This is a message I sent to one of my cohousing neighbors.  Another neighbor had sent out another critique of the Bush administration.  In response, Les asked, "so what are you going to do?"  This was my response:

Hi Les,  

I wanted to say how much I appreciate that you are "walking the talk" with your work with 34th Dems.  Around the time that my wife got pregnant, I concluded that joining and working as a Democrat was the only thing that really makes sense.  Standing at the sidelines and complaining feels quite foolish to me now.  Yet we all seem to do it out of habit.  I think the 60's gave baby-boomers an ingrained distrust of leadership, and now nobody but the most power hungry are willing to take the risk of being the brunt of the public's distrust.    In my current situation, I sometimes feel like Gulliver tied down by a thousand tiny threads right now, unable to do much other than my immediate life, but I intend to get back to my realization once my son is older.   

The other thing that I realized a few years back was to NOT spend time on battling leadership that doesn't need to be fought.  It happened in a cohousing association meeting during the budget.  I (quite self-righteously) questioned the copier expenses, asking if we could justify the expense based on income.  Ed, quite patiently, explained that we were getting sufficient income to cover the expense.  I then realized that there are INTELLIGENT people living in this community, and they use common sense for the most part.  Yes, we catch each other making mistakes once in a while, but each of us function very well, in our own way.  From what I have heard of another local cohousing, they are suffering in part from lack of trust and generosity that has made this community a real oasis.   They have instituted all kinds of rules and procedures to (try to) make sure everything is fair and proper.  I don't want us to go there.  Trusting others frees me up to take on what is REALLY likely to threaten our collective well being, like the current administration, for example.    So I am learning to do another thing that I have seen you doing, which is to be positive about the jobs that people are doing in this community.  I appreciate that.  And in the 11 years I have been here, I think other people are trending in that direction as well.  We have something very special here, and I think you have known that all along.   Paul

This is from the Power of Now.  It describes well what my wife and I are working on together right now.

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always around the cornor. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong - defending the mental position with which you have ident ified - is due to fear of death. If you identified with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So, you, as ego, cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. Y ou can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper and truer place within yourself, not from the mind. Watch out for any kind o f defensiveness within yourself.

What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a ficticious entity. By making this pattern conscious, witnessing it, you disidentify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the unconscious pattern will quickly dissolve. Thi s is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.

At dinner the other night, a friend mentioned that she knows a wonderful woman who is loooking for a relationship.  She wants to meet men who might be compatible. 

Is this a widespread problem, the Man Shortage?  Where are all the men?  Why do I know a number of women who want to be in relationship, and so few men who seem ready to be?

I guess many men have given up, either temporarily or pemanently.  The few men I do know who are single seem very busy.  Maybe too busy.

Then there are men who are probably like I was.  I was in my late thirties, wanting to be in a relationship, and dating.  But the women I dated either didn't do much for me, or I would get very depressed as I got more attracted to them.  I was in a conundrum.  Being close felt bad, being single felt bad, too. But maybe not as much.  It was just more familiar.

I had befriended a neighbor when I bought my first house.  She was a cohousing neighbor, so I had reason to have regular contact with her.  She identified as a lesbian, so I didn't ever consider dating her.  But we hung out together, occasionally went to the beach or ate dinner together, and I continued to date.

Apparently, she had some sense that I was "the one".  She worked her magic in a distinctly feminine way.  She never made a move on me, but was simply radiant and joyful in my presence.  She showed that she enjoyed me.  She wasn't trying to do this, it was just how she was. 

Long story short, we got together, were in a relationship for three years, and then we broke up.  I felt I wasn't that attracted to her, she wanted more involvement.  Marraige had come up, and I was ambivalent to say the least. (I'd been divorced after a 12 year relationship).  The next thing she did was key: she kept loving me.  She didn't go away.  I started dating, and my grief about the relationship, and all my relationships came rushing out of the chinks in my armor.  I was flooded with feeling.  I spent days feeling physically shaky (literally shaking when I would relax enough to let my muscles discharge the stored energy).   I got so depressed I thought I'd never get out.  And she continued  to love me.  I wanted to be back with her, but she was not interested.  I had the support of many friends and a ninja therapist to help me get reoriented to my purpose.  I reclaimed my desire, made a decision to marry her, and began to love her as best as I could.  Without any expectation on my part, I proposed to her the day after Thanksgiving in 2001.  She accepted my proposal the next August.

This is my point:  for single people in their 30's, 40's and 50's and beyond, it's not easy to love.  There is a reason we stay single.  In my case, there was a well of pain so deep I wasn't going to go down there without a very good reason.  I needed a loving woman and the prospect of losing her to make it worth my while.  It was her love that healed me.  You can't tell me it was mine (the "learning to love myself" idea), because it was there all along, but I didn't have access to it. 

Men don't want to think so, but most men I know are a project.  Men. allow yourself to be perfected by a woman.  Women.  Your love can heal a life.  But there are no guarantees that it will.

Dawson is here.  He is now a 17 pound bundle of intensity.  I am in awe of how much he changes me every day.  He wakes up at 6am and I take him into the blue room across the hall from our room.  We play on the floor for an hour before we go back to bed so he can nurse and snooze.  In that hour, I am watching him, and watching myself go all over the map.  Sometimes I am tired and just sit there and watch him chew on his toes.  Then I think I am not doing enough, so I stand him up or put him on his belly.  Then I worry that I am being too domineering.  I am having a relationship where we are both learning each othersl languages.  Sometimes I am listening, sometime not.  I usually have his diaper off for much of this time, and I watch myself worry about him peeing - on me, on the carpet, on himself, on his clothes.  It's amazing how far a little boy can pee while lying on his back.   When he pees, I make the peeing sound "pshhhhtttt!"  I am hoping to learn to communicate with him about peeing so we can have some of it happen in a receptacle later. 

If I didn't seek advice, the culture would give me plenty anyways.  One of the things I have learned is to distrust the advice that comes with the warning,"if you don't (teach him to sleep alone, get him into daycare, give him immunizations, etc.) it will only be harder later."  I am thinking now that development is a cycle of attachment and separation.  (Ken Wilber talks about the cycle of Agency, Transcendence, Communion, Dissolution, Agency....etc.)  Having the preverbal child go through major separations is a hallmark of our culture (why we circumcise boys 3 days post birth!  Try doing that to a two year  old!).  This allows the adults to avoid dealing with the difficulty of a conscious, verbal child going through these separations.  They are much more difficult with a two or three year old, especially to do them respectfully but not give into the child's desire to remain undifferentiated.  Maybe I will sing a different song in a year or two.  But the "cry it out" advisors seem lacking in a clear explanation of why their approach is the compassionate path. 

I just got home from the hospital.  Linda noticed this morning that the baby wasn't moving.  She came downstairs and told me.  Wow, I was surprised at how fear came rushing up.  Sometimes I wonder how attached I am to this baby, especially in comparison to Linda, but this morning, the suggestion that something could be wrong with the baby had me going.  I watched how the various parts of my brain worked this through.   Especially interesting to go over to a neighbor's for breakfast and act casually about it, when another part of me is wanting to grab Linda and drag her to the car toget to the hospital ASAP.

But we got to the hospital and hooked up the monitor, and the baby started moving just fine.  Linda is dilated 2cm, which is great.  Today is the baby's official due date, and so anytime is fine.  We're going to give her cervix a little encouragement.

Note to Self:  don't ask pregnant parents,"Is the baby here yet?"  VERY annoying.