Month: May 2017

Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

I’m going to be so bold as to say Newton knew what he was talking about regarding motion. Throughout my life, I’ve seen that during the times I’ve kept physically active, I had greater endurance and greater satisfaction with life in general. I’ve also seen that during those times when I’ve let sloth creep in because “I needed a little break,” it became harder and harder to get off my back or backside.

Simple message here: Keep moving. You’ll be happier and healthier. If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely you’re someone I love and I want to spend as much time as I can with you so do it for me if you need some motivation. I’m selfish that way.

Collectively, the three of us have had some somber, serious and even dark posts lately. Hopefully, our family and other readers recognize that as honest admission that life isn’t always great, but with the love of family and friends you can work through anything.

With that said, and with my coauthors earlier post on Memorial Day sentiments, I’m going to lighten the mood a little without, hopefully, defiling the purpose of today.

The other day I heard a DJ say that Memorial Day means beer, BBQ and parades. (I won’t dignify the lack of perspective since I’m keeping this light). So let’s get another interactive session going. Respond to the following questions with your experiences. Once again, my coauthors are required to respond. All others are welcome as well.

First Beer: Schlitz from my dads glass while eating pizza at Shakey’s pizza parlor when I was seven or eight  I hated it

Current favorite beer: Four Hands Incarnation

Most memorable beer: Guiness. Planned a full vacation around it with one of my coauthors

First Real BBQ: Central Texas BBQ near Monterey. The owner served up our ribs with his bare hands breaking every Health Code regulation in existence but people lined up around the block because it was so good

Best BBQ: Pappys in St Louis

Best parade memory; Tie between the Rambler/Scrambler parade every Fourth of July along the Great Lake near which we lived AND when my classmates and I drove my Mustang in our homecoming parade (story to be told in person later).

Happy Memorial Day

I recently read a book, The Time Book: A Brief History from Lunar Calendars to Atomic Clocks, by Martin Jenkins which talked about how we measure time. Before the invention of the mechanical clock every great civilization measured time in its own special way, with the associated problems. In ancient Egypt and China, they used sundials which required sunlight to count the hours and weren’t very useful on overcast days. Others bypassed this by using water clocks which steadily dripped water through a small hole into a vessel with lines painted to represent the passage of time. The problem is that changes in temperature change the viscosity of water which in turn affects the drip rate. On cold days, the water would freeze – so would time.

The Exploration Age with the great powers of England, France, and Spain brought about a new discovery. John Harrison, an English carpenter, invented the chronometer which measured time using the earth’s rotation.  The ship’s clock is reset to noon each day on the ocean when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. The earth rotates 360 degrees every 24 hours which means 15 degrees every hour. That’s also how they measured how fast the trip was traveling.

I was pondering time recently – and how we got to 24 hours in a day or even 12 months in year. This book answers all those questions in a quick format for kids and adults. Time passes quickly for all of us – even more so as an adult. Take time today and tomorrow and reflect on your experiences and appreciate those you love.

Memorial Day is a special holiday for those of us who have served in the military and for our families. We have so much to be thankful here in America considering what others in the world are going through. We are truly blessed. This holiday is supposed to be a reflective one. Where we think about those who died, and not just from the recent wars. The fact that young men and women have sacrificed their lives for our freedom doesn’t make us unique – many other countries around the world have men and women who will do the same for their country.  The fact we celebrate isn’t unique either – other countries have days of remembrance for their fallen. What does make us unique is the fact we honor all our fallen heroes – from all our wars – regardless of the cause.

It’s cliché – but very true – freedom isn’t free. While we haven’t had a true existential threat to our nation since the British invaded in 1812, we have faced threats around the world that could have become one. The Germans had invasion plans for the U.S. and were working on an intercontinental bomber before the war was over. Fighting on foreign shores ensures we never have to fight in the streets of Washington or Baltimore again. Having seen the horrors of war first hand and what it does to a nation, we should be grateful for that alone. Ronald Reagan so eloquently said,  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”  We must never lose sight of the that.

Military families are well aware of the potential sacrifice each veteran swore to give if need be – and every time we stood for the national anthem in a theater – or at base retreat, it hits home. Someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, son, or daughter gave their life so we could live ours. Please take a moment this Memorial Day to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice,and keep them in your prayers. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.

I wanted to follow up the darkness post with something “lighter”, so chose the Tolkien quote, because it does a pretty good job of summing up what I hope you glean from this post.  I cannot promise this will be my last “preachy” post, but this is part of the experience I went through on the road out of my depression.  The darkness of depression is many times referred to as the “long dark night of the soul” by many Christian counselors as the period of wandering in the proverbial wilderness, where you feel abandoned, alone and in despair.  Then God breaks through the darkness as the sun at daybreak and all is renewed and reborn.

Having researched the source of the quote, however, I believe that misses the mark somewhat.  In the poem Dark Night, St. John of the Cross defines the experience as the growth into a deeper relationship with God through a purification and expunging of all that is impure.  The individual is led by the light of the soul through the darkness as the soul makes its way to God.  It is the systematic journey of moving away from the darkness into the light.  I think this is significantly more interesting than the construct of suffering through despair and depression seemingly abandoned by God, because it focuses on the notion of the internal light of the divine drawing us step by step out of the darkness of our lives to a deeper, purer relationship with Him.  It is the process of being redeemed, rather than the process of being saved.  Salvation brings us hope, while redemption brings us wholeness of life.

This is also why I believe depression is so difficult to treat.  I truly believe there are chemical imbalances and many other contributing factors that have to be dealt with in the treatment of depression and other forms of psychological impairment, but I believe these only manage the impairment.  I also believe there is a spiritual factor, which God uniquely addresses in each one individually, to bring them to wholeness, healing and release from the spiritual darkness. While depression can be managed, I truly believe it can only be overcome through this combination of salvation, and more importantly, redemption.

Having a desire to keep this short and light, I will close with a very interesting, little-known “fact”* about God. (*Note: May not be true)  God’s name is Andy.  We know this from the hymn “In the Garden” where it tells us “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me…  Happy Memorial Day and have a great weekend!

Good memories:

• Making butter in kindergarten
• Human demolition derby on the playground ice sheets with every guy in fourth grade
• Learning mumbly peg
• Getting my first dog
• Making my can of Jolly Good soda completely empty because I shook it so long during our field trip to the Field Museum
• Going to the Cubs-Reds double header in 1975
• Acing Honors geometry class (all of it)
• Pubs in Oxford with my mates

and the Piece of Literature (by W.H. Auden)

The Ogre does what ogres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre canot master Speech:

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

I have started and deleted this post several times, for a couple of primary reasons, but mainly because the personal examples are still difficult for me to open up about. Of course, most of the times I started this column I was already in a bit of a mood, so the tone was darker than it should be. Also, I have been told I write too long of a post. So, fair warning, I will try to keep it short and sweet, but no promises. Also, I will try to keep it light while also enlightening, and finally, I will try to be as open as I can.

I restarted this post a couple of days ago as I caught myself descending into an irrational melancholy in an attempt to stop the descent and as an exercise in journaling, which has been a way of coping that I have used for a number of years now. I decided to go ahead and post, however, after reflecting on the fact that our goal as bloggers was to provide insight about our experiences, bad and good, to pass along what we have learned. 

A few years ago, I went through a very depressive episode in my life. It was not the first, it has not been the last, but it was the defining one. By that I mean, it was the episode that opened my eyes to the reality of depression and forced me to learn ways to cope and manage it. During that time, I felt like there was no hope, no purpose, and no meaning to life.  I felt like God had abandoned me, that my faith was nothing more than the baseless hoping of a desperate man.  I remember everything being influenced by my moods.  The spiral would start with the feelings of self-loathing and the pressure to be better than I was. As I would look at myself, I would begin to feel more and more worthless and more and more like a hypocrite.  On the outside things appeared to be fine, but inside I became more and more disgusted with who I was as a person.  I felt like a failure at everything I touched.  I sought momentary relief in self-destructive behaviors, like eating, spending way too much money, rarely, but occasionally drinking, and binge watching mindless entertainment to take my mind off the reality (or rather, perceived reality) around me. 

These self-destructive behaviors would then lead to greater depression and feelings of disgust and hypocrisy, thus deepening the spiral. At the same time, I was diving into scripture and Christian literature by everyone from C.S. Lewis to St. Thomas Aquinas to attempt to understand why I was being abandoned and, frankly, to throw God’s words back into His face, but since I couldn’t even tell if He was there, I just felt like I was yelling at the ceiling. I talked to counselors and, of course, received well-intentioned, but relatively useless advice, like “just feel better” or worse, “what do you have to be depressed about?”  At the lowest point, I questioned whether or not life was worth living.  

I know we aren’t supposed to say that, because it is a scary question to ask, and we certainly don’t want to think that anyone we know or care about would ever consider asking it, but the truth is the truth.  I never took any steps toward self-harm, but I did think about the question, the ramifications, and came to the fundamental truth that my life had value.  Maybe not to me personally, at that time, but certainly to my friends and family, and, as I climbed back out of the hole I was in, to God. And that was when I decided I needed to fight back.  I sought out good counseling, I learned all I could about identifying and managing triggering events, making plans for both hypomanic and depressive times so that I wasn’t caught unprepared, and so on.

I’d like to tell you that it got better quickly, but the truth is, I had to get up every day and make the decision to fight back for almost 18 months before I really felt like I was out of the episode.  There were days I failed miserably at fighting back, but with each new dawn, I got a chance to start again. 

There are just a couple of things I want and hope you get from this brief story.  First, depression is not something to take lightly.  If you find yourself sinking into a consistent melancholy, find someone to talk to that you can trust, and start addressing it sooner rather than later.  Second, what you feel, what you think and what is true are going to be at odds with each other.  Hold on firmly to the truth, because your feelings will lie to you and your mind can rationalize about anything.  Make a list of the things you know to be absolutely true, people that care about you, things that are valuable about you, etc., and remind yourself that those things are true whether you feel like they are or not. As a corollary, make sure you seek out spiritual truth as well.  That is a bedrock that can withstand the harshest of critics and skepticism.  Finally, and this is just another truth to hold on to, don’t buy into the lie that you have no value and that you are all alone.  You have much greater value than you know or can believe.  You are not alone and you are a valuable part of our lives by just being part of our lives.

I promise tomorrow will be lighter and I hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend!

We did a lot this weekend as a family and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. It’s just so nice to be back together even though I understand and accept that it’s temporary as our children begin their own adult lives in their own unique ways. I cherish every moment we have together. But like everything, moderation is the great equalizer that allows those who leverage it to live happier lives. More on that tomorrow.

One of the things we did was plant some things in the front garden. After negotiating placement with the boss, I ended up with the responsibility to plant sixteen shade plants right in front of our porch. While it wasn’t difficult and didn’t take too long, upon completion I stood proudly admiring my handiwork while watering the roots to set the plants growing. The arrangement of these floral jewels reminded me of a Monet watercolor set in Giverny and, of course these miracle plants are bound to flourish over time until they resemble plants from the mythical Hanging Garden of Babylon stopping all our visitors in their tracks while gazing in awe at the verdant thumb of this garden’s creator. Impressed? I was even if the rest of the family barely noticed. And that is what is called the IKEA effect.

We all value our competence and effort because it reinforces a positive assessment of our worth in the world. Researchers have proven that people value IKEA furniture more than similar quality furniture because they assemble it themselves. They also note that if the assembly results in a slightly misshapen product that our friends and family see as a flaw, we consider the final result exceptional work and don’t even notice the flaw. To further demonstrate the effect, researchers asked people to solve extremely difficult math problems which most couldn’t accomplish. Then the researchers offered participants the choice of assembling IKEA furniture or taking a pre-assembled piece of furniture of similar quality. All the participants who failed at the math problems assembled the IKEA furniture in order to realize a sense of accomplishment and demonstrate their competence.

We want our work to be valued, but sometimes we are stuck valuing it ourselves. That can lead to overvaluing our work in order to maintain our self-confidence. And we don’t even know we do this unless someone points it out. Just something to think about the next time I plant some flowers 🙂

Here are some random thoughts that hit me while I was in the shower.

Why do we only give our children (for the most part) three names?  Why not just two – or why not four, or five?  If you Google your name you will find literally dozens of people with your exact name, unless you have an eclectic name like Moon Unit or Zelda.  But even then, I’d be willing to bet there are others with that name.

Why do we have eyebrows?  I understand why we have eyelashes – that keeps things (including bugs) from getting into our eyes – but why eyebrows?  I used to think eyebrows had the same purpose as eyelashes, until I read they actually help us with identifying each other.

Why don’t we have perfect memory? Would it be great if we could recall everything that has ever happened to us?  There is enough brain space to easily hold it all according to science. I am reading a book, Gut Feelings, in which they described a person with perfect memory – and it turns out its more of a curse than a blessing. The person could remember everything good that’s happened to him, but also everything bad – in excruciating detail. It seems that forgetting is actually one of our psychological defenses to help us cope with the negatives in our lives.

Why don’t we build homes with stone in the United States like they do in Europe? Most of the blogs I’ve read think it’s the relative cost and speed of building a “stick” home and the availability of lumber. Building with concrete or brick takes time and doesn’t provide for any major modifications at a later date. I have lived in both and actually prefer masonry homes – the just feel more solid.

Enough random Monday thoughts – enjoy the week and hope that everyone has a great Memorial day weekend planned.

I was reading Peter Diamandis’ weekly newsletter (highly recommended by the way) which described a newly invented bra that will help detect breast cancer and I couldn’t help think how fortunate we are to live in this time.  I mentioned in a previous post how my grandparents had watched the beginnings of the American transportation miracle with the advent of cars and airplanes.  My parents watched as humans master faster than sound travel – then space travel.  All this innovation happened in a blink of an eye in terms of human history. For centuries people were fortunate if they witnessed one innovation in their lifetimes. We are witnessing new innovations weekly.

How far we’ve come was driven home recently while watching an episode of the original Star Trek series from 1966.  While we still can’t transport people digitally (yet) or travel faster than light, almost all the other innovations on the show are with us today. The communicator used in the show seems almost primitive compared to a modern smart phone. We have hand held sensors that mimic Spock’s tricorder, and Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder is under development as part of an X-prize. I have no doubt we will see a version in the hands of paramedics and EMTs before 2020.

With all the negative in the world it’s good to take a moment and dwell on the positives around us.  There is so much humanity is doing to make the world better, but it seems lost in the din of negative news.  So, take a moment to click on some of the links in this blog and smile – the future is better than the news media wants you to believe.