Buying Food

Berkeley Bowl is my favorite supermarket in Berkeley.They are a locally-owned business that responds to the changing food requirements of Berzerkeleyans. They have a large organic section, and they label their produce by name, state (or country) of origin, and price. They will also tell you whether it's a fair trade produce or not. They have a sensitivity about Berkeley's evolving relationships with food and consumables, and try to follow the trend by stocking its shelves with several kinds of "green" toilet paper, for example. And they have organic beef from New Zealand, which is great if you want organic, regardless of where its' sourced. [August 2011 update: They seem to have more local organic beef now.] I can walk to Berkeley Bowl, which is the best part about the place.

Compare that to Trader Joe's, for example. TJ's is a national chain that also caters to Yuppies (young urban professionals) like me, and has sufficient amounts of organic produce. I liked TJ's because they have a variety of edibles that are prepared for cooking for you. For example, they have a lot of pre-marinated and packaged meats that only take 10 minutes to cook up for dinner because it's already been marinated at the factory. They definitely cater to people with busy lifestyles. However, TJ packages everything in Monrovia - and if you tried to find out where anything is from, often it'll label it as "Made in the USA" or "Packaged in Monrovia, California." It's really hard to figure out whether the food is sourced locally. I can walk to the Berkeley Trader Joe's as well, though it's a bit further away then Berkeley Bowl in the opposite direction.

And then there's Whole Foods. I  really like Whole Foods, especially because they carry my favorite variety of apples called "Cameo." And it's organic. Its the most crunchy and sweet apple variety that I've ever found. Whole Foods also tells me where the food is sourced, and have a good amount of organic produce (not as large as Berkeley Bowl, though.)  But I'm told that they are expensive. One great advantage about both Whole Foods and TJ's are their hours of operation. They are both open later than Berkeley Bowl.

Yesterday, I went to the supermarket but made up a rule for myself before I went shopping. I told myself I didn't want to buy anything with plastic packaging. This proved to be a ridiculous rule, as it proved very difficult to purchase anything from the store! Everything in the middle part of the supermarket (everything from household goods to frozen foods and international foods) did not pass muster. Fortunately, it was easy to find fresh baked bread packaged in a paper bag, and there was one local cheese company that wrapped their cheese in paper. But for the most part - I walked through aisle after aisle after aisle looking for something I could buy, without any luck. Sure, many of the juices were packaged in bottles - but why would I buy juice when I can drink water out of the tap? (My parents are both borderline diabetic and I'm already hypoglycemic so water sounds like the best thing I can drink to maintain a stable blood sugar.) And the canned goods? I thought, "Hmmm. I'm not sure if I want to eat out of cans, if I can eat fresh veggies instead." And then there were a lot of things I just didn't need right now like detergent and milk (which would have passed the plastics test). Also, I wanted to get my produce from the Farmer's Market so I didn't even go into the produce section of the supermarket. In the end, I walked out of the supermarket with a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese. I was there to shop for the week.

Today was Tuesday, so I went to the Tuesday Berkeley farmer's market which unfolds a block away. The sun was turning orange as it lowered itself towards the ocean, and the denizens of this fair city flocked to buy local, seasonal produce. I was excited about the fact that things were not wrapped in plastic! And I learned that artichoke season is just beginning around here, and some fruit stand owners at one end of the market jovially discussed the fact that the other folks down the other way already stocked artichokes. "They're the first ones to have artichokes this season!" one fruit stand attendant exclaimed to another. Everyone seemed excited about the arrival of the artichokes. Like life itself - all good things have a beginning and an end. The arrival of a certain vegetable this season is only a metaphor for what's at play in the Universe. I paused to consider its significance.

Today, the experience of visiting the farmer's market was fulfilling physically (it was beautiful), mentally (it made me happy), and spiritually (I learned something). On the way home I realized that I was finally in want of nothing else other than what I had. I felt light. I'd spent years wishing for something I did not have - like uncomplicated love or the health of an aging puppy. Today is the first day in a long time that I realized that now, there was nothing about my life I'd want changed. I had somehow survived my last incarnation into my present life, and I was at peace with myself, finally.

Protein Education

I haven't felt hungry ever since coming back from the Southwest. That trip really screwed up my diet. I keep skipping meals because I'm just not hungry. Then I started to get worried that I wasn't consuming enough nutrients, especially because I'm not eating meat. So I decided to learn about how to make up for the lack of protein in my diet, so that I can be a healthy Vegetarian (because all roads point that way). Turns out that it's not that hard.

PROTEIN:
Fact #1: Proteins are necessary building blocks for our body.

Proteins are the basic building blocks of the human body. They are made up of amino acids, and help build muscles, blood, skin, hair, nails and internal organs. Next to water, protein is the most plentiful substance in the body. [Text omitted.] There are 20 amino acids that are required for growth by the human body and all but eight can be produced in your body. These eight amino acids, called essential amino acids, must be supplied by food and/or supplements. The other twelve non-essential amino acids are made within the body, but both essential and non-essential amino acids are needed to synthesize proteins. What does all this mean? It means that if you don't supply your body with the essential amino acids it needs, your body may be limited in the amount of protein it can use to build muscle. See http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein.htm

Fact #2: Eat two types of incomplete proteins (vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds and nuts) to make up for not eating complete (animal) proteins.

Foods derived from animals contain "complete proteins." If I don't eat foods derived from animals (e.g. beef, chicken, fish, eggs, milk), I just need to make sure that I eat two types of incomplete proteins (vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds and nuts or acronym: Very Fruity Gay SoN) instead. http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein.htm

That's easy to remember. That doesn't seem as complicated as I imagined it might be. And it'll even be easier for me to follow this diet because I have no ethical problems with eating eggs.

(Note: There are also some plant-based sources of "complete" proteins that you can get from Soy bean (soy milk, tofu, tempeh), Hemp, Quinoa, Buckwheat, and Micro algae such as chlorella & spirulina.)

Fact #3: I can calculate the approximate amount of protein you'll need based on your weight.
Based on my weight, I know I need about 50 - 110  grams of protein a day (on the higher end if I exercise). One large egg is about 55 grams. That means that if I eat one to two egg-sized portions of incomplete proteins (vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds or nuts) and otherwise eat what I normally eat, I would be completely nourished without killing animals. The website http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein_2.htm contains useful information on how much protein we need to be eating to eat healthy, if you're interested.

Easy. Gotta love the internet!

[May 2011 update: If you're transitioning to a Vegetarian diet, please make sure to eat green leafy things like spinach, kale, or dried fruits that are rich in iron. Also, make sure you are getting enough calcium and fats (like omega 3) as well. You may want to supplement your vegetarian diet with vitamin B12. For more info, click here.]

More About Chickens

Stacy, my new housemate, counseled me against getting goats - she says that I don't have enough room in my yard - which I think is probably true. "But rabbits for meat - now that's a good idea." she says. However, I'm not sure I can eat fluffy cute bunnies. That's like eating Babe, the Disney pig. I think I'd rather be vegetarian. I want to eventually throw a "let's kill my chickens" party and see if I can. Because I think I need to be able to kill and pluck a chicken if I'm going to keep eating them. I've thoroughly researched the different methods with which you can kill a chicken - on YouTube. I feel like an expert now (not really). The most humane way seems to be to get a reverted cone that's stapled to the fence with an opening at the bottom. You stick the chicken, head first, into the cone and let its head stick out at the bottom. Then we slit the chicken's neck and draw blood and the chicken will pass out. Berkeley allows up to six hens (female chickens) per household, and I have exactly that. I had gotten a rooster by mistake initially (sometimes they are hard to sex as little chicks) but when he started to crow in the morning, we figured out that maybe he won't be laying any eggs, and he was given away to a Spanish-speaking family in Richmond (which is several towns north of Berkeley) via craigslist.

And then my ex-Muslim neighbors gave me Spicy, a survivor - after the rest of Spicy's flock was eaten by the local raccoon. One of Spicy's wings had turned blue from gangrene from a raccoon bite. After she ended up in my yard, she had - and still has - a hard time being accepted by the flock. Ever heard of the phrase "pecking order?" Well, birds are really mean to each other when a new comer joins a flock. After several months of Spicy's presence, the flock finally allowed Spicy to sleep in the bird pen with them at night (I used to find her on top of the cage, whereas now, she's allowed to sleep inside the sleeping quarters of the cage with the other birdies.) She's still at the bottom of the chicken pecking order, and she spends her days by herself, alone, ostracized from the flock. When she eats food with them, they try to chase her away, but she's a tough chicken and knows how to stand up for herself. I don't remember telling her about Dr. King's speech, but she's strong and insists on her equal treatment as one proud fowl citizen of the world, and I'm proud of her. She's seen the underbelly of a good life and I respect Spicy for persevering. I half expect Spicy to bust out with a song like "I Will Survive" if she could sing - just like Gloria Gaynor.

Unfortunately, all of my chickens have names. My ex-housemates Harry and Andy gave them fun names like Bertha, Ethel and Henrietta. I still just call them generically "red chicken", "black chicken", and "brown chicken." And then there's Spicy. Birds are a lot more like dinosaurs (compared to cute fluffy bunny rabbits), and I don't feel as much of a kinship with them. But I still have a relationship with the creatures - especially Spicy, and all of them have personality (chickenality?) quirks that make them unique. I wonder whether I have the guts to kill, pluck and eat them? Would the experience nourish me or not? Maybe if I get hungry enough? Or maybe I'll just stick to eating eggs and killing vegetables.

The eggs are pretty cool. The Rhode Island Reds (that's a chicken breed) lay brown eggs. The Americaunas lay blue eggs. I think the black chicken is an Australorp - but not sure because she's the one laying the white egg, and the Internet tells me she should be laying brown eggs. I used to have to drive to a feed store in Half Moon Bay (about an hour away) to get chicks. But for several years now, I can get chicks at a store in Berkeley on San Pablo Ave. (about 8 minutes away by car). There are about three places I can get chicken scratch for egg layers, and some sell organic scratch. During the summer, I harvest about four eggs a day from six chickens. The eggs, when collected, are multi-colored and pretty. During the winter months, the days are shorter and they don't lay as much. I'm lucky if I get one egg per day from six chickens (it's always a brown egg, so one of the chickens must be doing all the laying, while the others slack). The color of the yolk changes, depending on the season (darker orange during the summers, and runnier and more yellow during the winters - probably from dehydration). I haven't had to buy eggs in about a year and a half, and during the summer, have enough eggs to give away a bunch to my neighbors.

Recently, I attended a Sierra Club Friday "Green" Potluck Meeting. It was held just down the street, because the local Sierra Club headquarters for the San Francisco Bay Area chapter is within walking distance from my house in Berkeley (the national headquarters are in San Francisco). I learned at the potluck that the term "free range," when it comes to describing a certain standard of living for chickens - has no legal definition and no oversight as to what it actually means. In fact, I remember watching "Food, Inc." and how they described chickens jam packed in a large warehouse with barely any room to move around - and that would be "free range" because they're "not in cages." But the warehouse, though large, is a cage. The movie detailed how unethical the industrial chicken farming practices are, from a variety of dimensions.

My intuition is pointing me to just one conclusion. It's time I looked into how to live healthy as a Vegetarian.

EVOLUTION STEP NO. 1: Create Collectives Near Home

I am in discussion with several amazing women, all from different areas of my life, about creating Collectives.

1. Plan Potluck dinners with your Friends and Neighbors

Some friends and I are talking about getting together once or twice a month over potluck dinners, so that we can talk about this stuff.  What are the simple changes we can make in our lives? What are the things that we can do immediately? And what if we had each other for support? We're going to invite others to join us. Maybe we can focus on a resource each evening and talk about how to cut down on its consumption in small but significant ways - like how to cut down our use of petroleum, or electricity, or water. Or how we can make simple changes to the ways we buy and eat food that will make a difference. We can recommend and read books to/with each other, and watch movies together and be an inspiration to each other. Because above all else, hope is a diminishing commodity in these trying times.

2. Talk about this stuff at your dinner table (with the people you live with).

Stacy is my new housemate. She just came back from 15 years of living in South America after having been in the Peace Corp when she was younger. She's my new soul mate. (I always thought that I'd one day like to be in the Peace Corp - the brain child of none other than JFK, a true visionary.) Stacy was married to a man down there, they had chosen not to have children, and separated last year. She's also a Quaker by birth,  attended a Quaker college, and still attends Quaker meetings.

Wikipedia says:

"The Religious Society of Friends is a name used by a range of independent religious organizations which all trace their origins to a Christian movement in mid-17th century England and Wales. A central belief was that ordinary people could have a direct experience of the eternal Christ. Today, the theological beliefs among the different organizations vary, but include broadly evangelical Christian, liberal Protestant, Christian universalist and non-Christian universalist beliefs. Some of these organizations also use the name Quaker or Friends Church."

Hm.

Anyways - because of her long absence, it's like she was up in the mountain for the last 15 years, and she's now come down, only to discover that the World has changed. Mostly, technology has changed. The Internet is new to her. It's really amazing to talk to her because she's reached a lot of the same conclusions that I've reached in my life - like choosing to not live in negativity, choosing a slower simpler life, being more conscious about the little things, and not having material wealth on the top of the list of her needs. But I utilized the Internet heavily to reach my conclusions. It's fascinating to know that she's lived her life up to now in a totally different part of the World without the benefit of the Internet, and she's still reached the same conclusions about our present predicament, and has similar ideas about what we need to do to lick the problem. I've already learned from her. We're talking about creating a Collective to run this farm house by inviting other, like minded-people to join us. As part of our daily lives, we're going to play with our relationships with food, and talk about how to be better humans.

MLK Day, Part Three: The Divisive Tiger Family and Why We Have To Rise Above

My friend Liz was outraged the other day because she read a Wall Street Journal article that had attracted thousands of comments (currently 6,472). The article was about how one Asian American parent thought that, in her opinion, Chinese parents were, on average, stricter disciplinarians towards their children than Caucasian parents. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook Granted, I don't think the article should have been titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." The title is patently offensive, which makes me wonder whether the author, who is a professor at Yale Law School, had control over the title of the article. Let's not even talk about how the Wall Street Journal has changed in recent years since being bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal

Liz was outraged not by the content of the article, but the vitriol and finger pointing that ensued in the comment section thereafter. Liz, being a mother of two young children and being half Caucasian and half Asian, struggles with parenting issues on a daily basis. She says that she is, in fact, more strict towards her children than the average White parent. But she is also more reasonable than the average Asian parent. In her own words, this is what she said:

I am less disappointed with the whole notion that my parenting doesn't fit neatly into any particular category (in fact,  I suspect that most people would find themselves straddling some lines-- this is America after all. Also, as a hybrid girl my whole life, I have never fit neatly anywhere so why would my parenting choices?), but rather, that the tone of the comments are, on the whole, defensive, offensive, and often attack race. The article, despite it's inflammatory title, is actually about the choices we make as parents. I wonder how many of those 6,000+ comments were written by people who made it past the headline? Or were able to get past the headline enough to actually process what they were reading through something other than the knee jerk "protect my peeps" filter that is pretty much a given in any forum, but most certainly in our political discourse. How are we ever going to have honest discussions that actually mean anything if we can't stop feeling that we need to protect those things we can't change (like our race or orientation) or things we can (like any choice or decision we make) from scrutiny or judgment? I mean seriously, why can't we sometimes just agree to disagree?

Turns out that the daughter of the Tiger Mom published an article titled, "Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom" in defense of Mom:
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/why_love_my_strict_chinese_mom_uUvfmLcA5eteY0u2KXt7hM

She's obviously a smart kid, just like mommy and daddy. She says in the article that "the meaning of life is different for everyone" - so she's agreeing with my friend Liz's conclusion - she's saying : "Can we just agree to disagree?"

Here's the thing that bugs me, though. The actions of the Tiger Family have bred disagreement and upset. Their actions, as a whole, have created negative resentment. They have, no doubt, struck a chord in American Society these days because of a pervasive fear that Americans are feeling towards China. But at what expense?

[The irony is that the same people who fear the rising economic power of China continue to shop at Target and Walmart - opening their wallets and their savings to buy more Chinese products, widening the trade imbalance. Note to Americans: If you value American values, you must also value American products. Shop local. Vote with your wallet. Think before purchasing things. I know times are tough. But times will be tougher if you don't shop consciously and think about the consequences of your actions.]

Back to why we have to do better than the Tiger Family: We can't just agree to disagree about everything. We live in the same country, and the same planet, and we need to live with each other. Moreover, Americans have already tried "separate but equal." Our public school system still suffers from the failures of those principals. We know it doesn't work. Separate is inherently unequal. That's not what this country is about. I think we have to do better than that, and I think I know just the skill set that might help. We, as Americans, need to learn about the basic pitfalls of communication, and learn to communicate effectively so that we can act like we live in the same World. It's do or die. Seriously.

MLK Day, Part Two: The Malfunctioning Brain - Why Humans Tend To Live in a Negative Thought Cycle

Summary:

Our brains tend to focus on and hold onto negative stimuli.
We need to live more simply, so that we can nurture a healthier mental state.

A Video by Brain Scientist Dr. Jill Taylor
Here is an 18 minute video clip by Dr. Jill Taylor, a brain-scientist, who talks about her spiritual insight when she experienced a stroke in her left brain. What she says is very similar to what is described below, except the information is easier to absorb as it's a short video presentation.

A General Theory of Brain Functions

The science behind describing our brain-functions via the "left" and "right" hemispheres is just a metaphor. Wikipedia says:

Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels such as "logical" for the left side or "creative" for the right. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, these characteristics are in fact existent in both sides,^[1] and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with functional differences.^[2] 
Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function

However, many scientists still talk about the distinctions between our left "logical" brains and our right "emotional" brains in a variety of ways because it helps explain our human natures and how we in fact possess both logical and emotional tendencies within us. See A General Theory of Love and the Triune Theory, in which the authors talk about the "limbic" emotional brain, the logical "neo-cortex," and the reptilian brain - these theories refer to similar patterns in human nature using different words. Regardless of the exact science - which is still being disputed- it is indisputable that many scientists use these concepts to help explain our human natures.

"I blame my left-brain."
At this point in our collective evolutionary history, we human beings value and reward left-brained behaviors amongst us more than others. People with strong left, logical brains (e.g. Scientists, Architects, Engineers, Lawyers, Accountants, etc.) are good at making / fixing things, categorizing ideas, and counting - all activities that have helped promote our Golden Age of Consumerism.

The problem with focusing a child's education on the competitive left-brain is that it creates unbalanced, unkind people. "Why help someone if we don't have to? How would helping another help me?" my left-brain might say. Our Left-brains tend to be negative-thinkers - often trained to point out errors in logic. Left to its own devices, our left-brains create a world lacking in compassion, since compassion can be quite illogical, in that it involves random acts of kindness.

Stated another way: our left brain is our Yin, or shadow. Our right-brain is our Yang, or light. The Yin and the Yang represent patterns in the Universe and our interconnectedness.  Both the Yin and the Yang are needed, to improve the overall all design of the future we are co-creating.  

Neuro-scientists say that our brain malfunctions in a negative-thought cycle, and that it continues to live out a "fear-based" response to the World. In fact, the human brain is naturally wired in such a way that we focus on the negative external inputs (and often ignore the positive ones that are equally present) because that was important for our survival in the wild. In the wild, it was important for us to learn from our negative experiences more than it was important to learn from our positive experiences. Our body produces adrenaline when we face a crisis, and in a properly functioning brain, the adrenaline enables our brain to create a deeper emotional memory about that negative experience. So even if you have equal amounts of positive and negative things happen to you, you'll naturally pay attention to more of your negative inputs. So humans get stuck in a negative thought cycle. (See "Buddha's Brain, the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom".)

Also, the daily stresses in our lives make us focus on our short term goals, at the expense of a long term Vision about ourselves and the World. This makes sense. If we're super worried about what we need to do by Friday - we might stay in crisis mode about Friday until Friday - thereby shedding any thought about what's beyond Friday. However, come Friday, many people don't re-gain long term consciousness. We stay worried about the next crisis - which is again, only a couple of days away. (See Buddha's Brain, "the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom".)

When we lack balance, we become unhappy because we are not able to correct our negative biases, and continue to live in a negative thought cycle. We become dependent on the food and things that give us short term pleasure. We may also worry more about how other people perceive us and don't work on our inner happiness. These same people tend to try to find happiness externally, and often seek a patina of material wealth that lead to an over consumption of the Earth's resources - a green lawn in the front yard (even in a desert like Los Angeles), the newest flat screen TV, two large petroleum-fueled status symbols in their garage, etc. - which is ultimately not good for our environment.

I know that eating meat makes me happy sometimes. I make the best miso-wine-plum-spice glazed short ribs. I learned from Alton Brown (from the Food Network) to slow braise the short ribs in the oven for six hours at 275 degrees. Frankly, the dish made me happy.  I used to over consume meat because I used meat as an emotional crutch to make me feel happier when I wasn't. I'm not saying that I'm never going to eat meat again. But I know that I need to find other sources of happiness because I care about the consequences of my actions, so I eat a lot less meat now.

It's on PBS. 

 
The video series by PBS called "The Secret Life of the Brain" (see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/) is a fascinating exposure of what we know about our brain, and how it can malfunction. For example, the episode about the adult emotional brain explains that emergency situations are handled through two distinct (neuro-) pathways in the brain. The below is a geeky explanation:

First, an emergency situation is handled by our amygdala, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala) an almond-shaped, older member of our brain community located close to the brain stem. The amygdala triggers unconscious but immediate behaviors in response to potential threats in our environment. So, for example, the show explains that when we are walking down a field and we see a rope, we unconsciously may stop our step half-way to avoid stepping on the rope, thinking that it might be a snake. That kind of immediate, unconscious response (which could potentially save our lives) is triggered by the amygdala, which immediately calls in the assistance of other parts of the brain to create an emergency response. Pretty cool.

Second, the same information is then reviewed via the frontal cortex. Our frontal cortex acts like the "conductor of the orchestra," the orchestra being the "brain community" which resides in each of our brains. Humans have a lot of different capabilities in the brain, and different parts of our brain are responsible for processing different types of sensory inputs from our environment, and then other parts of the brain are responsible for processing those inputs - combining it with our memories, so that our body can respond cohesively to the surrounding environment.

In the example of the rope/snake, our frontal cortex processes the same information that the amygdala processes, except that it is processed with the assistance of ALL of the brain's resources to process the same visual information. So the frontal cortex takes a little longer to create a response. The amygdala, being the quick one in the brain community, produces an immediate, unconscious response. Then, the frontal cortex goes: "Um, we need more information to decide if there's a real danger here." So we then take a closer look at the rope to see if it is in fact a snake or a rope. Upon a closer viewing, our frontal cortex is able to distinguish the difference between a real threat and a fake threat. Then, a properly working frontal cortex is supposed to send a new signal to the amygdala to turn off the unconscious, fear-based response that the amygdala was quicker to produce, thereby restoring overall conscious behavior. In other words, the frontal cortex gets to gain-back overall control of how we think and act.

Conclusion 

A lot of humans are stuck in the unconscious realm, because we have not nurtured balance in our lives. The frontal cortex doesn't restore conscious behavior because we are unable to turn off the emergency response produced by brain segments like the amygdala. And many of us have learned to cope with the environment around us in "survival" mode. As a result, we often live unconsciously, in response to our negative inputs from our environments.

We are more than our Left Brains.
But there is hope!! As human beings, we were each gifted with a better-half. Our right-brains are less about counting, and more about Love and Oneness. Our Positive-half is more loving and compassionate. Our right-brains are more likely to help others, despite the costs. As if our momentums have been pulled far to the left on a Newton's cradle, many of us intuitively want to see the world return to a more balanced place.

The Buddha talked about the Noble Eightfold Path. I was always mystified by its tenets:

• Right view
• Right intention
• Right speech
• Right action
• Right livelihood
• Right effort
• Right mindfulness
• Right concentration
• Right knowledge and right liberation

Perhaps the Buddha meant that we should let our Right, compassionate brains help us make decisions that will lead to a more simple, balanced, and sustainable lifestyle.

The time is now to employ our right-brains in order to take control of our common destinies! The best way to regain our mental balance is to simplify our lives as much as we can. We can start out prioritizing what is most important in our lives, and by doing less. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday Weekend

My nephew Sprit is a lovely man. He's eight years old. My sister must have read him my obituary poem. He wrote me a poem. It went like this:

"Perro was a Chihuahua dog.

He liked to walk but not to jog.

He liked to squint a lot.

We had to say "Eat, do not!"

Because Perro liked to eat human food.

When Perro was close to Aunty, he was in a good mood."

I wanted to write him a thank you e-mail, but I wanted to make it interesting, so in the draft, I started to explain that I was enjoying a three-day weekend in honor of Dr. King's birthday on January 15th. But after I wrote the e-mail in which I had quoted a segment of Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, I had to pause and think about whether it was appropriate for me to talk about racism or segregation with an eight year old. Granted, he may have been exposed to it already. I just don't know. I did a quick search on the Internet with search words "teach child racism" and found out that some people think it best that I not poison a child's mind with such ideas. Sprit lives in Tokyo, and racism is not talked about much but very present in Japan. I do want to talk to him about Dr. King at some point. But I'll do it after I speak with my Sister about the when and how. Also, knowing what a sensitive and smart boy Sprit is, I didn't want to weigh him down with the weight of the World. And then I knew that I am the one who is feeling weighed down by the World right now, and that it's taken a lot of joy out of me. So I decided not to send that part of the e-mail to him, partly because I wanted him to enjoy being a child for a little bit longer, and just sent him the conclusion of my longer e-mail:

Dear Sprit,

 

I want to thank you for writing a poem for Perro. I printed it out and put it by his obutsudan (word for "little shrine in the house" in Japanese). I am sure that Perro is delighted. Thank you for honoring Perro’s life and spirit. You have so much love in you. And with your love, know that you can conquer anything.

With love,

Your Favorite Aunty

Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech was all about believing, despite the adversity. His speech stood for hope, and a fundamental belief in the American Dream. Today, the existence of the American Dream is under constant attack by the powers that be in Washington D.C. For example, recently the Dream Act failed passage in Congress. It would have allowed young children of illegal immigrants a hope for legal status if they worked hard and either served in the military or finished college. No matter how you cut it, the Dream Act was about the American Dream - that if you worked hard, you could succeed in this World. At the same time Arizona is under intense focus in the news for being outspoken about the fact that they believe racial profiling is an appropriate way to control the illegal immigration issue in their state. To further confuse the issues, a democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head last week by a crazy man (the reason is not yet known), while six of the people near her were shot dead, and eighteen others were wounded. Indeed, my heart is weighed down by the weight of the way in which Americans have come to express our opinions, and also the decisions we have made against hope.

Personally, I believe that America is the greatest social experiment ever devised by humans. This is the land in which the World can debate about what our future will look like - and how we raise our children. [Please see the next segment on the Tiger Family.]

True to stereotype, my own Japanese parents were very much disciplinarians when I was growing up in Los Angeles. I think they were stricter than even the average Japanese parent. As the story goes - when I was ten years old, I told my father that I wanted to stop studying Japanese (we went to Saturday school, much like Jewish kids go to Jewish school, and we tended to cram all of our homework on Friday evenings).  Before I knew it, I had a bowl of miso soup thrown at me and I was wearing it. I never ever suggested that I give up Japanese ever again. And thanks to my father, I am the most bilingual Japanese-English speaker that I know (though I am definitely stronger on the English side - my particular combination of strengths is rare). I read, write and speak both languages fluently.  Thanks to Dad, I have never had any trouble getting a job. And being a lawyer was also his grand idea. It's something that I did because I didn't know what else I was going to do with my life. It was the default trajectory that he had programmed in my head from when I was very young. "You're going to be a lawyer," he would say. But now, more than ten years into the profession and after a long love/hate struggle with it, I have shaped my career into something that I can live with, in which I walk to the office, control my own hours, volunteer a lot, and work with only the people I want to work with - people who can separate how they relate to their peers from the poison and the negativity of the World or the Profession.

However, it took my American adult life for me to come to who I am today. It is not from my Japanese upbringing that I was able to learn about finding balance in my life. For me, the people who mentored me into my adulthood were entirely of America - it's educational system, peers, literature, and mentors. I believe that because Asian parents raise their children in favor of nurturing the left side of their brains (which is all about memorizing, learning, and competing with others), my emotional right brain was not nurtured as much as it could have been as a child. I was a young woman raised in a strict Japanese household, who went to college at U.C. Berkeley. I came into my young adult life angry, conflicted, confused - and I had to throw away much of the World map and value systems that my parents had lovingly handed to me because it was incongruous with My world - and I had to test out each of my assumptions for myself, because I did not have a role model to which I could look that had my upbringing and outside reality. I questioned my sexuality, my nationality, my morality, my role as a woman, my religion, my community, and all of my beliefs in-between. Maybe that is a common difference between a parent and a child. And my family was quite modern in that they always expected me to go to College and have a career - so I'm not complaining. But I've always wondered who I would have been if I hadn't chosen America as my home as an adult. Would I be seeking the same things?

Today, as a fully-initiated American, I seek a balanced-life, one that is an in-between of a lot of the things I have learned. My parents did a brilliant job nurturing my left brain (ten years of piano - I never enjoyed it as a kid, a bilingual education, as well as encouraging me through my three degrees in law - a B.S., J.D., and LL.M. in Tax). They also taught me the fundamental tools with which to nurture my right brain when I finished my left brain training - the simplicity of love, the heroism to care about others, and the ability to appreciate love even if it is never verbalized. But it took years of therapy and many many self-help books for me to understand what balance meant in my life. I think an American parent might have been able to teach me more about balance, and I think that would have been a valuable upbringing as well.

My point is that I think Americans are just debating the process in which a child is ideally reared in America, because we all love our children. Asian parents might sometimes do a better job nurturing the left brain - the competitive, mathematical brain - but Caucasian parents might tend to do a better job nurturing the right brain - thereby rearing a more balanced child. Neither are wrong, as long as the child eventually is able to find balance in their life. The problem is, many people never become balanced human beings later in life. I know many people who live in a negative world and act out their fear-based reactions to the World. [Please see the segment on the Malfunctioning Brain.] That's the problem with focusing a child's development so much on the left, competitive brain - no matter what race or ethnicity we come from. Yes, the child may score well on tests - but are they mature, well-balanced human beings who can temper the negative tendencies of our brain with a more positive, hopeful, and loving response towards not just ourselves but for other beings as well?

I can attest to the fact that, I lived unconsciously for a long time. And now that I want to live a conscious, simple life (because it is important for humanity's survival not to over-consume our resources) I want to talk about racism with Sprit. Sometimes, to arrive at simplicity, one must still learn about and weigh the complexity of our options, because we live in complex times. Of course, I'll need my sister's permission to talk about these things with Sprit. As Sprit's American Aunty, I want to talk about racism with Sprit in a controlled, safe environment, where I can have an honest discussion with him about racism, why it exists, etc. - and I want to make sure that he walks away from that conversation with the hope that Dr. King instilled in all of us when he told us about his Dream. The words to the speech can be found at: http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

In the speech, Dr. King talks about the obstacles of their day. And that his dream is that America would live up to its promise, a promise that all people are created equal. He read the speech in Washington D.C. in 1963. His ideas seem a distant memory from where American politics stand today. Same World, same issues. America is still the best experiment in the World. We're like the United Nations, in reality format. We are the best, and we are at the same time the worst. And we are the best representation of the World as it exists, full of the World's diversity of opinions, religions, customs, beliefs, beauty and contradictions. It's all here. If we are to survive, we must learn how to take care of our planet together, we MUST learn how to live together - to communicate effectively towards a common solution - with those who are different than ourselves, with those who we disagree with, with those who we wish not to speak to anymore. It has to happen here, in America. The best and the brightest representatives of the World live here, because we believe in the American Dream: the hopeful promise that if we worked hard, we would be allowed to be happy.

When we as Americans who live next to each other finally figure out how to communicate with each other effectively to find and create community with those who are different than ourselves - many of us, who are by our very nature hybrid emissaries, will be able to carry the lessons back to the rest of the World, in all the different languages that exist. I believe that has been America's real promise to the World. We hold the key. We are the ones that can turn back the tide. We must be, more than any other country, the change we wish to see in the World, because the whole World has gathered here in search of a promise, and the World is still holding its breath and waiting for Americans to realize our Oneness. So let's figure out how to talk to each other.

I think about these things every day. But even I, at a personal level, struggle on a daily basis to communicate with people who are only slightly different than I. So all of us, including myself - we need to look at ourselves and become better, for the sake of our children, and the other beings that inhabit this planet with us. This is about our survival. We MUST evolve as a species, because climate change is a reality. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization which promotes environmental causes through independent research (a group I trust), has the following information about global warming: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/ Listen to the scientists - and let's learn to weed out the noise.

We can do it. We can start by fighting for our survival, one individual at a time. Every single one of us, in the end, has been entrusted with this World, and we must take responsibility for our individual contributions. There is so much we can do as individuals. Let’s be kind to each other. Let’s be an example. Volunteer. Learn how to create positive, forward-looking dialogue. Be the change we wish to see in the World. Help someone that's different than us. Love. Talk to our neighbors. Get to know them. Let's each work towards creating diverse communities that are unique to America. And let us remember what Dr. King said: "With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

Namaste (We are One).

New Year, New Beginnings

I went on a "last hurrah" type of road trip with my parents, for old times' sake. We used to go on a bunch of road trips as a family when I was a kid, every chance we got. My parents are thinking about moving back to the old country next year, and they are getting older, so they wanted to go on one last trip. I went so that I could help my parents drive those long distances.

I enjoyed my parents' innocent banter with each other. They haven't changed. They were loving towards me knowing that I had gone through some significant changes in my life lately. I appreciated the simplicity of their love. They just want me to be happy. My mom and I always shared our love of singing. So during the road trip, we sang a lot of songs that we sang together when I was a kid. I was enveloped in their love and consideration completely, and cried quietly in the back seat as I realized how much abundance of love I have in my life, and how I won't have my parents forever. Kuro, my other dog that I'd been ignoring a lot behaved amazingly well. We had to stay at dog-friendly motels wherever we went (places like Super 8 Motel and Motel 6), but my parents were good sports about it. The fun part was seeing a friendship develop between Kuro and Dad.

My last meal in 2010 was the Wynn Buffet dinner. The "Wynn Experience" is the picture of human over-consumption and complete abandon in favor of  utter sumptuousness. Every where you looked, your eyes were nourished with opulence. It is an experience that is quite unique.

At the Buffet, the entrees were: foie-gras, grilled lobster, beef wellington, lamb chops, Alaskan king crab, every kind of side dish to match, and salads and deserts of equal fancy. It's all you can eat. The buffet regulars, after a while, develop a strategy to maximize their investments. The table next to us focused on just eating Alaskan King crabs. Four contented adults were sitting around a mound of crab shell carcasses after their feast. I had to take a picture.

I ate red meat during the road trip. It felt like there was no point in refusing red meat during a road trip around the Southwest.

1. We were burning a lot of fossil fuels to get around Utah / Arizona / Nevada and California. We went to: Zion National Park, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Sedona, Kingman (the home of Route 66), and various points of interest in -between. And there were many others on road trips just like ours.

2. Everywhere we went, food and drinks were served in styrofoam. Much of the food was served buffet style (it's very popular in the southwest), an eating style which inevitably leads to an over-consumption of food.

3. Recycling bins were non-existent in those areas.

4. Everyone seemed to drive around in humongous trucks and SUVs.

Their towns were designed in such a way that they probably couldn't live without fossil fuels, especially in the snow.

5. It was hard not to eat at a fast-food chain.

6. There is a lot about Earth can still be seen, in many cases, in its natural, innocent state.
It didn't seem like pollution would ever be a problem.


In general: There were pockets of extreme poverty. There were forgotten landscapes and abandoned buildings all over the place. There was so much nature and humans were few and far between.

It just didn't seem like it would matter. 
 There were many things during the road trip that made my efforts towards simplicity seem silly. In my heart, I had to refer back to Michael Pollan's article, "Why Bother" which I referred to earlier in this blog. http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/why-bother/

While in Las Vegas, I lobbied for my parents to see La Reve, a Cirque-Du Soleil performance at the Wynn Hotel, which is the best acrobatic / synchronized swimming / fire / water show I'd ever seen in my life. It was my second time seeing it. Being very modest people, it was the first time my parents had seen any fancy show in Las Vegas. I think it blew their socks off. My mom gets overwhelmed sometimes when her senses are overstimulated. The performance proved to be overstimulating for her, but I think she enjoyed it nonetheless (but Dad and I took her back to the hotel right afterward so she wouldn't hurt herself walking down the street). There was a big party on the Strip and a smaller party Downtown. My parents and I opted to call it a night at 11pm on New Year's eve. We were tired.

I woke up on January 1st in a Motel 6 in Downtown Las Vegas. It's probably the cheesiest place on Earth. To me, the place seemed devoid of spirituality, though perhaps that was because I didn't know how to find it.

The first statement I heard in the New Year was in Dad's voice:
"It's nice to have a new start, and leave last year behind."
I thought it was the most auspicious statement that I could think of, to start off the New Year - regardless of where I woke up.

Since, the rain has stopped wherever I've been. It's been cold but gorgeous outside. Naturally, any darkness has been replaced by an appreciation of what is.

Being the New Year, it is a year of new beginnings. I picked up Perro's ashes from the crematorium upon my return to the Bay Area. I created a little shrine for him with flowers and fruits and pictures. I have a candle lit for him during my waking hours. I think about the love of my puppy every day, as well as my family's love. Whereas before my love for them was confused - now it seems simple. They only wish for my happiness, and I in turn wish for theirs. They are all angels in my life, and that will never change, even if death separates us. From Perro, I learned that death doesn't diminish love. Love only becomes ever-present, free of the restrictions of the physical plain.

And lastly, Happy New Year to you, my friend. Thanks for going on this journey with me.