Tag Archives: mental-health

Mar 19, 2025 – Self- & Other-Care and Being Made Aware

Leave a reply

I’ve left off – just as I thought might happen – writing, but not thinking, about those things I notice that I take for granted. There are so many such things that sometimes I am stymied by the amount or, as I noted opening this note, I am unable to pick a starting point, a way ‘in’ to the thing taken for granted I want to write about. 

I mean … I could go for the big one: that I live in a democratic republic (or is it a republican democracy?). But that would really stop me in my tracks, both because there is so much to say about it and because I would not know where to start.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket posted to Bluesky an OpEd this morning about what he called “The Sharks Circling the Boat” [https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/the-sharks-circling-the-boat/]. And that post aligned nicely with one by Jennifer Mercieca on The Conversation about “Donald Trump’s nonstop news-making can be exhausting, making it harder for people to scrutinize his presidential actions” [https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-nonstop-news-making-can-be-exhausting-making-it-harder-for-people-to-scrutinize-his-presidential-actions-250733?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=bylineblueskybutton].

All of that said … “I take for granted …” that at 73 we are still able to care for ourselves (though, we are not the best housekeepers). That is, we are still able to bathe, dress, prepare food, eat, and so many other things that make a life AND we are able to do them for ourselves, by ourselves. 

I originally said it half seriously/half jokingly to the PA at our doctor’s office but that does not make it any less accurate in terms of this thing I take for granted: “I am still able to stand on one leg and pull on my pants, one leg at a time. And so long as I am able to do that I figure I’m okay.” But, there are mornings when it is easier (meaning less painful) to just sit on the edge of the bed and pull them on … slowly. Thankfully, those days are few but not always far between, depending on how much physical work I did the day(s) before.

It was while I was on a walk this morning (Jeeezus! It was cold out there this morning walking INTO the wind; and it seemed as though the wind was coming from every direction …) that this topic suggested itself to me, in part because being able to get out for a walk falls under this topic but, in a more immediate ‘sense’, I was ‘made aware’ of my taking for granted my ability to go for a longish walk unaided (or, for that matter, the ability to get up at 0530 today and bake off two loaves of sourdough bread): I was passed (twice!) by the City’s Meals-on-Wheels truck; the serivce is offered under their ‘Seniors Programs’, which are quite comprehensive.

‘Being made aware’, presuming of course that one is open to being made aware, is one of the methods by which we come to question – and, ideally – better appreciate those things we routinely take for granted. A chance encounter with something that or someone who calls our complacency into question is one of the most effective means of being made aware: it occurs independent of us, it intrudes on our ‘usual’ thoughts and acts, and it can force a reassessment if we are open to it (as, for example, I am through having decided to think and write about things I take for granted).

Mar 14, 2025 – Opening Thoughts on Things Taken for Granted

Leave a reply

This note-able topic is the outgrowth of some ‘shower thoughts’, yesterday. But it is also very much related to our present political situation. 

I had been toying with the notion of a diary-of-sorts, something of our time under Trump 2.0. The idea of a diary came from my reading of Victor Klemperer, specifically the introduction to his Language of the Third Reich. And that, working back, came from reading Timothy Snyder’s little book, On Tyranny. 

But, the problem I keep running into with diaries is that, lacking a focal point on which to turn my thoughts and attention, I am dreadful about keeping them going. I seem to have no trouble starting; I just ‘lose interest’ … though that is not entirely accurate. Focus is a function not only of ‘interest’ but of time. And, well, time … how easily is that disrupted, breaking focus and damping interest?

And that is where, more or less while indulging in ‘shower thoughts’, I stumbled on the notion of things taken for granted. How hard would it be to keep a diary going thinking about and then meditating on things one routinely takes for granted? And we take a lot for granted … if nothing else this could also be an exercise in self- and other-awareness.

Example: “I take for granted …” the ‘fact’ that when I open a tap in/on the house, water will flow. Not just water but, rather, water that is clean, safe – in a word: potable. That water is assumed to always be ‘there’ ready to flow from the faucet so that I can then drink it, clean our dishes and clothes, clean my body, prepare our food, water our garden. I also know –albeit in a ‘first world’ sort of way – how discomfiting it can be to turn the knob or lift the ‘handle’ and unexpectedly have nothing come from the faucet … nothing, except maybe the sound of air moving in the piping.

From where does this taking ‘water’ for granted come? And, what can I do to disrupt the complacency behind such thought-less thinking? What can I do to make present the precarity of uninterrupted access to water?

The nature of things taken for granted seems to me to be their (sorry, Heidegger …) readiness-to-hand or Zuhandenheit, their ubiquity, their duration/durability, the ‘fact’ that we have never – or rarely ever – been without. 

Reading Frank Herbert’s DUNE was an early wake-up call; subsequent readings have helped reinforce awareness. Living in the desert southwest – both as a child in the mountains around Los Alamos and now at the northern edge of the great Chihuahuan Desert – also helps with awareness. Metered water supplies, monthly water and sewage bills based on realtime use, the ability to log on to the City website and ‘see’ one’s water use in real time all contribute to water awareness. 

So, each day – not necessarily at a specific time but, rather, as the time finds me or I find it – I will endeavor to identify and question (interrogate?) something I take for granted.