Links to be added
Friday, Labor Day weekend: The 21st anniversary of the day I lost my eyesight.
Before I realize the significance of today for me, I am awakening trying to explain to myself why I would even think, consider, imagine I would want to put New Horizons and myself in a position to take on the task of taking on Capital Hill!
Whatever could I be thinking?
Trying to put thoughts into words I find myself considering the ONE story I had thought to write earlier in the week that might succinctly account for my making such a bold, brash pledge such as this.
Alongside this contemplation I note that I need to write two more blogs by night’s end of this day: one for the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” site and one for this one, in order to wrap up my monthly quota of one post per week for each.
Beginning early tomorrow I take off for the holiday weekend. So completing my monthly obligation must be now!
What I had wanted to write about was the one, main "back story” of the front story about "What It Means (To Me) To Be A Compassionate Warrior Woman Taking On Capitol Hill," as I thought I knew it.
Then I started scanning a re-run of my past history beginning with that day that changed the course of my life, the day I watched Richard Nixon lie to the Watergate Commission and lots of people seem to believe him though I sure did not!
Upon awakening this morning I initially told myself that the reasoning behind this outrageous Capital Hill plan of mine could be explained by one simple story, maybe two, at the most. An easy accounting of what has brought me to this point. That was before I started reviewing past events more carefully.
As the veil of sleep fell aside the main “ONE,” I thought, might be about the near-ceaseless debate Marty Groder, my former psychiatrist mentor, and I had had back and forth, like a tennis match volley, throughout the mid-1980s
We were developing our collaboration more and more in those days as I dug deeper and deeper into Marty’s original theories particularly the one about how high leadership individuals and convicts shared the same essential personality structures. This was the one that grabbed me most and probably accounts for much of my devotion to Groder.
How Marty’s theories could explain what had happened in the Watergate scandal, especially the part about Nixon lying and how and why so many seemed to buy his stories was what I needed most to understand.
Yet understanding my compelling need was way far off in the future and still something I am inclined to ponder on occasion still.
I felt compelled to solve this riddle, heart and soul, like nothing I had ever known before. To solve the mystery, as I viewed it then and be able to someday turn what I believed Groder could teach me back into some kind of gift to Washington would become my driving ambition, next only to my love for my children and my yearning to be the best I could be for them.
It mattered that much!
And, somehow the two ambitions were tied together. But I did not know that until many years later.
The year that stands out most for me in this regard with Marty is 1985.
President Ronald Reagan is in office and I, a local am having to admit to Marty, an outlier, that times, once again, are turbulent, as they often are in Washington.
But what does that actually tell us about how Washington society and politics are totally representative of the darkness of humanity that is set in place and irretrievable.
Our debate goes something like this --
Marty (“Not always right, but never in doubt”): “Washington is the center of darkness for the entire planet, next only to Moscow!”
Me, emphatically: “No, Washington is the center of light, a battleground in the ceaseless war between darkness and light!”
Accustomed as I was to Marty’s Scorpio stinging comments, I cut him a bit of slack in the argument, factoring in that he was a native New Yorker. I could, thus, forgive his one-dimensional view on the subject of the dark side of Washington.
I, on the other hand, saw Washington with the heart of a Beloved.
After all, I had come to the nation’s capital just out of college, believing in Kennedy’s Camelot and all I innocently thought it represented. And though my ideals have many times been disappointed and I had, over the years, physically moved myself further and further away from Washington’s center, I consider myself, to this day, to be a part of it, it a part of me.
For all its faults and no matter who inhabits the White House or Congress, the Washington I see is through the eyes of one who is in love with the town, its many personalities, peculiarities and ups and downs, most especially coming out of the political arena that is the very blood of the town.
Is this the story that explains my reaching for the this sky high achievement upon which I am now embarking?
Sounds like a love story to me!
Suggesting that “what it means to me to be taking on Capital Hill” is that I still have faith in the ideals that brought me to Washington so many decades ago and that these are worthy of my belief that collectively we American citizens and politicians can do better than we are showing these days. We have it in us. We always have.
So I think it’s worth my best efforts and hardest work to fight for these in true Compassionate Warrior Woman-style, meaning fighting for ideals with all the strength, wisdom and love one can muster.
Yet I think this is not “The Story.”
But it is a part of my story, a snippet, a chapter on the way to my laying out the whole saga, the saga my life has been for the past forty-five years since Nixon’s lying about Watergate, coupled with the prophecy that came to me along with it, altering the course of my life.
So I guess the bottom line for me today is that there is not just one story, not just one simple way to explain "What It Means To Me To Be A Compassionate Warrior Woman Taking On Capitol Hill."
There are many stories behind the front story.
For example, there is the one about –
- How Nixon’s lying to the American people about Watergate affected me;
- The prophecy that came to me the day Nixon resigned;
- How it came about that Bill Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky and I went blind;
- Marty and I debating about the dark and light sides of Washington and what that meant to me then and what it means to me today;
- Why I found Obama’s leadership and how people responded to it so disheartening at times, enough for me to create the Possible Human, Possible Society Study;
- And -- OMG! Donald Trump in the White House!
Now, at almost midnight, I am wrapping up what I have to say for August, asserting that I can no longer set my mind to writing the "ONE" story that explains it all.
I have many stories to tell on the subject at hand here.
I think I’ll tell them, write them and learn from them as I share them. I guess that's what it means to me to be a storyteller.
Maybe then I’ll know more about What It Means(To Me) To Be A Compassionate Warrior Woman Taking On Capitol Hill -- and -- so will you.
Still there always will be more to the telling.
Wishing you all a very pleasant Labor Day holiday!
