally unmanageable. So,
we presented a compromise position (in a letter to the psychotherapist) whereby
we would prop the door open when we were working there during the day and she
could have the key pad system at all other times. She did not reply to our letter but sent it
to the management people instead. We
received an email insisting that we comply with the new system and “adjust to
the change”.
First of all, there is no way our hundreds of clients could
“adjust” to this change. It would add
stress to their lives and ours and would frankly download this one woman’s fear
onto hundreds of people. It seemed to be
part of the current paradigm of fear, protection and separation that is being
used by populist politicians to gain power.
In the name of “security”, we were to limit our own freedom to run a
business and allow people to simply enter our waiting room. It reminded me of the merlin attacking the
harmless turkey vulture. And so, we
decided to pursue our idea of a compromise.
We replied to the management people with a long, thoughtful and hopefully
convincing email. We began with, “It is
indeed unfortunate that we were not consulted before this decision was
made. However, it is not too late to arrive
at a compromise position that is good for all of us.” We debunked the “safety” argument, explained
why this would create undue stress for our clients and implored in the spirit
of cooperation to be allowed to proceed with our compromise position. Later that day, we had a reply that the
landlords thought this was fine.
It would have been easier to go along with the original
plan and be angry about it, plan revenge and complain about our lack of power
in the situation. That is the paradigm
that I grew up in. But that is like
eating rat poison and hoping the rat will die.
Instead we decided to use our agency, be polite and yet forceful about
protecting our clients. We spoke for them
and we worked together to compose the email.
We offered to help the other therapist if she was ever frightened while
we were there and the door was open. In
short, we worked in the paradigm of cooperation and community to create security
instead of locked doors and separation. Perhaps, we were like the blackbirds,
working together to deal with a real threat when it occurred. It seemed to us, that by going along with the
paradigm of fear that we were adding to it and making it stronger. And that felt wrong. Instead we tried to elicit the paradigm of
cooperation and community and so far, that is how we are operating. We didn’t actually expect to be listened
to. We are far too schooled in being
quiet and in losing.
These seem to be very tiny struggles but I think they hold
larger truths. In the paradigm of fear,
security is found in separation, in locking things up and people out. Sometimes this is a good idea, but often it
is a solution with the side affect of reduced freedom, diminished community and
less resources available when trouble occurs.
In the paradigm of cooperation and community, security can be found in
joint endeavours and a diversity of solutions.
The collision of these paradigms is all around us and will be acted out
in small and large ways. It is a time
when we can think about which paradigm we want to live in because it seems that
we actually have the power to live and work in the paradigm we choose. Some of these choices are made unconsciously
but when we make them consciously, we may be surprised at the solutions and the
stories we create.
