Stalking a Mezzo-Soprano

Leandra Ramm is an aspiring mezzo-soprano with a problem. Someone has posted thousands of internet messages asserting a lack of talent, and reinforced the messages on a blog under Leandra's name and by posting obscene messages on her own website. The police in New York (where she lives) claim they have no jurisdiction over activities apparently perpetrated by a resident of Singapore, but the Singapore authorities have no reason to show interest.

Many people suffer from online persecution and are often more intimately related to their persecutor, such as the woman who broke up with her lover and within days received shocked emails from her friends asking about her new website. It turns out that the spurned male had created a website in his former affianced’s name, uploaded all the bedroom photos and videos he had amassed, and emailed her friends from the website address with an innocuous, “Come and look at my new website.”

There is a question under these stories that I cannot yet articulate, but it goes beyond understanding the difficulties of the individuals who live under this shadow, or their efforts to rebuild a life and reputation; it goes beyond even the motives of the malintents perpetrating this suffering or the role of society in perpetuating and hopefully reining in this behavior. There is something happening here that I feel I need to look at very closely.

The Cultivation of Insight

When I recently spoke on Career Day at my teenage son's school, I focused my comments on three life lessons I thought highly relevant to the students: staying flexible through and looking up from the job for opportunities; building and maintaining a personal network; and remaining a lifelong learner. These are easy to say, but even though I believe in them, I find them hard to practice. But when I come back to these ideas, I realize that they point for me at something very deep, which is my own tendency to get caught up in my activities, my personal story, and my own environment. I like to see things in a way that reinforces the identity I am most comfortable wearing. This is clearly nuts! It is when I lift my head up and look around with intention and clarity that I can see how narrow my view has become, and start to see other perspecives. From that place I can begin to look at what is going on in my life and in society at large, and start to ask, "What is really happening here?" "What is going on?" When my life is on a smooth glide I have time and space and these thoughts come up often, but even when life is not as steady, they run in the background. It is from this place that the seeds of my novels grow, and it is the source of my spiritual practice. It is an important place for me to nurture, and it is from here that I can cultivate insight into my life and the world around me.