Lifestyle – Page 7 – Brimmings: up from the well

How the East can teach us to master our anxieties

In the daily round of life, all of us are prone to experiencing conflict. It’s just the nature of the beast; but what if I told you that a lot of this conflict is of our own making? As Jungian analyst Ken Wilber reminds us in his insightful No Boundary, we’re often into the habit of creating boundaries, by which he means barriers, walling off a great deal of life’s potentiality of larger experience, since we’d rather feel safe in the confines of the familiar.

That said, it reminds me of the fences Robert Frost writes of in his beloved poem, “Mending Wall, that people erect to wall out their anxieties: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Let’s sidetrack for a moment. Have you noticed how many things in life fall into contrary couplings, with one of them tending to be more positive? By way of some examples, here’s my partial list put into categories, and you can add yours:

Spatial: up/down, inside/outside, east/west, near/far, above/below, over/under, wide/narrow

Temporal: morning/evening, today/tomorrow, past/present, sunrise/sunset

Attributes: short/tall, beautiful/ugly, clean/dirty, brave/cowardly, smart/dumb

Theological: heaven/hell, good/evil, God/Satan, flesh/spirit

Philosophical: logical/illogical, realist/idealist, rationalist/romantic

Biological: male/female, child/adult, young/old, thin/stout

Psychological: bold/timid, aggressive/passive, introverted/extroverted

My point: These couplings belong to our world, not nature’s, which brings us back to “Mending Wall,” where nature abhors Man’s barrier artifacts represented in the stone wall. While nature may feature its own divergencies such as ripe and unripe, it possesses no mindfulness about them or the accompanying paroxisms that plague us. No dog thinks about its ending or worries about present illness. No bird deliberates on life or death or the hereafter. While nature includes pain and animals respond, it’s physiological and thus without angst.

By contrast, humans hover around their drawn boundaries as bastions preserving their control. In turn, this results in anxiety, limiting their happiness. Ken Wilber sums up our dilemma when he writes, “the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss” (p. 19).

At the heart of what Wilber says, though he doesn’t mention it, lies the concept of polarity, largely an Eastern notion not understood in Western cultures with their foregrounding in dualism. In the polarity approach, which I’m proposing here, we encounter the healthier option, opposites being viewed not as contraries but complementaries, succinctly captured in William Blake‘s dictum that “opposition is true friendship.”

In our Western dualism for instance, we think of good vs evil as utterly opposed and embattled contraries. In the East, this becomes unfathomable as how can you have one devoid of the other? How can you know what good is, unless you have the yardstick of evil? How can you know love unless you also know what lacking it means?

Like virtually all Westerners, I couldn’t get a grasp around this notion of polarities, or two sides to one coin. Then one day it clicked and it’s been a norm for me, informative and helpful, across the years. I had been invited to give a paper at the University of Delhi. Afterwards, I fell into conversation with an Indian delegate and somehow, as often happens in India, it turned metaphysical. I mentioned the Problem of Evil, a salient concern in appraising the credulity of religious belief in the West. His response, simple and direct, startled me: “Problem of evil? What problem? Do we not have day and night, hot and cold, life and death?” The light turned on.

And how does any of this bear on our well-being? If you’re still belaboring this question, go back and review my earlier Wilbur borrowing, as it gets to the very heart of the matter.

When I try to wall out anxieties about what will happen today or tomorrow, or how people will regard me, or matters related to my health, finances, relationships, etc., I invariably allow worry to wreak its cortisol devastation to my health and on my daily well-being.

In the West, we measure progress across the board in science, religion, business and private life as movement towards the positive and elimination of the negative. This is the wrong formula for living the happy life, since it’s foreign to life’s dynamism, or plentitude. Those we love can decline, die, or even engage in perfidy.

Today’s job may not be there tomorrow. Accidents and genes may ultimately define our futures. I think of baseball: very few hitters ever bat 300 and when they do, fewer still repeat it.

To live life well, you need to take the spectrum approach that takes-in the full sweep of life’s potentiality. By the way, this is heart and soul behind why we get life and health insurance. We’re actually better off or lessen our anxiety in facing up to life’s quirkiness.

Opposites aren’t really mutually exclusive anyway. They require each other to exist. I can’t know pleasure apart from the possibility of pain.

Polarity, the notion of complementaries, can ease our wrestlings with our fears, reflected in our desperate folly of erecting fences or boundaries. It also teaches us to simplify our values, particularly the material kind; informs us that nothing is ever really ours, that everything is on lease as it were; helps us treasure what we enjoy now, our families and friends; most of all, enjoins us not to cling. When I give up my exclusions, an unexpected pleasure exhilarates, and I call it grace, for then I am set free. Or as The Bhagavad Gita, or Hindu scripture, has it:

He is to be recognized as eternally free
Who neither loathes nor craves
For he that is free from the pairs,
Is easily freed from the conflict.

Reflections on another New Year

Here we are, once again heading into a new year. With it comes the old anxieties and perhaps even new ones. Calendars are, after all, a human invention. Turning their pages doesn’t resolve life’s events or remove their burdens.

But a new year can also help us take time to cull the clutter of the trivial and reappraise the useful: old habits, bad memories, the good moments.

A new year traditionally triggers new resolutions or priorities. And that’s a good thing.

But good resolves need anchoring by becoming habits. Like newly planted seeds, they need watchful nourishing to assure they root and break the soil and survive Spring’s caprice. This means mindfulness and setting up an inviolable time and place.

New habits often take six to eight weeks to take hold and, even then, require our vigilance.

We can help ourselves to a better year by worrying less about what we’re powerless to change and forgiving those who’ve grieved us, knowing they’re the true prisoners. We can nourish ourselves in thinking the positive, and the reward may often be we we’re right. Through yoga, meditation and enhanced breathing, we can practice mindfulness, yielding discipline and reducing stress. We may not always avoid the stressful, but we can lessen its fallout by learning to bend with it, like survivor trees in high wind.

Maybe in addition to choosing better what we eat and exercising more we might do well to listen less to our daily news with its negative focus on human misdeeds. I’m not advocating an ostrich stance in this, but simply uprooting stress by focusing on life’s good things and how we might bring them about, perhaps by not taking ourselves so seriously and, instead, developing greater awareness of those around us and of nature and of each day’s new possibilities for marshaling happiness. What’s more rewarding than a kind word, a lover’s kiss, a child’s laughter, a red sunset, an airport embrace, etc.

Our resolutions ought to include more love and kindness, less worry, more acceptance.

It’s then we truly affect others, inspiring them to find their own radiance through our example of upbeat living.

All of this doesn’t come easily, so there’s truth to the axiom that bad habits die hard.

But as in a spring field erupting into its extravagant riot of weed and vegetable, we must begin the work of uprooting anything and everything that would overwhelm the tender shoots promising future harvest of what sustains.

As Voltaire reminds us, we can’t always alter time’s events, but where we are, whoever we are, we can till our own garden and make it bloom.

Do well. Be well.

On the violence that ails us: reflections on low self-esteem

The news headlines thunder the shocking mayhem of school children gunned down at Sandy Hook and of four firemen ambushed in upper New York, leaving even the professionals pondering the mindset behind such horror.

Sadly, the truth may be that a good many people don’t like themselves and act out their self-loathing on others. Its origin can be subtle.

Perhaps it began as a youngster in an overly restrictive home heavy on reprimand, short on love.

Or in unabated sibling rivalry for the mother’s milk, as it were.

Perhaps from a short-fused teacher, scolding a child in view of other children, maximizing his humiliation.

Perhaps because other children excluded or bullied.

I’ve known for years the high impacting of poor reading skills on youngsters, usually boys. I had been a social worker for several years at a residential treatment center for boys 8-17, replete with its own school. Of my hundred boys or more, 90% were remedial readers with substantial low esteem and often a history of acting out in the classroom.

The origins are myriad; the result the same, and always damaging.

Nearly always a person falls into hating himself not because he’s intrinsically inadequate, but because others keep telling him so. Rejection messages accumulate their toxins like excessive radiation, fostering demise instead of intended healing.

Fairly often you can see such psychological fallout in the overachiever who flagellates himself with extraordinary effort to win approval, and hence self-validation.

Those suffering envy, and many do, languish because they’re at war with themselves. When people like themselves they don’t require what someone else seemingly has in the way of goods, talent, and reputation. They have no need to project limitations on to others and sully them through gossip, innuendo or criticism. Another’s success doesn’t hint at reprimand or reminder of personal shortcomings. Those liking themselves know their own worth and it’s quite enough.

Ironically, self-loathing may turn-up in the guise of narcissism, or conceit, a kind of whistling in the dark to keep the wolves at bay. Confident people rely upon results, not boasts.

Lacking self-esteem, every conversation, work, class or play endeavor musters into a contest for mastery in a quest for validation for those who suffer.

In the worst scenarios, self-hatred in its twisted logic leads to rage and inflicting pain on self and others. What begins as temper, may end in verbal and domestic abuse, eating disorders, drug addiction, delinquency, or even worse as our headlines testify.

Somewhere, always, its source lies in a wound that festers. It lashes out at innocents, ironically often the very sources that offer love, but can never suffice to close the gap. Fed by a flotilla of ghosts, the self-loather purees his fantasies into a malt of maiming. Filled with rage, he seeks to even the score.

As the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, put it so succinctly: “A man’s life is what he thinks about all day long.”

Happy Holiday!

My wife Karen introduced me to this wonderful YouTube Christmas segment filmed in Spain recently. Hoping you enjoy it and wishing all of you well.

Reflections on living the simple life

Simplicity is about
subtracting the obvious
and adding the meaningful.
–John Meeks

There is a movement afoot known as minimalism, and by this I mean a lifestyle characterized by simplicity. The movement deserves a better name, something like simple living, since minimalism nearly always denotes a movement within the Fine Arts, e. g., music and painting.

You can view a growing number of websites and blogs dedicated to simple living. One of the more prominent ones, and my favorite, is Rowdy Kittens with its 100,000 readers, a quite lovely site filled with wholesome counseling for uncluttering our lives,

The simple living movement traces back to ancient history. Samson in the Old Testament was a Nazarite, or follower of an ascetic mode of living. The early Christian community was also noted for its communistic regimen, with goods shared in common. In Grecian times, there is Epicurus who cautioned moderation in all things and the danger of accumulating goods.

The East is even more famous for its preachments of the simple life. I think of Buddha, Lao-zi, and Confucious.

In America, there’s my favorite, Henry David Thoreau, with his remarkably quotable Walden. I have read this work several times over and you can see my enthusiasm for it abundantly evidenced in my omnivorous underlining and scribbled notations.

In fact, America, a country of abundant wealth, has a surprisingly vibrant tradition of simple living advocacy: the Shakers, now extinct, and the Plain People, or Amish, for examples.

Abroad, I think of another favorite author of mine, Leo Tolstoy, whose asceticism following his religious conversion, got him into considerable domestic difficulty as he sought to give up his wealth. “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” somber, intense, and profound, has always resonated well with me in its cautions again excess, and I have it almost by heart, as I taught it for nearly three decades as a college prof.

The greatest exemplar of this way of life in more recent times is Mohandas Gandhi. I remember seeing the possessions of this man I have always loved: a mat, cup, sandals, a pair of wire glasses.

A nation where simplicity has been a traditional staple is Japan. I will always remember the simple life I lived in the mountains surrounding the Nikko temples as a young serviceman on R&R: an unadorned kimono, raw fish and seaweed veggies, a hot bath, followed by a bed on the floor with a hard pillow, and sunset and sunrise setting the parameters of sleep.

Will this rediscovery of simple living take hold? I think not, though to our great loss, for it has much to teach us, if we will listen. We live with economies that preach growth, not sustainability, which may be the death of us.

Simple living is good not only for ourselves, but for our wounded planet that can only right itself if the majority of us, worldwide, heed the wisdom of simple living.

I wish I could be more hopeful. It’s just that there exist two primary lifestyles: of possession and of being, with the former having the upper hand by a large margin.

Possession, or accumulation, leads to inequality, founds classes or social hierarchy, fosters envy, social strife, and spills over into war.

Being, on the contrary, begets concern for life’s essentials, our needs and not our wants. There is no rancor when people live by their needs and do not exceed their fellows in goods. Being means to prize people and not possess them; to see nature for its own sake and not as a quarry. Being means an ability to let go.

Replacing anxiety born of compulsion, we find blessedness.

Do well and be well,

Spare me your heart: the plight of the mentally ill

In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, a shocked nation seems finally to be taking a hard look at mental illness, although for the wrong reasons. Gun control, with 250 to 300 million guns out there, owned by 60 million across the United States, would be a hard nut to crack even if legislation, unlikely, were to become law and remains the salient issue. Unfortunately, indicting the mentally distressed is subterfuge for not dealing with the primary source of our national mayhem.

While I agree with those voices calling for attention to our mental illness epidemic, I think it’s kindled by media sensationalism that would indict millions who suffer grievously as it is. I must point out that only 4% of our annual murders are committed by someone mentally ill (Richard Friedman, NYT, December 17, 2012). These vociferous voices simply add to the stigmatizing of the mentally ill. On the other hand, guns are very much the public health issue, if we define health as well-being. In the wrong hands, they foster tragedy, and most of these guns are found in American homes as happened with the Lanzas.

I want to outline here, however, just how serious mental illness is as a pervasive and growing presence and the compassion it should elicit from us rather than lynch mob condemnation. At the conclusion, I’ll offer some final commentary.

What is mental illness? When we talk of someone being mentally ill we’re not necessarily dealing with hard core psychotics such as schizophrenics. Mental illness affects how one feels, thinks, and ultimately behaves. While all of us occasionally experience ups and downs, those suffering from a “mental disorder” are simply overwhelmed and unable to cope. They may suffer, for example, from acute depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and addictions that simply won’t go away. This frequently results in problems at work and at home and needs prompt, professional intervention.

What are its causes? Possible causes may include

Heredity: Genetics may be suspected when mental illness affects several family members within or across generations. Certain stress situations may trigger it.

Trauma: an experience such as a death of a loved one or break-up in a relationship, being a crime victim, group rejection, war violence, declining health, a financial loss and a problematic childhood leading to low self-esteem and distorted thinking can be tipping points.

Chemical imbalance: Changes in brain chemistry affecting neurotransmitters and/or hormonal abnormalities may affect mood.

How common is it? Mental illness is pervasive world-wide. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports an incidence rate of 33% . In the United States, the figure approaches 46%. It affects all social-economic sectors.

Key symptoms:

Inability to focus
Constant sadness
Excessive worrying
Insomnia
Difficulty managing anger and hostility
Detachment from reality: hallucination, delusional thinking, Paranoia
Obsessive-Compulsive rituals
Sudden mood fluctuations
Excessive anxiety
Suicide thoughts
Feelings of abandonment
Eating disorders: anorexia, bulimia, etc.
Substance abuse (frequently addiction is associated with mental illness).

How is it treated? Treatment includes counseling, often accompanied with medication; brain stimulation such as electroconvulsive therapy for those not responding to traditional methods; treatment in a residential community (hospital).

Prognosis: Outcomes can be positive for milder forms of mental illness, provided the individual adheres to treatment protocol, has a network of support, and makes lifestyle changes such as reducing stress, exercising, making friends, finding interests, and developing a positive outlook. There are many others, however, who can only be managed, not cured.

Cost impact: The costs of mental illness are staggering, both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include therapy, hospitalization and medication. Presently, these outlays consume nearly 20% of medical expenditures annually. Indirect costs, more difficult to measure, outweigh direct costs by a hefty margin in lost income (an estimated $192 billion in 2008), educational attainment, disability payments, homelessness (one third of our homeless population is deemed mentally ill), social violence, litigation and incarceration (22% of prison inmates have been diagnosed as mentally ill). (Thomas Insel, “Assessing the Economic Costs of Mental Illness,” Journal of American Psychiatry, June 2008).

And then there are the suicides, those thousands who have simply surrendered to their depression. (Suicide numbers, by the way, have been increasing, not helped by the economic recession, and currently are the 10^th leading cause of death annually.

Final Reflections: The mentally ill, unfortunately, are frequently stigmatized as “maniacs,” “loonies,” “crazies,” “weirdoes,” “zombies,” etc. I think we know the litany. It’s so bad that a large number of the mentally distressed are afraid to get help. Psychiatry itself hasn’t helped the situation. Many psychiatrists in private practice turn down Medicare patients in favor of more lucrative insurance payouts, or cater to a more affluent clientele. They eschew paper trails and generally require cash payment in full for each session, though they may allow you the convenience of your credit card, but don’t bet on it. Like all professionals, they differ in quality or competence.

Psychiatry itself, since the 90s, has primarily surrendered therapy to the psychologists and social workers, opting for chemical treatment instead and, for this, a client can expect a usual allotment of 15 minutes to periodically check on the SSRI effectiveness at $100 plus. The truth is that much of this medication may be dubious, as new research continues to confirm that those given a placebo do virtually as well.

Health insurance, meanwhile, more often than not, discriminates against those with a “history,” that may simply be a prescription for anxiety or depression. Formularies have a way of being akin to finger prints in tracking down the mentally distressed, even if now recovered, under the guise of pre-existent illness. While the Health Reform Act when fully implemented in 2014 prohibits using pre-existent illness as a pretext for rejecting an applicant, it does not prohibit insurance companies from setting higher rates, which is like trusting the fox to take care of the chickens.

The one tool that has helped a good many to cope is cognitive therapy, sometimes called Rational Emotive Therapy) in which patients are taught how to think past painful emotions by substituting positive thought alternatives. We need more of it—a whole lot more.

One of the dismaying aspects of the mental illness syndrome is how neglected it has been, from the homeless right down to the incarcerated. While you can find a plethora of resources for the mentally challenged, not so for those suffering mental distress and we, as well as they, suffer the consequences.

All of this should not be! Consider that every year nearly 60 million Americans wrestle with mental illness. It knows no social/economic boundary. It could be your neighbor, your fellow worker, your spouse, your child. It could someday be you.

Returning to Richard Friedman in his NYT article, he hits the nail on the head in summarizing the wolves howling to get at the mentally ill when he writes, “All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.”

In the 1930s there was a landmark song that defined those tough times: “Brother, can you spare a dime?” There’s a new song in town: Brother, sister, can you spare your heart?”

POSTSCRIPT: I came upon this just published article on the paucity of mental health resources since publishing this post two weeks ago. it reinforces what I’ve written in my post:
Families Face Mental Illness Barriers

My iPad as game-changer

Buying the first generation iPad in July, 2010, has been a game changer for me like nothing else in town. Let me tell you the how-so:

Reading: I thought I read a lot before, but it pales to what I do now; often I’m into several ebooks at a time and have to hold myself in check from downloading still more. In the last year alone I’ve read at least 20 books, maybe more. It helps that I’m increasingly exposed to new titles and book reviews, having access to applications like iBooks, Kindle, and Nook along with Publishers Weekly. Since my iPad makes me more alert for new reads, I’m easy prey for best sellers lists and new offerings. I’ve even found applications that give me access to free books, many of them classics like Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. Currently I’m into Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes creation, A Study in Scarlet.

News: I’ve always been a news aficionado, something I picked up from my father, but now it’s nearly a vice, as I’ve largely stopped watching the local and network newscasts. There’s this plethora of news media, domestic and foreign, I simply can’t resist on the iPad. This doesn’t include journal and magazines. I’m surprised so much of it still remains free, though the scene is in flux.

Games: I know people who are into games around the clock. That’s not where I’m at, but when I do, it’s nearly always a game of mental dexterity such as Sudoku, Better Brain, Wordladder, and Blosics. They say they’re good dementia preventatives, which spurs me into wanting to play one daily round at the very least to keep the Beast outside the door.

Productivity: I scarcely use my laptop now, since most of what I do like blogging I can do on my iPad, and this includes printing from any room in the house. I’ve become fond of Pages for its ease and facility to handle most of my needs. In fact, I do all my blogs on iPad, save using my laptop for publishing.

Music: Though access to iTunes comes standard, I like fetching my music from sites like Pandora or NPR. I especially like to listen when I first hit the sack. There’s an advantage to such sites as well since they’ll frequently introduce me to new music, which I then can download from iTunes for my personal collection. I have this one nifty app that gives the lyrics of nearly any song I list.

Reference: As a writer, or just being plain curious, I’ve several apps grouped together that access databases yielding myriads of offerings not normally accessible to a google search. If I need stats, this is where I go. If I have questions on a health issue, here I can tap into the leading med files that physicians and pharmacists use.

Social: I’m big with this, especially Twitter. And I don’t need my laptop for this either.

Sports: Couldn’t get by without access to ESPN or CBS Sports, especially in baseball season when I can find scores, player stats, standings, the latest happenings.

Travel: I can make travel arrangements on my iPad, with access to travel guides for cities and countries. I can even see the flight arrival and departure monitors at virtually any selected airport via Flightboard. Can’t beat that!

Hobbies: I’m into languages, another one of those mind game things I suppose. Maybe I’m overboard, but I’ve got around 50 apps applying to all aspects of Spanish, for example. Nothing has done more for language learning than the iPad. Then there’s gardening. Not as many, but quite a few apps, right down to identifying weeds.

Miscellaneous: I’m using this category for all those subtle apps I rely upon frequently. For cooking, I often research recipes for nutrition facts about specific foods, whether carbs, fiber, proteins, etc., or even glycemic index. I have one app that takes your pulse! Another, Ambient Science 300, that provides bio-feedback to help you relax, promote better sleep or lower blood pressure. My special favorite is StumbleUpon, which introduces you to web and blog sites by interest that you’re likely to miss. You get the picture. By the way, at last count, Apple now features around 700,000 apps, many of them available on iPad. This just blows my mind.

Back to where I started, I use my iPad virtually for every need; my laptop solely for say banking and paying bills. Computer desktop sales have dropped off precipitously with three quarters of Apple computer purchases going for laptops. Increasingly, you’re seeing the iPad invading the professional world. Have you looked at what your doctors have in their hands? In our public schools, iPads are gaining ground, replacing textbooks.

I currently use my laptop as my default device. With the mini, I see the iPad becoming the default option, and the mini with its unbelievable lightness and retina screen becoming my mainstay for daily use. Like the desktop, laptops will largely go the way of the dinosaur.

One thing I know: I’m using my laptop less and my iPad more while relishing moving up to the next iPad generation. Or maybe to the mini!

Why winter sucks!

Sometimes I think about moving out of Kentucky, maybe to some place like dry Arizona or milder Oregon or Washington. Had we the bucks, maybe a compromise like Ft. Meyers, FL in the winter. Hey, that would be a real plus, since it’d mean we’d see our beloved Bosox in their new digs.

You see, I think winter sucks!

Aw, can’t be that bad living winters in Kentucky. What about real winter hells like the upper Midwest. You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen a blizzard sweep its way through South Dakota or January temps plummet to 30 below in Minnesota. How about a New England snowdrop of 20 inches?

Yeah, man, I know what you’re saying. In fact, I spent my boyhood in New England and lived in South Dakota and Minnesota, too. I should add Wyoming. Damn, that’s a place makes hell’s heat look easy!

Ok, guess it’s an age thing then. I still don’t like it right down to my sniffles and shivers. Let me count the reasons why:

1. Because winter keeps me indoors:

Me, I’m an outdoor guy who lives for his garden. Dawn means rising to eager endeavors of trimming roses, cutting the lawn, a bit of weeding here and there, off to Lowe’s for plants and fertilizer. Winter’s like wearing a monitor bracelet. I can look out, but I can’t really leave. TV sucks for the most part. Why I can’t even wash the car.

2. Because winter makes me feel blah

Think of it this way. Beginning with spring, nature turns technicolor, with daffodils, tulips and hyacinths bursting through winter’s cold, denuded earth, followed by summer’s contagion of color gone wild in sharp contrast to winter’s monochrome back and white. Is there a tie-in between weather and how you feel. You bet there is! I know summer buoys me and winter drags.

3. Because winter wars against my taste buds:

Winter means hothouse foods with their dull taste and often decimated nutrition. Warm weather means fresh food, farmer markets, and roadside stands; your own garden veggies just picked, free of sprays. While frozen veggies and berries help preserve nutrition in our stores during winter, nothing goes down better than just harvested strawberries or home grown tomatoes.

4. Because winter means shoveling snow:

When I was a kid, it was a different matter. Now it’s a damn nuisance that just won’t go away. It insists on getting done right away and, like housework, often comes right back. Used to be the kids did it. They have their own nests now. Suddenly I ‘m aware I’m up there with the big ones, the import nations like my own. Food, mail, other victuals–they have to find a way in and that means I’ve got to find a way out. Shoveling doesn’t get easier when you’re packing on years. Snow blower? Would have to dig a path to the shed just to retrieve it, plus more money to buy and “feed” it.

5. Because winter busts the budget:

Higher energy costs are now a salient feature of modern life and are destined to go still higher, maybe even skyrocket, given diminishing resources concurrent with increasing demand and environmental mandates. As is, we’re on the budget leveling formula to equalize monthly payments. Even that plan taxes the budget as winter weighs upon the summer months in shaping monthly outlay. Geothermal’s the way to go–that is, if you’re young, don’t plan to move, and have $30,000 handy.

6. Because winter menaces my health:

Case in point: my wife and I just had this conversation last night about taking-in Spielberg’s new Lincoln movie, only to decide we didn’t want to put up with the coughing, sneezing, throat-clearing cacophony of the movie audience. Germs like crowded contexts, multiplying sputum contact and dirty surfaces. Bad enough in the box stores, made worse by hacking coughers who don’t seem to mind sharing their misery in friendly fire in a crowded aisle. I can’t even say I feel safe visiting my doctor and enduring the waiting room of obviously people feeling quite miserable, T’is the season to be jolly? No, t’is the season to catch the flu!

7. Because winter inconveniences:

It’s no fun having to chip your windshield free of ice or dealing with handles refusing to budge; or irritating others in holding up traffic while you wait for the defroster to kick-in; or slipping on black ice along with other assorted evils. Winter driving can even get you to the hereafter sooner than expected or end in serious maiming or an expensive bumper encounter. It’s a risk you can lessen by escaping to a warmer sanctuary. Then there are those power outages, falling limbs, and advanced supermarket raids leaving shelves empty just when you need foodstuffs most. Last, very least, but still annoying–that dry skin that defies all lotion.

8. Because winter interferes with my wanting to go almost naked:

I like jumping out of the car and into the store unencumbered by a coat. Much better to enter in near runner’s garb, move to the goal line quickly, hop back in and return home. No hat or gloves to fuss over or accidentally leave behind in a restaurant. No coat buttons to deal with.

Now don’t tell me you like winter. Only in places like Minnesota do people say crazy things like that. Here, you can take my shovel. I’ll not be needing it in Arizona.

The why of anxiety and the how of coping

How is it we learn to be anxious? Surely it’s rooted in our past, maybe even in our childhood: a teacher’s stinging reprimand, a parent’s rejecting scorn, unsuspecting betrayal by a friend, a passionate love not returned. We all carry wounds and though outwardly they heal, we trace the scars where the knife went in. Anxiety flourishes when subsequent instances get past our defenses and replay the past.

Anxiety also takes hold when we face threats to our well-being, as in encountering a new geography, job, or intimidating individual, since we find safety in the familiar. In extreme cases, it can develop into agoraphobia where leaving the house, for example, can trigger a panic response. I have known such people in their trembling and labored breathing, and my heart swells with compassion.

Anxiety always pervades when we want something too much, forgetting every gain, even when achieved, is encumbered with the threat of loss. Life’s tendency, after all, is to lend rather than grant and to choose when to take back. Anxiety anchors itself in musts, when the true law of happiness is to discern what we can’t control and when it’s time to let go. I once met a woman who clung to a self-centered man, who often treated her badly. Though she knew the relationship was faulty, her anxiety for validation precluded her doing the right thing. Sometimes when we think we’re loving others we’re demanding love for ourselves. When love eludes us in our early years, we look for it repeatedly through others.

In matters of declining health, the scenario can become very scary and our imagination runs wild, rendering us hypochondriacs. It’s easy to become anxious when our bodies no longer respond as they used to and what we once found easy becomes more labored. Like our cars, our bodies take-on mileage and parts begin to break down. Declining health can nullify carefully laid plans and jeopardize our happiness. We help ourselves when we make lifestyle changes affecting diet, exercise, stress and sleep.

Related to the former, our greatest anxiety flows from wrestling with our mortality. When we’re young we give it little regard. As we grow older, we know the actuary tables don’t lie. Indeed, we feel it in our bones. Religion with its tenet of an afterlife capitalizes on the universality of such anguish. Life’s temporal nature can’t be altered, but its dividend is to teach us to value what truly matters. Accepting our mortality and doing what we can to enhance our health, while not easy, works like ginger tea on a nervous stomach.

Living life happily in a context of limitation takes a raw, every day courage, and I’ve met and often read of such people with admiration. It’s not that these heroes escape anxiety, but they”re not wallowing in it. I’m very fond of baseball, not because it’s exciting, which it often isn’t, but because of all the sports I like such things as the constant replay of the face-to-face duel between pitcher and hitter as an exemplum of grace under pressure. The pitcher needs the out; the batter needs the hit. Neither must flinch. I’ve known of players who lose their cool and whom anxiety masters, ending their stardom.

It’s easy to talk about freeing ourselves of anxiety. The trick is in knowing how. Psychology is built upon helping us find our way past worry and dread and sometimes it resorts to pills to help us through, when the truth is the answer lies within ourselves and not a pill that merely treats symptoms. All anxiety is born of desire–whether for security, love, power, or fame.

To truly overcome anxiety requires our developing a sense of detachment and avoiding taking ourselves too seriously. Life needs to be lived in perspective. Wrong things, hurtful things happen, whether of man or nature’s making. The healing comes from not wanting anything overly, but living with acceptance of life’s rhythms one day at a time, doing what we can. Anxiety changes nothing, and often makes matters worse.

Living life free of anxiety is something akin to a would be swimmer, who before he can swim must first learn to float. It’s all in letting go.

How timing affects your health

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” (Ben Franklin)

I think we’re missing something in all the wise counsel we’ve been getting lately on our TV talk shows about improving our health You know the litany, most of it pertaining to food: less fat, sugar, salt, and processed food. Less meat and more fruits and veggies. Along with diet change, thirty minutes of aerobic exercise five times weekly. Lately, the added caveat of reducing stress.

All well and good, but not good enough. Somewhere we’ve forgotten to add timing to the list. By this I mean doing things, whenever possible, at the same time and in the same way. Our bodies actually dislike surprise. They prosper from routine. Here are a few tips, and you can probably add your own:

1. Sleeping: The body replenishes itself when we sleep, restoring hormonal balance (homeostasis) provided we get enough of it, usually 7-8 hours for most adults. This means setting a time to retire. I’ve been getting to bed at 10:30 p.m. and usually fall asleep within minutes. Morning comes early, or at about 5 a.m. But I’m not tired. I’ve had my quota. By the way, don’t use the weekend to cheat. As I said, your body doesn’t like surprises. You don’t really have to fly across time zones to feel jet lag. Research shows that just the loss of one or two hours of sleep can reduce your daytime alertness by a third. Strange, but there also seems to be a relationship between a lack of sleep and obesity, and even depression (David Agus, The End of Illness).

2. Eating: Eat the same time everyday: I think My bichon, Truman, has a clock for his stomach. Come 4 p.m. and he gets fidgety, as if to say, “Hey, dude, where’s my grub?” I really have to laugh. Impatient with my delay with writing this blog, he’s gotten his bowl out right where I can’t miss it. Dogs provide wonderful examples of nature’s blueprint, with set times for feeding and elimination, which makes housebreaking them possible. They also can get sick if their food changes suddenly. Humans are likewise plugged into schedules and foods as any traveler knows. That’s why our tummies often revolt when we travel abroad. This doesn’t mean ruling out variety on occasion. Just use common sense. While I’m at it, snacks call for the same regimen as to what and when.

3. Exercise: The research is very clear–the body thrives on exercise. It does even better when it happens by the clock. I’m a morning person, so I take on the elliptical machine between 10 and 11. The dividend is I get it done early and when my body seems eager. But whatever works for you.

4. Bowel regularity: The tell tale signs the body’s out of sync are constipation and diarrhea. Changes in food, or wrong foods, or interruptions of elimination times lead to biological stress. Watch what you eat, how much, and the sanitation in its prep. When you “need to go,” don’t put it off. It’s amazing how just getting out of the pattern can disrupt body rhythms and take time righting.

5. Downtime: Sometimes your body just likes to rest, and don’t forget, body includes mind. Because our modern lives are often hectic, you’ll have to make sure to sometimes dropout of the race. This takes scheduling. I like yoga, or soft music (especially the sounds of nature), meditation (though I still have difficulty routing the mind chatter), doing a puzzle like sudoku, taking up a calming read, tending my garden. Whatever form it takes for you, choose something you enjoy and, remember, do it everyday, same time.

In a nutshell, good health comes down to not only what, but when.

Be well,

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