Synthesize Anew

I am an analytical sort, really. Show me a problem and I'll start picking away at it a piece at a time. I'll ask questions—who what, where, when—and pile up the answers somewhere. Show me something too big to take in and I'll try taking it apart. What does this piece do? What happens if you take it off? My son caught a little of that from me. He took the first bike we bought for him completely apart. He also inherited my mechanical skills, since that bike was never the same. But show me something broken in pieces and I'll try putting it back together. Think about the "I can fix that" urge that men seem to have, irrespective of how much or how little talent we possess in that department. Is that synthesis? I'm thinking it only becomes synthesis when there is something new added to the mix. So just trying to put it back together is just a transitional stage, maybe even a subtle form of re-analyzing something. It becomes synthesis only with the addition, the newness.
I was comparing notes with a friend of mine about some things in life that had really come apart (secretly focusing on my own stuff, I guess). It has made me think about how something new must enter the equation to make a change. And change is necessary—what has come apart has come apart for a reason. If you simply put it back together just the same, it can be expected to come apart again, right? So, yes, change is needed. Besides that, things usually don't come apart unless some new event or information comes into play.
That doesn't mean we don't need to know how things (our lives, our relationships, our vision of ourselves) went together in the first place. We won't know how it has changed if we don't understand how it worked before. But another piece of synthesis involves taking diverse elements and putting them together in a new way. Logically, that synthesis has to be new, or the "diverse elements" would not have really been diverse in the first place.
So now, I see this response to something coming apart has to be about dealing with change (that would be the new element that made things come apart). Self-examination is a beginning step, and necessary one. But as we struggle to synthesize anew, more "new' is needed. It can be a change in places, people or things. The first "new" you pick up may not be the answer, but it is the necessary beginning.

Wine A Bit, You’ll Feel Better

This little note will have little or nothing to do with wine and the fact that this is Friday. I just like the phrase. I found it at a party store—surprise. But feeling better is up to you, isn't it? I understand some maladies don't disappear just because you decide to feel better. However, most physical conditions are that way—they can't be wished away. So our choices are to deny the issue or accept it, right? If you deny it, reality will catch up with you. It will still be present, and will continue to make itseIf known. If you accept it, the outcome will be the same, but without the catching up.

Whatever is coming about from this malady is likely to continue. So, the next decision is whether to feel bad, neutral or good about it. If I choose to feel bad about it, then that is too bad, or two bad—I will feel bad from the malady, and feel bad about having the malady. If I choose to feel neutral about this case, I will feel only the badness that arises from the malady. If I feel good about having the malady, people are likely to talk. What kind of a nut feels good about having a malady? But how does that hurt? It is only what they think or say, right?

But, it doesn't hurt you, does it? So, score one for accepting and then feeling good about having the malady.

So, let's move on to non-physical conditions, things that are only "in the mind." What happens if I face the same choices on a non-physical condition or mood? Well, I can compound the problem by feeling bad about it, let it happen or exist by being neutral, or say it ain't so and struggle with it. So score one for letting it happen, because struggling with it creates its own anxiety. Hmm.

So the one thing in common is that neither case supports feeling bad about it, right? Just wallowing in it isn't desirable, is it? But denying it or ignoring it doesn't make it go away. So what about good old "poor me?" It sounds like an option we might explore, if we wine a bit.

Pop, Sears, and Artificial Limbs

Usually, I'm not given to allowing the greeting card holidays to influence the direction of my thoughts, so I was a little surprised to find myself thinking of my father while shaving this morning.

I'm sure it will surprise no one that my father had a corny (and highly repetitive) sense of humor. Go ahead, take your tape measure out to the apple tree, see if I care.

By the time I was five, my father's primary objective when I or my younger sister came to him searching for a little sympathy over a bump, a bruise or a scrape was to make us laugh. One of his favorite moves was to call out, "Dor (my mother's name was Dorothy), where's the Sears catalog? We're going to need to order a new (pick one: leg, arm, shoulder, finger, etc,) for this boy."

Sears catalog was yesterday's internet shopping session. Us kids used to make up our Christmas list from the toy catalog. Unfortunately, my mother also used the Sears catalog to make up the all-important shopping list, but she used the big catalog with the pants, socks and other practical stuff and not the toy catalog. (Oh, and I know spell-check will frown on "us kids" back there, but, as I told a friend recently, don't let spell-check take over your vocabulary, your new words belong to you).

I guess he is up there wondering about the karmic effect of all those times, as my older (oldest, really, but we try to humor him on that score) brother contemplates a knee replacement once his golf league concludes its season. He joins my sister who has 2 store-bought knees, and my younger older brother with his new hip (oh, don't let him fool you with that partial stuff—a hip replacement it is, just the same). By the way, Pop had a knee replaced in his 70's. Don't say it—and I'm showing signs of needing a brain replacement. Sears should have listened to him all those years ago. They would be doing a land office business in medical devices today.

Not to be beating anything with a dead horse,* but I think I have decided, just for today, that life's hurts could use a little more laughing off. Thanks, Pop.

*my new favorite malapropism

Busy Days Require Slow Ones

OK, I get it, I get it. Happiness contains the seeds of sadness. Life implies eventual death. Cold and hot cannot exist without each other. If the world were tepid all the time, we would not have hot and cold and that first chill that catches your breath on a crisp fall morning would never occur. It's the yin and yang repeated over and over, but people still deny, deny, deny. The important thing to understand is that it is all in the tension between the interdependent forces in the world and their interplay. We are given life and occasional happiness, what comes along for the ride? Well, it does. It just does and denying it doesn't change the fact. My good friend has told me we must expand our hearts in the face of this tension. That is true courage. But the fear remains, shrinking the heart. But I can stop that. Or can I?

Oh my—is this where you use OMG? I know this one! It's the endless knot—you've probably seen it before.

It has many interpretations, officially it's "the interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the dualistic world of manifestation, leading to their union, and ultimately to harmony in the universe." Another interpretation is that it symbolizes samsara-- the endless cycle of suffering or birth, death and rebirth within Tibetan Buddhism. But I like two others—love and friendship is one. I continue to know those throughout my life at all kinds of intersections. Another is wisdom and compassion, still a work in progress there. But I'll keep working this endless knot, with a little help from my friends. On some busy days, I lose track and forget it all, trusting life and happiness are not that fragile. Oops.

At some point in my life, this made more sense, but now I know what we're in for. Now, when I have busy days, I know slow ones will be coming. It's a requirement. Those slow days will come with time to come back and think it through again.

Courage, Fear and Freedom

At the risk of beating a dead horse, there is another element that keeps popping up for me—courage. People say I have courage because I face my reality. I am not sure where the courage is in that. It's not life or death courage, it's just inevitable erosion. Aristotle, in the Western tradition, defined the virtue of courage as a mean between fear and confidence, pointing out that too much confidence can be mistaken for courage in the foolhardy or those rendered overconfident by a string of successes. As far as I know he did not offer any indication that someone displaying fear could be mistaken for one having courage. In fact, the way he expressed it was that avoiding fear was more important than avoiding overconfidence. The extreme that one normally seeks to avoid that true courage moves toward and faces. When it comes to courage, it heads people towards pain in some circumstances, and therefore away from what they would otherwise desire. Huh? So far, it leaves me wondering how anybody recognizes courage when they see it, except maybe facing what you fear the most.

The Tao Te Ching, on the Eastern side is less specific, but still engaging in its way. There are four characters associated with courage—"loving," "causes," "ability" and "brave.' It goes on to distinguish two forms of courage this way, "One of courage, with audacity, will die. One of courage, but gentle, spares death. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit."
Now, we can add gentleness to facing fear, at least for some.

There is also a distinction between momentary courage that a soldier must have to face his fear of death in just that instant and that which must be sustained in the face of what is slowly advancing, like a rising flood, a leaking boat or a chronic condition. Both must face what they fear, but the soldier must have audacity, more so than gentleness. There is also physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is held in the face of pain, hardship, death or fear of death. Moral courage is to persist in doing the right thing in the face of public opposition or shame. But neither addresses that momentary aspect, and we are still left with that "gentleness" issue to contemplate.

You told me once that freedom sometimes evoked fear, just an undefined fear, similar in some ways to the realization that death is an inevitable fact of the human condition. Our reaction to that fear can and must only be to make certain the way we are living is enough. Are we now living as if we know we don't have unlimited days yet to live. Whether our fear has been narrowed to a specific threat or arises simply from a sense of our own mortality, doing enough for the others in our lives, being enough for those others, loving them enough all show up at once. We have freedom to thank for that. We can choose to be and do enough or not. The daily measure of this "enoughness" (your term) is a measure of a kind of courage, too. Everyone's courage in the face of impermanence is a measure of his or her virtue. I think gentleness can fit there, too.

Tai Chi Makes A House Call

I was disappointed to learn the story of James Reston's appendectomy and acupuncture in China in 1971 was apocryphal, however much it is recited by devotees of Eastern medicine. Some describe it as the "tipping point" for traditional Chinese medicine in the West. After that report, people began to sit up and take notice. It turns out the article was not a description of his own anesthetization by acupuncture for his emergency appendectomy while visiting China with President Richard Nixon. He did have the appendectomy, but without the aid of acupuncture. With that said, the good news is that the benefits of another aspect of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) have been firmly established. Tai Chi has been proven to benefit people with Parkinson's and other chronic diseases. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a clinical study that clearly establishes Tai Chi has a beneficial effect on PD patients that exceeds those of both weight resistance and stretching exercises. As a practitioner of both in the interest of maintaining my independence, I pursued it further.

Tai Chi is known (albeit up to now, unscientifically) to have benefits to its practitioners, in stress reduction for example. I have been doing a bit of research, and am learning more with every hour I spend. I am spending my time as I usually do—reading about it, even watching a video clip or two. I'm doing this instead of living it, of course. I often read about life as a substitute for actually living it. But, there are some things you have no choice about. One of those is chronic disease. I'm living that one, just now (see Blog Archive on February 10, 2012, The Full Catastrophe).

Into the midst of my usual approach of developing knowledge without making the commitment of actually doing anything about it, strode a friend and a friend of a friend and a friend of that friend (Whew! That was clear, wasn't it?). Well, they did it; I am not making this up. At dinner my friend was listening to her friend describe the findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, and she mentioned my interest in the means to do battle with the effects of Parkinson's. They agreed they should put me in touch with a newly-trained Tai Chi Exercise Leader who had some interest in working with people with Parkinson's. So, e-mails were exchanged and we made contact. She, because she had trained for some hours to become an exercise leader and wanted to make use of it, and me because it was time to put up or shut up, so to speak.

Consequently, S__ and I agreed to meet at my home to talk about it—note, we could have "talked about it" over the phone, I knew it would involve some element of practice. It turns out I can be talked into all sorts of things by the right people. I needed a nudge to move from watching and reading to doing and S___ needed a "first victim" to teach. So here I am, my third session is now scheduled, and I am learning Tai Chi. It seems Tai Chi has come and got me—making a house call.

Reading and Writing

It's a remarkable world we live in (Oh God, I sound like my father). Oh well, I suppose some of my voice is really his. My brother said the other day that when he hears my voice on his voice mail that I sound like him, that is, the way he sounds to himself. I have learned that writing is a kind of voice too.

But back to this remarkable world—yesterday, a dear friend recommended a book to me, really an author. When I couldn't sleep tonight, I sampled and then downloaded the e-book, and the author, Marilynne Robinson, leaves me speechless (imagine that).

Now, I am sure we have all had books recommended to us in conversation, I know I have many times before. More often than not, I can never remember them when I am in a bookstore. It's almost as if a curtain is drawn across the part of my brain where such recommendations are stored. I hope the books I missed were not as remarkable as this one.

From the first line, the voice comes tumbling out. I only wish I could write like that—not just to have the words come tumbling out—but for the words to have the capacity to catch you off-guard, to startle you into full attention with their speed and something else, something I can't yet get my head around. I will probably have to read the rest in a day or two just to figure out where we (she and I, the reader) are going with this. The book is entitled Gilead, and won the Pulitzer in 2005.

But this is not about the book; it is about what has happened to that process of recommending a book to someone. Having started on this little adventure, I am starting to rethink the process of recommending a book for someone to read. When you do, the person you are recommending it to can now connect almost immediately. It can, for a dedicated reader, become a new language. With the ease the e-readers provide, a whole heart and mind full of ideas, feelings and thoughts can be sent along by adding the book to your message. Sending your friend a recommendation might be more powerful than you think.

In the days of Cultural Literacy, when we all had a common vocabulary of ideas drawn from our common cultural reading list, people probably used characters and events from those stories to paint on their conversational canvas. If you have a lot of time, pick up the book, Cultural Literacy, its author, E.D. Hirsch, provides a much better explanation. But that's not a recommendation now, just acknowledging the source. I am learning to be more careful about my recommendations.