I’ve been thinking lately, before saying something, anything, WHY is it that I’m telling them precisely THAT at that precise moment.  What’s behind what I’m conveying?  It takes a lot of practice, believe me.  I requires thinking about two (or more) things at THE SAME TIME.  Talking about one concept and thinking about another.

My conclusion:  I guess I’m TRYING TO GET SOMETHING from the other person(s).

It could be anything.  Lately I noticed a lot of need for validation.  I need someone to let me know I’m on the right track, doing the right thing.

Is this really necessary?  In the name of efficiency, I would say no.  So I’ve started to THINK BEFORE I TALK and ask myself, What is the purpose of what I’m about to say to this person?  If it doesn’t have a good purpose, I’ve started not saying it, and not saying anything!

So I think soon I won’t have anything at all to say.

Introspection.  What a drag!  It could be the end of manipulation!  Bummer!

So if I see you and I don’t say anything, thank your lucky stars!  I won’t be manipulating you today!  I’ll just be Yelka the mute!

Tolerance can be a curse.  I guess that’s just me questioning myself.

I consider myself a very tolerant person.  When someone’s opinion differs from my own, I don’t automatically assume I’m right and they’re wrong.  I try to see it from their point of view.  The curse comes when I start to doubt myself, since I can see it from both points of views.

Opinions are just that.  They’re not right or wrong, and everyone’s entitled to having one.  And in their minds they are correct, so why even bother?

I guess my tolerance turned into complacency.

But one thing’s for sure:  You sleep on the bed that you made.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian has a sense of humor.  He started the Thursday night lecture by asking us how come we didn’t have anything better to do that night!  At least he was there because he was giving the talk!  Frail in his over 80 years of age, his rhetoric is anything but. 

When I saw the ad for his lecture I immediately decided to attend no matter what.  I missed a good friend’s birthday party to attend.  And that’s saying a lot.  But something really called me to go. 

I remembered hearing of his activities on the news back in the 90s and finally hearing he had been arrested and jailed.  I always wondered about his motives and wanted to meet him and talk to him.  “He went too far” I thought back then.  But in general I agreed with his point of view and didn’t understand why others couldn’t see it.

Maybe it was because my father committed suicide.  He would always tell the family that when the time came and he lost his quality of life he would do it.  He didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.

Maybe it was because recently my aunt spent over a year between the hospital and home while the medical bills mounted for my cousin who is now considering bankruptcy.  Was it humane to keep her, a person with failing kidneys, failing lungs, and failing heart, on dialysis, on a respirator, and on a heart defibrillator all at the same time?  Was it humane to keep her artificially alive and drugged with pain medicines while her gangrened leg from diabetes was amputated?  How far do we go to keep a person alive?  Keep them alive while we chop them up into little pieces?  When do we say:  “It’s enough.  Disconnect her”.

Human medicine has evolved so far that a person in a vegetative state can be maintained alive for over 30 years by means of a feeding tube.  We can now prolong almost indefinitely diseases that used to kill us in hours or days.  We die of very painful diseases in a very inhumane way.  In my opinion, my dog died more humanely when he was put to sleep.

Do we have a right to choose the way we die?  It’s a subject that’s as controversial as it can get.  It combines a taboo subject (death) with religion, legality and morality.  It mixes into a potentially explosive combination.

I thought the setting of Nova Southeastern University was very appropriate since students have always been the ones to question the status quo.  Nova is exploring “Life and Death” as its annual academic theme.  Imagine a whole year on that subject!  Yikes!

Dr. Kevorkian likes to be provocative.  He wants to shock us into opening up our minds and thinking beyond what he calls the “propaganda” we’ve been fed through all the years.  According to him, we are taught from a young age, over and over again, that America is the “Land of the Free”.  That there is no other country like America.

 As it turns out, he says, the Netherlands is far freer than we are.

At first he sounded too radical, too extremist, too “conspiracy theory”.  I’d heard it all before:   They used 9/11 to take away our rights; the Patriot Act removed some more, under the guise of protecting us, but no one rebels, no one says anything; the Supreme Court is corrupt; the powers that be want to control us, etc. etc.

But slowly, little by little, his point became more and more obvious to me:   that we have rights that don’t need enumeration and our laws are actually used to “block” our rights instead of defending them.

The central theme of Kevorkian’s message is the 9^th amendment to the constitution.  He calls it the most important amendment to the highest law of the land.  “…The highest law on the land” he kept repeating. 

How many people in the audience knew the text of 9^th amendment?  I certainly didn’t.  He asked, and not one of the almost 4,000 attendees raised their hand.  He was quick to let us know it wasn’t unusual we hadn’t paid attention to it, since it has never been challenged or used by the Supreme or any other court.  “But it’s the most important amendment”.

 He read it to us:  “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”.   He paused.  He called it “Beautifully written.  Simple, direct and to the point”.  He went on to explain that basically it means that we have other rights than the ones listed on the constitution.  They don’t have to be written.  We just have them.  Rosa Parks had the right to sit anywhere on the bus she wanted to.  She was born with the right.  I extrapolated:  Women could always vote.  They had the right.  They just didn’t know it.  The 19^th amendment allowing women to vote was not needed.  I was sold.

He admitted that his ideas were radical.  That was the point!  He went on to give us an alternative to jails for crimes, and to go over a study about the major dictatorships and what they had in common.  He went through the 14 commonality points while comparing each with the United States.  There were items like “Encouraging an intense sense of Nationalism;  flag wearing and worship; questioning people’s patriotism;  aligning against one common enemy; pursuit of military supremacy; control of the media.  One by one they all fit.  Are we truly that free?  Are we fascists?  Wow!  That’s radical!

I was lost in thought, and before I knew it, his lecture was over and it was time for a Q&A period.  Poor Jack couldn’t hear most of the questions being asked!  Someone forgot to arrange for someone to repeat back to him the questions.  Or fix his hearing aid!  But after making everyone repeat the question at least twice, he managed to get through them one by one.  Up to now he hadn’t once mentioned assisted suicide or the right to die, which was the supposed subject of the lecture.  Now the questions referred to more of the same.  When was he going to talk about death?

Finally a bold student asked him “Can you please talk about your experience with assisted suicide and euthanasia?”  The crowd exploded in cheers and applause.  It was what we all had come to hear.

His answer:  “I’m on parole and one of the conditions is that I can’t talk about how to assist in suicides.”  “Invite me back in May when I’ll be off parole and can say whatever I want”.  Huge roaring Laughter from the crowd.

 “But I’ll tell you:  I did it on purpose” he answered.  “I wanted to call attention to the issue and bring the 9^th amendment under discussion.  I knew and expected to be arrested.  What I didn’t expect is to stay in jail.  I thought I would take my defense to the Supreme Court.  But I couldn’t get even my state’s supreme court to hear it.  The Supreme Court wouldn’t touch it!  They’re too corrupt.  They know that any national discussion about the 9^th amendment would undermine their capacity to control of the people.”

Q:  What would you say to someone who says that euthanasia is against their religion?  A:  You have the right to choose the way you die, so don’t use euthanasia.  But don’t impose on me your dogma.

Q:  Why did you create the machine that administered the euthanasia?  A: Because I didn’t want have to do it myself!

Question:  Why did you push the button on your machine on 60 minutes?  Answer: Because the person couldn’t do it herself!  When you’re paralyzed from the neck down, there’s no way you can push a button!

Q:  Will he be using euthanasia on himself?  A:  If the moment comes and I’m not dead yet, yes.

Q:  Wouldn’t you be playing God?  A:  Doctors are always playing God.

I was really enjoying the back and forth, but time was up.  The Dean thanked him for coming and let us know that he would be available for book signing.  But the best was yet to come!  “Wait.  One more thing”.  With the help of an assistant, Kevorkian hung a huge American flag behind him.  “This is us in reality”.  Then turned it around to reveal another American flag where the stars were arranged in the shape of a swastika.  How’s that for a shocker?  That definitely elicited booing and offended many attendees.  A guy sitting on the first started screaming and yelling at him, and security had to be called.  That was the end of the lecture, of an unusual night on an unusual subject with an unusual messenger. Remember, he did it on purpose.  To make you think.

Yelka

Other memorable Kevorkian radicalism: 

During Roman times, it was widely known that you could go to a doctor and plead your case.  If the doctor deemed your situation worthy, you would get the poison.  We’ve gone backwards, not forward.

The Hippocratic Oath comes from the Pythagoreans from ancient Greece, support for it grew with Christianity.

Once euthanasia is legalized, the rate of suicide among the elderly (the highest rate among all age groups) will plummet.

He receives and has received thousands of letters and the majority of them, including from the medical profession, agree with him that we have the right to die.  People from other countries write to ask “What’s wrong with your country?”

He’s for ministry sanctuaries instead of jail – We build more and more prisons.  What do we get?  More and more crime.  Nothing is done to try to rehabilitate or bring back to society those who have made a mistake.  There is no redemption possibility.  Sanctuaries provide for redemption and improvement of society.

There are three states where euthanasia is expressly illegal:  Washington State, Oregon and Montana.

Lately I’ve been pondering the reasons for our actions.  Does everything we do / say have a reason?

They say children behave in certain ways because they want attention, so I thought maybe it’s the same way with us adults.  After all, we’re just grown up kids.

So I’ve been trying to “notice” what’s behind my behavior, what’s behind my every move.  For a week I made an effort to ask myself: “What is the purpose of what I’m about to say (or do)?” before I said or did it.

At first, I told myself I was “adding to the conversation” or “clarifying something” but the more I asked myself my real purpose for what I was going the more I realized that I needed validation.  I needed someone to agree with me.  I needed a pat on the back, a “good job”, so to speak.  I needed someone to pay attention to me!

Another interesting thing happened:  I realized that perhaps attention wasn’t that important, and I would just stay quiet and listen more.  I became more observant.  I said less hurtful things.

Many times I think we act on automatic, especially when someone in our family “pushes our buttons”.  It’s like we’re a machine trained to react a certain way.  For me, you’ll get this reaction if you “tell” me what to do instead of “asking” me to do something.  You’ll see a rare nasty side of me!

But on the day of this experiment, I was able to pause long enough to see myself falling into that trap.  I actually noticed myself hearing the person “tell” me what to do, and in my brain, before I reacted,  I actually replaced it and imagined them “asking” instead.  And I was able to avoid a confrontation.

The other day I was in the bedroom talking to my boyfriend who was in the kitchen.  Since we were in different rooms, with tvs blaring, and other noise interfering, he couldn’t hear what I was saying, which was annoying me.  And I was yelling!  After many times of asking me “What?” and me repeating myself, he finally walked into the room and asked one final time “What are you trying to tell me?”

It was at this moment that I realized that what I had been trying to tell him had no importance at all.  A lot of trouble for nothing!  A feeling of relief, embarrassment and laughter came to me.  My answer : “Nothing, darling.  I just needed attention!” 

We laughed.

Remember the song “If you like Pina Colada…”?  It’s about a man who answers a personal ad just to find out the ad he answered was from his own partner! He just never knew certain things about her! I recently heard that song again and it got me thinking:  Why does this happen?  What can be done about it? Sometimes we get so used to one other that we forget the initial spark that started it all. We get caught in a rut and assume that’s the way it will be from now on. Why don’t we try to keep the relationship growing, by learning more about who the other person is, and risk losing the other person without ever finding out if they were still the one for you?

I’ve pondered many times how to not get caught in a rut.  I’ve had lengthy talks with my girlfriends about it, family and friends who have been married a long time, thought about it, talked about it, and even tried to do something about it. Perhaps by sharing my thoughts with you we could come up with innovative ways!

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) I’m a long-term relationship kind of person.  My boyfriend in college lasted five years, I was married for seven, and my current relationship is now over five years old.  And no matter what anyone thinks, it’s really, really hard not to get in a rut.

So this is what I’ve got so far. Feel free to add your comments!

1)  Don’t take your couple for granted.  We can’t help it if they take us for granted, since we can’t change anyone, but we can control our own actions and what we think.  So start by realizing what your preconceived notions are about your partner.  What do you ABSOLUTELY KNOW to be true about that person?  Have you ever considered it might not be all that true, that you’re making it be that way?   They might have changed. Have you allowed them to change? to grow? How about looking at the person in a different light, by pretending you’re not sure about anything about that person. You might be surprised what results.

2)  Don’t become an extension of the other person, to the point that you lose yourself.  Find your own excitement! Sometimes when you’re in a long-term relationship, you get used to routines and doing certain things, and your own dreams and aspirations are left for another day.  Instead, go ahead and put into action some of the things you’ve always wanted to do, whether they include your partner or not.  Learn how to sing, skydive, learn a new instrument, language, take up a sport, etc.  Who knows, you might inspire them to do it with you or learn about a passion of theirs that you share, which will surprise both of you and bring you closer.

3)  Communicate.  Everyone talks about the importance of communication, but it’s definitely not easy to manage.  If you feel that you’re in a rut, most probably your partner is feeling the same way and either has not told you or hasn’t realized it, or doesn’t know how to tell you.  By communicating your feelings, and realizing that nothing’s wrong with them, you can come up with solutions together that might surprise both of you.

4)  Listen to your partner.  They might be giving you ‘clues’. Perhaps we can sacrifice a weekend of shopping and go to the game with them…? Small price to pay!

5)  Don’t act insane! - You’ve heard a definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So go ahead and analyze how you’ve been behaving in the relationship and do something different! If you’re the “clinging” type, give your partner some “space”. If you’re the aloof one, how about giving your partner some extra attention? What happens when your “hot buttons” are pressed, how do you you react? What do you gain from your reaction? Is there a different reaction that could give you a different result?

As you can see, this barely scratches the surface of the complications of human relationships, but it’s a start. I’m going home to experiment with some of these and see what happens! My pina colada is waiting!!