a little bit about me...

so last night, i blogged, and then i went outside to feed my dogs. i love feeding my dogs at night. it's one of the last things i do. i like looking at the sky and i like watching my dogs in all their "animal-ness"....it kind of helps me get back in touch with those basic truths about living things and lets me relax and settle down some....

so last night i was thinking about broken health care systems and sicko...and how i kind of didn't like my blog last night. it was so cynical. and i'm not an enemy of cynicism. but i don't like it when i can't find a comfortable resting place in my emotions and i land on cynicism. because for me, it's not a comfortable resting place. i mean, if i've thought about it and that's where i decide i'm just going to have to be, that's one thing. but it is not a good default setting for me....

i was trying to decide what scenes were defining for me in sicko. and i realized that the scene where the woman doctor who was an insurance claim analyst that went and testified before congress about her responsibility in a man's death because she denied him the operation he needed to live, and how she'd never been asked to be accountable for it, and how in her business, that decision ensured her promotion and success...i think that was a pretty important part for michael moore to include. because that woman was not evil. she did not set out to make money by denying people necessary health care. she was a doctor, trained in saving lives and understanding health, hired by an insurance company to do a job.

i don't think she took that job with the vision of testifying before congress in mind. i'm sure she thought she was doing something she was qualified to do--decide based on medical information whether someone needed medical treatment. i'm sure it took her time to realize the true nature of her job, her role in her company. i'm sure it was a gradual series of moments of clarity clouded by frustrations, preoccupation with her own daily life, fear, questioning... and i'm sure it just took time before she developed her awareness of her job, weighed it against her ethics, and made a decision to act on her resulting feelings. but what strikes me is that she was the same person the day before she left her job as she was the day she left. she'd just made a decision to bring her actions more in line with her beliefs, and after doing that, it became easier for others to see who she was. but it didn't change who she was. i mean, it probably did to some degree, but who she was was already in there before she acted in a way that conveyed it...

and that's what i think about the world mostly.... most people are really good people. it's only as they bring their actions in line with their hearts and souls that we see that, though. so we just have to believe in each other. and it's hard sometimes. when a company denies necessary health care (and we're talking about those that are already insured here) to a person...it is easy to hate that company. but who is making those decisions for that company? who are we hating? there is so much responsibility spread out over so many people, that it's hard to say whose vision is propelling it. and it seems, from listening to part of sicko where nixon is talking to kaiser about health care management organizations, that he honestly felt it was a good answer to a problem. maybe it wasn't. but i don't think he was trying to create the cluster fuck we have now... so how to take a not-so-good answer, driven by a desire to do something good (maybe not what we think would be good, but something good), and fix it? i think with some faith that others want it fixed, too...maybe even those we don't expect would want it fixed.

but i mentioned last night that i am not strong at sorting out facts or especially politics. i like watching the nature of people...how different we seem from the outset, but how truly the same we are. so i don't write about these things necessarily proposing solutions...not in policies anyway. i just look for ways to improve the dynamics between people...usually my family is my laboratory....muwahaha but it also helps me in finding a comfortable place to land when i'm thinking about an issue that i don't see a clear answer in and that threatens to push me under in despair...because cynicism is not very buoyant in my experience. and i don't mind swimming a little harder if i need to, but i've also observed that it isn't something i need to just do all the time without realizing why i'm so tired.

ok, enough self awareness today...my head still hurts...
peace