What Are Friends For?

I had a friend in college who had a favorite expression he used when caught taking advantage of my or anyone else's generosity. After a couple of years, Mike had taught all of us to use that expression in certain circumstances. The truth is we grew to accept each other's faults this way. If one of our friends let us down in some way or other, we'd feign complaint, and finish with "but what are friends for?" Friends do let each other down from time to time, but strong friendships weather those storms.

Like exercise, spending time with friends also is a great stress reliever—so said a friend of mine this morning. How does that work? I understand that exercise helps to reduce stress, stimulating the release of endorphins. Does interacting with friends work the same way? If so, does the stress relief vary directly with the number of friends involved or inversely? I'll bet inversely, meaning the larger the group you interact with, the less stress relief you enjoy. However, if you interact with one or two, you may enjoy more stress relief.

I'd like to know more about this one. I have had occasion to spend a few hours with a larger group of friends, and it was fun, but there was an element of the hectic. Too much going on around you can produce stress itself. I have also wanted to spend time with a closer friend or two. Those moments are more profound somehow. Does that profundity somehow reduce stress?

I don't know the answer to that one. I do know that there are no better times than those spent catching up with an individual friend with whom you share a special connection. Even if an extended period of time has elapsed between visits, you can quickly recover the connection when you catch up. How does this work? What are friends for, anyway?

The Education of A Wandering Man

The subject is a book penned by the late Louis L'Amour, the peerless writer of westerns, a smattering of colonial stories (the Sacketts) and a remarkable book about the Middle Ages called The Walking Drum.
I first found it in 1990. L'Amour died in 1988, and the volume I have was published in 1989, shortly after his death. L'Amour was a high school dropout who was largely self-educated by way of his love of books. But the focus of this book in particular was his wandering period in the 1930's. He read thousands of books as he traveled. Many of the stories he wrote over the years arose out of stories he heard as he traveled, some heard around campfires, others during long car trips and voyages around the world.

What it brings to mind for me is the connection between reading and travel. Why do we travel? Why do we read? Oh, I know much of my travel has been related to business, but I am not doing much business traveling these days. Some of my travel takes place on account of family celebrations, but we still relish the travel part of it. Whether I have headed for Edinburgh, Scotland; Saugatuck, Michigan or Sonoma, California, part of the celebration is the trip. We relish travel because of what we learn, in much the same way we read. As L'Amour puts it, "we are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are."

Travel can mean acquisition of knowledge in an exterior sort of way. What we see, touch and taste is the path to knowing a new place. To say, "I've been there," is to claim some true knowledge of a place or thing. We can't know a thing or a place if we haven't. But what about reading? Sure, we read for entertainment, but not completely without bringing our heads along. The stories I remember are the ones that take me somewhere. Sounds like travel, doesn't it? We enrich our lives by travel, both exterior and interior.

All too often our pursuit of something larger, richer and more important turns toward having more. A shame, when it could be about becoming something more. I've decided to link my reading and my travelling. Finding authors and stories linked to the places I will visit. I have Michigan, but have to start working on San Francisco, Sonoma and (way off in the distance, maybe) Italia!

Calling Out to Me

I recently received the gift of a giant piece of spare time (I don't like that expression—spare time, it implies you have extra, when we all have the same daily allotment) by way of a life-changing transition. I stopped working and am on the way to retirement. I spent five years looking at retirement and trying to find that one place I could take hold of it and make it mine, instead of just allowing it to become something that happened to me. However, Life caught up with me before I had found that handle (of course, because there may not even be the kind of handle I thought there was).
Consequently, I am reliving my late teens—looking for what I am going to do with the rest of my life. It is still a puzzle, just like it was when I was a teenager. This time around, I thought a lifetime of experience would be beneficial in smoothly switching my focus from work to whatever. However, aside from giving me some tools I have some proficiency in using, all that experience still has not provided the answers. For some time, I believed my retirement would include some work in my career field—not so any more. I have determined whatever I do will be something I haven't done before. My first career did develop in me some writing, coaching and speaking skills, and I feel ok about adapting those to new uses.
But, back to those teenage choices, what do I want to be when I grow up? At the very beginning of that first time around this block, I felt like whatever I did had to serve others. I compromised on that one, mostly for economic reasons. I wanted to have the resources to raise a family, etc. But I still managed to make my role one of helping others most of the time. Now that finances don't drive today's choices quite the way they did that first time around, I am sure service will be part of what I do.
Another luxury I have that I didn't have when I was a teenager is that I have the temperament to step back, breathe and listen. That either never occurred to me back then, or I didn't have the time (there's that time thing again) or the patience. This time around I am listening. The folly of my five-years of dabbling in the retirement plan was that I was out there looking for a formula, a step-by-step structure, and maybe just being a little too active. Just now I am listening to what's calling out to me, and choosing what keeps calling. Already I've found a couple that keep calling, insistently. I'm answering those two, but then I plan to step back, breathe and listen some more. Then we'll see.

Death as Teacher

My yoga teacher likes to conclude each class with shavasana, the 'corpse pose.' She makes the point that we want our death to be one of repose where we feel calm, at peace with our passing, satisfied that we have lived the best life we could have done. But, how in the world do we do that? Can we possibly live our lives in such a way that we don't miss saying goodbye to someone special? Or, can we avoid the prospect of leaving this earth on less than the best terms with someone?

Death is supposed to be the greatest teacher. I always liked my 'best teachers,' but death doesn't seem to fit. I have seen pieces of it in my own life, those that come immediately to mind—losing my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law. None of that made me like death, of course. I know we learn the important lesson of impermanence most clearly with death, but we immediately (at least I did) return to denying it. Then friends begin to die, or nearly do. What are we to do with that?

Platitudes about maintaining nearly perfect relationships with all those who are important to us in this life aren't realistic. We are human after all and will fail more than we will succeed, I am afraid. As long as we take breath, we will be imperfect, even with the best of intentions.

Further, people of all ages die, probably before reaching that perfect understanding that death was supposed to provide. At least, I can't see that their own deaths are the teachers, right? I assume it's other people's deaths that are supposed to be our 'best teachers.' It's a little too late to teach me if I'm the one that is dead.

On the surface, I can also understand that the death of a person who reaches a certain age is a cause for celebrating a life well-lived, and not a tragic loss. But we mourn almost all the losses, especially our contemporaries. They have been important to us, and we miss them. No avoiding it.

Everyone Has To Have a Voice

Stop and think about that one before you move on. A voice can mean many things. There's a writer's voice, a speaker's voice, a physical human voice, a singer's voice and more. All of them have, at least to me, a common thread—and it's not the sound. To me, a voice is something that forms a bridge from what is within to what is outside. That sentence doesn't capture it exactly. To me it starts with a series of thoughts gaining conscious expression in my brain. Thoughts are coming together in some way, conveying a message. The process of learning to write from within your own head is about trust in your own thoughts—trust that they are yours alone and, probably uniquely assembled within you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, "Self-Reliance," tells us "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages... Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another." How often we receive the thoughts and sayings of the great sages, recognizing there our own rejected thoughts, to which we have not yet learned to listen.

This learning to listen to and trust your voice is not one of those things someone else can point out for you, or tell you where exactly to find it. You have to hear the voice, recognize and express it; and my sense is that it is called forth only when we decide deliberately to communicate it, to draw it out from within ourselves.

Sit down to write something, craft a speech to express something, or even a poem. It is said that Winston Churchill, arguably one of the most powerful orators of the 20^th century, composed his speeches first in verse form. When you try to call it forth, you begin to hear the voice within. The voice is within your own heart and mind. It is who you are, what you have experienced, and the life you have lived. No one else has lived it; it is unique, as are you.

The voice that emerges from within each of us, if we let it, can be read, or heard only if we express it. There are obstacles on the pathway from thought to expression. There is the failure to pay attention to the voice as Emerson pointed out, there is the drowning out that takes place amid the noise of day-to-day life. At times, we lack the capacity to put it into words that will adequately convey meaning. We may have trouble with the actual means of delivery—whether by writing or the human voice. The human voice relies upon a certain mastery of the lungs, the vocal folds and the articulators (cheeks, lips, and tongue and nasal passages). Vocal variety is something that can be learned, as can clear speech and other aspects of delivery. Aristotle would say that rhetorical skills are a must—think of rhetoric as "the truth plus its artful presentation." Written expression requires a certain mastery of (sad to say) grammar and spelling.

Possession of a truth is not enough (see the discussion of a tree that falls in the forest with no one hearing it), it must be expressed or the thought is lost. How do we learn those skills? By doing—write or speak whenever you can. If you don't, your voice will remain lost, and we will all be poorer for it.

Summer in the Carolinas—Peach Stands and ?

This time of year, peach stands start popping up alongside the roads leading from one small town to another. You may have seen them yourself. Obviously, they are not allowed on the interstate, so they are found only on state or U.S. highways. Most stands are not adjacent to an orchard or even any cultivated ground. They are just there randomly, on the side of the road.
They come with at least three hand-sprayed signs, usually made of rough-cut plywood. The first sign usually says "Peaches one mile ahed." About 150 yards past the first sign will be a similar sign, "Peaches ½ mile ahead" (note the improved spelling, a really conscientious speller would also have corrected the first sign by crowding in an "a"—usually upper case—between the "e" and the "d" on the first sign, but this is strictly optional).
You may have noticed the distance between the signs was only 150 yards, but accurate measurement between signs is also optional. The only requirement is that there be three signs before you see the stand itself. The third sign will say "Stop Peaches ¼ mile ahead." The set up of the stand may begin with a stop to put up that first sign, followed by two more stops then the stand itself, or it might start with placing the stand and then the signs. The stands are also made of 2x4's and plywood, sometimes they are left in place when the stand closes for the day, sometimes not.
If the first stop is placement of the stand, then the signs may be placed a bit more accurately, distance-wise, since the trip to place the signs is a round-trip. If the signs are placed first, the location for the stand can "sneak up" on the person placing the signs, resulting in short placement like that mentioned above. In any event, there is no such thing as a "do-over" when it comes to placing signs. If you got too close before you set that first sign, it will just have to do for the day. In any case, as I observed to my wife, "No proprietor of a peach stand would deliberately mislead potential customers (although posting the price per pound for your produce is strictly optional)."
July and August in South Carolina are insufferably hot, especially in the sun where the only breeze is made by truck and automobile traffic and is laden with their exhaust. In the past, some vendors at the stands themselves have taken to sitting in their trucks (yes. It must be a truck, and ten or more years old is a minimum.), with the A/C on during slow periods when no one is stopping to buy. But with gasoline prices headed back up to $4 a gallon, the stand inhabitants are resorting to other means to try to keep cool. Some have rescued discarded beach umbrellas from the landfill and nailed them up to provide shade for themselves.
Today I learned some vendors are going beyond that, they are resorting to removing certain articles of clothing in the hopes of keeping cool. Always on the lookout for new trends and capitalizing on competitive advantage, I suggested to my wife that the traditional signs needed a makeover, now that we see this season's latest developments in peach stand vendor apparel. "TOPLESS WAITSTAFF ONE MILE" would be the first one, followed by "Peaches served by TOPLESS WAITSTAFF ½ mile," and so on. "Not so fast," she replied, "men wear shirts, and women wear tops, and 'No proprietor of a peach stand would deliberately mislead potential customers.' You said so yourself." "So, it's 'SHIRTLESS WAITSTAFF, etc.,' and you won't attract any extra customers with that."
I told her she was no fun at all.

Playing Games, The Brain and Learning To Dance

Playing cards—unlike most people, I realize it's a mindless activity. On the other hand, I continue to hear people say that games are an important part of ensuring brain health. Some promoters of the idea even argue that the strategies developed and employed to win are a valuable exercise of brain power, and grow one's capacity. But I'm not buying it. Playing with friends while you wait out the rain or pass the time in the evening without watching TV is just not a competitive setting, and is not calling forth any extraordinary effort from the brain. We forget to keep score or certain people "table talk" so conspicuously you can only laugh when they still lose the hand.

On a distantly related front, this week brought another story from Europe somewhere about the possible benefit of dancing to people with neurological disorders like Parkinson's. It seems there is a new study attempting to replicate some promising early results that indicate Irish set dancing can ward off certain effects on gait and balance. This is not the first time dancing has emerged as an effective therapy in such cases. It has something to do with the fact that dancing is a learned skill and is not strictly controlled by the same motor neurons that control unconscious movement like walking usually is. Luckily, not enough information has emerged to reach my bride's antennae, which seem to tune in any reason at all to compel me to take dancing lessons with her.

But back to playing cards (before she looks over my shoulder and sees an opening to point out the dance situation), what does it mean when the person who is playing the game for the first time scores more than double the nearest competitor? Two possibilities come to mind. One is that no one is paying as much attention as the neophyte is. Thus, the neophyte, who is concentrating, is outplaying all the other players who are not paying any attention at all. That's probably not an exceptional process of development taking place in his brain; at least the score doesn't prove anything that we can see. He still couldn't remember the names of the people he was telling us a story about. He didn't get smarter, he just made better game decisions, because he had to think about what he was doing each step of the way. The rest of us, on the other hand, continued to play without thinking. Sorta like life. We sleepwalk through it.

Then, there's the second possibility—his success was just the luck of the draw. The game takes no particular skill. The outcome is a product of dumb blind luck. So, tell me again how games develop the brain?

Now my yoga teacher tells me we spend too much time in our heads and not in our bodies. She would say these card games are just another way we lose that connection. We should be doing something else, an activity that gets us active, moving around like—uh-oh, don't tell my wife—we'll be taking dancing lessons before I know what hit me.

Vacation and Primal Instinct

There are certain things you observe living in a vacation destination (yes, I live in one. I swear it happened by accident, albeit a happy one). Wherever I go, I see our visitors jogging, walking and biking. It is so pervasive, and happens so consistently, it is startling. They are serious, you can tell by the clothing they wear while they are doing it (you know, spandex for bikers, sports bras with matching running shorts, running shorts and cutoff t-shirts, etc.). It is so common, I remark when I don't see them. I went for a walk with a friend of mine on Tuesday at the beach at eight-something and the place was crowded with runners, riders and walkers.

I remarked to my friend that I was puzzled as to why all these vacationers wanted to get up and exercise. I mean, were they taking the occasion of a brief vacation to suddenly get serious about wellness and health? He pointed out that part of vacationing involves release from your daily concerns. Once you let go of those, you return to your basic instincts, like survival. Those drive you to start taking better care of yourself. All this work on keeping fit will mean you'll live longer, won't it?

When I pointed out these same people keep hundreds of bars and restaurants going with their eating and drinking, we decided this too was a return to basic instincts—the pursuit of pleasure. That principle emerges in the absence of those pressures of day to day living. I think Freud said it drives almost all of human behavior in its earliest stages. It is the driven force of the id—to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The very young (infants and toddlers) are governed almost entirely by the pleasure principle. Its counterpart is the reality principle, which allows us to defer gratification when obtaining it is not possible. This is the process of maturing. So, vacation might be an attempted escape from reality after all.

After all, Merriam-Webster tells us vacation is a respite from something with recreation, recreation is the refreshment of strength after work, and refreshment is to restore strength and animation to something. All of these add up to acting out our primal instincts—survival and the pursuit of pleasure.

But what about those of us who live here all year round? I guess we have the choice of how to respond—pursuing survival (and longevity?) or simply pleasure (and denial of reality). By extension, who lives in a place where no one vacations? Vacation is not limited to certain places, it's a state of mind, and it can take place most anywhere. So can your response.