wisdom

May 8, 2014

Beyond the Loss of Someone You Love

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When you have sustained a personal loss others provide consolation as best they can. If it is a death, there is a funeral to attend and a home to visit. If it is the breakup of a relationship or a marriage, there are phone calls, email, and visits, too. Plus, in almost all cases, an off-stage sigh of relief from the friend or relative who was not so close to the departed; relief that it didn’t happen closer to their heart and their home. But what is life thereafter for those who are most bereft?

You know some of it because you’ve lived it or read about it or seen it on stage: the tears and/or anger, the grieving process, etc. I’m not going into that which is well-known to most people, but rather some of the things you might not think about that happen when someone terribly close is gone; and how the life of one remaining behind can be changed. The items on the list may or may not happen to you, but they do happen, at least occasionally, for more than a few.

First, however, I want to emphasize that while we are not all the same in dealing with loss, the time it takes is usually measured in months, not years. That said, anniversaries of the death, holidays, and other significant events at which the departed is absent can be very tough, especially the first few times through. And the long shadow of an important life can reappear even years later, although without the emotional wallop, as a rule. Just to emphasize, this is something almost all of us get through, painful though it is. And, as you will see at the end of this essay, it can also be a thing from which you learn and grow.

Now to the less often discussed experiences that you might have while going through the grieving process:

  • Fatigue. Loss can be like a giant vacuum cleaner that sucks the life out of you. You may feel tired, need more sleep, or simply have a general lack of enthusiasm and joy. The sadness is well-known, the spirit-draining weariness is less frequently discussed, but can go on for months.
  • Dullness of Thought. Whether you have a razor-edged brain or the more ordinary kind, you just might find that your usual sharpness is compromised. Perhaps you will be more forgetful, perhaps slower to process ideas, or just less in command of the executive functions that your mind typically does automatically.
  • Seeing the Loved One Who is not There. The days will pass and you will usually do the usual things. Let’s say you are filling up your car with gasoline at one of those petrol stations that also include a convenience store, filled with some snacks and sundries. As you are staring off into space while holding the gas pump, you see your deceased father walking into the store to pay for his gas. You literally can’t believe your eyes, and yet it seems to be your dad. You wait for him to exit and, indeed, it is a stranger. For other survivors, a similar circumstance occurs when they hear the voice that is not there. These are usually not hallucinations, but simply a part of the survival and grieving process.
  • Reaching for the Phone to Call the One Who is not There. Something happens in your life that would normally cause you to call, or email, or text the person who is out of your life. Maybe it is news of sports or a personal achievement, a surprising event, or perhaps you want some advice. A second later you realize that the contact will be unavailing. It is either impossible, if the person is deceased, or unwanted, if your former love no longer wants you.
  • Thinking about What the Deceased has Missed. My Uncle Sam, who died at age 50 in 1970, loved technology. He was creative and made things with the digital dexterity of an old-time watchmaker, although that was not his craft. He was the first person I knew to have a tape recorder (big reels in those days before cassettes and digital recording), a window air conditioner, and a Kodak camera that gave you a photo seconds after you took it, an advance we now take for granted. He was also a rabid fan of the Chicago White Sox baseball team. Over the years, as technology has progressed, I have occasionally thought that he would have loved to live today to see and use it all; maybe even to play a part in changing it for the better. And, in 2005, when the White Sox won the World Series, he would have been in heaven. Then again, maybe he was.
  • The Inability of Others Who are also Bereft to Help You Grieve. The most poignant and difficult examples of this feature of loss come in families where a parent has perished or fled to parts unknown. If the family still includes a loving parent, the children are used to going to that mom or dad with their problems, assuming the kids are still relatively young. But now they find that the person who provided consolation is himself or herself laid low by the very same loss from which the children seek relief. Part of the reason that therapists are useful is that they have not been struck by the identical calamity and therefore have the emotional energy and perspective that the remaining parent temporarily lacks. In a way, the children of parents who are also grieving the same loss have sustained a double blow: the literal absence of one caregiver and the altered capacity and emotional support of the other.
  • Changes in Continuing Relationships. The demise or permanent absence of someone important can change relationships among the survivors. When a parent dies who served to block family differences and ensure that “everyone would get along,” those submerged conflicts can burst out. It is a bit reminiscent of the multiethnic countries of Eastern Europe or the Middle East who were ruled by a dictator, until the dictator was overthrown and sectarian strife broke out. In some other families — those where favorites were played by the parents — I have occasionally seen the passing of the parents permit the siblings to get over their grudges and become closer now that no one is present to “stir the pot” to a boil, setting one child against another. Then there is the departure of a central figure in a group of friends to another city. His or her loss can, in effect, be the loss of the glue that held the group together; or, it can be the opportunity to reform the group and perhaps add someone new.
  • The Death of a Child. This is the terror that haunts every parent who ever loved his or her little flesh and blood. Again, each situation is different, but I will comment on two possible outcomes only. Some folks effectively deaden themselves to their surviving children or to any new child who is born. Consciously or unconsciously, they are steeling themselves against the possibility of still another emotional wound. Blame, too, can raise its ugly face. If one or the other member of the couple believes that his or her partner “caused” the death by action, word, or inaction, the marriage itself is at risk. The suicide of a young person too easily sets off this chain of events. Yet it must be said that many of us have also tried to deaden ourselves after the loss of a romantic love. Time usually softens our hearts and fuels the courage to try again, but not always.
  • Meeting Someone Like Your Lost Love. My wife and I have made wonderful friends in the University of Chicago’s four-year “Basic Program” for adults.  One is a man named John Kain. For Aleta, John is more than a friend: he reminds her of her father, who died in 1968 before I had a chance to meet him. She describes John and her dad as “the kind of men whom everyone wishes to have as a friend, the salt of the earth.” Thomas Henek’s funeral drew hundreds and I am convinced he must have been the genuine article: someone you could trust, a person who believed in fair play, and an unprejudiced man raised in a prejudiced home; a man who lived a principled life with strong, but not inflexible opinions, a sense of humor, and, above all, the kind of guy you wanted to have next to you in war-time (he was in the infantry in WWII) — a buddy who had your back. Aleta says that talking to John saddens her not in the least, but makes her feel good because of his likeness to her father. Perhaps you will be so lucky after someone essential passes away, that years later you can, in effect, benefit from his likeness in a new relationship such as hers with John.
  • The Loss of Your History. We’ve all read history books with dates, statistics, events, and conjecture about what caused those occurrences. Usually historians wait a bit before writing books, in part because one needs some perspective to understand how the puzzle pieces interlocked and how the dominoes fell against each other before they stopped. Such books have the advantage of distance, but unless they are written by someone, now usually aged, who lived that history, one tends to miss the authentic voice of the person who was there. Moreover, written history does not take the form of a novel, and is necessarily more concerned with the big picture than those particular lives in which you or I might be most interested. Oral and video history projects, as well as photographs and home videos keep some of that alive. Yet, inevitably, there are things one wishes to know too late, even if you have interviewed an older parent or relative and kept the recording in a safe place. There are always new questions about times that were very different from the time we live in today. Parents and grandparents also are typically our only link to the days before video cameras were in everyone’s pocket.
  • The Undead Feelings about the Dead. In the superb 1970 movie I Never Sang For My Father, starring Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas, the first voice we hear is that of Hackman as the son of Douglas: “Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship.” Such a death, where issues between child and parent were never resolved, finds the survivor struggling to heal himself alone or with the help of others, but with no ability to talk things through with his deceased progenitor. As a therapist, it was often my experience that my patients didn’t even know the extent to which they were still haunted by the neglect, criticism, or frank abuse of a late mom or dad. Indeed, on occasion, someone who was victimized only felt “safe” after the perpetrator’s death. Only then could her conscious and subconscious defenses drop enough to permit exploration and full awareness of the mistreatment she suffered. To some degree, there was still a small child within her (metaphorically speaking) who was terrified of what would happen if she talked about the thing she knew was never to be mentioned.
  • The Things You Said or Didn’t Say. Conscience can be a troublesome trait. Your words or actions — the things you believe you ought or ought not to have done while your parent was alive or your lover was still with you — are now put in “your permanent record,” as teachers of my grade school era would threaten from time to time about in-school misbehavior. This can happen even if your parents or your lover weren’t the best, but made you feel that it was you who were at fault. You will see this played out realistically in the movie I just mentioned, I Never Sang For My Father. If you cannot find the movie, read the Robert Anderson play of the same name, upon which it was based.
  • Unsolved Mysteries. Regardless of how much time you spend in therapy or hours on your own considering and reconsidering the actions and words of someone you loved — romantically or otherwise — more than likely there will be elements of understanding that elude you. Realize that you need to observe limits on how much time you spend reflecting on your past. You must live the only life you have in the present, regardless of what has been lost. As the great black Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
  • Empathy. Though no one would choose to grow by experiencing loss, we tend to learn more from sadness than happiness, especially about the human condition. There is a depth that can come from loss and knowing that you can come out the other side. No life is clear sailing all the way. Losing a close friend, lover, brother, sister, or parent not only can enhance our ability to be kind to others, but also to be kind to ourselves. More than that, it silently speaks to the folly of believing that the accumulation of wonderful material things is more important than spending time with those you care about, while reminding us that those objects can be replaced, but a life cannot be.
  • Appreciation. A recent episode of the great TV comedy series, The Big Bang Theory, presented Bob Newhart as the ghost of the just-deceased “Professor Proton;” a man whose science show for children had inspired two of the program’s main characters, Sheldon and Leonard, to become physicists. Both of them had come to meet and know their childhood hero in his old age, and were troubled by his loss. Sheldon, when he is “visited” by the ghost, believes the Professor to have returned in the manner of Obie-Wan Knobe, the Jedi Master of the Star Wars films, who “lives” posthumously as a mentor and guide to Luke Skywalker. Sheldon is a brilliant but very self-involved and condescending young man, something the Professor is wise enough to identify. Proton responds to Sheldon’s grief with the suggestion that he begin to show appreciation to those still alive and around him while he can.

If there is any positive message in an ended love, I think the Professor had it right. The human heart does tend to heal, as the history of our shared humanity reveals. The danger is in ignoring the terrible fact that no one will be here forever. Loss reminds us to get on with life, to do what is most important, and to show and tell those we love just what they mean to us. Time sometimes is generous with us and gives us lots of opportunities. But Father Time does not put out printed departure schedules for the passengers on his train. We do not know when the wild and wonderful, up and down ride of life will end.

Don’t wait for the right time. The right time to show appreciation is right now.

—

The above photo is a U.S. Department of Defense photo essay taken by John Crosby. It is not about a permanent loss, but the emotion seemed to me to fit this topic. According to Wikimedia Commons, “U.S. Army Spc. Nathan Martin hugs his father a final goodbye before the 3-19th Agribusiness Development Team’s Afghanistan departure ceremony on Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center, Indiana, Sept. 25, 2010. Martin, assigned to the Security Force Platoon, is saying goodbye to his loved ones one last time before deploying.”

 

April 28, 2014

Man’s Humanity to Man

This will be short, but important to those sensitive to the human condition. It is about our basic humanity and responsibility to respect our fellow-man.

I came upon the brief video below while reading a blog written by a thirty-something New York City area English teacher who is struggling with infertility. Her blog, The Empress and the Fool, is very much worth your attention, especially her recent post, Resolve to Know the Capacity of the Human Heart.

It is the video, however, that is my focus today. I’ve written before about the problem of the street people we see every day in any big city like Chicago. How do we look at these nameless people? What do we do when they importune us for money? How much respect or conversation or eye contact do we have with them? What do we think about them? You can read or reread that post here: On Giving to Street People.

What follows in the video is the answer to all those questions from the perspective of one homeless man who tries to survive in the area of Chicago’s downtown Metra station, the railroad that brings suburbanites like me into the city at the Union Station stop west of the Loop. I will say no more about it, because the dignified man who is interviewed says it all. If you’ve enjoyed anything I’ve written before today, I have a favor to ask of you:

Watch and listen to Ronald Davis:

—

 

 

April 21, 2014

How Much Does Your Reputation Matter?

 Your reputation

It is hard to run from your reputation. Like your shadow, it keeps pace with you.

There are several aspects of reputation to consider:

  • How does a good reputation help you?
  • What factors influence whether you have a good reputation?
  • What are the consequences of being too concerned about your reputation?
  • Is there value in thinking about the reputation of others?

1. A recent study on baseball demonstrates how an especially fine reputation is helpful. Even if you aren’t a sports fan, I think you’ll find this of importance, but I’ll keep it brief.

As baseball fans know, the pitcher of the ball is trying to keep the hitter from getting on base. The rules require that if the pitcher throws the ball outside of the hitter’s “strike zone” four times, the hitter is automatically allowed to “walk” to first base. The formula is four “balls” thrown out of the “strike zone” = a “walk.” Unfortunately, however, Northwestern University’s Braden King and Columbia University’s Jerry Kim, have found that the pitcher’s reputation causes umpires to bias their judgment of those pitches that are not put in play by the batters.*

For example, “…umpires tended to favor All-Star pitchers. An umpire was about 16 percent more likely to erroneously call a pitch outside the zone a strike for a five-time All-Star than for a pitcher who had never appeared in an All-Star Game. An umpire was about 9 percent less likely to mistakenly call a real strike a ball for a five-time All-Star. The strike zone did actually seem to get bigger for All-Star pitchers and it tended to shrink for non-All-Stars.”

King and Kim further state:

Baseball insiders have long suspected what our research confirms: that umpires tend to make errors in ways that favor players who have established themselves at the top of the game’s status hierarchy. But our findings are also suggestive of the way that people in any sort of evaluative role — not just umpires — are unconsciously biased by simple “status characteristics.” Even constant monitoring and incentives can fail to train such biases out of us.

Simply put, we are influenced by status and reputation in ways that are difficult for us to overcome. It might lead to getting better or worse future grades because of your reputation as a good or poor student. It might mean that your reputation for work performance lands you better or worse jobs. It might mean that the school you went to (say Harvard or Yale) makes people think better of you, treat you differently, or automatically assume that you are smarter than someone who was just as intelligent but who could only afford to go to a more modestly priced school or no college at all.

2. Now for the second question: what factors influence whether you have a good reputation? I’ve already mentioned a few, but let’s consider others. For example, in the Ancient World of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, it was common to ask people not only where they came from, but also ask who were their parents. This might sound a bit rude in today’s Western World, but it routinely came up early in contact between strangers at that time. You see some of this in the Bible, too. One’s lineage was assumed to say something important about who you were; better, in other words, to be the child of a king (and the heir to the king’s wealth and the ability to benefit from his gold-filled pockets) than the offspring of a slave.

We do participate in the same practice today, although it may take us a little longer to find out the information. We frequently want to know details of one’s parentage, upbringing, and life history to form an “opinion” about whether a relatively new social contact is someone we can trust and rely upon.

There is a downside, too. If your family of origin has a history of alcoholism or drug abuse, mom or dad can be quite a social liability. Indeed, your own parents probably discouraged you from being friends with certain other childhood neighbors because of what they already believed about those potential playmates’ families. At the greatest extreme except for murder, is perhaps when there has been a suicide in the family in question. Although suicide was seen as a perfectly honorable act by some in the Ancient World, Christianity apparently changed the view of it. Now, many think of it as dishonorable, cowardly, or sinful, even if they are not Christian. Moreover, it raises questions about the suicide victim’s spouse, children, parents, and sometimes even others to whom he was close; that is, it can throw a shadow over their reputations.

3. What are the consequences of being too concerned about your reputation? At one level, your reputation is important to making a living. If you are thought to be industrious and creative, your ability to make a good living is likely to benefit. The reverse is also true if you are thought to be lazy, unreliable, untrustworthy, or dull. Naturally, then, some awareness of your reputation is important, as is a desire to have it shine a good light on you.

But there is an alternative view of this, especially regarding those who are insecure, preoccupied with status, overly sensitive, or believe they have things about themselves that must be hidden from others. Such a person might be forever trying to find out what others are saying and thinking about him or her. He might be afraid of becoming close to people for fear that they will find out the source of his shame. At the extreme then, ever-present reputation concerns can be an ongoing nightmare. This is especially unfortunate if we remember that most people spend much more time thinking about their own ups and downs than about you or your history.

The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius put it well when he said: “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others…” John Wooden, the famously successful UCLA basketball coach, went so far as to focus away from reputation to what he believed was more important: “Be more concerned with character than reputation. Character is what you are, reputation is what people think you are.” Winston Churchill, the great British statesman, said the same thing in a slightly different way: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” In other words, have the right character and the strength to stand for what is important to you despite what others may think.

4. Finally, how much value is there in thinking about the reputation of others? Put differently, is it important to consider what you’ve heard or read about people, but haven’t actually experienced directly with them or from them?

People in new sexual relationships often don’t give reputation enough value:

Friend: “He’s a player. Don’t trust him. He’ll hurt you!”

The Innocent: “Oh, but he seems so nice and considerate. That can’t possibly be true.”

History may not be a perfect predictor of future behavior, but it is often the best one we have. We sometimes ignore that history at our own risk. As a therapist, I know very well that people can and do change, but not all do, and not all want to. Those with a history, sometimes even a history of early life mischief, can return to lying, cheating, and breaking promises in their own self-interest; and they are often capable of rationalizing their reversion quite successfully.

That leaves us with some dilemmas, doesn’t it? Not all reputations for good or ill are deserved. Yet some are. Too much trust and you will be someone’s fool; too little and you will have no friends.

Not all people who appear to be decent are decent. They may either be “confidence men” or men in whom your confidence is justified. They may be either people who have made genuine and lasting changes or those who will abandon you or steal, lie, and cheat when the chips are down. Only experience and street smarts will help you tell who’s who and I’ve never met anyone who always has the perfect measure of others.

Hell may be other people, as Sartre said, but it is also heaven if you are lucky to meet the right ones and have the good judgment to tell the difference most of the time.

One more thing to remember. Be careful about being too judgmental. None of us is as good as we could be. I’ve never seen a perfect person, including the guy who looks back at me from the mirror.

—

 *This op-ed, What Umpires Get Wrong, appeared in the March 30, 2014 New York Times in the Sunday Review, p. 12. The actual study will soon be published in the journal Management Science.

 

 

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/winstonchu135210.html#PeKiGTagK0MzsQcy.99

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/winstonchu135210.html#PeKiGTagK0MzsQcy.99In research soon to be published in the journal Management Science, we studied umpires’ strike-zone calls using pitch-location data compiled by the high-speed cameras introduced by Major League Baseball several years ago in an effort to measure, monitor and reward umpires’ accuracy. After analyzing more than 700,000 pitches thrown during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, we found that umpires frequently made errors behind the plate — about 14 percent of non-swinging pitches were called erroneously.

 

March 31, 2014

The Lament of the Middle-Aged Sports Fan

Dale Kasel

Spectator sports, like therapy sessions, have their ups and downs. For the middle-aged baseball fan, even some of the downs have value. And so, as a public service, I will offer you a few thoughts on why millions of people spend billions of dollars watching something they can’t do and probably never could do very well; something that causes much aggravation and that, by season’s end, leaves most of them disappointed, year after year.

First, the painful fiscal facts. There are thirty Major League Baseball teams. In every season, the fans of 29 of them will observe that they rooted for a team that did not win the World Series. In the 2012 season:

The Fan Cost Index, the total price to take a family of four to a game increased by 2.4 percent to $207.68, according to Team Marketing Report’s exclusive survey.

The Fan Cost Index is created by combining four non-premium tickets, two beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs, parking, two programs and two adult-size hats.

I’m thinking the two adult-size hats were included because the alleged adults needed to cover the hole in the head that allowed them to spend over $200 for the privilege of a bad seat and a day shot on fighting the traffic just to watch the home-favorites lose. And remember, I’m a baseball fan!

So what explains this exercise in self-flagellation and taking the fast-track to a life of poverty?

  • Comradery. Most of us find it very easy to talk at least a little to our fellow-fan of the home team, for the simple reason that we know he thinks like us and feels our pain; he experiences the same joys and sorrows as we do. We are bonded just by sitting in adjacent seats. It is a pleasant feeling and people out for a day in the sun usually start that day in a pretty good mood.
  • An Opportunity to Complain. Complaining, unless you are a member of the Tea Party, is seen as being a bad sport here in the USA. We think of ourselves as a “can do” people, who need to be blindly optimistic no matter the circumstances. But sports gives us a socially approved opportunity to vent and we all need some venting. That’s why we purchase air-conditioners and keep the windows open when we drive.
  • The Illusion of Youth. Where else can a 350 pound middle-aged man get away with saying, “That was an easy ground ball. Heck, I could have fielded that.” This, from a man who cannot see his own shoe tops while standing. Really. We all want to think of ourselves in the heady and fit days of our youth, when agility had not yet been replaced by flaccidity and ill-timed flatulence. For $207.68 you get four tickets to a place where people don’t laugh at you when you imply that you are a better man than someone half your age.
  • Distraction. Baseball is a pastime. It takes you away from the fact that your car needs repairs that you can’t afford, your son needs braces on his teeth that you can’t afford, the boss needs work you can’t afford to botch, and your spouse wants you to repair 18 different parts of the house that you can’t afford and have no idea how to fix on your own. A baseball park offers a place of escape, a Never-Land of illusion, a temporary refuge from the steam-roller of life.
  • Identification. Most of us lead pretty ordinary lives. We are not great heroes and athletes. No one we pass on the street points to us and says, “There goes godlike Achilles! Wow, I wish I could be like him.” But at the ballpark we can identify with wonderful athletes who can do things that we can’t and never could. When they hit home runs, so, in some sense, do we. For our $207.68 we borrow the hero’s prowess and glory in his achievements, at least a little bit. And, should the team actually win a World Series Championship, we hold up the foam finger we bought for even more cash and shout “We’re Number One!” We?
  • Looking for Something Bigger than Ourselves. Nietzsche said “God is dead.” That wasn’t entirely good news. Most of us seem to need something bigger than ourselves to attach to and believe in. We need other fellow-worshippers, too. And so we go to the ballpark, where the faithful at the green cathedral continue to hold on to the belief that, finally, “This will be our year.” That all those who believe in other teams are actually worshipping false gods. That the ballpark is a substitute for a church, a temple, or a mosque. And that the cost of admission is like a donation or a tithe — a small price to pay for the privilege of worship; to see the ballplayers, AKA the priests, perform (we hope) their magic on the field of play and give us reason to “believe” in spite of the fact that the team is 30 games behind the leader in the standings with only 25 games left to play. It is, in other words, a place where a die-hard baseball fan prays for a miracle.
  • Bonding with Our Children. Whether you have a boy or a girl, there is something quite wonderful about watching the game together, teaching them the rules, letting them share your excitement, and recalling for them the time your dad took you to the ball park, and the time that his dad took him to the ballpark, in a never-ending line of shared experience and love.

I have a confession to make. Until I was in my early-60s and suffered a torn meniscus in my left knee, I actually thought I could still play ball passably well. Yes, I was one of those people I’ve just described. Self-deluded. Holding on to a youth that was long past. Rooting for a team (the Chicago Cubs) that still hasn’t won a World Championship since 1908.

We need our illusions, our attachments, our distractions.

Perhaps $207.68 is a better deal than I thought.

—

The top image is a photo of Dale Kasel in 2007, then an outfielder for the Air Force Academy baseball team. It was taken by an unknown author and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

March 23, 2014

How Important is “A Room of One’s Own?”

poor schools

How many of you, I wonder, have a room of your own? Most, I would guess, but that doesn’t mean that everyone does; certainly not in the current economy. And what is life like if you don’t have such a place where you can retreat from the world, be silent, think, read, write, watch TV, go on the computer, or do whatever you want?

Virginia Woolf, the great English author, presumably thought it desperately important, especially for women. I will take only a moment of your time to think about a few of the ideas she expresses in her short fictionalized essay/novel, A Room of One’s Own, published in 1928. Her book was written nine years after English women won the right to vote.

The essentials that the book’s narrator believes to be required for the life of a writer are a room of one’s own (with a lock that you control) and the equivalent of $33,283 dollars per year. The actual amount she names is 500 pounds in UK currency, but I’ve converted it to 2014 U.S. dollars. That precise number isn’t crucial. She — Woolf’s character — is trying to name a figure that will make you sufficiently independent to have the intellectual freedom to do some serious writing.

Woolf anticipated some criticism of these ideas. Here is one that might have occurred to you already:

…I think you may object that in all this I have made too much of the importance of material things. Even allowing a generous margin for symbolism, that five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, that lock on the door means the power to think for oneself, still you may say that the mind should rise above such things; and that great poets have often been poor men.

Woolf then looks to a man to defend her position, one Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, a famed literary critic of the day and the author of On the Art of Writing (1916). He begins by naming 12 famous English poets of the last 100 years. He continues:

Of these, all but Keats, Browning (and) Rossetti were University men; and of these three, Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well to do. It may be a brutal thing to say and a sad thing to say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius (is to be found) equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those 12 were University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well to do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well to do, he would (not have succeeded as a writer)…

Quiller-Couch goes on to describe poor, but talented writers who became psychologically troubled out of their frustration or committed suicide. Then comes his powerhouse conclusion:

…It is — however dishonoring to us as a nation — certain that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for 200 years, a dog’s chance. Believe me — and I have spent a great part of 10 years in watching some 320 elementary schools — we may prate of democracy, but actually, a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.

Money = intellectual freedom. Usually only with enough money do you automatically have the time and space and opportunity to “think” about something other than how you will receive your next meal and who you must answer to in order to earn it. That is the belief both of Woolf and Quiller-Couch. Woolf also confronts the historical “belief” that women were incapable of serious thought and inferior to men in almost every other important way.

Yet we live in a more liberated time you might say. My answer to that would be to ask you to realize that Quiller-Couch is referring only to men. Moreover, I have seen yearly one such school of the kind I believe he is describing, although it is not an elementary school. Chicago’s Mather Public High School is my alma mater, much changed from 1964 when I graduated. The poverty induced stress in the homes of many of Mather’s students is heartbreaking.

We know this from talking to these kids, reading their personal essays, conversations with their teachers, and reading the letters of recommendation written by those instructors. We know that by age 16, at least for some of them, they have already been so discouraged by their circumstances that they believe the “American Dream” does not apply to their lives. Indeed, we know that many of the friends of the best students tell them that their academic hopes and career ambitions are unrealistic.

As some of you have read on my blog, my graduating class created and has supported the Zeolite Scholarship Fund for 15 years, to give some of these poor kids better than “a dog’s chance” to receive an education and make a good living sufficient to the intellectual freedom that has been described here — the education needed to get a job that allows you to rent or buy the room and the lock and create an atmosphere conducive to serious thought.

As Quiller-Couch said of the England he knew, it is “dishonoring to us as a nation,” in the USA, that his words apply to our time and place as they did in his. I know there are no easy solutions, but that doesn’t mean one should wait for someone else to do something. It could be tutoring, mentoring, donating money for books or scholarships, or becoming a teacher yourself. It could mean voting for those who have some good ideas about how to change the situation or running for office yourself. Many other actions — governmental, social, educational, and nutritional — are possible.

Nor is this simply a matter of dishonor or unfairness. It is a waste of young lives, plain and simple, some of whom would benefit the world given the right conditions.

My suggestion? Start by visiting a public school in a poor neighborhood. Unfortunately, they are very easy to find.

March 15, 2014

What Money Can Do to You and for You

bag of money

Is a preoccupation with money like a religion? The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines religion in three ways:

1. The belief in a god or in a group of gods.

2. An organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.

3. An interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.

The last of these competes for our attention with the organized and historic religions. Some people even state that those of us in the West worship the dollar. Lots of sayings display the long shadow that money throws over human existence:

    • “Money makes the world go round.” (Others say it is love that makes the world go round).
    • “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life: now that I’m old I know that it is.” (Oscar Wilde)
    • “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” (Mark Twain)
    • “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (Timothy 6:10)
    • “The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.” (Johnny Carson)

Of these, I think perhaps Johnny Carson (the long time host of the Tonight Show before Jay Leno) is the most intriguing. Carson enjoyed being a wealthy man, but recognized that it didn’t guarantee a happy life. All the problems with relationships, alcohol, broken marriages, infidelity, an even an ever-present bit of anxiety before every comedy monologue he ever gave — all these were well-known to him. He appears to have enjoyed being a rich man, but equally seems not to have been a very happy one.

Carson’s comment only deals with the problem of having lots of money. No, his worry was not the same as the person who wonders if he has enough for a room and a good meal or how to put his daughter through college. In his short story, Under New Management, Joseph Epstein expresses a different perspective in the voice of his character Artie Abrams, Marty Abrams’ son. Marty was a father who became wealthy in middle-age or, as his son put it:

I had to wait until my twenties to acquire a father like everyone else’s: a man distracted, concentrated on moneymaking, with less and less sense of the everyday adventurousness of life.

Artie blamed his father’s second wife for this. Artie’s mom had died of cancer some years before the new Mrs. Abrams transformed her husband into a money machine. And what did Marty himself think of the “magnificence” of his own wealth? He told his son exactly what he thought:

Some magnificence. It’s just about money, and money isn’t always magnificent. Sometimes it isn’t even a lot of fun. You always have to be watching over the goddamn stuff, making sure it’s producing on its own, that someone isn’t making a tenth of  a percentage point more than you, which leaves you feeling like a schmuck. This is not a problem I expected to have.

Most people would call it a happy problem, Dad.

But for Marty and Artie there was a bigger problem. Marty had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. As Johnny Carson said, “The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.”

Beyond the necessity of money in order to purchase life’s necessities, it is almost like a projective psychological test that all of us take without giving our permission. A dollar bill is the same in anyone’s hands: it looks the same, it feels the same, it smells the same, but from one person to another it doesn’t mean the same thing.

What do I mean by this? I’m talking about why it might be important to you beyond the essential things like purchasing food. Think of some of the possible meanings money has for people:

  • a sense of financial security
  • public status
  • making a living
  • helping out your kids
  • a way to improve the lives of others by giving it away
  • a way to make yourself feel good by giving it away
  • the necessary ingredient to obtain the permanent sexual partner of your dreams, who might otherwise not give you the time of day
  • a way of measuring how you are doing in life in comparison to your business competitors or friends
  • a method of exerting influence over the political direction of the country (think of the Koch Brothers or George Soros)
  • a way of boosting your private level of self-esteem
  • the ability to see a ballgame or concert of your choice from a good seat
  • what you are willing to do in order to get more of it (get a good education, work hard, cheat, put in long hours away from your family, etc.)

For those who hope to alter their self-esteem by making lots of money, I’ve got some news for you: there are limits here, too. In my therapy practice, I saw a great many people who had made lots of money. Many of them suffered from low self-esteem, nonetheless. Some felt that they were frauds. The looked good on the outside — fancy clothes, nice home — but the money hadn’t changed what they felt on the inside.

Too many had believed that lots of money would solve all their problems and discovered what Johnny Carson knew, even if they’d never read the quote I mentioned. For most of us, the purchase of a new, fancy, expensive car feels good for only a while. As the “new car smell” fades, so does the emotional boost it gives us.

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, has some important things to say about money. First he defines two kinds of happiness. There is the happiness that comes from thinking about (evaluating) your life. This is called “life satisfaction.” Then there is the happiness or well-being that you experience from moment-to-moment. He cites a Gallup world poll to draw some lessons about money:

  • “The conclusion (of the Gallup research) is that being poor makes one miserable and that being rich may enhance one’s life satisfaction, but does not (on average) improve experienced well-being (the second definition above).”
  • “The satiation level beyond which experienced well-being no longer increases was a household income of about $75,000 in high-cost areas (it could be less in areas where the cost of living was lower). The average increase of experienced well-being associated with incomes beyond that level was precisely zero.”
  • “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.”*

Put all this together and one comes to realize that the American Dream to which so many aspire, is something quite imperfect. If you are looking for happiness in making tons of money, you may be searching in the wrong place. The legend of King Midas, whose every touch made objects into gold, was a cautionary tale.

It is a fine and necessary thing to have money. It is not so fine for the money to have you.

—

The money bag pictured above is the work of Barbara Lock and sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Joseph Epstein’s short story, Under New Management, can be found in The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff and Other Stories published in 2010.

*The quotations from Daniel Kahneman come from his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

March 9, 2014

Are Your Strengths Also Your Weaknesses?

STRENGTH_FOR_YOUR_JOB_-_NARA_-_515350

Most of us think that we can never have too much of a good thing. I’m talking about human qualities, not money or physical possessions. But if you examine your very best qualities you might also find that they have a flip side. Your strengths can actually be your weaknesses, too.

Take a person who is enormously outgoing, action oriented, and confident. He may dominate a conference and be a leader, but just might overlook some of the thoughtful ideas expressed by the quiet guy in the corner of the room who has a better answer than anyone else. By the same token, that introverted person who works well solving problems alone in his head is less successful in groups where the loud voices dominate. His quiet and contemplative excellence doesn’t transfer well to a team meeting and costs him the ability to make a strong impression that might be useful to him and his company.

In each of these cases, the strengths are double-edged: they cut both ways. The outgoing leader might be too quick to come to a decision that feels exactly right for him and of which he is sure, but wrong. Meanwhile, the quieter, more cerebral type can have difficulty getting his ideas to be heard.

Now think of politicians. They must be tough enough to withstand the enormous public exposure and criticism that comes their way. But that same ability to tune out opposition (a thick skin) can make them tone-deaf to some of the criticisms that they desperately need to hear in order to serve the public good.

What about qualities like beauty and celebrity? If you rely on your good looks to get ahead you may find that it too has a down side. Do people want to be near you or your handsome face and attractive body? Do you depend on those looks when there are other personal qualities and talents that might be important to develop rather than neglect? And then what happens when the gorgeous face fades with age?

As far as celebrity is concerned, the applause of a big audience everywhere you go must be a pretty heady experience. But the loss of privacy for someone like Steve Martin and the expectations of his admirers for him to “be” like the Steve Martin image he created came at a high price. Eventually he decided to stop performing the nightly comedy routines that were sucking the life out of him, according to his memoir Born Standing Up.  And what happens to those same celebrities when they want to go to the theater as anonymous members of the audience? Some actually do so in disguise.

The point here is that whatever your strengths are, it can be informative to look at the possible downside. If you do, the exercise below might enlighten you about your potential limitations and those characteristics you need to work on. Or you can ask an honest friend for his or her opinion about your strong and weak points. In each case you should think of only those situations in which the strength that is listed below has either limited your ability to achieve your goals or actually done you harm:

  • bold self-confidence
  • thoughtful, quiet, careful deliberation: a cautious, well-studied approach to problems
  • physical attractiveness
  • a thick skin (the ability to endure criticism and brush it off)
  • very high standards for your performance
  • being kind and forgiving
  • tenacity or never giving up on solving a problem
  • independence from others
  • being empathic (feeling the pain of others)
  • relying on intuition
  • being very rational
  • being detail oriented
  • focusing on the big picture
  • fearlessness

I’m sure you can think of many others. If we are to be well-adjusted, sometimes a frank self-evaluation is needed. Whether we know it or not, our best qualities do not fit every situation.

Adaptation and adjustment will eventually be required, no matter how successfully you’ve depended on a particular quality for most of your life. Even such a widely praised trait as assertiveness will sometimes work less well than a quiet, less direct fashion of getting what you want.

Life is a teacher. It expects us to be good students.

—

The World War II poster at the top was called Save Your Strength For Your Job. It was produced by the Office of Emergency Management’s Office of War Information Department between 1941 and 1945. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

February 10, 2014

Lost and Found: A Different Way to Think About Your Life

656px-Lost

A very old question asks you whether you think of your glass as half-full or half-empty. But permit me to make a suggestion: think of your life in terms of what you’ve lost and what you’ve found over all the years you’ve spent on the planet.

Take all the victories and failures, the things you can do and the things you can’t anymore, the friendships you’ve lost and the ones you’ve gained and put them in a basket. Don’t forget to include what you’ve learned over the course of your life — learning in terms of knowledge found in books and the knowledge that only comes from experience. Add your greatest joys and your worst moments. Be sure to fill the bushel with physical skills and abilities too, talents you had once upon a time and all those you still possess, including the new ones.

If you do this, I’ll bet you find that your container includes some of the following:

  • That you are wiser than you used to be, in some small ways and maybe even a big way or two. Perhaps this is part of what is called Maturity.
  • That, especially as you approach mid-life, you are less easily rattled by some of the things that used to overwhelm you. To some extent, you’ve probably learned to cope or even mastered fears you thought you never could.
  • That you might not be as spry or as fast in a footrace, but that you care less about it than you did in your youth.
  • That you act more like the tortoise and less like the hare because you know (most of the time) that “slow and steady wins the race.” Or maybe just because you’re not quite as fast as you used to be and have figured out a strategy to deal with that, kind of like a baseball pitcher who loses his fastball and still wins by dint of craft, guile, and perhaps developing a new pitch.

Glass_half_full_kind_of_day

I’m sure, as you reach for things to put into the basket, that you will remember how much some of those that are gone mattered to you, and how some still do. But, I’ll bet you’ll be surprised to see that you’ve replaced a number of them, perhaps with people or activities or skills that compensate for many of those that have disappeared. Maybe not all, or, just maybe, just as much or more than what you’ve lost.

What we are talking here is about adaptation. Adapting to life and to aging. Grieving and moving on. Licking your wounds and coming back to find out what the universe still holds that is good for you. And that sometimes what is good for you is also good for others around you, in part because of the feeling your generosity gives you.

Not everyone can do this. If we’ve had too many losses, some of us don’t even go to the “Lost and Found” Department to find out whether what we value is there. Part of the problem is that no one told us that the “Lost and Found” Department of Life isn’t like the one in school or in a department store. In those places, if you are lucky, you find exactly what you lost — the thing itself.

No, life’s “Lost and Found” Department is different. It holds every one of the things you’ve lost and doesn’t usually give those exact items back, all precisely as we left them or as they left us. But if you go there and look hard enough, you just might find objects or capacities — people or experiences — as good as what you lost, a few better, a number worse. And if you travel there with the right attitude, you can find things that are priceless. One of those surprises is not actually a thing. It is the knowledge that it is often possible to adapt to those that are truly gone.

It’s a little like the way a heart breaks, a love is lost, and one finds that it heals or someone else enters your life or other people and activities compensate you. The “Lost and Found” Department of Life doesn’t work perfectly, of course. You must be willing to make the best of it. But, there is one thing that is essential if you are to give it and life a chance.

You have to go there and see what it contains. Without that, there is no finding what you’ve lost; or something new; or something better; or something that will do.

No guarantees, not even safety. But life is full of surprises, as I said. It might be time that you forget about looking at glasses half-empty or half-full, and look instead beyond what’s been lost and see what you can find in that new place, the yet to be discovered things in life’s “Lost and Found.”

Good luck to you. Good luck to us all.

—

This article was inspired by Frank Bruni’s February 1, 2014 New York Times essay on the subject of Peyton Manning and aging, called Maturity’s Victories.

The top image is the Lost Properties Office symbol at a railway station in Poland. The author is Mohylek. The second picture by Pete Unseth is called Glass Half Full. Both were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

February 3, 2014

The End of the Story: What Happens After Therapy?

My Story

Imagine that you are reading a book, the only one of its kind. No other copy of the book exists. That, by itself, makes the volume precious. You find the story compelling. You identify with its lead character. And only then, fully engrossed by the plot, you discover that the last chapter or two are missing.

You are frustrated, aren’t you? Well, now you know a little bit about how a therapist can feel some time after treatment of a patient comes to its end. As the clock ticks away, you find yourself wondering from time to time: how did her life turn out? How is he doing?

Of course, you can call to find out, assuming that you have the correct phone number. Or, you can see if the Internet will avail you any information with which to track your former patient’s post-therapy path. But, usually you don’t. You have other things to do, other patients, other priorities. And, you don’t necessarily wish to invite a kind of contact that will overstep the boundaries of a therapist/client relationship or violate the ethical guidelines of your profession. Still, every so often, you wonder: how did this person’s life turn out after all?

Sometimes, even without taking any initiative, you do learn some things. Your former patient refers a friend to see you and you might inquire as to how your ex-patient is doing. Or, the ex-client writes you a note, almost always of thanks. On the other hand, some of them will recontact you when their lives have again hit a rough spot. In effect, they hope that you can give them a “tune up,” almost in the way that you might do regular maintenance on a car.

A small number of therapists, those who are interested in evaluating their own performance as precisely as possible, do send out questionnaires to ex-patients after six months or a year. That provides some feedback. But mostly what you’d really like to know is how they are doing after five or 10 years. What their life has been like. You’d like to think that time has been kind to them. You hope that their lives have turned out reasonably well. These people, who you have come to know and care about, are mostly decent and good folks, struggling (as we all do) to make the best of things, to have some happiness, to make their lives as interesting and successful and useful as they can. You wish them only the best.

It is not a major tragedy that a therapist does not know “the end of the story” or at least the most recent chapter. It is simply in the nature of the work we do. And, without question, patients also ask the same question: “How is the doc doing? Does he think about me ever? It would be nice to hear his voice.”

Clearly, the answer is yes, we do think back. We don’t remember each and every one of you, but we recall some of you very well. You have enriched us, and I don’t mean by writing a check for our service to you. We learned from you about our craft and about ourselves. We valued and still value your life. As I said, we wish you only the best.

Sometimes relationships continue within a person long after the two people involved have had contact. Rather one-sided, certainly. But, even though you might never know it, I can assure you that some people almost certainly still remember you in a positive way; both therapists and old friends whom you haven’t seen in years. Someone out there may indeed be thinking of you in the very moment you are thinking of her or him.

Isn’t that what everyone wants?

—

The magazine cover illustration above was sourced from Turn685 via Wikimedia Commons.

January 31, 2014

An Uplifting Moment (Two Therapeutic Minutes)

Therapy doesn’t only happen in the office.

Here is a brief and inspiring video, just over two minutes long. No essay for today.

I’m going to keep it a surprise, so take a chance. One hint: it is not about a soldier returning home. That is to say, the events in the video don’t contain anything unexpected. What is important is that you might feel better for having seen it and be reminded of something that is therapeutic for your life. I certainly was:

A Lovely Surprise