Family and Friends

Journey After Happily Ever After

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[I read the following at the 50th wedding anniversary celebration for my parents, Sunday, December 18th, 2016.]

The story of how my parents met became mythological in its proportions to me after growing up hearing the story told many, many times during my childhood. It goes something like this:

They met at a statewide church camp when my dad was sixteen and my mom was – as she puts it – a mature 13 and three-quarters. They lived 100 miles apart, my dad in Fort Lupton, Colorado, a small town north of Denver, and my mom in Pueblo, a former steel town south of Denver. After meeting and becoming smitten with each other, they corresponded by mail for about a year. Wanting to see each other again, my dad drove to Pueblo with a friend of his and took my mom and a friend of hers to the Colorado State Fair. At that point, things took a turn for the worse. As the story goes, my dad told “the joke” – which so offended my mom and her friend that the rest of the time at the fair was spent with the pairs segregated not by couple, but by their sex. The drive home was tense with the two boys in the front seat and the two girls in the back seat. So tense, that at some point, my dad pulled over and threatened to make the girls walk home from there. His friend made him reconsider and the girls were taken safely home.

If you’re wondering what the joke was, it went something like this:

“What did Adam say to Eve? Eve, I wish you’d stop using my pants for the salad.”

From there, the story goes that they did not speak for three years. Three. Years. Now, during that time, my dad kept in contact with my mom’s older sister, writing letters occasionally to each other. At some point, my aunt suggested to both that they talk, and when they did, their romance was rekindled. A year or so after that, they married, at the ages of 19 and 21. As the story goes, they were so impatient to marry that instead of waiting until my dad graduated from college later that spring, they would marry during the Christmas break between the semesters of his last year. And so, they were married at my mom’s home church in Pueblo, on December 23rd. Their honeymoon consisted of a short road trip in the snow-laden mountains of Colorado, ending in time to get my dad back to classes for his last semester of college.

And they lived happily ever after.

If you’re finding that statement ridiculous, then A) you know that they’ve now been married 50 years and much has happened since, and B) you know that there’s no such thing. Marriage is compromise. Marriage is sacrifice. Marriage is work.

They would probably agree that at the time, they were both naive of these facts and that their marriage was just the beginning of discovering their personality differences, discovering their differences in upbringing, of discovering each other, and how these discoveries would impact the discovery of themselves.

When I first saw the musical “Into the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim, I loved the concept that it was a two act musical, mashing up several fairy tales, where the endings that we’re all familiar with, the “happily ever after” endings, came at the end of the first act. I remember spending all of intermission excitedly, and nervously, wondering what would come next – what would come after “happily ever after.”

There are many events that came next for my parents:

A decision to go into the ministry.

A move to the cold of Minneapolis, Minnesota for Bible college.

A move to the cold of Gunnison, Colorado to become the pastor of a small, mountain town church.

The birth of their first and only child.

A decision to become missionaries.

A move to Brussels, Belgium awaiting a decision for mission placement.

A move to Jerusalem, Israel – a life-changing experience. An experience so profound that their world view, their view of humanity, their view of home and everything they knew, shifted.

A need for a break.

A homecoming.

A decision to leave the ministry.

Building a life in Colorado with careers in engineering and high tech.

Building a life in California.

Retiring.

Living happily every after, again.

These broad strokes explain little of how they got from the wedding ceremony to happily ever after. I can tell you it wasn’t easily done. They will be embarrassed for me to share this memory where a fight of theirs got so loud and lasted so long, that my conflict avoiding, grade-school aged self decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to hide in the linen closet of the bathroom – putting two doors between me and their argument.

As an adult, I better understand, and deeply admire, their journey together.

Several years ago now, there was a television show my parents and I began to watch. It was a British show called “As Time Goes By”. It’s the story of a couple who, after being separated for 38 years, re-discover each other and fall in love all over again. While the story of how these characters meet again after so many years and rekindle their love is sweet, I resonate most with the interactions of the couple and how they treat each other. I see my parent’s relationship reflected in their story:

Their personalities are different, almost, seemingly, incompatible. But the result is that they complement each other, filling inadequacies of one with the strengths of the other. They recognize each other’s weaknesses and help the other compensate when they are feeling lost and inadequate. They celebrate the other’s strengths and encourage each other’s growth, even when that growth seems scary or isn’t fully understood. They sacrifice for each other, equally. They communicate, especially when it’s difficult to say. They laugh with, and occasionally at, themselves, finding humor in difficult moments. And when those difficult moments come, they face them and speak truth to them until they are no longer difficult. They challenge each other when the irrational moment springs from the trivial and support each other when it comes from the wounds of the past. They acknowledge when they’re wrong. They apologize. They listen.

Combining these traits with the wisdom of many years, there is a sweetness of interaction that is a delight to observe, and something that I not only admire but aspire to in my own relationship.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Family and Friends

Siblings

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Growing up, I remember a time when I was endlessly pestering my parents for a sibling. I wanted a younger brother or sister so badly. Although I can now look back and say that it was mostly so that I could have a playmate that was always there when I wanted to play. At the time, my parents and I were living in Israel, and my parents, though free with their attentions toward me, were nonetheless often busy with classes or working, and the neighborhood kids weren’t always around. But at that naive age, I didn’t realize that a brother or sister wouldn’t always want to do something with you – or do what you wanted them to do.

I learned this a few years later, after we moved back to the same town as my mom’s sister. I found I didn’t always want to do what my older cousin wanted me to do – like dress her younger sister (who was my age) and me in fancy clothes and make us dance.

And still later, when my mom went back to work and I spent time in the care of the neighbor down the street with her two daughters or in the care of my aunt and her two daughters, I began to really see what daily living with siblings could be like: often fun, but riddled with conflict, negotiations, and sometimes tears. I began to appreciate being able to go home to the always wagging tail of my cocker spaniel.

In years to come, however, I would realize that I got as close to having siblings as an only child could get through not only these two pairs of sisters, but through my many cousins.

Siblings share a closeness in part because only they understand “the family” in a way that no one outside could understand. Siblings know a history and sequence of events that make up your story in a way that anyone coming in at a later chapter must often work very hard to understand. Siblings are your first peers, your first mentors, your first pupils, and your first charges.

For all those things, I had cousins. With nine aunts and uncles from both sides of my family, I had 19 first cousins, some of whose kids I was actually closer to in age than their parents, so the number of cousins is substantial. While we may not have shared parents, we shared a certain history and knowledge of each other’s lives that few others could understand. In this life, there are many reasons that we choose people we meet to become our family and I have many friends that I count as family. But I have been blessed by a wealth of family that I also consider friends, and in particular, I have been blessed by cousins that are siblings to me. And I am grateful.

Bigotry

That’s Gay

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“My high school was gay,” I said. Disgusted.

Perplexed looks crossed the faces of my dinner companions.
A moment passes.

And another.

With perplexed hesitation, a sincere query: “Really? Everyone in your high school was gay?”

Another moment passes. Maybe more.

Realization dawns, synapse by embarrassing synapse, what I, a gay man, barely beginning his coming out process, has just said to his dinner companions, consisting of his first boyfriend, his boyfriend’s gay roommate and his boyfriend’s gay roommate’s gay friend.

The preceding, commiserate conversation among burgeoning college friends about the trials and tribulations of living through high school on the fringe was innocent enough. Round the table went the stories telling tales of petty high school shenanigans, implying the emotional growth of the participating conversationalists in the intervening years.

But my own mouth gave voice to words that betrayed my own immature notions and deep-seated, self-hating bigotry – bigotry so subtly taught, I hadn’t even realized the lessons took hold. I hadn’t even yet been able to say “I’m gay” – preferring to say “I’m attracted to men – to anyone, much less myself, and maybe this was why: I couldn’t separate the thought that I was “so gay” from … well, being gay. In the past, a “so gay” comment was an exasperating, eye-roll inducing, flippant belittlement. It didn’t have anything to do with my attraction to men. But in that moment, when my flippant words were combined with the context of the people I was with, I experienced an “a-ha” moment.

That embarrassingly painful foot-in-mouth moment taught me something terribly important: sometimes we don’t realize the gravity of lessons we’ve taken in, even when that which we’ve taken in as truth is detrimental to ourselves. I realized in that moment the power of disassociation. The power to simultaneously say something with the intent of a particular meaning while stripping it of the full weight of its full meaning.

I’m sure that’s what my boss did when the other day he flippantly said “they’re so gay” when looking at a concert video from the ’70’s of the long-haired metal band, Deep Purple. His comment caught me off guard as I’m sure mine did my college dinner party friends. He has heard me talk about my honey bunch and he’s expressed support to the other gay man and his partner in our department. Therefore, I’m sure(ly hoping) he meant that they were “gay” like I thought of my high school experience – only applying the socially negative meaning of the word while disassociating it from those of us who use it to identify ourselves.

In our society, that high school definition of “gay” includes “lame”, “uncool”, “effeminate”, “gutless”, “dishonorable”, “unmasculine”.

I refuse these associations to my person. Utterly.

And so, with an intentionally naive, optimistic attitude, I now assume when someone says such a thing in my presence, knowing who I am, that they must be praising the object of their comment. Therefore, to my boss, with a smile on my face and lilt in my voice, I responded “Oh! So you think they’re cool!” Statement. Exclamation point.

Stunned, thoughtful silence was his response as I finished doctoring my coffee and returned to my desk. Perhaps that embarrassing firing of synapses was now making its way across his brain.

Family and Friends

Places I’ve Lived

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It’s always a bit strange saying goodbye to a place, especially one in which you’ve lived and that you’ve called home. Strange because when you no longer go there, the place isn’t really what you’ll miss. In part, you’ll miss making new memories in that comfortable place. But on the whole, it’s the loss of the use of that place as an easy touchstone for old and cherished memories that makes parting bittersweet. 

Places hold power for us because they become imbued with the actions, and the intentions behind those actions, that take place in them. At home, the dinners, the games, the celebrations, the grief, the arguments and the love intertwine in the daily actions between family, friends, and spouse.

Today I said goodbye to the home my parents have made for the last 23 years. It was not my childhood home, but I did share it with them for a couple of summers between years at college and then for a few years when I later got another degree. It is also the place that my parents have lived for the longest period — so far.

It is the home that introduced neighbors to us that are now life-long family friends. It is the home where I held my childhood dog for the last time. It is the home they opened to a cousin and later an uncle when both came upon hard times. It is the home with grand 50th birthday celebrations, one “Over the Hill” for him and one “English Garden Tea” for her, that filled its walls beyond their capacities for people, laughter and fun. It is the home that helped us repair our relationship after the strains of coming out. It is the home that held us as our understanding of each other grew — where mentor / adult supplanted parent / child.

But I must remind my nostalgic self that it was not the home that did all of that, it was those who built it: my mom and my dad, together with dear family and precious friends, gathered in relationship, fun and love. So, I take this moment to recognize this transition from the familiar to the new, and in acknowledging the loss of the touchstone, I revel in the thought of imbuing the new with all that love.

Authenticity

Adaptive Potential

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A tinge in the tone of voice. An implication. An unspoken hope. The more blatant question, “Why don’t you just marry a woman and have a family?” is one I haven’t been asked outright. Still, the more subtle hopes and desires expressed by people questioning me about my sexuality have been real and I know other gay people who have been asked this question directly. 

Sometimes, the hope underlying the question comes from a desire that my life just be “normal.” The questioner then doesn’t have to think about how my life isn’t what they expect. Sometimes, it comes out of (what I would consider to be an erroneous interpretation of) a religious belief. Sometimes it comes out of a concern for the ease of the path of my life. Apart from not wanting to have to think about it themselves, it comes from an underlying intention of concern. The concern is at its most dire when coming from the religious perspective, because from their perspective it is my soul that weighs in the balance, after all.

On a cultural scale, the manifestation of this hope came in the form of the “ex-gay” ministries that sprouted up 35 years ago, coinciding with the growing visibility of gay people in mainstream life. These ministries purport to extend that hope to The Homosexual as they promise a life free from same-sex attraction. With the demise of Exodus International last year, arguably the largest organization of its kind, it is beginning to be clear that their hope is not as well-founded as once was thought. Still, the ministries that remain maintain that homosexuals can have a “normal” life with a spouse of the opposite sex, given enough faith, prayer and dedication.

I could approach an argument against this philosophy of change or adaptation by getting at the fallacy of its Biblical foundation. By going through the half dozen or so verses in the Bible that supposedly refer to homosexuality and showing how each one has either been misinterpreted or mistranslated, building on centuries of bias, I could render the need for this adaptation or change moot. However, I am not a Biblical scholar and would only be plagiarizing work that has been done better and more thoroughly than I could.

Therefore, I will approach it, as most of us only can, through speaking from my own experience.

Being with a woman is something I considered in the past. In some ways, it might have been easier. My closest friends have been women and there were times I considered the idea of carrying the friendship with one or two of them further before I started coming to terms with my sexuality. I think that I could have had a life filled with companionship, even love, and family — if without passion — at least for a time.

However, I realized early on that following that path wouldn’t be fair, to either of us. The benefits would have eventually been overridden by dissatisfaction, frustration and resentment.

As humans, we are highly adaptable. You can look anywhere in the world and find people who have adapted to conditions and situations that are difficult, adverse, even dangerous. Many entered into willingly while others are a matter of survival. I can think of many examples of people I’ve known who have adapted to a harsh life in order to survive and I know that I could have set my mind to living a life with a woman.

However, I do not think that our lives, that of my hypothetical wife or myself, would have reached the same full potential as lives spent with people who fully adored us. Passion, for music or chemistry or whatever makes you tick, unlocks something within us that allows us to reach our highest potential. At every stage of my life, when I have had a choice between something that spoke to my truest self and something that was safe, and made the choice for the former, I have soared, attaining goals faster and more easily than expected. When choosing the latter, I have been met with obstacles, frustration, and on occasion, regret.

Last year, on the eve of Exodus International’s closing, I watched a man talk about his experience with the organization on Lisa Ling’s “Our America”. He now considers himself an ex-Ex-gay. During his 19-year career as a pastor and marriage to a woman, he saw himself as “the star ex-gay”. However, on the inside he “knew it wasn’t true,” that he wasn’t truly changing, but that “what I was learning was how to hide more.” That doesn’t sound like soaring. It sounds like regret.

Through junior high and high school, I had a violin teacher who would frequently tell me: “We need to get you a girlfriend to light a fire under you.” Awash in confusion, my naive self couldn’t see how getting a girlfriend was going to bring the passion that he thought (and, in hindsight, rightly so) was lacking in my performances. That is, until I had my first serious boyfriend — and breakup — in college. The experience of love and pain breathed life into the years of technique I had learned. Sweet melodies were now fueled by the experience of true love. Melancholic phrases took on nuances of remorse and heartbreak. Loud, fast passages took on the robustness of rage and passion.

Adaptation is possible but comes at the cost of human potential. Compromise is a necessary part of life but our ability to reach our highest potential is diminished when we compromise anything that is at our core. Passion and love ignite the fires that drive us to soaring heights and in this one life that we have to live, it is the saddest tragedy of all to knowingly limit that flight. I could have married a woman but neither of us would have soared. I played the violin, but until I knew love, it wasn’t music.

Veterans

Memorial Day

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I hate war. I believe that in 9 cases out of 10 or 999 out of 1000, a better solution can be found than a contest of numbers that results in death and destruction and martyrs and vendettas. Precisely because that is usually the result, if we must, war should be entered into carefully, with wisdom and forethought and the full weight of the lives (on all sides) that will be lost and the damaging ripples those losses will incur. Any family who loses a member should be taken care of. Any individual, upon return, who has physical or mental illness due to their participation in war on our behalf deserves at least as much as was spent on the war to recover from it. We, as humans, know the effects of war. And as Oprah would say, when we know better, we do better. So far, we are failing on the do better part with regard to our veterans of war. We talk a lot about them, displaying our yellow ribbons and putting them on pedestals where we think we honor them. But they don’t need pedestals. They need care, and compassion, and an ear to hear, and a shoulder to lean on because they were strong for us there and it is our turn to be strong for them here. I failed in preventing the war from occurring. I pray I do not fail in giving our veterans and veterans families what they have earned.

Reform the VA.

Coming Out

Divided Lives

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For the last few years, I’ve made a point to go to Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. At Frameline 37, one theme came through in several of the films that inspired some self-reflection.

A short titled “Finding Franklin,” follows the story of a young lesbian who goes to her grandfather’s home after he dies. While going through some of his things, she discovers a box carefully separated from his other belongings. The box contained old photos of her grandfather as a young man with another young man, as well as a postcard signed “Franklin”. The young woman realizes these items tell about a part of her grandfather’s life she never knew. After some digging, she finds Franklin who fills in the picture with the story of the loving relationship between him and her grandfather. It was beautiful and yet bittersweet with the knowledge that the grandfather had gotten married and started a family with a woman. Pressure to present himself as straight caused him to hide his love for Franklin and eventually end it.

Two words vividly came to mind: “Divided Lives.”

Divided in part because these two people who loved each other were not together. Divided, in perhaps a larger part, because each man was living a divided life within himself. A public life. A secret life. A false life. A true life. These dividing lines sometimes blurry, sometimes starkly drawn.

Divided lives, satisfying cultural expectations.

“Lewd and Lascivious,” the documentary that followed, detailed a 1965 civil rights conflict affecting the gay movement in San Francisco. The overall story was previously unknown to me and turned out to be well worth knowing – particularly in the current political climate. One moment in particular caught my attention: an interviewee’s name was listed as a subtitle on-screen as “Fred ‘Al’ Alvarez.” It seemed like a typical “Name ‘Nickname’ Surname” way of presenting a name on a documentary film. However, Mr. Alvarez described how, in that time, because it was so dangerous to be known as homosexual, many people would employ a pseudonym when out at gay bars. Fred was his “official” name and Al was his “gay” name. When he received a call at work, he knew which world the person was calling from based on which name they used.

Divided lives and the keepers of the secret.

Keeping the secret requires a trust with all who are told, but carries with it the fear of a slip or even a betrayal. it’s a fear that, even in today’s world, burdens all involved.

A documentary about Alan Turing, “Codebreaker”, continued the theme. Turing was the brilliant, British mathematician instrumental in breaking Germany’s ENIGMA code in World War II, allowing the Allies to gain a strategic advantage over the Nazis that would eventually win the war. Prior to the war, he wrote a paper detailing the basis of the modern computer. Moreover, after the war, he devised a mathematical explanation of patterns in nature that spawned mathematical biology and the beginning of chaos theory. So, “brilliant” is not applied lightly here. These are big ideas that have spawned decades of research and changed the way we as humanity go about our daily lives. Alan Turing was also gay. Alan Turing was gay in a country where a male having a sexual relationship with a male was illegal. After being found to have had a relationship with a man, he was convicted for “gross indecency”. To avoid jail time, Turing agreed to chemical castration and received estrogen hormones for a period of a year. Because his work during the war was unknown by the general public and considered to be state secrets, and because homosexuals were considered to be security risks, the government hounded him after his arrest. At the age of 41, he was found dead from an apparent suicide.

Division equals suppression, oppression, and dire consequences.

Each of these films showed men who hid significant parts of their lives. Reflecting on their stories, it strikes me that with each lie, half-truth, and suppression of self, we chip away at ourselves and splinter our soul into disjointed pieces. I’m not talking about white lies, I’m talking about lies and half-truths that deny who you are at a fundamental level, especially as it relates to something so fundamental as whom you love and whom you share your life with. Division at this level prevents true joy from forming and taking hold.

When I was growing up, the realization I was gay came slowly. It started with the realization that I was drawn to looking at the guys in my class and neighborhood. It continued with the realization that my male classmates had the same attractions, but toward the girls. Concurrently, I somehow knew that I was not to talk about it, much less act on it, and probably shouldn’t even think about it. So, I did not. As I grew into high school, my attractions were clear, but the pressures were so great, that I continued to say nothing. In fact, all I would allow myself to think was “if I’m gay…” which happily pushed any real thought about my sexuality to some point the future. It was a self-imposed, painful and shaming division between who I am and what I allowed the world to see.

In college, I knew that the future had come and I needed to deal with my thoughts and fears relating to being gay, lest I marry and mislead a wife and children about my truth. As clearly as I had known in earlier years that I could not talk about being gay, I knew the time had come to allow myself to explore my own thoughts and begin to speak. Still, thoughts written in my journal about being gay were couched in code words and it wasn’t until my second year that I could finally say to someone “I think I’m attracted to men.” By not saying “I’m gay”, I was still giving myself plenty of room to back out. After telling a second person, he invited me to have lunch with some people who were a part of the local support organization on campus for LGBT people. I don’t think I said anything and shook with the fear that someone I knew would walk by and know that I was at the “gay” table. I was taking the first steps in integrating my true self with the self that the rest of the world knew, the unknown with the comfortable, and I was terrified. I was 19 years old.

At 40, I had come a long way and my life was something different than I would have imagined while I was growing up. I had a party to celebrate the milestone. It was a bigger party than I’d ever had before. But it wasn’t that food was great, the playlist hand-picked, or the Wonder Woman themed plates and party favors that made my party so satisfying. Friends from work, friends from college, friends from church, neighbors, and family were all there, mingling, talking, laughing and having a good time. After years of keeping trips to gay clubs secret, of keeping pronouns of romantic interests gender non-specific, and of keeping lists of who knew and who didn’t, the joy I felt in that celebration came from all of my closest friends , family and boyfriend being there and not being terrified someone might say the “wrong” thing to someone else. Everyone knew. My life was integrated. And I felt free.

The phrase “coming out of the closet” is meant to indicate when a LGBT person tells someone about their sexual orientation or gender identity. I like to think of it more as integration. While moments of happiness can be found within the splinters of a divided life, integration of the soul brings true joy and freedom.

Nature vs. Nurture

I hadn’t thought of that…

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There’s a great video that was coincidentally made in my home town of Colorado Springs, Colorado a few years ago. It’s a very simple “person on the street” sort of video. It’s worth the three minutes to watch it, but in short, the interviewer asks three questions in the following format:

1.  Are gay people born gay or do they choose to be gay?

This is usually asked off camera, the interview starting with the subject’s response. Most of the folks who respond say that they think it’s a choice or possibly a combination of nature and nurture, with an emphasis on nurture. In response, the interviewer hits back with:

2.  When did you choose to be straight?

The subject’s response is frequently shock, combined with disbelief that the solidity of their heterosexuality just came into question. One woman outright laughs at the question. The next moment is my favorite, when you can see them realize that maybe, just maybe, if the question is ridiculous when asked of them, it might be just as ridiculous when asked of a gay person. It’s at this point that a couple of people say “I hadn’t thought about that.” Logically, the interviewer follows up with:

3.  Do you think it’s the same for gay people?

Invariably, each person taken through this progression ends up saying that they think it probably is the same for gay people. They end up realizing that if being straight was not a choice for them, it was not a choice for a gay person either.

My point is not to delve into whether being gay is innate or due to environment or a choice, although I think that if straight people took a moment to turn inward and ask that question of themselves, that question wouldn’t be a question anymore. My point is that most people who are sure that being gay is a choice, haven’t actually thought it through.

As a gay, white male, I have the distinction of being able to live in both the world of the minority and in the world of the majority. When you are part of a majority, there are aspects of your life that fit in nicely with your image of the world. You can rely on society’s “rules” about how things work and do pretty well. Therefore, there’s no need to question the “rules” and you’re free to explore other issues.

As a white person growing up in a largely white city, I didn’t have to question whether my classmates of color might get followed or questioned when browsing the same record stores I browsed in. I was never followed. I never questioned whether my female classmates were treated differently in class. Getting called on in class seemed natural because I was a good student. I didn’t question whether there was another reason.

People in the minority, on the other hand, must spend a great deal of time thinking about their position as a matter of survival, why the rules of society don’t apply and how, and then confront the opposition to those every day.

As a gay person, I had to question the societal image of getting married, buying a house with a white picket fence, and begetting 2.5 children. I had to think about the possible repercussions of talking about a romance at work or with family. And yes, I had to think about whether my being gay was something due to my environment or just who I was. I can say, I knew it wasn’t a choice because then I would have chosen to be straight. Without a doubt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with my life now and wouldn’t change the journey that has led me to where I am, but if I had had the option to choose then, I would have.

So, knowing I didn’t choose, my options were nature or nurture. I did question whether there were things in my upbringing that may have made me gay. For instance, was it because I liked to cook or sew? Was it because I didn’t like sports and preferred music? Was my mom overbearing? Was my dad distant? I thought about all these things and more. A lot. The deductions were many: I knew of many straight men who loved to cook and sew, I knew many straight musicians (and soccer camp had no effect), and both my parents were loving and involved without being overbearing. Those deductions lead to the same conclusion: I am innately gay.

So, it frustrates me when someone in the majority, with the power and privilege that comes with that position, fervently discounts my life experience by saying “it’s a choice.” Especially when they then build upon that belief, voting for policies and laws that directly affect my life without taking the time to examine the validity of that initial belief. I am grateful to those with privilege and power who take it upon themselves to not only question themselves, but their peers. I too am grateful to those who have prodded me to examine the areas in which I have power and privilege due to position.

We are all made better when we take the time to think about it.

Musings of an engineering musician