Cheryl and I

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I increased my H2H kettlebell "juggling" to 120 second rounds with 1 minute rest. Needless to say, nine rounds of this is pretty murderous, even at low intensity. Two days later, I'm waking up pitifully grateful that I stretched the night before. I would be TRASHED otherwise. Even so, I can feel that my body wants me to back off a bit today. No problem: today is using the S.H.O.T protocol created by Jeff Martone. Jeeze, that guy is an animal. Woof.

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"To know oneself is to know everything"--this is a thought extracted from the Bagahvad Gita. I agree. If you go to Musashi "Know one thing, know ten thousand things" or even Jerry Pournelles "If you master anything, you have the key to mastering anything else" or the "it takes 10,000 hours to master a discipline" and take these comments as a cluster, it seems pretty clear that they all point in the same direction. Then in the Art of War we are warned that someone who knows neither his opponent or himself will lose every time. One who knows himself but not his opponent will win some and lose some. And one who knows both his opponent and himself will never lose.

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I look at these things, and come to the conclusion that, indeed, our primary task is to know ourselves, and that when we do that, we open the doorway to all other knowledge. The road I've taken for this is the assumption that, until proven otherwise, everyone wants a relationship, a healthy fit body, and to make a good income doing something they enjoy. Three measurable standards that point to the person within. The only missteps I've made in my life have to do with lying to myself about something connected with one of these arenas. Frankly, most of the mistakes I've ever seen others make are connected here too.

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It's clear that not everyone wants these things...but that really seems the way to bet.

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So in looking at something like "A woman's right to choose" it makes sense to look at my own experiences, and my reactions to them, to help me understand other people's reactions better. And no, I don't accept that men can't understand women's reactions in this arena, any more than I accept that white people can't write about black people. You have to listen to what women say, that's for sure. But unless they're all liars, it should be very possible indeed to grasp the situation.

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In my own past, I was involved in two abortions with a former girlfriend we'll call "Cheryl." It was a horrible decision to make. Best case scenario is that abortion is the worst #$%ing form of birth control you can possibly imagine. There were no direct health issues--frankly, it was just massively inconvenient. We weren't ready to get married, and our life situation would have made a child a gigantic drain of time and energy.

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Anyone who reads this blog knows my commitment to my children. I would NEVER have kids were I not ready to make that commitment: to sacrifice career, dreams, or even life itself to provide for them. Period. To use my children to force myself to become more mature. To let them inspire me to become healed at deeper and deeper levels. I look around myself at the world, and realize that most people begin to abandon their dreams by the age of 20 or so. They pass on to their children a message that life is a constant, draining endurance event with death the finish line.

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I don't believe that, at all. But it was easy to see the trap. Not just for me, but for my children, and theirs as well. Those were my thoughts.

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On the part of "Cheryl", I think that if I had said "let's get married" she might well have said "yes." After all, what she had as a role model was a mother who had sacrificed her own dreams to have children, even when her marriage was confining and sometimes painful. Cheryl had her own hopes and dreams, and the hours we lay in bed talking about what we wanted for ourselves, and each other, were among the happiest of my life. Trust me, Cheryl was devastated by her decision to have the abortions. Yes, I could probably have talked her out of them. No, I'm not sorry I didn't.

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I saw that, later, when Cheryl became a mother she fell right into her mother's pattern, sacrificing and giving everything for her children. And while she seems somewhat satisfied with the choices she made, there is also a sense of sorrow. We probably all feel that at time.

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And I think that she wounded herself with those medical actions. Yeah, I do. I remember that several times Cheryl and her girlfriends took over our house, banished me to a movie to perform a Menstrual Extraction--a kind of abortion--on a woman who couldn't get a medical appointment. There was absolutely nothing jolly or casual about this. It was as solemn as a church service. This was a space in which I was not welcome, although they appreciated that I did not criticize.

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What is the precise feeling of having life blossom in your body? I don't have it exactly, but I've listened to hundreds of women speak of it, and there are enough parallels to other human experience in those words to, I think, give me a glimmering. And I've never, ever felt anything casual, even if there were, on the surface, the appearance of casual emotions. No: I saw a wrenching, tragic decision made by people just trying to make their way through a confusing world.

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I've never seen anything, anything at all to convince me that women have LESS empathy, LESS regard for life than men. In fact, I am tempted to believe the opposite.

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Because I cannot say with certainty when life begins (I just have an opinion), it would seem invalid to try to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies in this regard. I see hypocrisy on both sides. The manipulation of language into "Pro-Choice" bothers me, but then the language war is one of the major battlefields of human experience. "Pro-Life" bothers me just as much, if not more.

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As I've said, it seems to me that the major difference between the Left and the Right is the question of whether Essence precedes Existence, or Existence precedes Essence--a debate that simply can't be answered conclusively. To demand that a woman adhere to some standard of behavior decided by men, when the very basis of those standards cannot be decisively clarified, when that basis is in essence Faith rather than science...I just can't go there. I can't.

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Ultimately, it feels like a choice that has to be between a woman and her sense of the ultimate ethical structure of the universe. With God, if you will. There are few instances where women get to control what men do with their bodies. I know that it bothers the hell out of me that the fact that men die more violently and often than women simply isn't reckoned into the equation of "who's got it better" during explorations of sexual politics.

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When Queens rule, and have declared war, they've sent all-male armies off to die. On the occasions when women have power, not one of them, to my knowledge, has disbanded their male military and put women in their place (it would be insane). I accept that, but it hurts me that the terror and pain of those countless men simply isn't figured into anyone's equation of "who's in control." I don't believe that, in general, anyone is in control, regardless of the illusions so many buy into.

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And if we're going to get out of this trap, a trap that was designed to produce maximum children so that a people would flourish, we have to give individuals freedom over their own lives and souls. I see no real alternative.

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After all--take a look at the spread of opinions about "when life begins." The Spartans exposed children who were actually already born--and we revere the Greeks. Late-term abortions are supported by some, reviled by others. First-term abortions are probably supported (given medical reasons) by the majority, but still reviled by some.

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The "morning after" pill has similar controversy. And it doesn't stop there: there are those who feel that any form of birth control at all is sinful. And worse, there are some who feel that masturbation is wrong, on the basis that it is a sort of pre-emptive birth control. And others who feel that it is our sacred obligation to have sex and procreate.

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There simply is no "line" everyone agrees on, and there would have to be before we can agree on what to do with that line. What I DO see is that men, statistically more violent and murderous, have little claim to being MORE compassionate and respectful of life than women. But most of the most strident anti-abortionists are men. Which leads me to think that the primary thing is not respect for life. What then? Control? Well, sure. Everyone wants control. I do think that men tend to control with fear, while women control with guilt. But that's just an opinion.

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How about fear? At the base of every negative emotion, I believe fear is lurking, using other masks to distract us from its primacy. And if that is true, it is quite clear the things that men would have to be afraid of, if women have complete (or more) control over their reproductive systems. That impacts on so many other aspects of life that I couldn't begin to address it casually.

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I like fear as an answer. Fear of women's power (as women are fearful of men's power). Fear of being made irrelevant. Fear of a future in which Paternal Power is no longer driving the overt structures of authority, commerce, and politics. Of course, respect for life is there. But as someone noted, if people REALLY believed, really, deeply believed that abortion was murder, I would expect a far larger percentage of anti-abortionists to resort to violence--just as I probably would if I knew my next-door neighbor was murdering his children, and no authorities would stop it.

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But that doesn't happen. So I think that that is partially just inflammatory rhetoric. This subject is so painful, and so charged with mistrust and fear on both sides, and there is just no way to come to any absolute conclusions about that "when does life begin" question. Slide the line too far in one direction, and most of us would agree that children are at terrible risk. Slide it too far in the other direction, and women are biologically enslaved.

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This is the reason why I would be perfectly happy to just let women work it out. They have as much empathy and respect for life, morality and wisdom as men. Different proportions, perhaps. I see no way that they would not come to useful and appropriate conclusions. Men have the problem of trying to hold onto the power structures as they have existed in their, and their father's lifetimes. That feels just a little like Southerners trying to hold onto segregation, using Biblical justifications to prop up a power structure that just happens to be to their advantage in every way. Can't go there.

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But I really do empathize with both sides. But because I believe that there is more to life than biology and physics, I think that the answers human beings cannot ultimately resolve will all balance out, in the end. And unless I am willing to take responsibility for a woman's soul--let alone financial and emotional responsibility for her child--I will not presume to tell a woman what to do in this regard. I just cannot. I would have to be divine to see what really needed to be done, and I am not.

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I have to admit that men who would NOT be willing to allow women to vote amongst themselves on this issue make me nervous. I trust my daughter, my mother, my wife...and Cheryl. I tasted her tears.