better

It's the sitting area outside a clinic, inside UNM hospital. I'm waiting for a door to open and somebody to call my name. And trying to ignore the everpresent TV just overhead, in the meantime. Or, failing that, to be grateful for the reminder, for the moment of perspective: few things like a public waiting room -- at any institution, really -- explain as well why so much of humankind is operating at the level that it is. The observations of the level of physical and emotional survival of so many are an invaluable insight. As are the inventories of what 'the masses' are given -- their diet of food, medicine, and mainstream media, to name a few -- with which to nourish body and soul. What they're given, and what they continue to accept.

I'm trying not to judge here. Really. Trying not to think in terms of motives or other things that I can't actually know about people. Just to explain, or at best to empathize. To imagine how my mind would function, if consistently exposed to the tangible and intangible mind-altering drug that is commercial television. To say nothing of the commercials themselves. After so many years of having been with decreasing frequency in its company, I'm just nothing but startled at what comes out of that little box. I truly can't believe that anybody ever thought of this stuff. Much less that others would choose to watch it, for entertainment. For any purpose not forced on them.

The program on right now involves a short thin woman asking a tall, slightly overweight woman how to shop for healthy groceries, while "staying on budget". They walk around a florescent-lit supermarket, pushing a loaded shopping cart down aisles as they talk. "What should we look for, if we want to be sure we're eating healthy?" asks the short woman. The taller expert advises scanning the labels of these many plastic-wrapped objects for the words 'organic', 'all-natural' or 'whole-grain'. Although, she points out, "'natural' means something different to every company, and is not regulated by the government like 'organic' is..." That's for sure -- "natural" is one of those words that should only appear in the public sphere surrounded by bold-face quotation marks. But, what's this? We need written directions, key-word-recognition, to inform us what foods nurture us? I know not everyone got the benefit of the high-intensity whole-foods experiment that my family subjected itself to when I was a kid (produce we planted, weeded, picked, washed ourselves; super-density bread that began with grinding wheat kernels in a food processor), but...really? Do we not come with any more help from our own operating systems? Is this what a lifetime of choosing one plastic bag over another does to the powers of discernment?

The expert is pointing out another budget strategy: using coupons that are good for all the items of a certain brand to get a more expensive jar of 'organic' tomato sauce, for example, for the price of the conventional. "It is NOT unethical", she assures her companion, "to use these coupons for the organic product." What a relief, that we're allowed to raise our sights just a little without compromising our consumer values. Just don't mention going for any ideals here: this is daytime TV...

We break for commercials. I almost laugh out loud when I see that even the name of the show is a relative term: "Better". We can't possibly see our benumbed collective way to "Ideal" or "Real" or "Best". Only to some middle-ground plateau between our physical and intellectual poverty, and what (some of us believe) we were created to be.

Can't bear to see the commercials. Nothing in the reality I understand moves that fast, or is that garish. I glance around the room. Of the 13 people waiting, 7 have heads bowed, communing with a faraway someone through texting. A young couple is arguing, in painfully honest terms, over all the ways each has wounded the other and whether or not they can forgive. They sit barely making eye contact, separated by two empty chairs, but the tension that pulls them toward each other is palpable. Two women in the room have young daughters with them; one mother gazes into the crystal display of her phone while her girl plays with an electronic talking toy. The other is wonderfully engaged with her one-or-two-year-old, talking, gesturing, responding to the little one's happy incoherent sounds. Against the far wall, a man and woman in army drab and boots sit side by side, wearing the same name on their uniform shirts. They talk very little, mostly gaze straight ahead, but both are smiling as if they know a happy secret.

Perhaps I could feel some relief that all 13 people aren't turning identical glazed stares toward the TV set. Maybe our mediaddictions don't pervade the way I thought they did. I look around again. A sign at the reception desk reads, "please do not use cell phone during your exam". Nope. I think it's a collective habit we've got, if there's a need for a sign such as that.

The woman at the desk gives me a paper affirming that UNMCare is committed to a program of "quality, excellence and compassion". I'd believe it. Almost everyone I've dealt with - doctors, assistants, receptionists - has been courteous, willing to listen and to answer questions. It occurs to me that their vision statement would be useful to offer to oneself, on the journey of getting well and staying well. Do I maintain a standing offer of quality, excellence and compassion in my dealings with myself? In the health that I create for me, as far as it's up to me? In the terms and conditions of the everyday I inhabit? Maybe...maybe not. I do gift myself with a healthier-than-average diet (as plastic-free as possible, and natural without the quote marks), but when it comes to the kind of inner compassion and forgiveness proposed, for example, by the book I'm carrying (from which I read a few more pages, here in the waiting room, before the TV's electronic hum distracted me), I've got room for improvement in my own vision, as well.

Again, I don't want to criticize the fellow humans that I see in public spaces. We all sit in some limbo of our own here. We're all waiting, looking sometimes for a way from here to there. Reaching for some level of healthy, alive, free. The sincerity of our effort is sometimes as painful to consider as are our failures to try. But why don't we want to try more? How can we, so many of us, be fine with remaining in our seats, letting the TV tell us what things like health and quality of life are? Why don't more people trapped under the glare of televisions rise up in indignation at its suggestions -- or at least laugh out loud once in a while? How can they be content with its shrink-wrapped propositions? Don't we originate with, or at least find along the way, many more stimulating possibilities? Don't we have that in ourselves, whether or not we were educated to seek it? When I described this scene, a friend commented, "For some, dreaming is all they want from life." Wow. If this is dreaming, I could dream of a life a whole lot healthier, juicier, more free than what that little screen boxes in. Even when I don't have any idea how to get there. Doesn't anybody else dream of 'better', without quotation marks? Or even, dare I say it, of their own unlimited vision of 'best'?