Zarkaria's GPS: must viewing

I always enjoy tuning into Fareed Zakaria's GPS. Zakaria, who also writes for the Washington Post and Time, strikes me as a man largely free of assumptions, or political bias. Last week, for example, he provided helpful explanation of Mitt Romney's all over the map positions, motivating Republicans, whether liberal or conservative, to be wary. Romney's shifts lie behind retired general and former Bush secretary of state Colin Powell's endorsement on Thursday of Obama for reelection.

Zakaria offers that Romney's protean shifts are due to Tea Party elements within the Republican Party. It's stratagem entirely, though one could argue this reenforces the widely-held notion Romney's deceitful. According to Zakaria, Romney's surge in the polls is due to his moving over to more moderate positions on key issues. In short, this is the real Romney who can now return to the middle that characterized his tenure as Massachusetts's governor. After all, Obamacare is modeled after Romney's historic health insurance legislation in Massachusetts. While it doesn't get Romney off the hook, it's analysis like this that can provide another purview.

I also enjoy the broad spectrum of GPS' panel feature with its participants drawn from neo-con to far left. Again, cool-headed analysis to extract the factual and reasonable governs Zakaria's show.

One of my favorite, can't wait show elements comes at very end when Zakaris gives his weekly book recommendation. I've actually taken him up on several of his recommended reads such as Charles Murphy's Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010, a book by the way that supports Romney's off-the-cuff notion of the 47% who pay no taxes and not necessarily from need. I intend to pursue this week's recommendation of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't.

For me, Zakaria provides a refreshing change from the pervasive mortar shelling of the current political scene, whether at MSNBC or Fox News, or among the partisans of the print media and social networks at large. After all, I like finding the truth for myself as best we humans can get at it to someone's imposing her notion of the truth on me.

You can dismiss me as quixotic, but I find the probing almost as much fun as the finding.

Thank you, Fareed!

Be well,

rj

The dismal failure of the debates

It's just a hop, skip, and a jump and Election Day will be upon us. Although debates possess potential to help us view candidates more fully, and even to shift momentum as seems to have occurred after the first debate, they can frequently run as shallow as a drought stream in August. More likely we remember them for their gaffes, or their generating new memes such as President Obama's "bayonet" analogy of the last debate, the likeability of the proponents, their apparent command of facts, etc.

Alas, the casualty is more likely to be substance. Whatever happened to seismic suffering and its inveterate challenge? From these debates you would gather poverty--think the likes of Bangladesh, Haiti, Somalia--has been solved. And global warming? While we may debate its causes, we cannot deny its consequences, already upon us and mapping our future. Think about it: three debates (four, if you include the veep debate) and not one question on global warming! I hold that we define ourselves not only by what we say, but by what we omit.

In all the debates, moderators have played a big share in their failure by not asking the sizzling questions on issues such as nuclear proliferation. If nothing else, these debates have mirrored a colossal absorption with ourselves in their shocking indifference to the plight of our earth and its increasingly beleaguered populace, not just the American middle class.

Must all moderators derive from the press, often with their own hidden biases? We would do better with the likes of someone like Fareed Zakaria, whose mainstay is to sound out the truth rather than adumbrate ideology. Or perhaps a panel approach of disparate moderators to provide for balance, scope, and substance would offer us better vistas.

In so many ways, these debates have failed all of us in their platitudes and cliches. Consider the matter of economics, rightly a center piece for focus in the Great Recession. To promise more jobs and balanced budgets should not be conflated with result. We must get at the devil in the details. Two unacknowledged integral factors posing destabilization of the middle class with no easy, if any, resolutions are vested in globalization and the digital revolution. Third world workers can now compete in a global market place at lower cost. Meanwhile, the digital revolution means more jobs going through the shredder. Increased stimulus spending is unlikely to dent their effects and may ultimately even complicate our morass.

At the worst, we can take the ostrich approach and bury our heads in the sand. (Our debates show we have a talent for this.) At the best, we can at least probe for solutions.

More than ever, we need to preempt the political capacity for glibness rather than substance. In an elbow-touching world menaced with the damocles sword of marginalized income and hammer blows to Nature's resiliency, it behooves us to hold our candidates' feet to the fire.

Anything less subjects ourselves to further political manipulation and erosion of trust, complicating our future.

Be well,

rj

Doesn't get better than this

Karen and I saw Argo yesterday, the film about the ingenuous CIA-Canadian rescue of the six Americans holed up in the Canadian ambassador's Tehran residence in the aftermath of the seizure by Iranian militant students of 52 of their fellows at the American embassy in November,1979.

You may already have seen it, and even if you haven't, I'd be doing you a considerable disservice to give you any details.  Now don't cheat by googling and miss all the fun. I promise you this film will keep you glued to your theater seat from beginning to end.

Of course, a lot of the film's tension is orchestrated, since one of the six has recently shared that everything actually went like clock work.  By the way, the hostages had three plans to work with, but chose this one, the film production guise, as the most likely to succeed and embraced it immediately. Not so in the film.

Other inaccuracies occur as well; for example, the Shah's full name isn't correct. Also, Premier Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, not elected. Free elections haven't been part of Iran's history.

The primary roles of Britain and New Zealand in helping the Americans are ignored.

At the end of the movie, former President Carter says, "Eventually we got them all out." I seem to remember an aborted rescue attempt somewhere. The truth is the Iranians spitefully released the hostages on January 20, 1981, or on Inauguration Day when Reagan took office.

But the movie overcomes its exaggerations, just maybe because it's more fiction than fact, thus enabling its transformation into an intense, well-performed thriller that will surely catapult it into Oscar consideration. Ben Afleck, who directed the film, plays CIA agent Tony Mendez, with understated brilliance, replete with a 70s' shag-carpet beard.

That last scene--a lumbering Swiss jet lifting its wheels, heavy trigger-finger revolutionaries in hot pursuit--Oh, my God!

Foreign vote monitors in this year's election

When the polls open this upcoming Election Day, you may be seeing UN affiliated monitors at your local voting place, particularly in places like cities with large minorities. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), for example, will be sending 44 observers.

This comes at the request of leading liberal groups such as ACLU, NAACP, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Conservatives are outraged, although monitors have been present since 2002 and a number of states directly allow for it. In what augurs to be a close election, every vote matters, and thus a wave of conservative attempts to ensure voting fraud is minimized. Civil rights organizations, on the other hand, worry about the disenfranchisement of minority votes, who are likely to vote for Obama.

Such groups are sending up to 15,000 monitors of their own, concentrating on 80 cities, to counter scores of conservative ones. Meanwhile, the courts have been consistently ruling against conservatives' implementing specific eligibility requirements.

As I see it, both sides are justified in their concerns. We only have to recall the closely contested 1960 election of John Kennedy to the presidency with its large scale fraud in Illinois that altered the outcome. Fresher in our minds is the Florida debacle of 2000, decided only by Supreme Court intervention.

Elections shouldn't come down to getting our guy (or gal) in by hook or crook. Voting lies at the heart of what we're all about and should be free of intimidation and fraud.

How widespread is fraud? I think it substantial, given the worst in human passions that exist when it comes to politics. We live in a nation of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. You can't question their citizenship when they register at the local court house. And then there's the problem of double voting among those who reside in two states over the course of a year, which includes many with winter homes or out-of-state students. Unfortunately, and ironically, we don't have a national computer tracking system in place. As I pointed out in an earlier post, we can’t even track those who over stay their visas--and this after 9/11!

Personally, I favor a national ID card. While, yes, you'd have to provide proof of citizenship, I don't grasp how opponents may consider this intimidation. After all, we require documentation for benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. And, yes, we require photos on passports. No honor system here! Drivers licenses aren't sufficient, as an increasing number of states grant them to undocumented residents. ID cards are successfully employed by countries such as Germany.

Since both liberals and conservatives believe elections should be fair, surely both could find a better way to ensure the ballot is accessible and fair. Unfortunately, mistrust and rancor have so far preempted their bridging the impasse, exacerbating narrow self-interest.

I propose a non-partisan commission to study the problem and make recommendations to the Congress. This commission needs to take a look at the Electoral College with its winner take all approach as well.

Your thoughts?

rj

Twitter's wrong move

Twitter today did the unprecedented. It shut down a neo-Nazi site, @hannoverticker, though only in Germany at the request of the German government. Earlier in the year Twitter announced it would close down sites in conflict with local law while leaving them open internationally. I wonder if this policy is really nothing more than appeasement of religious conservatives in Islamic counties such as Iran or Pakistan. Whatever, today they exercised that option for the first time. We''ll have to see where this thing ultimately goes. Despotic governments will probably become even more adamant in demanding the same be done for them when they find their power threatened.

Think about it: Twitter has proven a catalyst for change in such countries, a jungle drums scenario that dispenses what ideologues would snuff out, the yearning of the oppressed to undo their shackles. It's inconceivable to think of an Arab spring without the social media's advocacy; the phenomenon of the Occupy Wall Street Movement that spread to other countries; the daily revelations of otherwise sequestered Syrian government atrocities against its own people.

Twitter, what you've done is a grievous wrong. I can't really speak for your motives, but the end doesn't justify the means.

In Turkey, world-renowned pianist Faxil Say's trial has begun. He's been arrested for alleged defamation of the prophet Mohammed. Ironically, the charges stem from several of his tweets. "I am not sure if you realize it, but if there is a louse, a non-entity, a lowlife, a thief or fool, it's always an Islamist." So much for Turkey's aspirations to join the European Union. Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, must be turning over in his grave.

In our own land, the threat to harness our right to free speech remains under continuous attack in the current reign of political correctness and the narrow confines of political and religious ideologues bent on imposing their own views, not through better arguments, but by shutting now those who oppose them. This afternoon, In Ocala, Florida, as Republican veep nominee Paul Ryan gave a campaign speech, malingers gathered nearby, bent on disrupting the rally.

Back to Twitter. Why not protect the speech rights of tweeters like prominent African-American actress, Stacey Dash ("Clueless"), who recently urged her 200,000 followers to vote for Romney. Almost immediately, scores of threats on her life. Hey, Twitter, these are the people you need to use your broom on.

Censorship has its place against those who sanction violence, or like those just mentioned. Otherwise, as I've said, fight a bad idea with a better one.

John Stuart Mill was spot on when in he wrote in On Liberty, that "if all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

I suspect the roots of Twitter's action is money. Nicholas Kulish, writing in the New York Times, takes us back to last summer's Olympics when Twitter blocked the account of a British journalist who heavily criticized NBC's reporting of the Games. (NBC is one of Twitter's corporate sponsors.) Twitter later apologized and reinstated the account.

Twitter may have opened up a Pandora's box for itself. So far, six governments have made requests for site closures.

Be well,

rj

No knockout blows

I don't know how you saw it last night, but I found the debate between the President and Romney riveting, with no real knock out punch delivered by either candidate. Romney was just as smiling, confident and nimble as in the first debate, which most observers have conceded to him. On the other hand, Obama couldn't afford another lack-luster performance, and last night he didn't disappoint his fans, aggressive, yet never compromising his characteristic graciousness, delivering dextrous rejoinders to his challenger. I thought his great moment occurred when he summarily said, "Governor Romney says he's got a five-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules."

For me, the ex-governor was at his best when he repeatedly asked if licenses and permits for energy on federal land had been reduced. When earlier Obama had maintained that energy permits and licenses increased during his tenure, Romney came back that those increases occurred on private, not Fed land, where they suffered a 14% decline.

Two very positive moments occurred in the debate that made me feel good about both contenders. The first was when Romney was addressing the immigration concerns of a Latina in the audience. Unlike many office-seekers, Romney didn't pull any punches.
Four million would-be immigrants are standing in line, but are hindered by the large number of illegals.

At the close, I liked Obama's graciousness in remarking that Romney is a "good man," despite the heated, in the grill aspect of this debate and his campaign's unrelenting demonizing of Romney as a liar immediately following the first debate.

My most negative impression is of the moderator's (Candy Crowley) blatant interference in the debate, correcting Romney in his charge that Obama went days before declaring the Benghazi violence a terrorist act, initiating audience applause. It turns out that Crowley didn't get it right. While Obama did use the word "terrorism" in his White House Rose Garden statement, he spoke only of his resolve to combat terrorism rather than specifically dubbing the violence as terrorist. (Most of the press continues to pass on Crowley's imprecision.) Romney missed a golden opportunity to set the record straight.

Anyway, I dislike when a moderator deliberately sets out to circumvent the previously established ground game for this town-meeting format by raising her own questions, which in running the clock also ironically stop gaps other audience members from asking more questions. I think of, say, baseball, where an umpire can sometimes make himself bigger than the game by an obviously wrong call.

Will this debate prove decisive? I don't think so. At this late stage, I would venture most voters have made-up their minds. Each candidate, in any event, did what he had to do. Obama showed-up for this debate and Romney held his ground. Neither candidate committed a serious gaffe. Partisans will find fodder for declaring their candidate the winner.

Of course, there can always be the occurrence of some late moment anomaly such as a global crisis or a glowing or dismal end-of-the-quarter economic report a few days before the election to tip the scales in what appears to be a dead heat

rj

Getting the monkey off your back

Take a moment, in a quiet spot, and close your eyes. Visualize a scene from the past that gave you a sense of peace or relief from daily anxiety. For me, it's hiking the trail up lofty Ben Nevis in Scotland with my wife several years ago. I can still see the narrow trail's steep ascent, slate gray limestone fences dividing a retreating green tapestry below, snow-flaked with sheep; hear a babbling brook; feel the day's exhilarating coolness. I find again the shepherd psalmist's quiet waters and renewal.

Such moments are rarer now for many of us, given the frenetic pace of modern life with its myriad stresses. The poet Auden knew this when he famously dubbed our era "the age of anxiety." We pop our pills, vegetate before our TVs, seeking relief from deadlines to meet or places to go.

It isn't really cancer, heart disease or the like that are killing us. It's stress, and much of our morbidity is its result. We eat more, worry more, hurry more. Twenty percent of us suffer from acute anxiety disorder requiring professional intervention, while our media proclaims daily the social violence of those who "just can't take it anymore."

Here are some suggestions that have helped me and may help you ease up and enjoy your life more fully, ways of coping that may even help you live longer:

1. Change your reactions: A lot of our stress derives not from what happens, but how we respond. We can choose to adapt like that Robert Frost birch bending with the wind, rather than arching its boughs, or remain brittle like a Bradford pear, its limbs severed by the storm. Substitute a positive alternative for a negative one. What we think fosters our emotions, and emotions often generate our distress. Instead of dwelling on how awful the economy is, think of how it's likely to ultimately get better. It's not "that sob, he cut me off"! Instead, drivers can be rude, but most aren't. It's not, "What's going to happen?, but "Let's take it just one day at a time.

2. Get a hobby: Like birds, learn to identify them. Fond of the outdoors, join a hiking group. Enjoy games? Try contact bridge. Cooking? Attempt new recipes. Want something new? How about learning another language?

3. Take-up meditation: Clearing the mind's clutter goes back several thousand years.
It endures because it works. Don't know how? Check your local resources. They're abundant now. Stress reduces the brain's white matter (the wired area of the consisting largely of nerve fibers). The good news is that according to a published report in the Proceedings of the National Academy, just 30 minutes of meditation over a two week period showed measurable changes in the white matter, indicating that meditation facilitates healthy brain function.

4. Try biofeedback: Many find the device Resperate useful for teaching them precise breath control that produces a relaxation effect. Dividend, it reduces blood pressure. Resperate gets a thumbs up from a number of leading medical resources, including Mayo Clinic.

5. Say no! You've only so much time in a day. Take time for yourself. Give yourself a special treat each week. Go for that dessert! See that movie! If you can, set one day aside for yourself.

6. Read! This means shutting off that TV. Television, mostly a mind-numbing activity, doesn't generally relieve our stress. It may even add to it. Reading expands the mind and relaxes at the same time. At bedtime, it can help you get a good night's sleep.

7. Blog! I can speak first hand about what it does for me. When I'm writing, it seems I've hurled my anxieties into the deepest sea. Writing not only opens a window on the world, it brings me into touch with myself, clarifies and cleanses, while providing perspective.

8. Drink green tea:. It works because of its i-theanine content, which you can also find in pill supplements at your local health stores or at Whole Foods. Drink it several times daily, especially when you feel uptight. Taking about 30-minutes to kick-in, it's super just before bedtime and will help you sleep like a rock.

8. Exercise: Nothing really new about this life essential, along with good nutrition, for promoting health. But exercise also relieves stress. The trick is to schedule it into your day. The preferred form should be aerobic, and the cardinal rule remains 5-days a week, 30 minutes minimal.

9. Tablets: I 'm not thinking pills here, but of those popular devices such as the iPad. I've become fond of the mind-stretching game apps in particular like Sudoku. Talk about time out, diversion comes easily with a tablet. It doesn't have to be confined to games. Tablets provide apps for virtually any interest. How far away troubles seem when you find a riveting app.

10. Turn on the music! Shakespeare rightly said, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast." Obviously, it works, or it wouldn't be so popular. To promote relaxation, however, stay away from the frenzied kind. I like classical Indian music for this purpose. You might also find Enya very soothing. She works for me. Sometimes I just go for the sounds of nature: waves washing up on the shore, a murmuring brook, birds in early morning revelry, the soft pitter-patter of falling rain, etc.

Yes, you can get that monkey, stress, off your back, and in doing so, wake with joy each morning, eager to seize the day.

Be well,

rj

The patient succumbed to complications....

In following a news story about someone's demise, we often come across something like, "He succumbed to complications following routine surgery." The truth is that anyone undergoing surgery of any kind faces at the very least a one percent risk of never making it home again.

One percent might not seem much of a risk, but then we tend to think such things happen to the other guy, not us. Unfortunately, life is replete with the improbable and unanticipated every morning we get out of bed, and death has its way of cornering us in unexpected places.

I still remember a chance conversation I had many years ago with a custodian at Harvard who told me of the loss of her child during tonsillectomy. As I was very young, I don't think I took in its resonance as to the freakish nature of life itself, contributing not only to its mystery, but underscoring its frequent tragedy. I think it was Thomas Wolfe who wrote that a young man at 25 thinks himself immortal. (Say that to Keats, who knew better.) In my case, I was just 22.

A little more than a year ago, model and actress Mia Amber Davis died following knee surgery. She was 36. Dying from knee surgery? Yup, it happens.

There was also the unanticipated death of author Olivia Goldsmith, 54, whose Wives' Club became a popular movie. Following plastic surgery, she went into cardiac arrest, possibly induced by anesthesia. For me, the latter has always been the spookiest element in any surgery I've undergone. To borrow a phrase from poet William Carlos Williams, "so much depends on" an anesthesiologist.

Then there was the widely reported death of prominent Congressman John Murtha, 77, during "minimally invasive surgery" to remove his gall bladder. A close source told CNN that doctors accidentally "hit his intestines."

While natural causes such as a weak heart or allergic reaction to medication may often be factors in surgical mortality, the human capacity for error through misjudgment or negligence always looms, increasing the risk. Even good doctors make mistakes. The quandary is the more you do something well, the more the law of averages kicks in. Let's hope your surgeon is having a good day.

The bottom line is that our bodies treat any surgery as invasive, and human error compounds the danger. Surgery may be necessary, but it's never really "routine." Consider the case of Jenny Olenick, 17, who died of hypoxia (deficient oxygen to the brain) while undergoing anesthesia to have her wisdom teeth removed. While very rare, it's not unknown.

Of course, you can help lessen your risk by choosing your doctors well or considering a non-surgical alternative.

Unfortunately, we seldom get the choice as to the anesthesiologist. They just happen to be there, often rushing in from a previous procedure, and know precious little about us.

Next to death, surgery may be the ultimate in loss of control.

rj

English is still number one

We hear a lot these days that we're transitioning from the American Century to a Chinese one. In my own lifetime I never anticipated the current groundswell for Chinese language classes. I grew up with the emphasis in schools and colleges on Spanish, French, and German. I hadn't thought about it until just now, but my high school didn't even offer Spanish, let alone an Asian language, though it did offer four years of Latin. The times certainly are a-changing.

While I'm strongly for learning another language in a world of shrinking distances and expanding global interchange, I still think English will remain the closest we have to an international lingua franca for some time to come. Even in China, English is seen as "the ticket."

Language domination does shift over the centuries with the wax and wane of primary empires and modern nations. Before the rise of Latin, the language which defined linguistic universalism in the Western world was Greek, so much so that the New Testament was rendered in Greek to promote the new faith. Its antecedent was the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.

We all know about the spectacular spread of Latin with the rise of Rome and its shaping several of Europe's primary languages, including English.

With the reign of France's Louis IV in the 17th century and the nascence of the Enlightenment, French began its ascendency as the language of diplomacy until English began its challenge with the birth of the Industrial Revolution in England and the growth of its Empire. English received a further boost with America's emergence as a superpower in the 20th century.

While Chinese may have far more speakers than English, its users are primarily geographically confined, unlike those speaking English, a truly international tongue based on geography alone--UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Guiana, former African colonies, and much of the West Indies. We tend to forget that more than 300 million Indians use English daily.

In all of this, that so many opt for English as their second language doesn't mean they like us anglophones, but that they find it the most useful for world communication.

What principally inhibits Chinese is its notorious difficulty as a tonal medium, despite a relatively simple grammar, and the virtual impossibility of mastering its written language. The Chinese, along with the Japanese, would do themselves a huge favor by transitioning to the Latin alphabet, as did Turkey in the last century, but they aren't going to do that.

English musters a terrific advantage in its being largely inflection free, unlike German or Russian with their formidable declensions. While English features some irregular verbs, a vestige of its Germanic origin, it doesn't exhibit the complexity of verb conjugations found in the Romance languages. Nonetheless, I've always maintained that while English is easy to learn, it's hard to speak well. Only a relative few native speakers know how to distinguish lie and lay, farther and further, amount and number, etc. Then there is the challenge of its non-phonetic spelling. Imagine the challenge this poses for non-native speakers. Still more, there are all those nasty homonyms: horse vs hoarse, and the infamous to, too, two, etc.

Nevertheless, English remains relatively easy to speak, with only the Scandinavian languages approaching it in leveled or near absent inflection. Their speakers, however, are too few for it to matter. In fact, English has become so dominant in Sweden that a new language law was recently enacted (2009) to protect Swedish. In Sweden, virtually everyone speaks English well and you'll find it abundantly in public ads and English language television and movies, which are seldom dubbed. Many young Swedes prefer English as more expressive and practical. If this is Sweden, can you just imagine the consternation of the French?

So despite what you may be hearing, English is still number one and likely to remain so for a long time to come. But do the language a favor by learning it well. After all, it's the language of Shakespeare.

Lately, I've taken a strong interest in....

Lately I've taken a strong interest in meditation to escape stress and feel more relaxed.  From the medical sources I've read, I'm convinced it has a lot going for it. If you're depressed or anxiety prone, meditation may be more helpful than Zoloft or Valium and the like. In his book, When Panic Strikes, noted psychiatrist David Burns, argues that the new research isn't gung-ho anymore on the assumption of chemical imbalance in the brain, resulting in serotonin deficiency.  What success SSRI's seem to have may really be the placebo effect in action.  Control groups in which placebos have been given have shown virtually the same results. Of course, this is bad news for the pharmaceuticals, who keep pumping out their propaganda across the media and offering perks to physicians.  Alas, there are even those in the FDA who have had strong links with the drug companies. One thing we do know:  while meds can be necessary for many, they all have potential side-effects that can do great harm.

Burns eschews the psych meds, favoring the cognitive approach with its advocacy of getting rid of emotional distress by adopting alternative, more positive thoughts in handling stress. It takes work to reprogram your responses, but it can be done. Cognitive therapy now dominates counseling, replacing traditional talk therapy. I agree that it can be helpful.

In the hard scenarios, something more is needed.  (Here I'm writing about anxiety, not depression.)  That something may well be meditation. In the last several months I've been trying out what's called restorative yoga, which consists of simple breathing, visualization, and meditation exercises. I'm not a champ at this kind of endeavor. I can't even say I've got the breath thing down right. Books and videos can help, but ultimately, at least initially, you need a good teacher.

Clumsy as I may be, I know that when I retreat to my sunroom hideaway, unroll my mat, and lie down, beginning with breathing from the stomach up through the nose, four seconds in, six seconds out, I sense my body unwinding from its tightness. I follow with body visualization, letting each limb "fall through" into the mat. Then I transport myself mentally into bliss, a scene that brings pleasure. For me, it's usually my wife and I walking up the steep, narrow pathway of rugged Ben Nevis, the valley below a dense green, splattered by the white wooly sheep grazing contentedly in a rolling landscape fenced by stone walls. I am there again in Scotland, that dear country of green mountains, twisting by-ways, lakes and bubbling brooks, and friendly people. I am at peace.

I follow with actual meditation, or at least the attempt, with the aid of my mantra, the psalmist's "lead me by the still waters," emptying the mind, though it keeps insisting it's the boss.  Whatever my failed attempts, I feel relaxed.

Recently I was virtually mesmerized in reading Tim Park's Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic's Search for Health and Healing.  He could have been writing about me. Both of us have been profs, working with language and literature. Both of us are into the mind thing, analytical and suspicious, reserved in our allegiances.  Both of us were raised in a religious context, which we've now abandoned. Both of us have suffered the same physical ailment with its ubiquitous fall out, always there, seemingly beyond remedy.

 Parks, in his desperation, suspends his cerebral dissonance, to try meditation.  It comes hard.  It's all about breathing.  Though the mind resists emptying, Parks knows there's something to it. He attends a five day retreat.  On the fourth day, it happens. He feels the breath flow across his upper lip.  Heat radiates through his body. And the pain? There is no pain.

Of course the conscious world will bring back the pain with its culminating anxiety. You're not there in a day. But Parks knows now, though he may not understand it fully, that mind isn't separate from the body. The mind and body are one.

The seed has been sown and Parks persists, each attempt in overcoming the chattering mind becoming easier.  

Parks finds his way ultimately to permanent relief from his physical pain.

Nonetheless, as a rationalist, he still finds it paradoxical,  He's a writer with twenty books published, and on one occasion, short-listed for the Booker Award, Britain's highest award for literary achievement.  Words, after all, not only give him employ, they are the essence of what make us human.

And yet there is that world beyond words, vast and ineffable, removed from the mind's ceaseless chatter, bringing us in to touch with our full selves.  Integrated, mind and body become amalgam, and reconciliation grants equanimity.  No longer two selves, in our found wholeness comes peace transcending time and space, circumstance and pain.

Teach us to be still.

rj

When it comes to stress....

When it comes to stress management, seeing things in perspective can help you get your ducks in a row. I still stumble, but it helps when I get a tip once in a while such as in reading Peter Bergman's insightful article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Origins of stress

Bergman points out that a lot of our stress comes from frustration, or this disconnect between expectation and result.  I'll make up some of my own examples here:


1.  You're driving through a residential neighborhood.  There are stop signs at the end of each block.  You're behind this guy who doesn't stop at any of them.  The speed limit, well- posted, says 25.  He's going at least 40.  It gets to you: why is it some people think the law's for other people?

   
2.  You thought you had a connection with someone, only to learn they've been putting you through a shedder when talking to others.

3.   You haven't heard from your kids in ages. Not the first time.  Do they give a hoot at all?

4.   It's the damned cell phone again. Expensive gadget at high monthly costs and you can't get it to work just when you need it most.

5.   You've paid all this money for a good meal, only to find you've been short-changed on both the food and the service.  

As I write, I find I'm surprised how easily the examples come to my mind of daily frustration. Doubtless, you can add your own.  

Consequences of stress

Frustration mounts up and spills over, souring relationships and potentially impacting your health, both physical and mental:  think ulcers, gastritis, hypertension, depression, etc.  According to the American Psychological Association (2010), stress can have multiple effects on your body, mood, and behavior:

Body:  headache, muscle tension, upset stomach, insomnia

Mood:  anxiety, restlessness, loss of motivation, sadness

Behavior:  overeating/under eating, anger outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, withdrawal

Oddly, the APA misses out on the worst behavioral response of all:  suicide

Coping

In getting a handle on things, it's helpful to gain a sense of perspective.  Say something happens to you. When you can't get out of your head, then all hell can break loose. Maybe you've got something like acid reflux, diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome. None of them is fun, but resorting to what I call comparison helps put things in perspective.

Better the reflux than the way some people languish. Try on Lou Gehrig's disease, MS, or cancer. Trade places with a paraplegic needing total care. In the news recently comes the story of the pretty Georgia girl recovering from flesh eating bacteria, resulting in multiple amputations. Haven't seen such courage in a very long time.

All over the world are those who suffer grievously and unfairly from natural disasters, famine, disease, poverty. Think Africa.  Think Bangladesh. In our own blessed nation, there are many who've lost their jobs, homes, and health coverage.  

All too often we learn of Man's cruelty to his fellows. Think of today's Syria, of whole families executed, civilians shelled daily, deliberately.

When you lie in bed at night, thinking things are awful for you, try this tactic to get out from under: What's the worst thing that could ever happen to me? Believe me, it will make your present anxieties seem small.

Here's another way you might develop a sense of perspective:  what I call the camera technique.

Ok, the moment you sense stress coming on, imagine you're outside your body, filming yourself. (In yoga, we call this kind of thing the Witness.) Fill the frame with yourself.

Now pull your camera back to fill the frame with people.

Now pull back again to include the landscape.

Then pull the camera back yet again to include the clouds.

Take the shot.

How do you find yourself in the picture now? Seeing yourself in the larger spectrum helps you downsize the seeming magnitude of your stress.  Here, you might look back at the photo that prefaces this entry to catch my meaning.

Set your lens on infinity, whether spatial or temporal. What am I in the backdrop of the stars?

Prognosis

Learning to cope, you'll discover your stress tumors shrink.  

It's then you 'll find freedom in an unfree world.

rj

i was reading somewhere....

I was reading somewhere that half of those who die from heart disease have low  cholesterol LDL, which of course flies in the face of long-standing medical emphasis on reducing the bad stuff.  But there's a new blood test in town that explains why you can have acceptable LDL, but still be in danger of a heart attack or stroke.  This test, performed by just two labs in the U.S., measures lipid particles for their size and density   Everyone should take this test on an annual basis at the very least. 

Unfortunately, the practice of relying on cholesterol scores can lead to fatal consequences, since it doesn't get at the causes of heart disease--poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and daily stress.  Statins don't even remotely touch on any of these factors, though It may be good for the pharmaceutical industry, contributing substantially to our bloated health costs.

In my last post, I mentioned the crucial role diet plays in preserving good health:  whole grains, fiber, and vegetables versus fats, sugar, refined flour, and lack of sufficient fiber.  As much as you can, focus on a plant based diet.

Writing in the Huffington Post, physician David Hyman cautions that "instead of looking just at the cholesterol numbers, we need to look at the cholesterol particle size. The real question is: Do you have small or large HDL or LDL particles. Small, dense particles are more atherogenic (more likely to cause the plaque in the arteries that leads to heart attacks), than large buoyant, fluffy cholesterol particles. Small particles are associated with pre-diabetes (or metabolic syndrome) and diabetes and are caused by insulin resistance."

What got me started on this entry is that I recently took the new test and was shocked to find I'm excessively high in small LDL particles.  Further that I'm experiencing insulin resistance, which can be a precursor to diabetes.

For years, I've been taking annual blood tests for cholesterol, and thinking everything is well.  Now I think again of that 50% fatality among people displaying low LDL cholesterol, many of them slender types like myself.

I'm actually thankful for the surprise results, as things aren't helpless.  You can decrease small LDL particles by adopting the eating habits I mentioned earlier and doing five thirty-minute exercise sessions weekly.  You might also try niacin supplements, but under a physician's monitoring.  Niacin has proven to be as effective as statins for many. 

One caution I need to add:  choose nutritious foods that have a low glycemic index, or convert to blood sugar more slowly.  Look out for the carbohydrates like white potatoes!

Do well and be well.

rj

I was recently reading....

I was recently reading a favorite minimalist blog.  You know, the kind that stresses simplifying one's life, something I wrote about recently.  The blogger writes about her teaming up with another blogger to reduce her sugar intake, not a bad idea, considering the increasing occurrence of obesity and diabetes, even in children.

She mentions that she eats an apple a day as her primary sugar intake.  If I remember things right, your sugar intake shouldn't exceed 36 grams daily.  An apple, at 25 grams, almost gets you there.  A medium banana nets you 14 grams.

This leads to a conundrum for me, to say the least.   After all, most medical sources recommend five daily servings of fruit, which help assure proper fiber intake and promote digestive health.  Assuming fruit is loaded with sugar, five helpings would suggest you'd be way over the max.

Out of curiosity, I checked the National Diabetes Association site and found they include fruit as a sugar source.  While they encourage you to eat fruit, you have to trade off with your carb intake.  Rather cumbersome, I'd say.  By the way, I wasn't aware before of how carbohydrates contribute to your blood glucose.  Cutting out sugar isn't as easy as it might appear.  Seems you almost need to be a chemist.  Just looking at the sugar content on a label doesn't suffice. 

On the other hand, there are the well-respected holistic doctors such as Neil Barnard and Joel Fuhrman, who shun limits on intake of fresh fruits, though not fruit drinks.  For them, the key is avoiding processed, or refined, foods.  This includes refined carbohydrates.  What about unrefined carbs such as brown rice?  These are the good guys, the complex carbs, which haven't had their fiber stripped away.

Who's right? I side with Fuhrman and Barnard.  Don't stress about carbs or fruit, unless you're diabetic.  Focus on fruits, plant foods, and the good carbs like oatmeal, rye, multigrain and sourdough breads, brown rice, pasta, etc.

You can also select more wisely by using a glycemic index chart, available online.  The GI indicates how quickly the food item converts to blood sugar.  White potatoes, for example, have a high GI.  Try a sweet potato instead.  Back to the complex carbs.  In general, they have lower GIs.

I've found medicine isn't an exact science.  Abounding in contradiction and uninformed, even dangerous, practices, you always have to be wary.  When it comes to sugar, say no to its common sources-- table sugar, cakes, pastries, sodas, etc.  But then don't forget the carbs and fruit.  Check their GI.  Avocados, for example, have a very low GI.

We are what we eat.  Better:  We become what we eat.  Did you know that 60 percent of our diseases come from what we eat?

Anybody for an apple?

One of my favorite things to do online is ....

One of my favorite things to do online is to read blogs by everyday Joes and Jill's.  I'm even more keen on this, having joined the blogger tribe more than a year ago.  It's fun to be part of a conversation and read what people say and how they say it, and view their web designs.  Blogs have frequently given me good advice and sparked new creativity.  Best, they've linked me to others with similar needs and wants, dreams and fears, as questing, yet fallible, beings in life's journey. 

This morning, my daughter sent me a link to a blog I found just fascinating.  www.theminimalists.com  More than 100,000 subscribers apparently agree.  It's the work of two young men with writing finesse.  You get the feeling they're sitting across the table, talking to you.  I started reading their posts this morning and became this greedy kid with his fingers in the cookie jar, devouring one post after another,

Minimalists, they share a passion for getting down to life's marrow.  They've done this in their own lives, downsizing their living quarters, forfeiting television, that great time mugger. Courageous, they quit their six figure salary positions in the corporate world to live independently, sustaining themselves through their own resourcefulness.  Not many of us enjoy their liberating lifestyle; instead, we often endure life with anxiety riding our backs.

It's like Walden all over again--you know, the hut in the wilderness experience Thoreau undertook to redefine the good life.  (That guy has to be one of my all time favorites.)  I like the way he put the matter of simplicity:  "Our life is fritted away with detail.  Simplify, simplify.”

Yet simplifying doesn’t come easily to me.  I don't know about you, but I cling to memories and am obsessed with routine.  I collect junk.  I hate throwing things out.  I don't like change.  Yeah, the jig is up:  I confess to being a sentimentalist junkie.

I know some people don't seem to have difficulty tossing out past memories or replacing old friends, or moving to new climes.  But I've always been different that way.  When I was a child, I’d frequently make myself scarce to avoid saying good-bye to those I loved.  Silly, I even hated giving up my worn out shoes, friends who'd been with me everywhere.  I remain that way about a lot of things, cluttering my life with the inconsequential.

Still, I'm beginning to do better in lightening the load.  Take the mail for instance. For too long I've been in the habit of creating disheveled piles on any available surface in the house.  Now I sort the mail immediately, sometimes on my way walking up the drive, separating the wheat from the chaff.

I know it doesn't amount to real simplification, but it does indicate my awareness I need to learn how to let go.

In a way, the life Karen and I live is already simple.  Finances make that the only real option. I’m retired and my wife soon will be.  We live in an older house of modest square footage.  We don't purchase frills, or things we don't need.  We seldom get out of town.

Right now, I'm thinking about shedding my many books I've gathered over the years as a prof.  This isn't as easy as it may seem.  I'm a lover of books.  But I'm also more aware I need to give to others what I no longer require.  I haven't looked at most of these books in a very long time anyway. 

Elise Boulding, the renowned sociologist, put the whole thing succinctly:  “The consumer society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.”

Like my worn out shoes, it's time to let go.  Time to simplify.

I don't know about you, but ....

I don't know about you, but I worry a lot, even about little things, and I've been this way my whole life.  Maybe it's in the genes.  Now and then, I get these vivid flashbacks of my dad, a chronic worrier, ensconced in his armchair, peering out the window for long stretches, chin resting on his hand, like Rodin's Thinker.

Believe me!  I'm trying like the dickens to get free from its weight and adopt a more casual, perhaps fatalistic view of the way life works in a world often mediated by chance, not will, human or divine.  

Worrying displays my need to control, a rather arrogant pose if you think about it--as if any of us possess the key unlocking our hoard chest of desires.

It's a hard thing to quit once you're into it, which is odd, since worry has so little to recommend it, except to delude us into thinking we can keep destiny's jackals at bay.

This isn't to say we shouldn't prepare for tomorrow, say like getting an insurance policy or making a will.  In life's lottery, diligence has often proved our evolutionary savior.  Take the Dutch building their dykes, for example.

Oddly, it's the intelligent person who often gets himself caught on barbwire speculation.

In fact, worry may very well characterize intelligence.  In the February 1, 2012  Frontiers in Evolutionary Science, we learn of a research study involving 26 people with generalized  anxiety disorder and 18 healthy people without this disorder. Intelligence tests and brain activity scans showed anxiety and high intelligence were linked.

As I hinted earlier, worrying may have conferred survivability.

Then, should I continue to indulge my vice?

Think of it like salt and pepper: a little bit won't hurt, but no more than a pinch or you'll spoil the broth!

We talk a lot about good health

We talk a lot about good health.  Given the increasing expense of medical care, it's understandable.  Costs seem to have no end in sight.  Mindful, health providers frequently feature free check ups to reduce future costs.  

We can do a lot to help ourselves: quit smoking; imbibe alcohol moderately, if at all; exercise; watch our weight; eat the right foods (low fat meats, lots of veggies and fruit), get a good night's sleep.

Truth is, even these good habits may not get us there.  The heart of the problem lies not in nutrition, but in daily stress.  There's plenty to go around these days, whether at work or at home.

I wasn't surprised to recently see the statistics.  According to a recent National Health Interview Survey, some 75% of us experience moderate to high stress in a given two week time frame.  In fact, stress is costing companies nearly 300 billion a year in claims, lost work days and productivity.

The American Medical Association tells us that up to 60% of all illness derives from stress.  I believe the mind and body are one.  When we're consistently stressed, our body bears the toll, whether in a weakened immune system, hypertension, or an increased acid digestive environment.  Ultimately, stress can affect our mental stability, work performance and our relationships.

But how do we lessen stress?  Here are ways that work for me.  I don't pretend I've made my way past anxiety.  But these have helped me and may help you.  

1.  Changing thoughts

I'm no guru, but anxiety, my particular consequence of stress, has been a close neighbor all too long.  I don't like its proximity, but I know it's not going to move away.  It's up to me to make the move.

I've tried medication to relieve my anxiety.  Frankly, I don't like this route and try to avoid it since every drug, even the seemingly innocuous, has its side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.  Meds often give me that hangover effect or sense of stupor.  They can lead to kidney and liver damage and, ironically, increase the anxiety for which they've been prescribed.  There is now convincing research evidence they may not work for many.  User success claims may well be due to a placebo effect. Minimal result differences exist, for example, between those treated with SSRIs (anti-depressants) and those in control groups receiving placebos.

Unfortunately, modern medicine generally treats symptoms, not causes.  I believe we find healing when we root out cause factors.  I wager that our thoughts greatly define who we are and how we feel.  If I can change my thoughts, I can  minimize my anxiety-laden emotions causing my stress.  

The good news is that we can find our way back to well-being, or wholeness of mind, body and spirit.  After all, you are what you think.

2.   Exercise

It's incredible how well our bodies function when we exercise regularly.  By exercise I mean what gets your heart pounding for a minimum 30 minutes, five times weekly.  It doesn't matter whether it's running, swimming, or the elliptical machine in your basement or at the gym.  LDL gets pushed down; HDL (the good stuff), goes higher; weight gain comes under control; blood pressure is lowered, etc. When I exercise, I feel better.

3.  Relaxation strategies

Lately  I've been turning to the East with its bottomless wisdom nurtured over centuries into a profundity often missed in our materialistic, frenzied West.  Recently, I found a book with simple yoga exercises designed for stressed people like myself.  They take only twenty minutes to do without all the twist gyrations traditionally associated with Hatha yoga, the form most practiced in the West for its physical regimen.

Yoga has its spiritual side, releasing us from everyday stresses.  When I lie on my mat and practice progressive relaxation and visualization, it helps me to divert.  When I breathe properly, that is, deeply, I can actually feel my tightened muscles relax and my mind yield to prevailing calm.  Yoga teaches me that I can transcend my worries and achieve a richer life free from angst.  Yoga frees me from reacting to the gauntlet  of pummeling circumstance. In its place comes mindfulness, the importance of living in the Now.  Through meditation, I am learning how to control my thoughts.  Detached from my anxieties, I find my worries far away, or like passing clouds in a tall sky. 

When I lie down on my mat, breathe deeply, chant my mantra, or fixation aid, my limbs  seem to have fallen through. I am become like a bird buoyed on a thermal, removed from earth, empowered for flight.

In my kindling of interest in the East I have found Qi Gong and Tai Chi buttress what Yoga does. Because of its simplicity, Qi Gong can be done in a chair. You might think of it as a take-it-with-you exercise.

As for Tai Chi, it's one of China's foremost cultural achievements.  When I think of China, I visualize multitudes of young and old, gathered in parks, invigorated by early morning coolness, anointed by the sun's first rays, shifting their balance from foot to foot, arms moving slowly, rhthmically.

4.  Music

Shakespeare tells us that music has charms to soothe the savage beast.  I would say it a more modern way: music has capacity to heal the troubled psyche.  I think of David singing psalms before troubled King Saul. While I like many kinds of music,  I prefer classical Indian music best when it comes to fostering relaxation.  Enya also is very special.

5.  Reading

I've always read a lot.  At times when I cannot sleep,  I will read.  Better than a pill, it usually works.

6.  Hobbies

Nobody should be without one.  Hobbies divert, providing a way out from stress.  They also promote the best part of ourselves, the Eros (creative) rather than the Thanatos (the negative or death element.  There are two dynamics, like laws of physics, embracing the universe and individuals: one fostering creation; the other, destruction.  One is positive; the other, negative.  Hobbies foster the right choice.  I happen to indulge in gardening and studying languages.  They've proved unstinting in their capacity to delight me and bring peace.

7.  Social

We need each other.  Get out.  Be with others.  Like many of you, I often would prefer to stay home bound, but when I do go out, I'm usually glad I went. Besides, there are dividends.  Psychology tells us that when we connect, we're happier and live longer.

8.  Humor

Again, Shakespeare rises to the occasion.  "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."  In short, laugh and be well. I turned on the comedy channel last week when I was emotionally fidgeting.  Shakespeare was right.

9.  Good deeds.

Wordsworth, that great poet of memory, tells of how recalling his acts of kindness afforded him peace despite the varied, unceasing shocks of life.  A shy person, I'm not there yet. But I'm making effort to go out and do.  To find a cause.  To engage.  Again, Shakespeare reminds us that “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.”

10. Writing

I could have included writing under hobbies, but I wanted to give it emphasis by listing it separately.  Writing offers me catharsis for pent up emotions.  But it also becomes my act of self-discovery, my journey into self-knowledge.  Writing clarifies, helps me see patterns, staves off my too often impulsiveness for making grand, sweeping generalizations and, in being superficial, to be silly.  I'm always wiser when I reflect.

11.  Quietness

I am learning to take time out.  To take time to let go.  To take time to do nothing.  I am learning  to be quiet.  To listen. To learn.