Xenial in Xanadu

This title phrase Xenial in Xanadu means

constituting hospitality or relations between host and guest

in an

idyllic place.

In an age of social media, disengagement, and silo-based rudeness, can we make a difference? I, of course say, “Yes!”

All it takes is being on your Best Behavior and Acting in Accordance with Your Better Angels

Writing about how you achieve goals, what your goals are, and how you determine your goals are all aspects of one of the most important points where culture and societal norms meet familial and personal implementation of those norms that you can document.

There are a bazillion ways you can show your best practices, where you learned what you practice, and how your practices developed.

How I Learned Xenial Behavior and Found my Xanadu

• Manners. My mother had given up on getting her family to be etiquette experts long before I was born. My four brothers were raised on a small mixed crop farm with lots of hens and a few pigs.
• I may not have known which fork to use other than starting at the outside and working my way in
  • but knew the children should be seen and not heard
  • elders should be treated with respect
• Other things, well, I sort of had to intuit, but I had access to libraries and was a keen observer
• I became very hesitant to speak out if I was not absolutely certain I knew what I was expected to say, or I had a question that I was pretty certain I could ask without being laughed at. You see, I was fed misinformation by my brothers about everything just for fun. Then I figured out that my mother’s summaries of events and beliefs were apt to be skewed or at least fancifully elaborated upon.

So all these givens in my life made me take copious notes, and study them, whenever I heard someone speak in public. Eventually I found the pursuit of anthropology and realized that I was pretty darn close to being born to study anthropology. Then I worked in university research libraries in the 80s and 90s, while studying anthropology , then in a state archeological museum. These are amazingly information-rich places to work and hang out.

My library positions, more than anything else, taught me how to interact with patrons in a friendly and supportive manner. This is much like being a host. The idyllic place is, at first glance, much harder to create, but it can be cultivated. I think I became a turtle and learned to carry my idyllic thoughts and context with me. The hard parting isn’t learning to carry them, the tough part is learning to project the idyll to others. Teaching helps with that.

These are the things that created my lifelong pursuit of information about women’s culture and interlaced natural world which I conceptualize using Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis. Gaia, if we were able to achieve a “natural” somewhat peaceful world where wars are no longer viewed as ways to settle disagreements.

I have always held out hope that women will discover a way to keep violence, greed, and hate from growing in our hearts and society so far we haven’t done that. Peace and love seems to have a flip side of protect (in-group)and drive away out-group). It is the old oxytocin problem, loving mama bear becomes raging protective mama bear.

Trace how your best self learned to act and facilitate a pleasant home or business filled with respect. How have you expanded this understanding beyond your family and into the community. Perhaps your faith has influenced this process in a way you can document. Or your civic involvement, or your volunteer work with children. Or perhaps you have worked with an agency that delivers what is needed when disaster strikes.

Write about your xenial xanadu.