Balancing Safety and Freedom

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.

Red-winged blackbirds chase away a crow. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/altered-images/intercept/

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.