done

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.

Cesar Chavez

I watched the movie Pi. Made in 1997, it was intriguing and well done. The main character is a mathematician who is looking for the meaning of life through numbers. He is plagued with excruciating headaches and no treatment helps.

Two factions seek his help--the sacred and the profane. A group of Jewish mystics want him to find the number that represents the true name of God. They start out by befriending him and engaging his curiosity. He is also under surveillance by a faction who want to use the patterns he finds to make money on Wall Street. They bribe him with a state of the art computer chip.

In the end, both groups resort to violence. Their motive? Greed. The greed of the religious and the mundane both lead to violence.

At the end of the movie, SO and I debriefed as we often do and these words fell out of my mouth without my even thinking about them: "I am done with violence."

I feel angry sometimes. I sometimes even feel my animal nature want to strike out violently when I feel threatened or taken advantage of. So it isn't that I never feel the urge to violence. I'm just done because...violence solves nothing.

Even when I don't strike out physically, but my tone of voice conveys hurtful energy, I end up having to apologize before we can move on to connection and solution. Violence is so passé.

I hope we figure this out. Soon. Before it is too late.

[On another note: One year ago today, my dad left us. Anniversary times are strange. We are still adjusting and getting used to his being gone. I hope he is getting used to where he is now, too. We love you and miss you, Dad.]