Shellen Lubin's Monday Morning Quote

30 Jan, 2012 - Testing the Test

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 UTC

"The test of any man lies in action."

Pindar

"Good tests kill flawed theories. We remain alive to guess again."

Karl Popper

Good tests reveal flawed theories, and one of the flawed theories--it is becoming increasingly clear to me--is the ability of the testing situation to reveal how someone will behave in any circumstances except those of the test.

It's something akin to Heisenberg's Uncertainy Principle, which includes the observation that anything we observe we affect, and so our observations are flawed, impure, not the same as they would be were we not observing.

I've been thinking about this as I've been reflecting on how people perform in job interviews, auditions, presidential debates, dating, finals, SATs, and DMV road tests (also, as I've been writing three men taking the infamous "casket test" in my play based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice). How people perform in testing situations is not necessarily reflective of how they perform in life, and in fact uses some skill sets which are completely irrelevent in the actual doing of things.

I know smart people who don't test well, excellent actors who don't audition well, and beautiful, complex people who are great in relationships who don't come off well on dates. The only job that fully involves the qualities of salesmanship and ease under fire required by all these tests is, in fact, being a salesman, and even then the conditions are different because one is selling a product as well, not just oneself.

So why do we trust all these methods of testing to sort through and choose people when over and over again they have revealed themselves to be ineffective? Because it's the best we've got? No, I don't believe so. Because we think these factors should be the ones we choose by. Because we think we just made a mistake in the choosing, instead of recognizing that the method of choice itself is severely flawed.

And this is coming from someone who tests quite well. Any sour grapes are far more from how I've given tests than how I've taken them.

23 Jan, 2012 - Risking Enthusiasm

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 UTC

"Courageous risks are life-giving. They help you grow, make you brave."

Joan L. Curcio

"Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence. It is no more or less than faith in action."

Henry Chester

It's still a new year. It's barely started. You've barely taken it out of the closet, brushed its jacket, shined its shoes. There's so much year to come, so many days to say "I can't," "It's too hard," "I'm too tired." And so much of what we can't, what is too hard, what we are too tired for is only that because we feel that way.

Risks, courageous risks, are critical throughout our lives because they remind us that we can accomplish things, because they renew our energy and enthusiasm. Look at a baby trying to hold her head up, trying to stand up, trying to walk. It takes courage, but every baby has it. It takes determination, but every child who is able to do it will. Almost every baby starts with enthusiasm about the world, and will take huge, courageous risks every day, despite failures. Can you imagine what our world would be like if babies gave up trying to lift their heads when they couldn't manage it the first few times? Yet we all give up all the time with far less discouragement.

When, where, and how do we lose that impetus, that fortitude? Why is that not cultivated in school, along with reading and writing and book knowledge? It is as critical to our lives--no, more critical, because it enables us to continue to acquire skills, dexterity, and information.

Take a risk today. Have enthusiasm and courage to make a venture. Even if you do not fully succeed at the venture, you will succeed at propelling yourself forward to a new place. And that alone is worth it.

16 Jan, 2012 - Precarious Progress

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 UTC

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

So we are endlessly confronted with new problems -- new puzzles to gnaw on as we move forward -- newly revealed layers of the onion as we dig deeper. But if we allow that to cause us despair -- to hate the process, to hate anyone who has confounded us -- our vision will be perverted and obstructed.

So what else to do? Accept, revel in, and yes, even love the endless conundrums . . . and appreciate the discoveries that have been made, the solutions that have been found, in the endless process . . .

Two of King's more personal, human quotes--yet as true globally, and politically, as they are personally and inter-personally.

Happy Birthday, Martin.

9 Jan, 2012 - Mastering Making Masterful Mistakes

Mon, 9 Jan 2012 00:00:00 UTC

"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

George Bernard Shaw

"If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything."

Marva Collins

It's one of the most important lessons to remember, and one of the easiest to forget.

Why? Because we all hate to make mistakes. We all hate to be wrong. We all hate to not know the answer.

And yet, we cannot get better at anything without doing, and doing involves making mistakes. We cannot learn unless we identify what we don't know, or know erroneously. And some of the most important questions do not have one finite answer.

So is the most important thing to try learn so much and practice so much that we get so much right that no one can ever find fault with us? (As if that were even possible?)

Or do we learn and practice to get better at learning from our mistakes? Is the equally--sometimes even more--important thing to learn to love the process? We may never love being wrong, not knowing, and making mistakes, but we can relish what they offer us, and appreciate them for the steps in the process that they are towards knowing more, being more facile, and also being more compassionate with ourselves and others -- you know, growing.

2 Jan, 2012 - Starting Again

Mon, 2 Jan 2012 00:00:00 UTC

"How are you going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued? Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are."

Anne LaMott

STARTING OVER

"Nothing's worse than an accomplished task . . . The excitement, the true excitement, was always in starting again."

Marilyn Harris

A new year . . . a new slate--not clean, but open for the creating of what is to come.

I do not place much stock in resolutions, even less in fantasies of winning lottery tickets or brass rings, but I do hold out hope and determination that I can work towards being clearer, stronger, healthier, more loving, more accepting of what it is of benefit to let be, and less accepting of what it is of benefit to just let go and be done with. And not so hard on myself. For it is a journey. And I am making my way through it moment to moment, year to year, the best I can.

Last year, 2011, one of the most challenging and problematic of my life, I also finished (yes, finished, before midnight 12/31) the play I had been working on and researching on and off for something like fourteen years. Amazing. Yes, life is, isn't it?

What are you hoping to create for yourself in this new year?

26 Dec, 2011 - The Quality of Respect

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:00 UTC

THE QUALITY OF RESPECT

Mercy? Pleadest thou mercy to the court?
What place hath mercy in contracted law?
Aah, yes, tis how the gentryprivileged few
Forgive their kith and kin each noxious flaw.
The sinnings of a fair-skinned, titled man
Are pardoned with a show of mercys breath,
The same missteps that send poor citizens
To be locked up for life, or worse, to death.

And be he deemed by state no citizen,
But alien, slave, or not man at all,
Therell be no clemency, no shelter to
Be found in hallowed mercys narrow sprawl.
In fact, there is a greater quality,
More requisite for prosperous and poor
That you with malice did deny the Jew
That which all souls deserve and clamor for.

Respect. Yes, tis the quality respect,
The breath of life that renders breathing sweet,
True honest work providing roof and floor,
Fair clothing, medicines, fresh foods to eat,
To hold his head up high howeer he pray,
Or dress, or when first born what was his station,
The land where once his ancestors did live,
The color of his skin, his occupation.

You spit upon this man, you call him curr.
You spite and ridicule as if deserved.
You kick him, skin his hide, deride his dreams,
Then stand in shock when "just deserts" are served.
You think he cannot see? or hear? or feel?
He bleeds not from the knives you thrust in him?
When never once accorded dignity,
The chance he'll care for yours is bloody slim.

For any soul may sure be truly wrecked
For want of just: the quality of respect.

Portia as Balthazar
Act II, Scene v
THE QUALITY OF RESPECT
by Shellen Lubin
(loosely based on Shakespeares
The Merchant of Venice)

This year's New Year Poem.

With all my love and gratitude for being part of the circles of my life.

19 Dec, 2011 - Holiday Cheer

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 UTC

"As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same."

Donald E. Westlake

"The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

Helen Keller

What do I want for the holidays this year?

To be able to express my love and caring for those who I love, and receive love and caring back from them.

To hear them and be heard by them as to what is of value and necessity to each of us.

For I--and all the people in this country--to be able to earn a substantive living doing work that has meaning.

To know that there is some hope for justice and equity in this completely out-of-balance society we live in.

For people in other countries to share with us a world of peace and tolerance for other cultures, although not acceptance of any practices that enslave or victimize other people.

For all the people of the world (mostly us) to take responsibility for the huge climate changes we are creating that may too soon destroy the very planet we live on.

Is that so much to ask?

Of course it is.

12 Dec, 2011 - Recovering Respect

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 UTC

"We must build a new world, a far better world -- one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected."

Harry Truman

"There is no respect for others without humility in one's self."

Henri Frederic Amiel

It is all around me and coursing through me these days,
this notion of respect.
It is where we needs must go,
but it is not from whence we come.

I have read many of the histories that have been written,
the plays from the Greeks through Shakespeare,
and I see that our civilization, that all civilizations,
have been built not on respect
but on patriotism, chauvinism, jingoism:
my family above yours, my neighborhood above yours,
my country above yours, my culture above yours.
It is not enough that I love me and mine,
but it must be different, better, above yours.
The antithesis of respect.
Fear. Hatred. Condescension. Disdain.

I was sad when on September 12, 2001
so many people put up American flags
as if that was the greatest triumph "over" the terrorists.
To me, it moved us further from understanding them
and closer to being the same.
We had not moved on to an America of inclusion and acceptance.
The isolation of cultures had won.
We were encouraged to fear people who speak that language,
who pray to that god,
whose grandparents came from those countries
or look like they might have.
We had not moved on to respect.

This is where we have been.
It served us to win wars, money, power,
but not to flourish and thrive as human beings.
And if we cling to it now, we may not survive.
For the other is us, and we are ripping ourselves apart.

The concepts and constructs of America
were freedom, liberty, religious freedom,
acceptance of other immigrant cultures, no monarch or ruling class,
governmental representation of the people by all the people
(well, all the people once white men got that blacks and women
were actually people).

With respect for those who lead and follow,
who create and build and repair and protect and nurture and grow
and feed and house and teach and clean and manage and serve.

With all due respect.

5 Dec, 2011 - To the Victor and the Spoils

Mon, 5 Dec 2011 00:00:00 UTC

"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships."

Barbara Grizzuli Harrison

"Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships he makes with others and what happens to him in the world about him."

Virginia Satir
PEOPLEMAKING

So some people claim that--whether by nature or nurture--men just aren't as good at communicating as women. Others say that their particular learned non-communication skills were come by honestly from culture, from family, from early training. I get that.

But if Virginia Satir is right (and I do believe she is)--that communication is the largest single factor in the kinds of relationships we create--lovers, friends, family, work--more important than desire, devotion, even than love--then what have we consigned ourselves to if we accept those limitations?

It may take a few more generations (if we're lucky enough to have them with all the other destruction we're doing to this planet), but it is critical that our culture--and men in particular--are encouraged to cultivate these abilities: to know and articulate one's feelings as much as one's thoughts, to truly listen and hear others' feelings and responses to ours, and to have enough compassion and empathy as well as self-interest and self-reliance to come up with compromises and concessions that give each other enough to feel supported and cared for, but not so much as to feel that we have "won."

Otherwise--from the most intimate relationships to the most global--from the house to the House--from the tiniest debate to the hugest sticking point--we will be consigned to what we've historically had for the most part, conquerors and slaves, victors and spoils.

And this is as great a loss for the conquerors as it is for the slaves, for what it is that the victor triumphantly throws over his shoulder and carries home, but spoils?

28 Nov, 2011 - Family in a Box

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 UTC

"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box as we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation."

Margaret Mead

"The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the last one in perspective."

Robert Brault

"Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that it is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will be there later for you to climb back."

Mignon McLaughlin

One family friend calls it the "Thanksgiving Curse"--we Europeans decided to celebrate the holiday of the great shared feast before we decimated the natives of this land, and there is a big old Medicine Man Curse on us that whenever we do there will be great unrest in our families. But we didn't even celebrate Thanksgiving (and the Lubins never do as a family). We commemorated Evacuation Day, and still we were not spared the drama.

Of course, there is a purpose to the drama--as challenging as it is--no matter how it starts, who starts it, who participates, who is scarred in the ensuing battle, how it "ends" (for the moment, that is). And that purpose is to reveal what is under the surface, what is bubbling and brewing, what needs to be addressed one way or another--not just by the soldiers of the momentary battle, but often by the whole family.

It is also a test of how well you can retain your grace under pressure--not by non-involvement, but by being a calm, loving, honest, direct reality check. T'ain't easy. But then, none of the roles in a family drama are.