492. We Are All The Wall

Or how to stop the wars about walls and rather focus on taking responsibility for the source of the problems that cause them to exist.

A few people have sent me information and documents as well as asked for my personal perspective on what’s my perspective as a Mexican – living in Mexico – on Trump’s executive order to ‘Build the wall’ that he promised to all of his supporters during his electoral campaign, therefore I’ll share some of my points of view here.

First of all, I’ve shared in previous blogs about my decision to not bash other people in positions of power such as presidents (Read Let’s Make Us Focus .On .Our .Lives. Again!) and I’ve lived up to that point with both my country’s president – and actually have had a few words with people that constantly bash him and make of his bashing a form of national sport – as well as with the new ‘human piñata’ for Mexicans, which is Donald Trump where now Mexicans have interestingly enough gathered around in this 4-day old renewed sense of Nationalism that started emerging in people’s phones and social media participation based on now having something/someone to fight and stand united against and that is the perception of Trump’s wall as a discredit to Mexicans, a bashing of Mexicans – which Mexicans have taken personally now reacting in this sudden ‘solidarity’ which I would have very much liked to see during the first week of this year in course where we were all more divided and against each other than ever, with all the lootings, protests against government and by the government… but now it’s as if Trump’s Wall has become a reason for Mexicans to unite, though for only all the nice-sounding reasons, but still failing to acknowledge the responsibility to look back at the collective mess we’ve created as our country, which is predictable considering that us as human beings like to focus on all the nice things but always react to and resist to look at ‘all the bad’ stuff, the ugly and very real aspect of our truth and reality – individually and collectively as the world system.

What do I mean with this?

As a disclaimer and allocating myself in what I’m about to share. Throughout this process I’ve learned to identify myself as a human being in this world, not as a ‘Mexican’ which means I have throughout my life walked a process to dissociate myself from the constructs, beliefs, main views or cultural associations of what a Mexican is supposed to be like. This is not to set myself apart, but this is exactly the same self-deconstruction that I would do living anywhere else in the world, where I’ve come to understand all notions of nationality and its ramifications like patriotism or nationalism which I equate in the same way as racism, religious ideologies or political inclinations that create a division between people. All of these ‘labels’ stand for and as separation between human beings, therefore the identification of myself as one single ‘nation’ to me would be a disservice to the principles I am standing for/as which are that of oneness and equality, who we really are as life beyond our characters, our personalities, our cultural (mental) biases and the rest of the opinions that we’ve transformed into religious-political factions that we’ve turned into ways to separate and conquer us.

I share this bit so that I leave it clear that by now it should not be expected that I will take any ‘side’ with anyone here –  otherwise I would be recreating the problems that we all precisely should be focus on stopping in this world: the continuous ‘siding with’ groups/nations/identities that invariably create friction and conflict among each other, where we lose track of how we are ALL collectively creating all the problems in the world that we are at the same time constantly fighting and complaining to resolve – yes, paradoxical in nature, but we haven’t yet realized how we are creating the very world we live in based on each word in the nature of fighting and spite that we’ve accepted as part of who we are in our lives.

So, what I see from the creation of the wall is nothing else but a way to contain a consequence that interestingly enough, most of Mexicans currently united in a sentiment of ‘renewed nationalism’ have failed to have the common sense to admit and look at, to rather question HOW we’ve come to this point where someone has to create a wall, a physical border to prevent more people from going illegally to the US and WHY it is that so many millions have decided to leave Mexico in order to have a better lifestyle than here. This has been an all-timer question that I’ve heard many people blame since the nineties to the NAFTA, but immigration has been going on way before that which is quite obvious in the sense that people would see it as a very easy thing to do to have the same kind of jobs they would have here in Mexico yet getting paid a whole lot more for it if opting for the American Dream, which is also a misnomer because there’s millions of stories of suffering and abuse as well, and I won’t go into that because there’s thousands of articles and documentaries on this situation as well. Therefore it’s not like it’s all rosy and nice in there, even more so there’s several accounts of many succumbing to or resorting to become criminals to make a living, which is also not acceptable. I’ve personally met several people lately that have come back since it wasn’t such a great deal for them anymore to be living in the US and are instead having decent jobs here, which I find cool since they went there and lived ‘their dreams’ only to realize the kind of values that opting for the ‘life of the riches’ lead you to – which in any case is a life lesson and interesting process for many of us humans that tend to only look at money as the whole drive of one’s existence.

Now, I don’t blame people from following such aspiration to have more money than they would in Mexico, but it is certain that in all of those millions that have left the country, the workforce that could have instead stayed here to build a prosperous country in various forms/ways have gone to take menial jobs to ‘the other side’ as we call it here. So, what happened is that only money came back here to Mexico, but most males in little towns in this country would leave to the US, leaving huge gaps in communities across the country as a result of this, creating a ‘norm’ for many youngsters to only be waiting to be old enough to be able to go to ‘the other side’ and make a lot more money than here, which means: we failed as a society to create an economy that gives opportunity to everyone to have a dignified living.

So, it’s quite ludicrous to consider that Mexicans or Mexican Government can get offended about the creation of a wall as a way to stop a consequential outflow of decades and decades of complete negligence to create sufficient economic stability and incentives to make people stay and instead use people’s labor and dedication to rebuild communities, especially in agriculture, to create more associations that could in one way or another sort out agreements with governments in order to prevent the mass immigration to the US and also strengthening the Mexican economy that will now be probably more affected by this bilateral disagreement going on between the US and Mexico, turning it into yet another unfriendly stance that is in no way something supportive to have between neighbors, especially considering it is ‘THE’ United States of America on the north side, so, we have to own our creation: we did it to ourselves, bit by bit.

Therefore, I am not at all in disagreement nor in favor of the wall either – again, won’t take sides and refuse to do so because that is what keeps this ‘battle’ going on without solutions.

The last thing I can do here is share this perspective and suggest a few things to everyone in Mexico or outside of it that may be standing with an interesting ‘fervor’ to ‘save Mexico’ and ‘stand united with Mexico’ or ‘be offended along with Mexicans’ to rather stop the sudden nationalism and realize that we should have done this a LONG time ago in the sense of actually deciding to build this country back on its feet and become the people that can stand as individual leaders – all together – with transparency, honesty and integrity which means Everyone, as ALL citizens would have to live by and stand by these principles, as well as in self-responsibility. Because we have been masters at pointing out corruption, being OK with corruption at all levels of our societies and being the first in line to mock presidents and create jokes out of any corruption- or narco-case gone wrong – I was once there, I did that many times, but I can stand my word. I don’t indulge into that at all any longer.

Therefore I’d rather ask: how many of us are actually looking within ourselves to recognize our responsibility to the creation of all the problems faced in this country and whether we would stand also ‘In Equality’ within self-honesty and self-responsibility to own and recognize our creation, to acknowledge the fact that we’ve all built this wall by accepting and allowing our economy to be not good enough to cater for proper livelihoods in the lives of those people that were the most hardworking, noble and wise when it comes to an essential field of our economy: agriculture. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot, therefore we have to stop the tantrums and why-me/whining at a national level.

As with all things, the only solution I foresee now that this deal of the wall is done is to use it as a lesson to learn from and prevent from creating further consequences from now on. I don’t disagree that people create a sense of unity, but for god’s sake, let’s make it about ourselves, who we are as people – not about ‘Mexican beauties’ like its beaches, best weather and landscapes in the world – but about who we are as individuals, the kind of relationships that we can create in our families, with friends, at work, at our jobs. Becoming honest and integral individuals where we can again trust each other to act responsibly, to do ‘the right thing, that which is best for all’ and to not cheat and do whatever we can to bribe our way to the top.

In this it’s about applying the same as we do with our personal process: it’s about facing consequences and learning to live them the best way possible, making of the consequence a learning process where we can strengthen our strengths and weaknesses while also making sure that we go correcting our core values wherein we can once and for all be a little bit more considerate in terms of ‘following an American Dream’ and whether that was in any way sustainable as a long-time aspiration or desire for generations of humans to come. My take is: it is not. And here I clarify that it is not that I am not wanting prosperity for the people, but I am talking in the specific means in which massive amounts of people have gone to the US to get ‘rich’ or ‘lots of money’ while having to leave their families back here in Mexico, it’s not nice for them nor for the families, most of them would really want to be back here yet we all have been the ones that instead of staying in this country to make it stronger and built with an intent to revive its economy and therefore the living-quality in it, we have opted to run away from it or live off from its worst sources of income like politics or narco-business – we haven’t yet decided to create an economy that can fulfill people’s livelihoods in a best-for-all manner, hence the consequences.

It’s time to see beyond the sentiment of nationalism or ‘uniting against the enemy Trump’ because that breeds more of that which we need to STOP fueling and participating on in this world: hatred, anger, separation, blame, vengeance, racism. I refuse to be part of the millions that rejoice in a false sense of empowerment – instead I decide to remind ourselves of common sense: let’s own our consequences, let’s understand the source and origin of this ‘wall’ which is that of massive immigration that we haven’t been able to prevent by creating a solid economy at home.

So, if we really want to ‘be very Mexicans’ I’d first say, let’s stand in principles that change the nature of what we’ve all become as individuals, starting with stopping the hate, the fight, the spite towards presidents or nations ‘out there’ and instead focus on ourselves, focus on our own lives. There’s nothing to be offended about when we are ALL the creators of walls, because it represents nothing else but the manifestation of our separation as our inability to stand together to create a dignified livelihood for all inhabitants in this world – not only Mexico but everywhere else in this world.

Let’s keep this in mind when seeing the word ‘WALL’ = We ALL Are the WALL – now let’s start breaking down our own inner and outer wars and let’s rather focus on understanding our creation, looking at the origin of the problems and so focus on solutions to sort them out from their root, that’s what we should focus on in our lives right now.

Thanks for reading

 

 

 

 

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Perfectionism is an Inside Job!

Per-fact working with what is here to be created/ directed within the principle of what’s best for all – Working in specificity, living in ways that are taking into consideration an outcome that will benefit myself and all equally – there are no inner-guidelines according to my own value schemes based on comparison or fears within that. This is how we can transform our current participation in ‘perfectionism’ to self perfection.

Perfectionism – system word and the familiar imprint.

I read the word perfectionism and remembered the usual talks my parents would have with their friends around the table and how my father would boast about his peculiar traits of being methodic and a perfectionist. He’s cool from the system perspective and I’ve learned heaps from such specificity and efficiency within taking into consideration aspects that make our day to day living more practical – yet a lot is definitely based on fear and an underlying desire for control. Now that I look at the word I see that looking at the ‘driving force’ of this experience is having everything working the way ‘he wants it to be’ and this aspect can consume him the moment things don’t go as expected.

That’s when anger would ignite within him right away – it was a ‘known’ fact that if something didn’t work out the way it was expected, we would have to deal with his bad temper. It’s been cool actually because this past year  I’ve gotten to be more open in talking about how to support ourselves with my parents/ family in general, so I’ve been able to point out in the exact moment when he’s going into anger and frustration for things not resulting the way he wanted them. This has been supportive for him to snap out of it and realize that all the fuzz is absolutely unnecessary and that things have to simply be physically directed without adding any other ‘charge’ to it.

The reason why I’m writing about my father is because I require to apply the exact same points for myself.  I can see myself in him in terms of how we have lived ‘perfectionism’ as literal cage wherein we want everything to be ‘under control,’ wherein we don’t want to make any mistakes which is essentially out of fear, fear of not keeping up with this ideal that we’ve created of ourselves, our ‘reputation.’ I now remembered asking my father in one of these events ‘well, what is it that worries you the most if this doesn’t work out?’ and he replied something along the lines of ‘what everyone will say about it.’ And then he goes into his petulant mode wherein he’s just like a little kid that has been caught in the nitty gritty of what is actually ‘mattering’ within our mind, it’s actually funny because there is no place to hide once we reveal and expose ourselves. 

So, it is about fearing others’ judgments, fearing not being ‘up to the expectations’ which is just an overall fuckup since we then will try and make everything fit our imaginary idea – not a pleonasm but a required redundancy to realize how we cannot become an ‘idea’ that is only existent in our mind unless we actually live it in fact. When living in comparison and caring too much about our general ‘presentation’ toward others, we start hindering our expression and placing a lock to our expression to not get out of the ‘known-safe bounds’ and in that, giving up the ability to express, share, being, speak and act because of caring too much about what others have to say about it.

 

How I have experienced perfectionism.

It started when I was a little girl – kindergarten to be precise and I wanted to be the perfect girl that did everything I was told to do. The moment I deviated from it like grabbing a pair of scissors and cutting some boy’s hair, getting scolded and resenting such action coming from the ‘teacher,’ I got ‘stuck’ within the point of never wanting to create such ‘harm’ on to another, the kid started crying after it all seemed like ‘fun’ to me.  That’s the first imprint of ‘being mean’ at school and being reprehended for it. From there fear kicked in and made sure I was doing everything I was told to do out of fear of having to go through that ‘humiliating experience.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having experienced humiliation out of being scolded without anyone taking into consideration the inner-workings and intentions behind the actions – in this

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to move from self-expression into fear because of not wanting to be ‘scolded’ again ‘in public’ and experiencing such humiliation which I didn’t know existed at the time, creating a general imprint of ‘fear’ which then became the driving force to ‘do as I’m told’ and be an obedient sheep in class.

In fact, from that moment on any ‘fuck up’ that I made during the elementary school years – like being kicked out of the class for talking too much which only happened once – I felt like the scum of the Earth, I feared to be expelled from the honorable wall of fame at school – losing the grace all teachers and others had – the ‘reputation’ point became quite prominent when being the ‘perfect system’ that does ‘everything perfect.’ In fact now that I see the latest points wherein that word has come up in my reality, I get this icky feeling like fuck that’s just not cool, it’s all ego based – how could ‘accomplishing tasks’ be related to ‘being perfect?’ It all was part of getting to know how to score in the system of rewards – nothing else.

I can only accept Self Perfection as myself and in that, we all have to stand equal and one to it – that would be principles and self-will to be efficient, practical, specific in terms of what will create an outcome that’s best for all. I speak of ‘creation’ because that’s what we are doing here with ourselves and the world. Therefore, now that we understand that all points within creation must be equally responsible, we can see how within being self responsible, correcting ourselves and accumulating words and deeds that co-operate to create a best for all outcome is walking the process of Self Perfection. This then cannot be a mind/ ego-driven move, but a best-for-all consideration that anyone can apply in an equal manner.

The reason why we have become so hooked on ‘perfectionism’ is due to the current system wherein one has to be absolutely ‘fit’ and aligned to its rules to keep going – this is just another survival-mechanism point because the main motive is fear once again. Whether it is fear of judgment, of not having money, fear of loss, etc. we have to take such fears to see where we have placed our value/worth upon.

Walking in this process has allowed me learn how to work as a team for the first time as I used to ‘loathe’ to work in teams, because it would usually mean having other 4 people wanting to be in my team because they knew and I knew I would do it all – yes I would create such a situation for myself and accept to do it all most of the times just so that I could make sure it was done ‘the right way.’ Once again we see that the motivation was fearing it would be a fuckup and believing that ‘my way’ is the ‘best way.’ I have stunned myself whenever I see how cool it is to brainstorm about points to the extent that I can see how funneling everything within the principle of equality can create an actual diversity of perspectives that lead to the same point – yet using different ways and expressions to get there, that’s the cool part.

It’s probably been over a  decade since I started letting go much of the initial hardcore perfectionism I experienced as a child – I mean, when I was around 8 years old if things didn’t go out the way I wanted, I would become frustrated and angry and bottle myself in it only getting to see some ‘light out of the tunnel’ with some support that I would get from my mother at that time, allowing me to see how I was simply able to do the things without having to be so strict and ‘hard on myself.’ I see how I would take such comments like ‘quick fixes’ that she could say in order for me to have like a spoon fed of honey to get past the bitterness, I would not really consider what she was saying. It did support to snap out of it and learn to be more flexible with my own religion. Like if I would say: I go to bed at 9:15 I had to be in bed at that time, no matter where I was I would have to be in bed because otherwise I was breaking my own rules and that was equal to what missing Sunday’s mass is for a hardcore christian.

I created for myself an overly-apprehensive childhood, no one was putting a gun to my head to have set such standards of ‘being the best’ all the time, it was like literal preprogramming running itself wherein my parents never had to bother in asking if I had done my homework or doing exhaustive reviews on my homework. My mother would support me with tools to learn useless data and create questionnaires to enhance the understanding of what I was learning –  that was it.   The drive that I would experience in an almost automated way to ‘be the best one in the class’ was driven by fear of losing my reputation and image toward others.

After these initial years at school I learned ‘the ways of the system’ wherein I simply got to know the ‘rules’ and started manipulating the points to get the desired outcome, extenuating the effort as well.  This is Not Self Perfection at all! Yet from a system perspective it was regarded as such – it was me becoming part of the ones that are able to manipulate things to suit my reputation/ ego. It actually sucks when people build a certain ‘idea of yourself’ and then create all types of expectations of ‘who you are’ and when finally getting to meet you, they eventually see you are just another mortal that is not self perfected – yet.

 

I can also now pinpoint the times in the past wherein I would create this ‘lower standard’ of something I had created even though it was ‘well done’ just to create a ‘safe zone,’ like a margin of error wherein if people thought it wasn’t ‘good enough,’ they would have my initial input of the work ‘not being good enough’ so that they could then measure the end result according to their judgment and my input and create an ‘acceptable average’ from it all. All fucked up complicated value systems – the mind complicates everything and it’s all done just for the sake of keeping up an imaginary standard that apparently can uplift of diminish who we are – it’s not real!

 

From Perfectionism to Self Perfection – the process.

The way to go every time from here on that I experience any perfection-demon kick I  stop for a moment and become aware of what is the driving force within this – what is it that I am actually supporting here and if common sense is not able to be found, we’ll know it’s being an ego-driven task directed to fulfill a certain patterned-idea of myself that is not self-supportive, that will not be applicable for all equally and will only stand as a general bluff within my experience.

Self-perfection is taking all into consideration to the best outcome possible – perfectionism is just ego-driven desires and fears which are the same but just in opposition to each other. It implies then stopping the desire to be ‘the best’ or beating my own standards and self-created ‘records’ to simply continue living in a way that is supportive for myself and everyone equally. That way we let go of measuring ourselves against ourselves and others and feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about it.

“Perfectionism is based in fear – self perfection is based in self creation” – Bernard Poolman

And with that we can see how we’re all walking the process of self creation wherein self perfection is the accumulation of consistent self-application directed toward a best for all outcome.

 

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