Apathy

Apathy bothers me more than anger . When I'm angry, I understand the cause, see it coming on, and see it dissipate. Apathy is more elusive. Sometimes I get stuck in an apathetic mindset and I don't know how I got there and worse - how to get out. 

Apathy ties in with desensitization - and we are desensitized in so many ways. Video games desensitize us to rampant violence. Comedy on TV desensitizes us to racist, vulgar humor and makes us critical of others. Lack of healthy outlets to release frustration and anger desensitize us to screaming at one another to get a point across. Impersonal communications such as text or social media desensitize us to how we really connect with others. 

And a personally poignant one - school desensitizes us to learning. 

I was navigating through 'apathy' in Wikipedia and I came across Robert Maynard Hutchins, who I hadn't been previously familiar with. Aside from become the Dean of Yale Law School when he was 30 years old, he has a laundry list of impressive life achievements. As an educational philosopher, he spoke about apathy and the disintegration of our generation. 

His book, The University of Utopia, speaks about a world where students learn about the intellectual concepts behind their majors rather than just the skills to simply 'get it done' - where children are first taught how to communicate with one another and then given the ability to choose for themselves what their school of thought will contain. He talks about having a full range of educational classes which focus on comprehension, rather than just 'getting through the class'. He talks about giving degrees to students who prove masterful comprehension, not just show their 120 credits. 

Utopian, indeed.

There is no question that while going through school my main focus was on getting good grades and getting through it. Not to say that I didn't learn anything, but I was more interested in the simple achievement of crossing the finish line than I was with gathering a deep understanding of the topic which so fascinated me - philosophy. I love philosophy and I loved it then - but it's only now that I'm devoting myself to getting to know it better. 

I'm sure those reading this can remember taking a class because it was pre-requisite credits you needed and you heard it was easy. Did it matter what the subject was? Minimally. And it never becomes as full of an experience as it could have been, and you never learn as much as you could have. 

There are so many distractions outside of class - video games, drinking, social scenes, social media, TV, movies - it's hard enough in this generation to keep focused on school. If the emphasis to really cherish the ability to learn isn't there in the professors, how will it be in the students?

Our culture needs to re-sensitize. Not that we have to become blubbering babies or anything, but we need readjust our grip on reality. If we keep pulling ourselves farther and farther away from reality, there's only so much we can handle before we shut off and ignore it all. 

I think the digital culture is a major culprit, but it doesn't have to be. Technology can aid in our evolution and connection to one another - but people struggle to see the reality that surrounds them when a device is in their midst. It seems more important to type what they are doing, in Facebook, than to actually live it. And the motto for the media and corporations, who keep making more and more and more, seems to be, "if it makes money, who cares what it does to our human culture?" 

Ah, I get apathetic just thinking about it. 

Slov

Determination

How easy is it to lose your determination? When I think of people who were challenged as children, with situations that were beyond their comprehension and sometimes control, I wonder how much it took for them to lose it. What makes a person fall so deep that they stop being who they are?

Our determination causes our actions, which defines our character. When we stop short and look over the edge, we never take firm action. We won't fight for what we need and our character will be hazy at best.

I've seen people who have lost hope that things can change, or that they can have any effect on their lives. They simply don't believe it's possible that they have any more control over what they feel. They feel the world happening around them, and they are ducking the blows.

I've seen people who give up on themselves altogether and leave the part that has lost determination behind. This is a difficult experience because the person is determined in one part of themselves, but not in another, and rather than bear the weight of their collapsed counterpart, they push on ahead and leave that part of them behind. But they can never be rid of that piece of them, and a struggle ensues within the mind.

I've been motivated to do a lot of things, but I keep stumbling over a distinction between determination and motivation. Motivation happens when I tell myself that something 'should' be acted upon - I give myself the 'reason' or 'motive' that a certain action must occur. Determination only activates once I've given myself enough space to make a choice that I completely commit to - a choice for which I am willing to struggle if necessary. Sometimes I mistake one for the other, and I confuse my intentions.

I am definitely finding that sitting down in a peaceful place and allowing my mind to feel exhalted helps allow my determination to step forth.

I love to be in awe. I love to be fascinated. The beauty of a moment, which reminds me to take a full breath of air; to fill my lungs and experience awareness in every single cooling atom that has brought clarity to my mind - I'm determined to find more ways to speak about that beauty.

Bubbling Stress

I have often experienced anger bubbling up and through me. I've often allowed that to create and sustain stress. As I've been settling in and becoming more relaxed, I have less tension in my back and shoulders than I used to, I get emotional less often, and I have consistent energy.

What's most striking is my newfound ability to fend off stress or anger as it approaches boiling, threatening to shoot up my neck and right into a headache-inducing exclamation of its presence. It used to be that once it made it's ascent, exponentially gaining speed, I was helpless against it. I would get stressed, defensive, and/or emotional. I would feel offended, guilty, or bitter. And the whole time I would hate that I was feeling that way, which would only prolong the cycle.

There have been a few incidents recently where I previously would have unleashed my stress monster, but I evaded it. Driving is always rife with stressful potential, but I find myself less and less with the urge to succumb to road rage like I used to. Of course, being in a place where people give each other the finger less helps as well - it's useful to not fuel the fire - but it's mainly my ability to better control my stress.

The most recent incident was today at work. My landlord came in, angry that we had called the heating company to clean our air filters. The labor costs were higher than what he wanted to pay ($0) and he said that he could have done it just as easily. I explained to him, calmly, that I had spoken with the heating company and they said they were going to talk to him before they came out, since the account was in his name.

He didn't affirm or deny whether they called. Instead, my landlord asked me why we had needed to clean the air filters. Still calmly, I told him I had been having sneezing attacks every time the heater turned on because dust was coming out of the vents. His suggestion was that we should, instead of turning on the heat to get warm from the chilly air outside, open the windows to air out the office.

I took a breath. The monster was brewing in my gut, but I told him to sit back for a minute.

I reminded our landlord that outside was cold and the reason for the heat was to mitigate the effects of said weather. Our patients couldn't be expected to be freezing during a treatment where they need to sit still for 30 minutes. Flustered, he asked if I felt better, now that this expensive air filter service was completed. I told him that yes, I was sneezing noticeably less whenever we turned on the heat.

His response was that it was all in our heads, and the air filter being really dusty and dirty didn't acutally make a difference. He told me that the next time we needed to clean our air filters, he would come do it, not tell us when, and he was sure that we would never even notice that he changed it.

I looked at him without responding. My monster was anxious for a fight, but my head wasn't even interested. It was a surprising difference from what I had come to expect from myself. I focused on this fact, rather than the illogical man in front of me. My other head would have welcomed the monster as he knocked over everything on the shelves to make room for his fat little body. But this time, I just didn't feel like getting frustrated or emotional about something that wasn't worth my stress.

So, I just stared at him.

He pulled back and explained that he wasn't mocking me, but was simply frustrated that it cost so much when he could have done it for us for cheaper even though he didn't feel it needed to be done. I repeated that the heating company was supposed to call him first but they seemed to not have listened. I apologized for the confusion.

He finally realized I wasn't going to succumb to his anger and left.

Then, my monster, though disappointed it didn't get to play, simply abated and settled back into the recesses of wherever he dwells in my core. He still exists and is able to put up a fight, but I have a better relationship with him now that we've had this reality check.

It's a good feeling, to not feel out of control and sucked into an emotional whirlwind; to not feel put-upon by the external world. Even saying this evokes excitement that I really am taking control of myself and choosing how my world unfolds. So long, it's felt as though I've been saying the way I wanted things to be, but that reality wasn't actually happening in the world and I couldn't understand why.

The irony is that I don't understand what I've been doing wrong until I've come around the bend and start doing it right. I rarely know how to do it correctly beforehand, I just have to take the risk and follow my instincts, when they show.

Asking Questions

I've always been one to ask a lot of questions. When I was young I remember asking question after question, wanting to understand 'what this means', 'how this works', and 'why this is'. My parents were willing to indulge my questions, but it wasn't too long after going to school that I started to develop negative correlations with my many questions.

When I was in school, I had a feeling of isolation from a number of my classmates. There were kids who weren't listening to the teacher, kids who were too intimidated or insecure to ask a question, or kids who weren't motivated enough to ask questions because they didn't realize the benefit questioning could have. Therefore, I felt alone as I stuck my hand high in the air, looking down at those other kids who were slumped down, trying to hide in their chairs.

This latter type of person, the unmotivated questioner, has become an epidemic that I see prevalent in a lot of people (of all ages) today. These people are acting on what they are being told, without questioning it enough to know why they are acting, or whether or not they prefer the action over another one they could freely choose.

It's easy to be pulled along, responding to what you are being told, believing the world is as the people around you are telling it is, and not worrying about other possibilities of existence. This is due to fear of too many options. To avoid overwhelm and failure, we settle.

I did and still do think that it's important to ask questions. I wouldn't have been able to self-motivate and create things for myself if I didn't know why contrasting behaviors wouldn't be beneficial. Trial and error is how we learn, and it involves questioning ourselves before, during and after our active choices. 

However. The next experience I began having in school as I got older, into high school, was a lack of encouragement by my teachers. Some teachers just wanted to get through their curriculum, other teachers probably felt that holding onto one topic for too long was appealing to the lowest common denominator when they needed to keep an average pace to appeal to the general population of students. Either way, many times I was sitting in class, with my hand raised for five minutes, the muscles slowly losing strength, only to have my teacher admit that they weren't going to call on me because I was asking too many questions.

"A symptom of not listening is asking too many questions". This is something that I wrote down the other day and it struck me. I've been having concerns about my focus and deeply listening - can there be too many questions?

I did stop asking so many questions as a result of being ignored (or so it felt) in class. And then, I realized that to many kids, it was cool to pass notes and not pay attention to the teachers. I was pulled into that world, where I began to perfect my skills of half-listening and multi-tasking.

So was it the teacher's fault? I don't suppose so - with a class full of students you can only answer so many from each of them. Was it my fault for not really listening and just trying to think of a question for everything I heard? I wouldn't imagine so - I was learning how to question and understand everything around me, all the time. What really happened, which was no one's fault, was that I went from one extreme, and once learning it was not ideal, went to the other extreme.

I keep coming back to balance. It's all one huge balancing act, and being too aggressive or too passive in the approach yields similarly unsuccessful results. And there isn't a spreadsheet with numerical limits to my questions to keep me aware of when I'm asking too many - "Oh! No, you asked 6 questions in the past 3 minutes. Sorry, you have to wait two minutes before you have another question in your queue."

Ha - spreadsheets and clearly outlined rules - of course I would ask for that.

I've been attempting to allow my questions to come through one at a time. It's sort of like eating: if I ask a question and sit with the response for a little bit, sometimes when I go to ask my next question I'll realize I'm 'full' sooner than I expected and I don't really need to ask the next question.

I need patience so I can review what I know and have just learned and make sure it stays in my mind, before I go and try to stuff more things in there. Previously, my technique involved replacing the thing I had learned before with the new thing I just learned. Didn't make for creating broader contexts from which more knowledge could be inferred.

Speaking slowly and asking questions slowly - I definitely sound like I'm from the west coast now :-)

Intuition

I've been reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink. I hadn't known about the book or intended to read it, but I happened to be having a particularly pensive day where I was trying to figure out why it was that sometimes I had a sense of what choices were best and yet I still did not act on them, when I came across the book.

I opened it to a story about a statue that was sold to the Getty museum after it was scientifically determined that it was authentic. However, four or five specialists knew that it was a fake without any scientific study- in fact, they knew it the instant they looked at it, even though they couldn't explain how they knew. It turned out they were right, and Gladwell uses this to lead into his theme - looking at the moment of experience that happens in a blink of an eye when we fully grasp a situation.

The problem is, we aren't always conscious of this moment, because this process is largely unconscious.

Blink explains why we should give more credence to this ability - many times, we can formulate more accurate judgments in one moment than we can after careful deliberation and study.

Of course I got excited about it. Being told that analytical, logical, fully conscious processes can be more harmful than helpful is just what I'm ripe for hearing. Since I've been working on balancing my left and right brain I have been trying to assure myself that even though I still can't always respond without a safety net, I'm on the right track.

I certainly believe in the intuitive mind. There have been many times when I've had a quick insight that something might be going on in a situation, that I understand what a person is feeling even though their emotions suggest otherwise, or that I will have more success if i take a certain action, and it turns out to be right. In fact, I experience it rather frequently.

Retroactively.

Meaning- I know it in the moment and i know how i can act as a result of that knowledge but i act in a different way out of fear, only to experience being incorrect and stewing in the knowledge that my initial urge was what i should have acted on. In these moments, I'm not letting myself play fully, not being completely fluid in my thoughts/actions.

As if in response to this distress call, the book assured me that the intuitive mind can result in faulty behavior. This happens when the left brain shuts it down instantaneously, before it is allowed to fully form as a thought capable of being expressed by the conscious mind. The resulting action is based on half-knowledge, and it looks as thought the intuition was incorrect.

Ah ha! Refer to my recent post on my posture while running. I experienced just that.

Oh silly brain, what clever tricks you play. I'd rather use that wit and quickness for entertaining connversations, rather than using it to build a shield against the very things I enjoy.

So what I'm concluding from all of this - I can't force myself to find deeper clarity within my unconscious, but I can have better control over allowing the uncontrolled understanding in my unconscious (so many un-s!) to enter more freely through the gate into my conscious brain. I must gain more control of the gate, but relinquish control of my intuition.

I have been focusing too much on trying to control my unconscious - and explain it in words. I must have been thinking that if I said enough words, perhaps my unconscious would emerge excitedly and say, "I've been hiding, but your amazing logic talked me out and made my abstract nature more coherent and controllable - thanks!"

My intuition suggests I have control issues.

Bali Art

Grateful

Aside from it being January, and having gorgeous weather without snow here in the Bay area, there's another beautiful thing that I see happening here that I've not seen before in such regularity or abundance. People watching the sunset.

It's amazing to me, whenever I go running at dusk, to see so many people taking time to walk and be together as the sun goes down. Teenagers, couples, families - so many people just holding one another, sitting and watching the sun drop down behind the Golden Gate Bridge. 

It's a wonderful sight, and it is amazing to me that so many people make time in their day for this moment. Every day is different, and every day is worth watching.

It makes me happy to see people loving their lives. No matter what other struggles they are going through and fighting for, they relax for a moment and let the beauty of the universe wash over them. They are aware and grateful that they can experience moments like this.

I am grateful for every sunset and all the people who go out of their way to see it.

Being the Statesman

Ok. I don't want to get deep into the political conversation, because politics in this country makes me want to switch on Apathetic and put in some earplugs. But I have been keeping up with this Tucson thing, have had a few conversations, and I'd like to speak briefly about our clarity.

I think it's pretty clear that we are a pale comparison of the democracy our founders intended. Democracy is meant to stimulate debate and discussion, in order to come to a decision, through compromise. Currently, all I see are arguments screamed loud enough to drown the other out, without the slightest hint of intent to reach a decision.

"We will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults."

I have a hard time understanding how Sarah Palin doesn't see that she is what she describes. To be fair, the yelling and defensiveness is happening on all sides. But Palin specifically has earned our focus this week. And I don't know if, "Don't Retreat - Reload!" is celebrating greatness - sounds more like being the bully to people who don't share opinions, rather than having a conversation with them and REALLY TRYING to understand why they don't agree with you. Either way, let's continue the clarity - screaming at each other, getting defensive and tossing out threats is not democracy.

As to the 'blood libel' comment - let's not forget that Sarah Palin says a lot of stupid things. I'm not sure if her speech writer is just as ignorant of politics as her or if she ignores the speeches they write, but she doesn't evoke intelligent deliberation. Being a non-Jew talking about a Jewish woman and using the term 'blood libel' - really ridiculous, but I expect nothing less from her. Perhaps she wanted to try to 'take back' the phrase; if that's the case, she's really gotta work on her timing.

In her favor, however, she just isn't presidential material. And that is in her favor, because it releases her from her missteps. She was put into the Vice-Presidential candidate role without any grounds for it, and she has since become no more of a Presidential candidate.

I had a conversation with one of my patients the other day. He is a person living in San Francisco who likes Palin and the Tea Party (they exist, but they are rare). I was eager to have a deeper conversation about his opinions and was, as expected, disappointed. Why was he a supporter? Because he is a Republican and he has no idea what is going on in politics. He just knows that he should dislike Obama and like the Tea Party. He asked ME to tell him what the Tea Party believed in. I hope all political sentiments aren't borne this way. But I'm sure many are.

He asked me why I disliked Palin, and I explained to him that she didn't have the ability to be a statesman/stateswoman. For better or for worse, if you don't like Obama, you have to admit he has that ability. He's chosen the 'voice' that he uses to communicate with the country - it's an idealistic voice, similar to Kennedy. Perhaps that isn't your particular preference for a leader - maybe you just want an aggressive voice which takes you under its wing. What Obama's words are doing can be uncomfortable - he is deeply trying to turn the mirror inwards on the American citizens, and to help them re-set their moral compasses.

Sure, with the state of our society now, where the majority of people want to be taken care of and not have any personal responsibility, I can see why people balk at Obama's mirror. Fear of taking on responsibilities and motivating oneself daily is bad enough, but to expand that and make each person responsible for the attitude of a community, society, country - most people become too overwhelmed and want to relieve themselves. They put it on their leaders - so the blame is on anyone but them when something happens they don't like.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep a neutral political tone - any person, regardless of political ideologies, who stepped up and spoke in a voice that acknowledged the responsibilities inherent in each person and encouraged everyone to take more control of the way their world functions, I would respect. 

We are nit-picking. We aren't looking at the bigger picture and we aren't asking enough questions to which we actually want the answers. When we become too frightened of what it would mean if we ask a question and get an affirmative response, because then we'd be obligated to take action - we've lost the ability to be in the world fully, to form fair and informed opinions. 

When we can no longer ask why, we are no longer individuals. 

When we stop listening and repeat only what we've heard, blaming the 'other' rather than seeing how we are responsible for the state of affairs we are mired in - we are no longer a functioning brain.

We might as well be robots.