Florida

is not one of my favorite places.  i'm more a temperate weather, non man-eating-alligator-in-your-kiddie-pool kind of person.

i recently returned from my second trip to the sunshine state in 3 weeks.  I have an ailing brother and an 89 year old mother living there and as you might imagine, things are getting complicated.  my mom lives alone, by her own choice, in a too big house with too many maintenance issues and too much yard to care for.  what was reaffirmed for me on this last visit was that i am powerless to affect that.  it's well past time for her to make some changes but it isn't going to happen so i am left with the prospect of more and frequent trips with the inevitable collapse of her shakey independence.

driving home, i searched the radio for distraction and stumbled on the Ted Talks hour on public radio.  they were featuring innovative thinkers on the topic of education.  one of the speakers was a man named John Hunter, who teaches 3rd grade in Charlottesville Va. and who has created "The World Peace Game".

what he does is remarkable.  in the game, which he's been teaching for 30 years, his kids assume positions of political power, representing various countries, and they're presented with some complex and interconnected, real time, real world problems.   as he says proudly, various classes have solved the global warming crisis in 5 days or less.  they have all the choices that are available, theoretically anyway, to the rest of us....declare war...send aid...unite for a common cause.  what they don't have are the limitations of hard-wired "impossibles".  and they're not hog-tied by looming prospects of re-election time.  they're free to imagine possibilities. the game is won when all the problems have been solved and, at the same time, every country is better off financially than they were at the beginning of the game.

i'm not doing it justice and i urge you to google the actual talk.  what struck me and the reason i'm bringing it up, is that the Mr. Hunter's ultimate goal with this game is to teach compassion.  his hope is that by the end, the kids have realized that they're responsible for more than their own territories...that they're responsible for the fate of humankind.  and the beauty is that, given a free hand in working out the issues, they seem to naturally come to that.

i'm reaching here, to connect this to my recent experience in Florida.  it hasn't come clear, yet, but i know it has everything to do with the compassion piece.
it's easy to look at my mom and call her the problem.  she's a difficult person and her behaviors have a huge impact on any well intentioned folks who try to help.  but in a world of more highly functioning, fast moving, clear headed powerful younger people, each with their own agenda, about all she has to hold up in her own defense is a refusal to cooperate and she does that with no pretense of being a nice old lady.  she's in your face and fighting mad, all the time.  friends fall away.  pretty soon its only the morally obliged who show up to try again.

so if my mom was a country, she'd be a dangerous one and a threat to world peace.  Mr. Hunter told the story of a little girl who was the defense minister of a small, impoverished nation.  She shocked the room by unexpectedly and unprovoked declaring war on a larger nation next to hers.  Against all protests, she fought and won by surrounding and immobilizing their army in a surprise attack.  It was only revealed later that the larger forces in question had been planning a global war, whereby they would take control, not just her country but of everyone else's as well.  The little girl had been watching and reading the signs of coming aggression and she'd preempted it, essentially saving the world.

wow.  talk about your lessons.  it involves personal and collective sacrifice and an incredible level of confidence.  it scares me cause it challenges my own absolute beliefs about the morality of war.  and on a smaller scale, it challenges my obligations with regard to that dangerous territory i call my mom.  she's still driving.  that alone makes her a threat to the rest of the world and to herself.
at what point do i step in, surround and immobilize her to prevent something bad from happening?  what's the compassionate choice?  i dunno.

i dunno.