Thinking Small (but Real!)

When I was in Japan working for the Los Angeles Times, I studied shiatsu on the weekend. I studied with a very ordinary old man on a top floor in a typically ugly Tokyo apartment building. No temple or New Age music, or incense or Buddhas in the corner. Each Saturday I would trek to some unknown station, march through the garish mini-mall, and ride up to my teacher's floor.

The class was simple. He showed me how to do the shiatsu on his wife. Then he had me lie down to feel what it felt like. Then he had me try it on him. Mixed in with it all were many powerful lessons--about bodies, minds, life.

At the end of my class he gave me my certificate. He told me I had great talent as a healer. I could intuit the problems, and bond with the patient. Few people could do that. But, he said, I was too vulnerable to their sadness, their illness, their misery. In effect, he said, I was too open. I let everything in--the good AND the bad. But the bad weakened me. To be successful I needed to build up my walls a little, so I could walk through the world and do what I needed to do. I needed to control what I let in, so I could still feel the problems, but not let it debilitate me.

Wow.

That was my last class. But his words have stuck with me.

I know that one of my strengths as a writer is that I can intuit the feelings of people, sometimes better than they can themselves. I am empathetic to an unhealthy degree. But usually that benefits me.

But even when it is not shiatsu, the problems of the world seep into me. I read about Obama and his efforts, and the Republicans and their stubborness just to be jerks, and I feel hopeless. I read about LAUSD, and their resistance to change, at the price of the students, and I feel hopeless. I look at our economy, our environment, our city, and it all seems so messed up and tangled that I get very depressed.

I read all the newspaper on Sunday and that is how I felt. I almost took to bed.

But Jonathan, my relentlessly positive husband took me in his arms and talked to me.

He reminded me of this: Yes, perhaps the political system, the economic system, and the educational system are all F.U.B.A.R..
But I cannot dwell on that and let myself be immobilized by sorrow and depression and hopelessness, which I am prone to do. I must think small and pure. We could not change LAUSD, never, and to try to do it would have been foolish. The system must be blown up. But we could help start a charter school. And that charter school, through example, can inspire parents and challenge LAUSD, and make the intractable institutions stop and take a look. It is not changing the world, but it is making one perfect corner that gives hope to everyone who sees it, and changes the lives of those who are in it.

In the words of my shiatsu teacher, I cannot let all of that in. I must focus on what I can do, and do it.

I must see the problems of the big institutions, but I must let them be inspiration for change, not grist for immobilizing depression.

I must build my foundation so I am strong enough to not get knocked over by the bad news, so I can focus on making the small, beautiful, inspiring changes that make a difference.

I need to just start small, and beautiful, no compromises in the vision. That is all I can do.

And that is a lot.

I will look to: Alice Waters, my aunt and uncle who started the Ironman, Allison Cohen, who started a newspaper, Marya and Jay, who started our charter school, Deepak Chopra, who has changed the way we think about medicine, the woman who built OZ in the Hollywood Hills.

How about you? Is there someone doing something small, beautiful and perfect that inspires you?

Do tell!