It’s going to be Easter in a few days; that celebrate not only of egg shaped candy and furry rabbits, but the new life and resurrection.

I confess I’m feeling in dire need of all the symbols of Easter this year to lift my spirits: the candy, the bright pastels, the soft plush toys. And the slim spiritual hope of regeneration.

For many Christians, the season of Lent, the forty days leading up to Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, are akin to fasting during the Muslim month of Ramadan. Except that for Protestants, we don’t stop eating everything, only those things very near and dear to us. Or in the “spirit of the law” practice which infuses much of the modern church, we chose something of value other than food that we want to give up for a period as a sacrifice.

It’s supposed to be hard, as all discipline is, to surrender and think of the sufferings of Christ or of the poor, or others, during this season. I’ve used it (rightly or wrongly) to give up a character trait I wanted to work on. Because it’s Lent, there’s no more procrastinating once I’ve made a vow before God to stop.

For many it’s abstaining from chocolate or television watching or secular (as in non-religious) music. For me in the past it’s been giving up rage and a spate of food related loves like Coke Classic, among others.

This year I honed on the one thing that was my life line as a new mother and over-committed modern woman: the afternoon nap. It’s not unknown for me to make up sleep missed overnight with a two hour stint before evening activities.

When I decided to give it up for Lent, I don’t think I knew how hard it would be or how much I relied on sleep to reset whatever negative things had happened during the day. Waking up from the nap was like resetting my entire brain; defragging the hard drive and rebooting if you will.

For the past six weeks, a couple of new trends have replaced the medicated power of sleep. One is that I am more productive. It’s slightly shocking how much you can get done in two hours. Exercise and shower, writing (like this blog), catching up with friends, spending time with baby; there is no shortage of filler for this “empty” time.

The second thing is not as easy to talk about. It’s the utter, earthshaking presence of boiling, black, fury at rudeness. Perhaps without my system reset, the anger is just there on the surface, constantly getting piled on. Whatever the reason, I can’t shake the annoying things of the day.

Like the insistently rude student, who I can’t tell if she’s speaking to me this way because of my age or my race – because in a society where people are very class and manner conscious, I know she wouldn’t dare speak this way to certain other people in the same situation.

Or the dull, glazed look in people’s eyes when you ask them where something is. Who knew “I don’t know” could be a corrosive, all purpose, excuse for checking out of life?

The women having tea in their office when you come to do something good for their school, who can’t be interrupted to show you where you’re supposed to go.

I rain down cruses on all of them including the incompetent, the inconsiderate, the indifferent.

It’s hard work being so agitated all the time. And I realize the person I’m hurting the most: myself. Being negative is not who I am in my core. Somehow all the grace that I’ve been given in life – and even recently there have been many, including a fender bender where the man agreed not to pursue damages – don’t seem to be sticking to the ribs. Rather it’s the bruises.

I hope for Easter that I can replace these flashes of pain, the sense that I’m so weary of the world and its harshness, the impulse to strike back with a sense of joy, hope, and purpose at the new life that we’re promised.

Lord knows I’m tired of this old one.

It started on January 25 and hasn’t ended yet: the revolution that was 30 years in the making –the popular uprising of millions, young/old, male/female, in Egypt. What the peaceful protesters in Tahrir – Liberation – square want is the remove of the 82 year old dictator Hosni Mubarak. Implicit in his stepping down is the conclusion that his son, Gamal, will not be immediately ushered into office, or indeed ever hold an official position in the Egyptian government. It is the end of an era — of U.S. backed foreign interests in the Middle East, of a population so downtrodden many described them as “lazy”, of life long dictators siphoning national funds to finance their vacation homes abroad.

Living in Qatar brings me geographically closer to the eleven day old uprising than my home base on the East coast of the U.S. Working for a Middle Eastern company and with a largely Arab staff (three people from Egypt) brings it directly into daily conversation about the well being of loved ones, fact versus rumor, waiting and hoping, hoping and waiting that “he” (aka Mubarak) will leave.

Add to this the larger circle of friends and colleagues at surrounding universities with ties to Egypt, mix in the excellent 24 hour coverage by Al Jazeera English on TV, the radio, via Twitter, and bake in the heat of friends posting status updates live from Egypt and you have a region more or less glued to the breaking-news ticker.

Against the backdrop of this history-making bravery, people I know personally are writing in international newspapers like The Guardian about being teargassed while trying to protest peacefully. Against this milieu of people saying what they mean, standing for what they believe, and in general living while they are alive, my petty irritations and conflicts seem so small.

In the midst of  international tumult and the constant broadcasts of pent up desire for freedom, it’s not entirely surprisingly that this week, after a long self-enforced silence, I broke and said what I was really thinking.

What I actually said may not be that important ( this isn’t like saying don’t think about elephants) but rather the way that I came to say it.

I had enough with the lack of respectful practices, disorder and chaos a particular set of people kept bringing into my life.

Since July I thought of ways to get out of being tied to them: over maternity leave, I was hoping we’d grow apart.

And as we started sleeping regularly again, I realized nothing had changed – though I had a seismic shift in my own life with the introduction of our new baby. With said baby, an odd thing happened. Instead of making me the crazy person everyone warned me of, the baby actually brought stability. Suddenly I wasn’t checking email all day and most of the night; I was home for meals instead of wandering from event to event. His presence called me home>

But more than being around. He gave me a reason to live a better life. I wanted to be more for him – happy, present, living up to my ideals.

Yet the difficult group relationship continued, with them walking through personal boundaries and in general wrecking havoc in a way that kept me fighting to stay positive and upbeat.

A long Christmas vacation during which I contemplated how to end this increasingly negative interaction. Returning from a long holiday — was difficult but I was much stronger than I thought. I was able to minimize the ever present irritations better than before. Though things were not perfect, I convinced myself to make the best of it, holding the baby close, and real friends closer – the rest receded a bit.

In the background though, like piano keys stuck together, a discordant note kept plunking.

They weren’t going to change. And my ability to ignore them was wearing thin as their discord further intruded into my resolution to live a life worth living while alive.

Last weekend the world couldn’t look away, and I was no different, watching mouth agape as pro-government thugs storm into the square astride horses and even on the backs of camels, beating those they came across with whips. It brought back childhood memories of students standing in front of tanks in another T-named square, Tienanmen. Unlike the Chinese, the pro-Mubarak supporters, paid thugs or undercover police, didn’t have the honesty to wear their uniforms into the square but came in dressed like everyone else to dilute the reputation of the peaceful protesters.

Like the Egyptians over the years, I had grumbled and complained about this group crowding my happy days and happiness. But I wasn’t ready for action. I wanted change but I didn’t know if I could deal with the discomfort. Was it easier for things to stay as they were? Could I weather the storm that this major shift would bring in my life, the life of my family?

In the middle of this week I, alongside  the example of millions of Egyptians who had finally tired of dictatorship above all else, had enough. We were ready to pay the price, come what may of having our say and reaching for impossible dreams. That of self-sovereignty.

I finally said what I had to say. Without emotion or drama or shouting. In a clear, unshakable voice, I spoke what had been on my mind for several months.

As the flags wave in Tharir square, we don’t know what will happen. And without this toxic group in my life, I’m not sure what will come next.

But the sight of Christians protecting Muslims gives me hope that Egypt won’t be overrun by the islamists as everyone is saying. Rather, unlike Iran or Iraq, Egypt will rise out of this revolution strengthened and renewed for the first time in three decades. This may sound idealistic, and no one is saying it won’t be messy. If you haven’t already seen the images of protesters with blood soaked handkerchiefs, then you don’t know the lengths people are willing to go to have their say.

The people of Tunisia and Egypt and have inspired me and even youth all over the Middle East region.

We can all create a life that we want, rather than the script the West (read: those who thought they were in charge of us) write. We don’t have to be puppets of anyone. It won’t be easy. In fact, it will be the hardest thing we’ve done.

But we know what life under dictatorships is like. The promise of freedom is too compelling to turn away any longer. Live the best life you can. After all, you know what the other option is like.

In what areas do you need to have a personal revolution? And from what parts of current or past history can you garner strength?

I love the count downs that occur during the last week of December. There are the top music videos and most embarrassing moments; celebrity shockers and sports highlights. It’s the one week every year that my inner pop culture junkie can get her fill of the year that was. Even grander are those moments which observe the passing of a decade which we find ourselves in as 2010 draws to a close.

Before New Year’s Eve comes to Doha, however, is another event of equal resonance, if only locally in Qatar: National Day. Observed on December 18, a year ago this week, a blog post about National Day ignited a firestorm of controversy. A woman blogging on Qatar Living.com posted a piece about the antics of youth on the cornice, ending with the conclusion that the boys (for they were mostly) were symptomatic of the country and both needed to grow up. Spray painted cars, wheelies, people hanging out of windows – all of this, plus someone accosting her with a facemask on, led the blogger to call out her host country and also its people.

The response – over 600 replies to her posting – covered the range of emotions: defending, decrying, and debasing her claims. Whatever people were saying, the outpouring was something few people could have predicted. Hate pages for the blogger and the website sprang up on Facebook and gathered several hundred members. The post and the responses exposed feelings not just about a group of boys out on the town to have fun, but on a range of topics, some as innocuous as driving, to differences in compensation, polices such as Qatarization, and lack of respect for culture.  Whatever the topic and rebuttal, people were arguing ferociously for “their” side.

A year later, what I’m ruminating about is not the incident itself, but what it revealed about those of us who share this tiny peninsula on the larger land of Arabia. The post and the subsequent reaction revealed the deep rooted tensions between ex-pats and locals in our small city state.

As someone who often has to code switch and defend expats to locals and locals to expats, I was saddened by how large the rift still seemed last year and can’t say that things are really drastically changing. The gulf in Qatar (pun intended) is not merely between the haves and the have-nots though that is evident when I sit in traffic next to the buses full of laborers. It’s also between us as people. The expats are not a homogenous group as they seem. There are distinctions between where people come from – Europe, America, and South Asia – as well as their occupations; oil, educational, sports. And locals have an intricate ranking system based on tribal ancestry, how long their families have been on the Arabian Peninsula, and who they are connected to by marriage or otherwise.

When one population is constant – the Qataries, and one population lasts only 1-3 years – the expats, there is no real window to confront these myths and stereotypes. A year later, coming upon National Day, I’m reminded that while we may all live next to each other, stand in line together, driving the same roads, we don’t actually see each other or engage.

New Year’s resolutions are known for triteness and being doomed to failure. Instead of waiting until January 1, I’ve started implementing “life changes” earlier so that by the time the New Year comes; it will find me already practicing my desired habit.

December 2010 is about daily exercise and the practice of being present with people. No messaging, or mobile, or internet. Just being present and really hearing what they have to say.

It is only by really hearing someone that we can stop seeing them as the “other.” And we know that the boundary between us and them is not as firm as we once thought.

Hotels, DJs, clothing manufacturers, want me to buy into the buildup of that other dread holiday – New Year’s Eve. I’ve had the rare opportunity to spend the most talked about night of the year in a different country over the past five years. This isn’t as glamorous as it sounds since often my companions for the evening go to bed before the witching hour, leaving me watching fireworks around the world via satellite.

Despite the hype and commerciality, the end of the year is good to evaluation and introspection, both of what’s happened and what’s to come.

For the sake of all the people living in Qatar, I hope 2011 finds us turning a new page together.

Not to be confused with the often quoted ‘clash of civilizations’ between the East and West, lately I’ve observed an equally significant disconnect between assumed expectations and the ensuing chaos when those around us behave otherwise. The physic disruption this kind of gap has caused in my own life over the past ten months is related to the way other people’s nonsensical choices contradict the symbolic order of my life as I’d like to live it. And the result has been irritation, rage, frustration: the desire to not stand and fight but to flee.

And I’m noticing the effect it has on others….

Little things, for example, such as the position of a desk in an office, to big things, such as who has access to what information and when, color how we feel about ourselves and our place in the order of the institutions we belong to.

Young people in Qatar are being educated in a different professional value system from those of their managers. Instead of basing respect on title or age, they are taught in their educational settings to give credit to those who contribute to the overall mission. They are encouraged to be treated with the same consideration as the higher members of the company, in accordance with a system that is more egalitarian than hierarchical.

This sometimes in direct conflict with a system that rewards age and also gives people with titles lots of privileges.
As someone who entered the workforce at the age of 20 in a professional capacity, I fought hard to distinguish my work persona from my student persona (it didn’t help that I stayed to work at my undergraduate institution after graduation).  And perhaps this is why I see the potential in so many of the younger people around me – despite the fact that I am now a 32 year old manager. I know that people like to have tasks that are meaningful rather than clerical and to feel a part of the greater purpose of an organization rather than just ordering paper clips.

Of course I’m a perfectionist and expect that things that are requested get done – as soon as possible or with an explanation as to why otherwise. Nothing irritates me like staff meetings where planning ahead or warnings fall on deaf ears (or students who have to have things repeated to them). But I am a relational leader and I’ve noticed that while others may not choose this particular style, it’s worth too much to me to give up just to strike fear into the hearts of others.

If only more managers knew how to cultivate the young people around them so that they would bring to work a sense of pleasure rather than duty or obligation. I have been trying to let go of tension and worry in general in preparation for the last two months of pregnancy.

I swing between feeling that this is such an ordinary experience, because women around the world do it all the time and wanting to treasure it and nurture the child at the same time. Generally I just collapse into a nap on the days that I can to get away from it all: work, home, the baby growing inside me. And generally, I feel more energized when I wake up, like I can hold on for another ten hours or so.

A friend was visiting and gave me a copy of the Shambhala Sun, a magazine that includes thoughts on “Buddhism, culture, meditation, and life.” The theme for the March issue was Mindful Living. Given all that is happening in my personal and professional life to get ready for this baby and the longest break from work I’ve ever had, it couldn’t have been better timed.

The entire issue was related to how to just be still. Be still and focus on the now. On simple things like your breath or even the sense of what you are about at the present moment. Life isn’t the past or the future – it’s the now, one of the contributors said.

And that’s the profound truth I’m taking into this next phase of my life as a mother and also a professional. I am trying to chip away at that idealist core in me that is always reaching for excellence and what could be possible – the logical order of the world as it should be – and accepting what it is. Flaws and all. Hopefully this is an important lesson the young people around me will also be able to put into their repertoire.

Are there valuable lessons you were taught or are being taught in the workplace or life?

 Or a few, I suppose.

On Friday I was shoe shopping and the woman who was managing the store had her children in the store with her. The kids were running up and down the aisles (as they could have been doing in a park if their mother wasn’t trying to make ends meet working even on Good Friday when their schools had sent them home) and instead of getting angry, I asked them their opinions on my shoe selection. The girl was full of shy pleasure and said “good” at the first pair of black pumps I tried on. In addition to being a fast runner, she had good taste.

Then on Saturday, on my way to Memphis, TN, I had an unexpectedly flight delay. The flight delay cost me several hours with my neices (who had been jumping up and down at home, each with their own plans of how to spend the weekend) and several hundred dollars to get on a earlier flight than the one the airline would provide for me. At 5:30, a few minutes after I was supposed to depart, instead of rage, I felt – confused? I had no one to get mad at and so instead I called a few friends to commiserate about domestic airlines, and then read a few chapters in my book, sent a few work emails, and in general got on with the business of waiting. Thankfully, for both myself and my neices, there was a flight at 7:50 p.m. so the delay was only three hours instead of six.

So on Easter eve, here’s to a clean heart and mind, rage free, that can cope with life’s tumults. 

(Of course I called the airline service number and tried to work it out with them, but we all can guess how that went. But still I didn’t lose the cool….)

It was Palm Sunday yesterday, or the day in the church calendar that symbolizes Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. This week he is treated like royalty; by Friday he will be tried for blasphemy and then hung on the cross.

And this means that my six weeks of focusing on anger, or rather letting go of angry impulses is almost up. Will I return to the rage letting beast I was before Lent? That remains to be seen.

But back to the most recent incident of rage I was privy to earlier this week. I was traveling with students to participate in a leadership conference focused on women “learning leadership.” Notables including Jane Fonda, Sarah Ferguson, and several Emirati leaders challenged the 1000+ audience with their lessons learned, words of caution, and courage to push forward.

Then, on the second day, a routine procedure: the collection of all cameras and cell phones due to the afternoon address by a female member of the royal family. If you haven’t spent time in Southeast Asia or the Middle East, then you might not know that photography of women is often controversial. A family’s honor is comprised of the purity and modesty of its women. Thus, many women don’t allow photographs or videotaping by the public – they don’t want their images to be in public circulation. This kind of conservatism might sound odd, but take a look around the Internet and might wish more people have this sense of restraint.

At any rate, there we were, listening to a commentary on how far Emirati women have come and their list of accomplishments. I had a translator set because the talk was in Arabic and simultaneously translated via headset into English. The translator dispenser had not given me an assigned number for my headset as the woman who took my cell phone had done. She took my ID. Inefficient, I thought, but handed the ID over.

At the conclusion of the event, I came out of the arena, and handed over my headset. The staff member had lined up everyone’s ID so that you could see the photo and recognize yourself. I picked mine up and proceeded to the mobile/camera station.

Where I found complete and utter chaos. Despite assigning us all number, in clear adhesive which was placed on the phone itself, and a written card with the corresponding number in our hands, the table contained a jumble of hundreds of phones and cameras. What was even worse, was that in front of the very small table, about 10 feet long, were hundreds and hundreds of women, jostling, elbowing, demanding, yelling, to get their phones.

“Come back in an hour,” a conference organizer kept saying, “we’ll have this sorted out.”

No one paid her any attention.

Gone were Sarah Ferguson’s admonitions to think of others before oneself.

No one seemed to recall that Jane Fonda had told us it took her 62 years to realize she was a leader and that had been eight years ago.

Everyone wanted her phone, and she wanted it now.

She could not wait because she “had a very important call.”

She could not wait, because, “What if it was gone later?”

A few of the women, myself included, found ourselves meeting each other’s eyes and laughing.

“This is madness,” I said to a woman who was putting her arms up just to avoid being hit by anyone.

“I know,” she said, rolling her eyes, palms up.

Then, despite several pleas that we attend our sessions and come back (all unheeded) someone came with a box and scooped up all the phones so we had no other choice.

What had been a positive, nurturing group of listeners was transformed into a seething toil of hands grasping for their possessions, in less than a minute.

It happened again: out in public, another angry foreigner speaks to a room at large of his disbelief at the lack of efficiency that surrounds him. I’m using ‘he’ because it was a he; a large man, over six feet tall, lumbering into the Qatar Airways office, escaping the rising afternoon heat. I was idly playing with my mobile, draped in a chair; waiting for the agent working with me to come back and help me untangle the Gordian knot my noncommittal students had made of the group travel plans to a conference (see Lack of commitment continues, March 4^th entry).

The belligerent European came in, looked around, took off his sunglasses and said, to no one in particular:

“Is anyone working today or what?”

Now, the thing is, I’ve had this same feeling, dozens of times, and in more countries than just the one I’m currently living in. China, Peru, India, even your local U.S. Social Security office, can evoke feelings of despair at Byzantine bureaucratic inefficiency.

The thing that piqued my interest was that this man had just arrived. He wasn’t even sitting down. He hadn’t even taken a number from the electronic dispenser as the one other waiting customer had.

Essentially, he didn’t have the right to be angry. At least not from where I sat, having waited at least one hour before on a similar visit for similar services.

A sales agent came from the back and the man persisted.

“There are only two people working right now?”

“I just came on duty sir,” the petite Pilipino woman said, “I’m turning o my machine.”

Now, there are lots of things about class, power, and gender politics I could say here. I could tell you that this same scenario gets played out all over this city but instead of European, there are Americans, Qataris, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, and the receipient is almost always either Pilipino or South Asian. Even in the instances when it’s two men, the service provider is always subservient in the presence of more power, wealth, or a higher ethnicity than his own. It’s a stunning example of how race and class conmingle in a heavy handed way.

But instead, I’ll say I thanked my agent several times for her wonderful assistance, thanked the cashier when he gave me my change, and walked out of the office leaving the steaming over weight Euro behind.

 I am really learning the hang of this non-anger thing.

Elsewhere on this blog I’ve talked about the challenges of living in a transient community – a revolving door of a place where no one is really here but merely on their way to somewhere else (http://mohanalakshmi.livejournal.com/tag/culture).

What’s surprising is that the lack of community or sense of connection also comes from the nationals.Recently I confronted this reality when a few people backed out of attending a conference at the very last minute. Then, they seemed surprised that I would actually hold them to paying the cancellation fee.

“What will this fee go towards?” They were asking.

To pay for the ticket we are already bought for you. To offset the cost of the hotel that was booked for you.

This attitude put me a little bit on edge – especially when I found out that these individuals tried to get out of paying the cancellation fee by using wasta  or influence – testing my anger levels yet again during Lent.

I took the easy way out and took a calming nap. 

Which left me feeling refreshed and ready to take on the most troubling part of this whole process. Not the wasted money, or lack of consideration, or commitment, which were all annonyances.

But missed opportunities – discard chances – the fact that many, many other people would love a chance at an all expense paid trip focused on their self imporvement.

Taking the nap inserted a breather where I could put distance between my feelings and the careless actions of a few and try again to get to those who would appreciate it.

Life in general, but especially in Qatar, is continual lesson of never giving up.

Thankfully, I’m learning how to cope at less emotional expense to myself.

I was tested earlier this week on my Lental commitment. I was white hot with rage at an injustice I thought was being inflicted on my husband and I. But I took a split second (literally because I really was angry) to remind myself to breathe, to think about why I was angry, to remember I was working on this very surge.

A miraculous thing happened. 

The sting went out of the insult.

Instead of fleeing from the room in high dungeon, I stood, crossed my arms, and breathed.

I thought about why I was upset: being angry on behalf of someone else isn’t really productive.

Being afraid you’re being taken advantage of is a way of diminishing what you have to give to the world.

Focusing on the petty and not letting it go can corrode your soul.

 In those few moments of breathing and calmness, I decided to forget it; not to hate anyone; and just keep breathing.

(Oh, and I will be taking steps not be in this particular predicament again).

There we have it: week two and I’ve overcome one challenge. Hopefully the next one won’t blindside me.

how to manage money or your rage. These are two important life skills that aren’t really transmitted in books or traditional learning. We absorb attitudes towards money and anger management from our surroudings. Parents, friends, other adults. Constantly our young minds are watching them, cataloguing what is permissible and what is unlikely to get results.

Anger management courses have been featured by Hollywood: Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson use comedy to show the utter extremes of provocation. Even Robert De Niro or Tony Soprano resort to a therapy to deal with their out of control emotions which affect their standing as mafia dons.

My moments of self reflection as they relate to anger only come afer major blow outs. The last major one on record was in 1996. If you have one of these, they are volanic erruptions which teach you your lesson. Never let the id take over and run the mouth. That’s what the brain is for. Even if you have to bite your tongue in half, some things are worth leaving unsaid.

I’m learning the best way to avoid anger, to stop it from building into rage, is to breathe. Taking deep cleansing breaths is the way stop the churning tide and to gain some perspective.

Try it. And tell me how it goes.