Hello Again

Hello again! 

Hi. It’s been a while. 

I know, right? But I haven’t forgotten you, I promise. 

Life happens, and before you know it, seven years have passed. I never imagined I would end up now, almost exactly where I was geographically and professionally 23 years ago. I couldn’t be happier. 

Well, I could be -- I think we all can be -- but I have returned to my passion. I let my vanity drag me through ten years of jobs that gorged my ego and starved my soul. The work I did during that time is some of the greatest work I’ve done in my life and I will be proud of it until I die. Nevertheless, it drove me to depths of depression that required every ounce of my energy to conceal - more unsuccessfully than I thought. 

I didn’t know it until I recovered. 

I have written before about joy. I didn’t realize at the time that I was in the middle of a miserable period of my life. Looking back, what I wrote then remains true - or even more true today. The unceasing deluge of “information” overwhelms our capacity to regulate feeling. It seems we have lost the capacity for anger. Instead we vault from calm to rage. 

Last week, Time magazine published a story about the breakdown of civility, “Why Everyone Is So Rude Right Now.” They named all the usual suspects - stress, change, and fear. All of society rarely encounters those three emotional challengers at the same time.

It is all of society. 

Two similar times have occurred in American history - the 1890’s and the Great Depression. As today, much of the stress, change, and fear originated in the vast gaps in wealth that had developed in the Gilded Age and Roaring Twenties but proved unsustainable by the Panic of 1893 and the Wall Street collapse in October 1929. The COVID-19 pandemic proved economic warnings about the growing wealth disparity true. The 1890’s gave rise to labor unions and the 1930’s marked the origination of a social safety network that eased such great swings until both fell out of fashion in a generally prosperous society of the 1980’s. Forgetting the lessons of history, we celebrated the accumulation of wealth while ignoring the economically precarious. 

This year has seen a different kind of labor action: the great resignation and widespread staffing shortages in low-pay jobs. Rather than organized action, the strikes are being staged by one employee at a time as they find opportunities with better pay and/or working conditions. The lack of civility directed at individuals, people deemed “essential workers” at the onset of the pandemic, hastened the movement. Others cannot return to the workforce due to responsibility for young children or elderly family members for whom there is no longer another source of care. 

The Time article cites another factor absent in history - the language dominating the national discussion. Words matter. Our leadership - at every level and on both sides failed their vocabulary test. The attack on any opposing idea as anti-American and the “othering” of anyone in disagreement makes rational discussion nearly impossible. Reason has been removed and replaced with emotion. Facts don’t matter, perception does. 

The vitriol spread in media and social media makes finding joy a challenge. Even I, Mr. Joy, question whether it is present in my life. 

Thankfully it is. 

Joy is playing with my niece.

Joy is cooking something new. 

Joy is watching my chickens being chickens. 

Joy is grading a paper on which one of my struggling students is successful. 

Joy is reading a book that has nothing to do with anything. 

Joy is writing again.

The "Sucks to Get Old" Drawer

Recently the time for a change came to the drawers that hold my regular/easy access grooming and personal care products. As much as I dreaded doing it, convenience dictated that I reorganize.

Moisturizer lost it’s place as one of the first products I sought while preparing for the day, and muscle rub took its spot.

The “I Feel Pretty” drawer became the “Sucks to Get Old” drawer.

Potions replaced lotions.

I don’t know if I am more upset that muscle ache relief became such a vital part of my life or that the skin care products upgraded to most of a shelf in my linen closet.

What I really dread is the day that the anti-achey stuff expands to the shelf in the linen closet.

Inspired NOT Stressed

One of the most eye-opening discoveries in my graduate school counseling preparation was that everything is stressful and has been assigned a point value by Holmes and Rahe  on their stress scale. Even events people regarded as positives in life carry degrees of stress based on the amount of adaptation a person has to do in their life routine to adjust to the event. They connected the measure of stress to a likelihood of physical ailment based on the number of “points” accumulated in a year’s time.

Since the mid-sixties when Holmes and Rahe’s research was published, stress has become the catch-all boogey-man for any type of inconvenience we have (such as performance expectations at work). It becomes the reason for mistakes and the low-quality work. These interpretations of Holmes and Rahe’s work completely misrepresent what they believed about stress: it is necessary for life. Our reactions to the stressor are where the harm lies. Some current research reminds us of that understanding.

WATCH: Turns Out, We May Have Gotten the Science of Stress Completely Wrong | TEDTalks:

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McGonigal cites a study that reported on the effects of the view of stress and health consequences, not the stressor itself. They re-discovered that our response to stress determines the likelihood of illness and even death. Holmes and Rahe assigned the points on their scale based on the general reaction people have to the event - not the event itself. That is why the birth of a child merited fewer points than the death of a loved one. Likewise, a promotion at work scores lower than losing a job. We generally experience less disruption to life with the first examples than the second.

Since discovering the work of Holmes and Rahe in graduate school, I have considered situations differently. I work in a stressful field - education. The challenges differ from school to school and some of them are entrenched and cultural. As long as they are challenges, I have the power to seek and implement solutions that may make them less challenging. When I call them stressors, I have given up seeking solutions.

I am glad that some are beginning to reframe the conversation around stress. For so many years so much misinformation spread so widely that if the number of times a lie was repeated changed it to the truth, then stress would be the villain. Replacing the false understanding of stress with a correct one faces an uphill battle at the start, but I believe it will be readily received: the old news about stress was a tale of weakness, but the new understanding is one of power! Shifting the conversation to our response to stress rather than the stress itself puts control over it within our grasp: we control how we react. We control the effects of stress.

We control our lives. There is no longer a reason to use stress as an excuse.

Because...

Less than a day after Oxford announced that “selfie” was its word of the year, the Internet was ablaze with articles about the new preposition in the English language. As annoying as it is to have such a narcissistic term become the word of the year, accepting the change in usage of “because” is accepting one of the seven deadly sins into language. Using “because” as a preposition represents linguistic sloth at an unforgivable level.

Making  “because” a preposition usually serves to state something already obvious that could go without saying or it leaves the reader scratching their head.

“I tripped and almost fell today because clumsy.” We kind of figured that out at tripped. And you are telling us this because overshare.

“I cut the waiter’s tip in half because garnish.” So...not enough or too much parsley? The truth be told, you cut the tip in half because jerk.

I enjoy the changes in our language and that we have the ability to take certain liberties with it. I certainly do on a regular basis. Communicating the point we wish to make sometimes does not fit neatly into a grammatical box; stepping outside the traditional box draws attention to the statement being made as the reader/listener notices something unusual about it. Any adjustment to the traditional use of language should have purpose.

That would be the way I approach profanity. I rarely use it due to my belief that it carries great weight when used sparingly and under the right circumstance.

With the advent of text-spelling and Internet grammar, I expect there will be many more changes in the coming years as communication becomes more and more ubiquitous and compressed. Those of us who matured (relative term) prior to the wwwing of content find some of the rapid changes disconcerting.

Nevertheless, the changes will keep coming because creativity.

Shaped by an Era

(Since the original articles came out and I began writing my response to them, I have read much more about things that Deen said/did in recent times that crossed the line of acceptable behavior. She cannot use the excuse that it was “ok when I did it.” It extended into current times and to actions that are far beyond the use of language we now consider unacceptable. While she is now a less than perfect example for illustrating the point, the point that we need to use caution when judging historical behavior based on today’s standards stands.)

The recent scandal involving Paula Deen and her use of racist language has been challenging for me. The reports that she had used the “N” word came as a major “duh!” for me. She is a generation ahead of me from the south - of course she used the “N” word in her lifetime. It was a regular part of southern culture through the eighties (at least). It did not stop with the Civil Rights Act in the sixties: racist language did not cease because the laws changed. Unfortunately, it was a normal part of southern culture.

That it was a normal part of southern culture does not make racism ok; it simply recognizes that it was a real, regular part of life in that region at that time – and it was acceptable to the bulk of people living in that region at that time. We look back upon it with disdain, but history records its prevalence in that region at that time.

I do not excuse anything Deen said or did, but as a proponent of social justice, I believe we must be cautious about casting judgment, not just when someone is accused of racism, but of violating any contemporary social standard. I am a product of my generation and can guarantee that something I have said or done will be considered offensive by future generations. While I believe, somewhat, in psychic phenomenon, I do not profess to possess the ability to predict how society will change by the end of my lifetime or how things considered acceptable in my earlier life will be the object of scorn by the end of it. I do not expect past generations to possess any greater power. As a result, I feel an obligation to give due consideration to the generations that preceded me. Just as I do not want to be judged by the standards of future generations for living according to acceptable standards in my time, I must be cautious about judging previous generations for living according to the standard of their time by the standards of today.

The dynamic nature of society comes from our ever increasing understanding based on new knowledge. I have a hard time condemning any past group of people for operating based on their knowledge at the time. I have a problem, though, if we do not learn from their mistakes based on the knowledge we have now. Failure to recognize how changes have taken place over time stem directly from a lack of historical perspective (just ask a social studies teacher!). We live so much in the now, it is easy to jump on the bandwagon of outrage anytime we become aware of something that does not match contemporary sensibilities. We rarely contextualize the situation and nuance is often lost without the experience of proximity to the event.

In the age of Twitter, CNN, TMZ, and other round-the-clock media, would even Jesus have appeared perfect? By contemporary standards his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15:21-28 & Mark 7:24-30), for example, would have required a good PR specialist. Even though he did what she requested, the racist and misogynistic language he used in the passage would have been the headline despite it being used as an opportunity to educate. The whole story is never as memorable as the sound-bite. Even when the complete story, miracle and all, has been told, the sound-bite has stuck.

The current political climate has all sides responding in increasingly hostile ways to situations that historically would have merited little to no notice. The raw emotion created by the rapid change within society has put even people who should know better on edge and changed the norms under which most of our leadership learned to function. The rules and core beliefs of generations are being rejected. We know those rules and core beliefs were based on incorrect information, but that does not make the change any easier for the people involved. If anything, it makes it even harder for them to accept because the “facts” that shaped their world were not really facts. What then can they believe? When their entire mindset has to be altered, it is simply easier to reject the change outright.

We are all products of our generation. As much as we would like to believe we have worked it out and operate under enlightened rules, history tends to judge differently. As easy as it is to judge others for their shortcomings, let it be said about us that we extended some of the grace we hope to be shown when the foolishness of our ways is exposed.

Change and Such

         I have heard that only babies like change.

         I do not believe that.

         Ask anyone and they will likely provide a list of things they want to change – about themselves, about their work, about the people around them. The status quo gets boring. The longer we do the same thing, the more likely we are to find ways to do it better – change what we are doing. Regularly we are changing things around us.

         Yet when change comes from the outside, the chorus of “why can’t we leave it the way it was” rises quickly, and often most loudly, and from those people calling for change. Law, policy, new information directs change from many directions. Some of them questionable. Some of them worthy. Change happens and is a force in all we do. Our lives are stressful – or not depending on how we handle the changes that come.

         Years ago Holmes and Rahe developed a scale on how much stress a person has in their life. The scale calculated stress based on life-changes a person experienced in a year’s time. Whenever I ask someone to look at it, they are shocked to see that even positive changes create stress in life.

         Deaths (of family or friends) are stressful.

         Relationship troubles are stressful.

         Getting fired is stressful.

         Yes, even getting a raise is stressful.

         So is a vacation.

         Every change we have in our life is stressful. When the stress points total 150 points in a year, the person has a 50% chance of developing an illness. When the points total 300, the person has a 90% chance of developing illness or some other kind of blow-up.

         While Holmes and Rahe provide a guide to change stress, perhaps most important about change is how we approach it. Change and such happens around us on a daily basis. What matters is how we go about approaching it. We can resist and fight all change, increasing the stress that comes with it. We can take the opposite tactic and go with the flow to reduce the stress (Wrong! Going with it when we disagree with it is just as stressful as, or even more stressful than, fighting it).

         Or we can select our battles. Accept that change happens around us and let some change go unchallenged because it is part of the environment in which we work/live, but challenge those things that matter most about us. The energy that stress requires can be turned to something positive. Prescribed change challenges even the most resilient person, but the better we learn to manage that change and our reaction to it, the healthier we will be. We cannot prevent change, but we can control our response to it.

Flowing with Change

Last weekend while doing my hike and taking pictures of the rushing water, I found myself captivated by some of the water as it rushed toward the waterfall. As it encountered a rise in the stone or some hidden obstacle that was higher than the rest of the stream bed, the water rose up and tumbled backward, as if it was trying to escape the waterfall.

 

The inevitable tumble over the cliff came regardless of the energy spent trying to flow upstream.

 

I sat for a while, transfixed, thinking that this water was so much like us when we are confronted with change. We fight with every bit of energy we have to avoid the change, but ultimately are swept along with it.

Several events this week kept bringing me back to the images of the water attempting to run backward. Some events could be managed, others had to be accepted, but all were going to be what they were.

Change has been. Change is. Change will be. 

Living through change wisely is my goal.

 

Christmas 2011

I did not believe the Christmas forecasts when they started coming in. No, the forecast did not call for snow in south Texas. That only happens once every few lifetimes and we had that once a few years ago. The weather forecast actually called for what equals winter weather in south Texas – chilly with chances of rain. The chilly part is most certainly correct, but the end of the day will tell us whether the rain held true.

Work, in several forms, got in the way of the holiday cards the way I normally do them. Instead of 96, this year there were exactly zero that went through the mail. I did not even create a fancy electronic card. If the motto for my Christmas this year was on a t-shirt, it wouldn’t even make the t-shirt. I would be, “I attended Christmas 2011 and all I got was this lousy blog post.”

Behind the appearance of griping, the “lousy blog post” means I am busy enough and loving what I  am doing that I did not take the time to send out the many Christmas cards I normally do.  The blog posts also came in the way of Advent devotionals – one written for each day of the season – that is continuing into Christmas and in some form through the church year calendar on my other blog.

Doing the daily Bible study and actually meditating on the passages and then writing a reflection has done more to prepare me for Christmas this year than in a long time.

I am not at all giddy about Christmas; I am ready for the holiday to kick of a new season of work and opportunity.

Beyond preparing for the holiday in a different way, I made some major changes in my life this year that fundamentally shifted how I spend my time. The changes led to positive, measurable output in writing and reading and health, so I do not look back on any of the changes with regret. I write from time to time about technology – especially when it fails.

Some of my changes have involved changing the technology I have in my life – namely getting rid of cable television and actually spending more time working on my iPad than on one of my computers because, while possible, it is harder to multi-task on the tablet than on a computer or laptop. All that is for naught when I have the MacBook Pro, Dell Laptop, and iPad all going at the same time – which I sometimes still do - though I am working at only using one device at a time.

2011 truly has been a transformational year for me and it culminated in the preparations for Christmas.