Flight 1407 - 12/08/2002

Written on Flight 1407: returning to Oakland from NYC. 12/8/02

There are two ways to enter a new world: Either to be terrified or to decide to be eaten whole and to become enlivened by it. To be moved and changed and to see and feel things that one would never have guessed or even imagined. To be thrown, hurled, tossed, turned inside out and yet never feel that it is not pleasant.

This is the transformation that began in New York for me. To think that a boy who had always thought that he would have to return to the country to find safety and community and instead realizing that I had found in a city of 8 million strangers, all of whom are my brothers and sisters, as well as my cousins, my mother, my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather.

This is what I’ve found to be me:

Upon arriving I was filled with a slight apprehension. “New Yorkers are rude and in a hurry.” I could not have found this to be further from the truth. Strangers immediately helped me find my way and were gracious about it even though it was a Friday night and they were obviously on their way to something important in their own life. The open smiles, the many languages, the unlimited races and cultures all living in one place. It was both perfect and peaceful. It is hard to explain gracefully what New York means to me. Suffice it to say that I cried almost everyday because of the beauty, the love and the unbeatable spirit of the people who had been through such horrid times.

I have traveled to many places and have never felt the love that I felt in New York except one place: Hiroshima, Japan. It is my belief that the people of these two cities experienced the worst humanity can do and decided that love and kindness can stop it from happening again.

In New York, I saw the play “Our Town.” It is about a town much like Healdsburg, my hometown. The play is about a small place where nothing happens except life and how each second of it is important: birth, marriage, death. Everything passes quickly and if you don’t make the most out of each second, you miss life. Three seats from me Christopher Reeves sat in his wheelchair. I could not imagine what he must have been thinking after being on top of the world and then having that taken away. However, he, like New York and Hiroshima and hopefully each one of us, sees at that moment, that, no matter how simple and basic what we are doing right now is, it is of the utmost importance. My eyes well with tears as I tell you this and hope you understand what you all mean to me.

Love,

Aram

Mea Culpa

Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English as “my fault”, or “my own fault”. In order to emphasize the message, the adjective “maxima” may be inserted, resulting in “mea maxima culpa,” which would translate as “my most [grievous] fault.

As I move closer to my 40th birthday, I am somehow compelled to look at myself, my beliefs, and my way of moving through the world. I grew up in an exceptionally loving family that showed emotion openly. The benefit of this was that I felt supported and loved by my family. My dad would be there to take pictures and my mom would be there to cheer us on. The negative was that the level of emotionality often resulted in fighting, yelling and personal attacks. We did not learn “proper boundaries” in the psychoanalytical sense. In the last year or so, I have been working on my boundaries, my sense of what I want to bring into this universe, and how I want to handle myself with others.

I used to be a rageaholic. I would blame others for my unhappiness and my not being the center of attention. This narcissistic wound was so deep that I had a hard time regulating my own emotions. I would lash out when I felt hurt. I would take things personally, then verbally attack the person that told me these things because of my inability to be objective about my perceptions. I was unable to differentiate between where I ended and others began so I was constantly anxious and depressed. I was judgmental of others because I needed to keep myself safe and protected. If I were not better than anyone else, then I was nothing. As Shakespeare wrote, “[Jealousy] . . . it is the green-eyed monster.” My eyes were deeply green for much of my life.

I took this persona on and I am moving through it as best I can. I remember raging at the government and constantly blaming the “others” (whether they be democrats or republicans or whatever) and how that allowed me to move through life angry, bitter and devoid of my own responsibility. My stepfather, Phillip, was a marine and a captain of a NOAA ship (they do the weather information for the government and scientific work on the oceans). He once told me, “You are the government and if you don’t take responsibility for what you dislike, it is your fault.” It took me quite a while to agree with this statement because I used all the excuses like, “Well, the lobbyists have paid them off”, “They won’t listen to us”, and “They don’t care.” I still battle with this but I think that I’ve turned a corner. I think Obama, whether you like him or not, shows us how to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We cannot constantly blame others for our situation and our view of the world. That is up to us alone.

I also used to rage against religion. I used to say, “If there is a god, why does he let this happen” and take it as there is nothing out there because of the choices of humans. I used to chronicle the litany of evil the Catholic Church brought down on the world as fact that there is no god. My family is Armenian and Jewish but we didn’t really practice religion. My mom’s parents were Devout Atheists, as I like to call them and Communists on top of that. My dad’s mom never talked about religion, though she came from a generation where many Armenian families were deeply Orthodox. That being said, Stalin and Hitler prove that atheists can be just as heartless as any religious institution. I’ve realized that it is we, humans, who bend words and take them out of context. Read the Old Testament, the Bible, the Qur’an, and what Buddha said…it is based on love. I may not agree with all of it, but these books are based on love. It is our choice not only to hear that love but to bring it into our life.

As some of you have seen on my Facebook pictures, I was in a horrible car accident when I was 4 years old. I thank each of you who left comments or thought about me as that hurt child when you looked at the photographs. In regards to that, I hung out with a friend of mine this weekend whose 3-year-old son is in Children’s Hospital. He has a very rare Juvenile Xanthogranuloma (a histiocytosis disease). It has completely closed his airway, taken his happy voice, and is spreading. After a tracheotomy, a port in his chest, a GI feeding tube, & many complications involving approximately five months of lengthy hospitalizations, Tanner is still facing 1-3 years of medical procedures & expensive hospital stays. His case is the only one in the WORLD like this that we know of. The company my friend worked for laid him off last year. He now has to rely on COBRA for health insurance and the grace of his church, his family and his friends to survive. His wife is a stay at home mom and they have two other children. This is someone that would have the right to be more bitter than I could ever imagine and yet he trusts in his faith and that things will work out. That is the beauty that faith, trust, and seeing love in the world, can bring.

I have thanked my family and Katia for all their support in the past but I have to add another: My friend Saul, who has helped me immeasurably by supporting me to walk down this difficult path. He has helped me learn to control my destructive thoughts and outbursts, to look inside and examine my motivations and needs, to state what I truly believe and be honest about it instead of sarcastic and underhanded. He has helped me to become who I am. He has helped me in learning to own my choices. He has shown me ways to stop patterns that offer no benefit in today’s world. I have learned you always have a choice, no matter what the situation. He has also introduced me to meditation. Saul, you have my profound gratitude. Namaste.

As I write this, I look back at all the people that I have blamed, all the names I’ve called others, and the pain for which I have been responsible. I do not regret one moment because I would not be the person I am now. I do apologize if I have hurt you. I apologize if my anger, resentment and jealousy hurt you so that I would feel bigger and more important.

If you would like to talk to me about something I have said in the past that might have hurt you, I will try to listen, as best I can, without judgment and with love.

Mea Culpa.

Throwing shoes and other unmentionables

I was reading some posts about the reporter that threw the shoes at President George W. Bush. My initial reaction was “Good, I just wish he had hit him in head or better yet, used a bullet.” Then I thought about my shadow. I believe that we all have a shadow and that if we don’t deal with our shadow, it will slowly kill us. I believe that Bush, or in all actuality, Bush’s mindset, is my shadow. His seemingly inability to care for others, think with an open mind or realize that he is the creator of the hatred and terror that he is afraid of is utterly destructive.

Simply said, Bush stands for everything I abhor. That is such a simplistic and easy answer. In reality it means that I need to examine myself and how I react when I am faced with opinions and ideas that are differnt from mine. I need to realize that, even if I think they are absolutely wrong, I need to find something that connects me with that person and their beliefs. If arguing and anger would have changed their minds, it would have already have happened. If love and acceptance can’t do it, at least I know I didn’t add to the distrust and anger in the world.

I look at all the different wars that have been fought through history and it saddens me. When people talk of the different wars, and why their were righteous, I tend to think of the “Christmas Truce” of World War I. There was a truce declared on Christmas Eve, 1914 when the Germans started decorating their trenches in Ypres, Belgium. The Scottish troops in the trenches on the other side responded by singing carols. Both sides continued singing to each other and then, amazingly, the soldiers came out of the trenches and shared gifts with each other. Eventually, the two “waring” sides played soccer and, it seems, became friends. The British Generals, Sir John French and Sir Horrace Smith-Dorrien vowed that there would never be another Christmas Truce. The reason? The soldiers actually stopped the war and the Generals had to bring in new soldiers because the soldiers no longer wanted to kill someone they knew as friends. The reason I bring this up is that when we see people as they are, instead of dehumanizing them, it is easy to see how immoral it is to hurt them. Everyone has a right to live and be treated with respect. I will try my best to do just that.