The Grasshopper and The Ant

Remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper?

It was summer, glorious summer. After a cold wet winter, Grasshopper was delighted to be spending the day singing and fiddling, hanging out with his pals, and enjoying spur of the moment sunset hikes up Mary's Peak. He loved laying in his hammock watching the moon rise, and sleeping through the hot parts of the day in the shady cool. He loved hanging out at the farmer's market, sampling the seasonal produce. He loved gleaning at town picnics. And he never turned his kid's requests for a trip to the river to take a dip, or a walk to the park to pitch a ball.

With pity in his eyes, he watched Ant, scurrying back and forth gathering food for the winter. What was the point of wasting such rare and beautiful days on nothing but work? "Hey!", he teased as she heaved past, lugging some morsel to her tunnel. "Stop already! Smell the roses!"

Ant glared at him in disgust. "SOME of us are busy. Some of us have work to do. Winter will come, and then where will you be?" Grasshopper just fiddled a tune and patted his round belly.

Winter did come, along with the drowning rains and then the cold. Grasshopper was fine for a bit, living off the fat he'd packed on during the summer lazy days. But after a while, he grew hungry, and there was nothing to eat. He went looking for Ant.

"Ant", he said, "share some of that food. You have so much."

"Forget it, buster. While you fiddled, ate and lazed, I worked to have food for these hard times. I left my babies to find it. I forsook the contra dances. I missed the sunsets you said were so fantastic on Mary's Peak. I didn't even get to see my kid's baseball games, because I had important work to do. And if you think your lazy butt will profit from all my sacrifice, you got another think coming."

At the end of this soliloquy, Ant keeled over from a sudden and massive coronary.
Grasshopper fully intended to mourn the moment, but was too weak from hunger, and passed out instead.

The moral of the story is:

MODERATION IN ALL THINGS. Including work and play.

Here's to balance--
Jana

Plays Well With Others

"Life is Mysterious
Don't Take it Serious"
(quote on an old rubber stamp)
In several of these blogs, I've talked about the inevitability of suffering.
Enough of that. Let's talk about the power of playfulness.

You may have heard the expression that "Kid's play is kid's work." Play is where kids learn to deal with roles and other people, fine tune communicating their ideas and needs, exercise their bodies and widen their imaginations. Why would we want to give that up as adults? Yet many groan-ups (yes, that was deliberate) see life as one unending have-to-do list. I'm not advocating shirking responsibilities, though I am admittedly expert at it. I'm encouraging righting priorities. Play, laughter, positive thinking, joy have their own rafts of research supporting the idea that a good time is good for you. Laughter really IS good medicine-- it reduces stress hormones that havoc the body and soul. Researchers in Loma Linda found cortisol and epinephrine levels drop, while human growth hormones and beta-endorphins rise when people experience, or even anticipate big fun. Other research shows laughter improves relationships, immunity, increases oxygenation, is cardioprotective, and helps us be more alert and creative.

At least twice a year, I go away to play with my pals at WAR (women's art retreat), where we hold theme dinners in dress up (wedding in Vegas, Beauty Pageant, Circus Night) and write ridiculous bits. For years I participated in an on-line salon where we exchanged thematic haikus, limericks, tom swifties and wrote bad country songs. There's lots of ways to make the ridiculous sublime. A few minutes a day softens the heart and sharpens the brain.

A few links for you:
Laughing Yoga
Laughing Yoga was started by a physician in India who to promote the healing benefits of laughter for the body and soul. Here John Cleese provides a 3 minute intro to the practice.

Global Belly Laugh Day
We're a few months off from the official Day (Jan. 24th), but we can start practicing. This site is also offers a wealth of research and related links.

Positivity research and tools for its practice can be found at Dr. Segilman's site on Authentic Happiness

Want to shop local in Corvallis?
Our own Happy Guru Jean Bonifas offers Right-Brain Fitness and more and is a member of the World Laughter Tour

Even if all the movies that week are dramas or documentaries, a look around the eclectic decor at Darkside Cinema holds grins for most of us. While you're there, pick up one of owner Paul Turner's books of essays or a Prancing Lavender Bunny T-shirt sporting one bad-ass buff biker bunny.

Grassroots Books has the latest McSweeney's collection of public weirdness, humorist/scientist Mary Roach's sex research book "BONK" and other sources of inspiration.

Dancing like a maniac always cheers me up, and there are plenty of opportunities at River Rhythms, contra dances, and our summer festivals (Cherry Poppin' Daddies this Friday!).

And don't forget next week's daVinci Days! The Saturday morning kinetic sculpture parade always brings smiles.

Watch the website for announcements about a Play Weekend during the dark days of winter. We'll need it.

Now, go out there and don't come back until you've had some fun.

Yrs,
Jana

You are not your mood.

One day last week I woke up cranky. Might have stayed up too late, might have been the moon. Maybe I had a bad dream. Whatever the reason, I woke up irritated, and projected it on everything. A series of regular delights and irritations followed:
some things I wanted to happen, didn't, even though I did my part. I had a nice breakfast with a colleague. Someone talking on a cell phone nearly ran me over. I found a present from a stranger. Point being: things happen. Every day. Good things, bad things. But from my half-empty-glass state, my attention wanted to focus on the bad.
That morning, I noticed my mood and decided I would make a real effort to act reasonably even though I don't feel reasonable. In my therapy practice, I talk a lot about acceptance, as in the Serenity Prayer: deal with reality you can't change, change what you can, be smart enough to figure the difference. I figured I may not be in charge of my mood. Feelings aren't facts; they rise up when they want. But how we act on them-- we can take charge of that. It wasn't easy. I wanted to snap at people (and I did, time to time, before I caught it), but for the most part I was intentionally kind and patient, even though some rascally part of me wasn't motivated to that. I want to be clear that I was not denying my mood or feelings. Rather, I was choosing my behavior, on the premise the mood would pass. I thought about the economist I quoted in an earlier blog who noted our future self often would prefer we make different choices than our present self desires. I practiced, in short, being a grown up and doing the hard but right thing.
It was simple, but it was eye opening. The next day, when I inexplicably woke in a good mood, I was able to assess my choices of the day before and feel ok about them.
There's a story I sometimes tell, about a king who was terribly melancholy and searching for a cure. He hired and fired various priests, sages, doctors and wizards. Nothing worked. After a time, he was presented with a ring and told it would do the trick. Inscribed on the ring: "This too will pass."
That's the deal with moods. In his book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff , the late Richard Carlson noted that we wake up different days in completely different moods, despite the same circumstances we had the day before. No sense reworking your life-- or your reactions, or behaviors-- on something so transient.
Good stuff, bad stuff--this too, will pass.
Jana

Big love, big heart

Click the title!
"through music, we can get enlightenment."

Be luminous! The day is over.

Title generated by a robotic poetrix-- but it's not half-bad, especially for a Monday evening mantra.
Except I am lucky. I have a job, and I love my job. I realize not everyone is in that happy boat.
I remember the dip of the mid to late 80's-- people walking away from their 18% mortgages, plants shutting or cutting down left and right. I was working in Southeast Texas. Many of my clients had worked for years on the rigs or at refineries, where no degree at all, not even a high school diploma, was needed to make a family wage and have health insurance. When the Savings and Loans failed, those same folks couldn't even find minimum wage jobs. We didn't wait to see how things turned out. We left our newer, Lone-Star-State scale Texas home on the market for a year and a half at much well under 100K in a town that had boomed, then busted on oil.
The good thing about getting old is watching history rewind and unwind. The market goes up, the market goes down. If you live long enough, or die at the right time, it doesn't matter so much. In a book called "Astonish Yourself! 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life", this is illustrated in No. 55: Invent Headlines. Author Roger-Pol Droit encourages the reader to write an imagined front page full of political changes, scientific advances, crime stories, celebrity tidbits and natural disasters. At the end of the entry, he notes: "Killing time is not the point of this experiment, which is rather to prove to yourself how the flood of news never ceases to repeat itself, and how it is always the same. It shows neither progress or novelty...only confirm(s) that there is nothing less new than the news. All it shows, interminably, is the endless misfortune of man."
That seems rather disheartening. But for every sorrow there are also joys, and guess what? Neither are permanent. There is something to be said for being an observer rather than interpreter of events. I like the old Chinese story about the farmer, out in the field. One day he finds a stray horse. His neighbor tells him, "You are so lucky! Now you have help for harvest." The farmer nods, and says, "Maybe, maybe not." The next day, the farmer's son attempts to ride the wild horse, and is bucked off and breaks both legs. The neighbor comes over to comfort the farmer, saying, "Bad luck! Now your son can't help you with the harvest!" The farmer replies, "Maybe. Maybe not." A day later, the dynasty in power comes searching for any able-bodied young men to go on a suicide mission. The farmer's son is out of commission. The neighbor says, "So lucky for you!" And again the farmer replies: "Maybe, maybe not."
We don't know the ending. We can't know. We can make meaning out of what is offered. We can do the serenity prayer-- change what we can, accept what we can't. We can do, as my grandmother used to say, the best we can do, and that's all we can do. But the answer to most of our worrisome thoughts is: Don't know. While we wait-- try not to suffer in advance.
Jana

What's At Hand

I made a good mental health decision and spent a weekend at the beach and another in the garden. While there are a few hundred other tasks begging for attention, nothing soothes my soul like some time away from things electronic. At the beach I walked for hours, tracked a cougar tracking a deer, and shut up the Chattering Monkey for a bit.
A friend told me about attending a lecture on American Malaise; the speaker talked about the propensity of Nature Deficit Disorder. I'll try to hunt down and credit the speaker. Meanwhile, if you're cranky and preoccupied, try a dose of the woods or beach in spring.

Spring

Things are starting to bust open here in Oregon. Spring reminds us that even after we've been asleep a bit, there is plenty in us that is beautiful, and waiting.

I was premature about the unraveling fear knot. I've turned off the radio alarm because I don't want to wake up to more bad news. The doomsayers are out in full force. Many folks I know-- clients as well as friends-- are dealing with layoffs. What I also notice, but seems to get less press, is that some people are being more patient with themselves and each other, and expanding in their generosity as a result. For some of us, the fear of what will be is a bad story that isn't even happening yet-- but we suffer in advance. I am reminded of an exchange writer Anne Lamott had with her Jesuit friend Father Tom. "How are we going to get through all this craziness?" There was silence for a moment. "Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said.

When we suffer in advance, suffer for what we fear but has not yet occurred,we suffer needlessly. If it doesn't happen, we suffer for nothing. If it does, we suffer twice. Keep present, keep walking. Use this time to practice kindness, and patience. Learn how to receive if you need to, and give if you can. And let what is asleep in you, but beautiful, open.

Jana

If you're going to break, break open.

Are you starting to feel the knot of fear unravel, or grow tighter?
There's a lot of bad news out there. It's easy to react by holding on more fiercely to our divisions. I attended a beautiful talk this week on reconcilation by Rabbi Benjamin Barnett. He started with the poem at the end of this post. It beautifully addresses how fear closes our hearts.

We're all in this together. Be kind to one another.
Some seed for your journey can be found at
www.loveandforgive.org

The Place Where We Are Right

by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

Welcome 2009

As we ready to put 2008 to bed, spend a bit of time figuring out what you're ready to release, and what you want to invite in to your life in 2009. Each day we have the opportunity to fine-tune our lives. May this new year bring you many blessings in love and growth.

---Jana

Let It Snow, Let It Slow

Mother Nature threw me an unexpected gift this week: an enforced slowdown. The Wintry Mix that has coated the roads kept me out of the car the past three days. After 15 years in the temperate valley (and near a decade in SE Texas before that), I no longer trust my ice maneuvering.Walking was no easy feat either. I opted for the grass when possible, avoiding the glazed sidewalks. Still, it was a very slow and careful stroll . I had to look at the ground, I had to go slow, I had to shut up the Chattering Monkey and concentrate on one foot in front of the other. I noticed things I never would have seen at my usual break-neck pace: rabbit tracks in the snow, the colors in the ice. I arrived each day relaxed and happy, grateful for things I ordinarily don't think about: heat in my office. Gloves. Making it across Monroe street without falling down. My 20 year old boots, still waterproofed after all.There's lots going on in the world right now to scare us. I've stopped using my clock radio to wake up, tired of the daily litany of economic horror stories. I don't deny the very real hardships, but I find that slowing down and being grateful for what ISN'T broken keeps the fear weasel from the door, and increases happiness. Research supports that. What we feed, grows. A replicated study found that people who kept a daily gratitude journal for 6 weeks not only were happier at the end of that period than the control group, but remained so six months later-- even when they were no longer keeping the journal. It's a simple but profound notion: we find what we look for in the world.

Worth Watching: Rachel Getting Married

In the early 90's, I taught social work teacher in a small Texas college. I tried to prepare students to get personal with clients by giving them first hand experience in having their psychological closets scrutinized. Seniors were required to do a family genogram (psychological map) of three generations in their family. Each semester before the papers were due, a parade of nervous students came to my office, afraid I would think their family crazy. Leo Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are happy in the same way, whereas unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way. I'm not sure I agree. To nearly a one, families deal with disease, dysfunction or one of a hundred kinds of very real suffering that is part of the human experience.
The award winning Rachel Getting Married is a realistic look at one family's suffering and subsequent (though imperfect) redemption. The haunted and luminous Anne Hathaway plays a junkie home from rehab to see her sister married off. As she jockies to resume her position as the family screw-up, she illustrates how one can be 9 months drug-free and yet far from recovered.
There's no dearth of family-dysfunction pics to be had. What I appreciated about this film was the authentic portrayal of damaged, suffering people doing the best they can, and doing better as they come to consciousness. Unlike typical Hollywood films, the characters here are not good guys or bad guys, but three dimensional beings acting out of their limitations with as much grace as they can muster. Sometimes, like all of us at our worst, not much grace is evident at all.
My theoretical foundation for understanding human behavior is summed up in three words: People are messy. We all hold the capacity for loving and being loved, as well as for wounding and being wounded. When we are acting out, it is usually subconscious and not necessarily related to whoever happened to be nearby at the time. We walk around with our sore spots not even knowing some are there until someone bumps into one or reminds us they exist. That's what therapy is all about-- figuring out why we are stuck repeating our history by understanding it better. We learn to forgive others, and ourselves, for being imperfect and semi-conscious. And as we wake up and learn to tolerate the discomfort we have been running around trying to avoid, we increase our capacity for love.
Rachel Getting Married is now playing at the Darkside in Corvallis. While you are there, grab another dose of wisdom by picking up a copy of owner Paul Turner's fantastic collection of tales and truths, "Prancing Lavender Bunnies".

Xenophobia

2008, a coffeeshop blog--
I'm having a cuppa and enjoying the wifi at a little cafe' in Topeka, Kansas, in between a couple of workshops I'm doing on communication and diversity. The topic is timely: on the heels of a historic election, after a particularly mean-spirited political season, during a period of national anxiety. Americans have been drawing lines vigorously. On both the personal and political levels, we tend to batten down when we're scared, and we get scared when we think our piece of the pie is possibly up for grabs. And when we're scared, we often act direct from our reptilian (read: fight of flight) brains. It's not pretty, but it's pretty common.

When my sister drove me into Topeka from the airport, we made an immediate pilgrimage to the Brown vs. the Board of Education historic site. It’s the only national park site named after a court case. Here in 1954, in the heart of the heartland, the legal segregation of schools by race was ended. I wasn't even born when 7 year old Linda Brown's father sought permission to let his daughter attend her all white neighborhood school, rather than make the mile-long trek across dangerous railroad tracks to the black school. The decision was made in the mid-50's, but years of dissent, marches and bravery were needed before integrated school were mostly a reality. Mostly, because racism persists in subtle and not-so-subtle ways in institutions and in community.

Four months ago I had the privilege of a viewing an exhibition of Civil Rights memorabilia at the High Museum in Atlanta. I was disturbed and deeply moved by the photographs of Rosa Parks’ arrest, nonviolent protesters being hosed and beaten by police, and the little girl walking through a path of angry, threatening grown men scared because she wanted to go to a white school. I was astounded by the courage of so many with so little, and how they changed history.

How do we mend our separations? At the workshop I gave today on diversity, I talked about how we are all viewing the world through our tiny lens, thinking we are seeing the truth. A participant asked how one could enlarge the view. My immediate answer-- stretch your vision. We're scared of what we don't know. And when we align ourselves with like minds, we reinforce our belief that we are the norm. Research on dealing with fear tells us the best way to reduce it through exposure. The philosopher Kierkegaard said it as well-- to grow, move toward what makes you anxious. Expand, don't contract.

We may not all have the same experiences, but we experience the same primal events, of love, fear, suffering. There is much more that unites us than separates us. Jung teaches us that there is nothing we can perceive we have not experienced on some level, so even that we reject has somehow, sometime, been a part of us. When we open up to new ideas and experiences, and seek to understand, we can't help but grow.
--Jana

Although the exhibit at the High has closed, you can read about it here

Lighten Up

The days are darkening here in Corvallis, and it won't be long until what little slanty sun could shine will be thwarted by rain clouds. If you notice yourself getting sleepy, lethargic, or gloomy, you're in good company. Seasonal changes in light have a very real and physiologic effect on mood and energy. Our brains and bodies are set up by evolution to react to long light days with increased energy (work those fields! harvest!) and to cooler, dark days by slowing the system down (sleep! now sleep some more!). Our bodies would be perfectly happy going to bed not long after the sun sets. That probably worked well in days before widespread use of artificial light and 24/7 availability of food and things to do-- but it's unrealistic for most of us now. The result in the split between rapid societal evolution and much slower physiologic evolution can be sleep, energy and mood disorders.

A light box can address both typical and more drastic results of the effects of waning light on the brain and body. Light boxes produce effects similar to sun exposure and can be used in the morning to assist in wakefulness and mood regulation and in the afternoon to increase energy. Exposure is typically between 15-30 minutes at a regular time each a.m. or early afternoon. To be effective, the light source should be at or above face level, with eyes open (although it is not necessary or recommended to look directly at the light)and within 15-30 inches of the light source. Specific instructions vary according to model. There is a great deal of evidence of effectiveness in the use of light boxes to treat seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression linked to low winter light.

Because they have a real--and sometimes profound-- effect, they are best used according to specific directives based on the particular mood or sleep issues one is experiencing. In some cases, use can increase hypomania (agitation, excess energy, and insomnia among other symptoms). Usually a reduction in the exposure time is enough to remedy that. However, I encourage persons considering light therapy to consult their physician or mental health practitioner and have some sort of system in place to track results. Because it isn't completely clear that such intense light exposure is safe over long periods for eyes, light therapy isn't for everyone and the risks as well as benefits should be explored.

I'm a chronically terrible sleeper, and an even worse waker. I noticed that the best sleep I have is when I am camping and rise and go to sleep with the summer sun. Since that time frame is typically also when I rise and wake in the winter, I have found great benefit in the use of a dusk/dawn simulator. The device I use attaches to my bedside lamp and is programmed to turn the (100 watt full spectrum) light down very gradually in the evening and then up again gradually in the morning. I use it from October to May and find I don't even need an alarm clock, as the dawning light creates a gentle alertness over time. I wake up refreshed instead of startled. Research suggests that gradual lightening stimulates a chemical cue to awakening, just as gradual darkness stimulates a chemical cue to drowsiness. I rarely use a light box since I've bought my dawn simulator. They aren't cheap-- mine was $150-- but I find it a bargain for the help it's provided me with sleep and waking.

Meanwhile, if it's a nice day, get out there! I recently read that the average American is getting LESS than the 20 minutes of sun a day needed by the body to manufacture adequate vitamin D. My MD tells me northwesters are often deficient, and the government just doubled the recommended RDA.

For more information on light and mood, see the wonderful website of Dr. James Phelps at www.psycheducation.org. Dr. Phelps is a psychiatrist who has done extensive literature review on the subject of mood disorders and light therapy.