Looking for Normal

"The peace comes when it doesn't depend on the other person."

That's advice Gabor Mate gave to a mother of an estranged adult child. I've blogged it before but wanted to put it out there again, this time as a sort of general "to thine own self be true" bit of advice.

I've been told all my life I shouldn't care what other people think, but it's really just another way of telling me I'm living my life all wrong. So I'm going with "to thine own self be true".

Is inner peace even possible in a world at war with itself?

Last night we watched famous people grappling with what other people think of them on Netflix. First up was Ellen "the meanest person in show business" DeGeneres in "For Your Approval". She's hilarious, of course, but it's her openness about what was an awful time in her life that makes her latest standup so brilliant. Because, of course, caring what other people think is part of the human condition. Certainly it's part of the female human condition. And being Ellen, she knows how to bring the funny to everybody thinking she was the worst.

Next up was "Will and Harper", a documentary of Will Ferrell and his friend, Harper Steele, a former SNL writer transitioning at 61 to womanhood, taking a road trip across America to visit Harper's old haunts. It's such a moving film, and it's their vulnerability, Will's as much as Harper's, that makes it so. Watching them both try to be who they want to be, and are, is inspiring but also really sad because it's so unnecessarily hard. Will sees it as his job to protect Harper from the America she loves, the dive bars and lonely places, and at one point he cries, worried he's let her down, let himself down.

As for Harper, there's a scene where she confesses how difficult make-up is. She wants to be pretty but as she says, it's so hard with her masculine face. I wanted to tell her it's age, make-up and being pretty gets tricky with age, but I've had a lifetime of living as a woman and making myself pretty with make-up to get to this age where I don't wear make-up at all anymore. She's playing catch-up in her 60s.

And, of course, there's social media, where basic human decency goes to die. 

I finally read "The Myth of Normal", referenced in so many of the interviews I've watched of Gabor Mate on YouTube. It's basically a 500 page indictment of how we've been made to live, particularly in the US and Canada, and what our priorities have become, thanks to social constructs like patriarchy, capitalism, gender, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc, still going strong.

For instance, Dr. Mate argues normal is communal and cooperative, how we lived for thousands and thousands of years, not individualistic and competitive. And I particularly like his take on addiction, although addiction isn't the right word for our various behavioural disorders, I don't think. Distractions? His method is one of compassionate inquiry. Why do we behave the way we do? What problem is our behaviour solving for us? What childhood wounds are we soothing with happy hour?

I have to admit, I really had to park my biases to fairly consider his take on our world. And although he claims none of this is about blame or judgement, as a parent who used the sleep program to put her toddlers to bed, it does feel a little personal. But maybe he isn't referring to the sleep program of the 90s, intentional, reassuring and re-settling of toddlers with minimal interaction, but rather of the 50s and 60s, when we were left to cry ourselves to sleep.

I just read an article on CBC's website about the sleep deficit too many strung out parents are experiencing, too, along with their toddlers keeping them up all night. For my own part, I doubt our third child would've been conceived if I hadn't done the sleep program with the first two.

Also, I couldn't help but notice he doesn't extend his no blame or judgement, because we're all experiencing generational trauma, to Liberal politicians, and his singling out of Justin Trudeau and Hilary Clinton, alongside Stephen Harper and Donald Trump, struck me as both unfair and problematic. He name drops, too, and some off-putting ones like Russell Brand and Marianne Williamson, which, in my opinion, he needn't and shouldn't do. It only takes away from the rest of his teachings, backed up by study after study after study, and makes him appear infatuated with celebrities who flatter his political leanings.

There are way too many studies cited, because Dr. Mate is nothing if not thorough in his research, and I diligently skipped over every single one.

But I still came away from "The Myth of Normal" more enlightened than when I went in, and realizing how wrong it is our round bodies are being made to fit into the square holes of an economy that not only doesn't work in our best interests, and never really did, but is actively hurting our health and well-being while destroying our collective habitat.

I forget if he mentions WWIII, I don't think so, but I have friends now at odds on social media over which is worse, Russia committing genocide in Ukraine or Israel committing genocide in Gaza, with some even pitting Ukrainian refugees to Canada against Palestinians trapped in Gaza, so now a real life get together with people who used to be up for one is no longer in the cards. For my part though I want to expand my social circle, do more connecting in real life, more breaking of bread, starting with Facebook friends in Ottawa.

My plan is to eventually hit the road to meet and greet beyond our capital city.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I hope you find yourself in a good place, too. We really are all in this together.