DO YOU BELIEVE
that a
LIFE TIME
can be lived in a moment. . .
Maybe the saddest thing
about this one minute award winning film
is that it’s
J U S T
A ONE MINUTE AWARD WINNING FILM
(And not a an-everyday-reality)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
Be
A Caring Catalyst
enough to
DISPROVE
IT
NOT SO FAST
Was this past year and a half
a complete wash out because of the Pandemic
or were there a few
TAKE-A-WAYS. . .
Your Pandemic Habits May Fade Away—
But the Strength and Wisdom You Gained Won’t. . .
Jamie Ducharme, a frequent journalist for TIME MAGAZINE took a good look at glancing back over the past year to remind us that maybe,
JUST MAYBE
NOT EVERYTHING
wasn’t all bad
and some
ACTUALLY GOOD. . .
Since the pandemic began, the think-piece economy has churned out countless articles about how our world—work, medical care, cities, transit, social interactions—will be different when it finally ends. . .
But will we be different after the pandemic?
Judging by the fact that a New York Times essay titled, “You Can Be a Different Person After the Pandemic” quickly became a meme this past spring, it’s safe to say lots of people have changed over the last year-plus. How the pandemic changed your life, of course, depends very much on how you lived before it. A childless white-collar worker who spent a year at home in sweatpants obviously had a different pandemic experience than a doctor working ICU shifts, or a grocery clerk desperate for adequate PPE, or a single mom struggling to homeschool her kids while also supporting them.
But almost to a person, the pandemic altered some elements of our lives. Old habits, from grabbing coffee with friends to visiting the gym, were suddenly rendered unsafe. New behaviors—masking, social distancing, vigilant hand-washing—rapidly became routine. And in many cases, our personalities or values or temperaments changed too, as a byproduct of extra flexibility and free time, loneliness, fear, stress, awareness of mortality, or any number of other emotions brought on by this seismic event.
Now, as shots go into more arms every day, many of us are standing, blinking into the sunlight, and wondering what happens next. Will we still bake sourdough and tend our houseplants when there are once again other things to do? Will we return to offices, or to our old jobs at all? Will we ever feel safe shaking hands with a stranger, ever pack into a crowded bar without wondering who’s exhaling which germs?
In short. . .
Will we ever get back to where we were
B E F O R E. . .
Humans are adaptable; when our surroundings and circumstances change, so do we. It’s that skill that allowed us to develop new habits during the pandemic in the first place. Mask-wearing is one obvious example—something few people in the U.S. did regularly before March 2020 quickly became second nature for many.
Now, after performing pandemic-era routines for more than a year, they may feel permanent—but Benjamin Gardner, a behavior-change researcher at King’s College London, says people may be surprised by how quickly they fall into their old ways when their circumstances change back to normal. Habits explicitly based on “temporary changes to our situation,” such as wearing a mask in public, will likely be the first to go, Gardner says.
That’s already happening, particularly since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its mask guidance for fully vaccinated people. A May 25 Axios/Ipsos poll found that 45% of people in the U.S. said they always wear a mask outside the home, down from 58% earlier in May. That’s a clear sign that people are abandoning their pandemic-era behaviors, in line with historical examples. One 2009 research review examining public behavior during respiratory disease outbreaks concluded that people are quite willing to tweak their behavior at the most dangerous part of an outbreak, but that willingness fades over time. When the danger passes, we go back to the way we were.
Y I K E S
Routines formed during—but not in direct response to—the pandemic may also slip away once it ends, Gardner says. How you behave is dictated largely by where you are and who you’re with. If the context that cues a behavior stays the same, you’ll likely keep doing it. But if your context changes, so might your actions. If, for example, you used to buy lunch every day from the same salad place near your office, you may find yourself doing that again when you return to in-person work—even if you’ve steadfastly prepped all your meals at home during the pandemic.
Reward is another key element of habit formation. If activities are satisfying or pleasurable, Gardner says, we are logically more likely to do them regularly. But we may find different things rewarding after the pandemic than during it. For example, if you were home 24/7, cooking three meals a day may have felt like a nice pastime. When you’re back in an office, it may begin to feel like a chore. “If something is no longer rewarding, we may stick with it for a while and then slowly taper off,” Gardner says.
For some people, however, the pandemic may have served as a reset button. A 2017 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that, after a 2014 labor strike kept many commuters from taking the London Underground, about 5% afterward stuck with whatever alternate transport they’d adopted as a replacement. This finding, the authors write, suggests that when people are forced to change course, at least a portion of them find better options and stick with them.
So may be the case post-coronavirus—lots of people have discovered they like remote work and at-home workouts, among other facets of pandemic life, and don’t intend to go back to their old systems. “We’re likely to stick to aspects of our pandemic lifestyles if they can optimize our quality of life,” says Jacqueline Gollan, a psychology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who researches decision making.
Indeed, while many people are itching to return to their pre-coronavirus lifestyles, others have realized there was a better way to live all along. That helps explain why houses are selling fast and furious as people relocate, and why about half of U.S. workers said in a recent Fast Company/Harris Poll surveythey’re considering changing jobs. All told, about 70% of people said in a 2020 Coravin/OnePoll survey that they’d learned something about themselves during the pandemic and more than half felt embarrassed by what they valued pre-2020.
Some changes may also be outside our control, happening subconsciously in response to the conditions of the last year. Skyrocketing levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic could lead to lasting, population-level upticks in mental health conditions, as research shows happens after natural disastersand wars.
The extent to which traumatic events have a lasting impact varies widely from person to person, says Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell University. Personality matters—some people simply find it easier to bounce back than others—as does someone’s lot in life. Logically, if someone faced great hardship during the pandemic, or lost out on significant future opportunities, they are more likely to bear scars than someone who was comparably well off, Pillemer says.
But even those who were mostly fine during the pandemic may see subtle, lingering changes. The Great Depression is an illustrative example. Like the pandemic, it was a highly disruptive, widespread, and long-lasting event that fundamentally changed the way people lived. And just as many people who lived through the Great Depression maintained values like frugality, the pandemic may leave behind its own fingerprints—perhaps germaphobia, wariness of proximity to strangers or increased comfort with solitude.
“There might be an epidemic of mistrust” after the pandemic, suggests Pillemer. Flawed pandemic responses caused many Americans to lose faith in their elected officials, and trust in the media is at its lowest point in recent history. Arguably more affecting, strangers have been equated with danger during the pandemic. Solitude, in these times, is safe; crowds and social interaction are risky. Particularly for young children learning about the world, Pillemer says, it may take concerted effort to undo that conditioning.
But Pillemer says he is optimistic it can be done. From wars to recessions to terrorist attacks, nearly every generation has faced traumatic events, Pillemer notes. After each, there are some people who face long-term psychological effects, and the mental health system must be set up to recognize and care for them. But the majority of people, Pillemer says, do return to a steady state once the immediate crisis subsides. In many cases, they even grow from it. “People who go through adversity, especially in later life, develop wisdom, ability to regulate their emotions, resilience,” he says. “It is remarkable how resilient people are.”
In fact, research suggests older people weathered the pandemic’s psychological challenges better than younger generations. During the pandemic, adults 65 and older reported lower rates of anxiety, depression, substance use and suicidal ideation than any other age group, according to CDC data. That’s somewhat counterintuitive, given high rates of loneliness and isolation among the U.S. elderly, but that fortitude may come from dealing with difficult situations before. They had a kind of “inoculation against stress,” Pillemer says.
No one would choose to live through a pandemic, and the world has lost a staggering number of lives and livelihoods over its course. Those losses should never be discounted. But for those fortunate enough to come out on the other side, the pandemic may instill this kind of strength, Pillemer says.
So will we be different when we’re no longer living with COVID-19? Yes and no. Most of us will, in all likelihood, return largely to our pre-pandemic norms. We will socialize and commute and eat in restaurants, even if those things feel inconceivable now. Some people will make lasting changes to their lives, both mundane and monumental. And, hopefully, many of us will hold onto lessons learned during this time—such that next time we are faced with difficulty, we may have a better understanding of how we can overcome it.
OR. . .
or NOT
SO. . .
NOT SO FAST. . .
Before moving forward
have a quick look back
take some inventory
DARE
keep some of the things
that made your life
not just bearable
but actually better. . .
NOT SO FAST
. . .don’t just take a quick look back
TAKE A LONG GAWK
and bring along some of the things
that kept you,
Y O U
A Dad’s DAD
Dick Hoyt died on March 17 and yet he’s never been more alive. . .
WHO???
Who exactly. . .
I never met Mr Hoyt
but I read/heard about him years ago
when I was still running marathons
at a pretty good clip
and an even better speed
but nothing like
Dick Hoyt
did. . .
STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD
RICK REILLY is a great writer and a very frequent contributor to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and I not only bow to his craft but instead of even trying to rephrase or even poorly plagiarize him, I thought I’d share what he had to say but I deeply felt:
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.“
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
To see a photo gallery of Dick and Rick Hoyt, go to SI.com/teamhoyt. If you have a comment for Rick Reilly, send it to reilly@siletters.com.
“Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
Dick Hoyt gives his son that feeling as often as he can.
Kind of gives
FATHER’S DAY
a whole new meaning, huh. . .
M A Y B E
m a y b e
all those years
all those races
all those marathons
all those Ironmen Triathlons
he wasn’t pushing his son, Rick so much
as he was pushing me
and anyone else who took notice
TO BE A NO LIMIT
d a d
TO BE A NO LIMIT
p e r s o n
TO BE
what it took
when it took
how it took
TO BE
what was truly needed
instead of merely
wanted. . .
KAZE NO DENWA (Phone of the Wind)
“Hello. If you’re out there, please listen to me.” On a hill overlooking the ocean in Otsuchi Town in northeastern Japan is a phone booth known as the “Telephone of the Wind.” It is connected to nowhere, but people come to “call” family members lost during the tsunami of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many visit the phone booth including a mother and 3 children who have lost their father. This documentary looks at the unique role that this phone is playing in helping the grieving process of many.
KIND OF CHILLING, huh. . . ?
QUESTION:
WHO WOULD YOU CALL
on the Wind Phone
Kaze no denwa (phone of the wind)
curling whispers from the depths of the earth
carried by the wind
through every crack and crevice
finally reaching my ear
i’ve missed your smile
your warm glow
gentle touches
please come back to me
i want to hear your voice again.
in a little town
on the coastline of Japan
stands a white phone booth
in a small backyard
in the booth is a telephone
rotary, the clicking numbers
line going nowhere
but the wind carries words
of the lost loved to us
so we can speak to them again
“grandpa, are you well?”
“i won a prize in school today!”
“is it cold over there?”
maybe i can’t hear your voice
for real again
but
if for one instant
i could say “i love you”
i’d be happy.
In Otsuchi, Japan, there is a telephone booth with a rotary phone with an unconnected phone line. It was built by Itaru Sasaki after his cousin died in 2010 as a way to talk to him and have closure. Many from Otsuchi use the phone to talk to loved ones lost in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Some come for one long talk to say things they could not, and some regularly visit to talk to the deceased about everyday things. It’s become a way to connect to the past and the one’s they’ve lost, since many Japanese do not usually tell people that they love them often to their face. It’s a way to lay regrets to rest. Sasaki said that he wanted the line to not connect to anything, so that his words would be carried on the wind to his cousin. And so, the wind phone remains.
. . .R E M A I N S
to let us know that
L O V E
is the one thing
IN AND OUT OF THIS WORLD
that CONNECTS US
and with or without a phone
it’s the clearest connection
you’ll ever experience. . .
Now,
about THAT Call. . .
get to dialing
JUST A BREATH
IT’S A REAL KILLER. . .
In fact, go ahead
TRY NOT TO DO IT
B R E A T H I N G
THE NOT SO NEW
R e s e a r c h :
Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress
I recently read an article, and not the first about
BREATHING
by Emma Seppälä, Christina Bradley, and Michael R. Goldstein
and maybe it wasn’t because of the first time I had heard this
but the FIRST TIME
I heard it
BREATHED IT
this way. . .
When U.S. Marine Corp Officer Jake D.’s vehicle drove over an explosive device in Afghanistan, he looked down to see his legs almost completely severed below the knee. At that moment, he remembered a breathing exercise he had learned in a book for young officers. Thanks to that exercise, he was able to stay calm enough to check on his men, give orders to call for help, tourniquet his own legs, and remember to prop them up before falling unconscious. Later, he was told that had he not done so, he would have bled to death.
If a simple breathing exercise could help Jake under such extreme duress, similar techniques can certainly help the rest of us with our more common workplace stresses. The combination of the Covid-19 pandemicand battles for social justice have only exacerbated the anxiety that many of us feel every day, and studies show that this stress is interfering with our ability to do our best work. But with the right breathing exercises, you can learn to handle your stress and manage negative emotions. . .
AND YOU HAVE WHAT TO LOSE BY TRYING IT
(aside from a little
HOT AIR. . . ?
In two recently published studies, several different techniques were explored and found that a breathing exercise was most effective for both immediate and long-term stress reduction.
In the first study run by a research team at Yale, the impact of three wellbeing interventions were evaluated
- Breathing Exercises: in their experiments, they measured the impact of a particular program, SKY Breath Meditation, which is a comprehensive series of breathing and meditation exercises learned over several days that is designed to induce calm and resilience.
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: a meditation technique in which you train yourself to be aware of each moment in a non-judgmental way.
- Foundations of Emotional Intelligence: a program that teaches techniques to improve emotional awareness and regulation.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three programs or to a control group (no intervention). They found that the participants who practiced SKY Breath Meditation experienced the greatest mental health, social connectedness, positive emotions, stress levels, depression, and mindfulness benefits.
In a second study, conducted at the University of Arizona, SKY Breath Meditation was compared to a workshop that taught more conventional, cognitive strategies for stress-management (in other words, how to change your thoughts about stress). Both workshops were rated similarly by participants and they both produced significant increases in social connectedness. However, SKY Breathing was more beneficial in terms of immediate impact on stress, mood, and conscientiousness, and these effects were even stronger when measured three months later.
Before and after the workshops, participants underwent a stress task that simulated a high-pressure performance situation, akin to presenting at a business meeting. In anticipation of the stressful performance, the group that had completed the cognitive workshop showed elevated breathing and heart rates, as expected. In contrast, the SKY Breathing group held steady in terms of breathing and heart rate, suggesting the program had instilled in them a buffer against the anxiety typically associated with anticipating a stressful situation. This meant that they were not only in a more positive emotional state, but also that they were more able to think clearly and effectively perform the task at hand.
Similarly, in a study with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who struggled with trauma, it was discovered that not only did SKY Breath Meditation normalize their anxiety levels after just one week, but they also continued to experience the mental health benefits a full year later.
So what makes breathing so effective? It’s very difficult to talk your way out of strong emotions like stress, anxiety, or anger. Just think about how ineffective it is when a colleague tells you to “calm down” in a moment of extreme stress. When we are in a highly stressed state, our prefrontal cortex — the part of our brain responsible for rational thinking — is impaired, so logic seldom helps to regain control. This can make it hard to think straight or be emotionally intelligent with your team. But with breathing techniques, it is possible to gain some mastery over your mind.
Research shows that different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, and so changing how we breathe can change how we feel. For example, when you feel joy, your breathing will be regular, deep and slow. If you feel anxious or angry, your breathing will be irregular, short, fast, and shallow. When you follow breathing patterns associated with different emotions, you’ll actually begin to feel those corresponding emotions.
How does this work? Changing the rhythm of your breath can signal relaxation, slowing your heart rate and stimulating the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain stem to the abdomen, and is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” activities (in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates many of our “fight or flight” responses). Triggering your parasympathetic nervous system helps you start to calm down. You feel better. And your ability to think rationally returns.
To get an idea of how breathing can calm you down, try changing the ratio of your inhale to exhale. This approach is one of several common practices that use breathing to reduce stress. When you inhale, your heart rate speeds up. When you exhale, it slows down. Breathing in for a count of four and out for a count of eight for just a few minutes can start to calm your nervous system. Remember: when you feel agitated, lengthen your exhales.
While a short breathing exercise like this can be effective in the moment, a comprehensive daily breathing protocol such as the SKY Breath Meditation technique will train your nervous system for resilience over the long run. These simple techniques can help you sustain greater wellbeing and lower your stress levels — at work and beyond.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
TAKE A BREATH
or Three of Four
after all
all you have to lose is a little
HOT AIR. . .
The Luckiest
My parents would have celebrated
their 69th Wedding anniversary
TODAY
June 7, 2021
I believe they still do
because that
“till death do us part”
never really separates. . .
Tomorrow
June 8, 2021
Erin and I are celebrating our
35th Wedding Anniversary.
On June 8, 1986
the odds makers gave us a 35% chance of surviving our second marriage
which blended two families together
and it even went down a few percentage points when we had
o u r
two children within the first four years of our marriage.
T O D A Y:
the odds makers are ruling in our favor.
T H E Y
say
77% of couples married since 1990 reached their 10-year anniversaries according to recent census figures. It’s a supposed slight increase from 74% in the 80’s when divorces were at an all-time high.
N O W
Fifty-Five percent of all married couples have been married for at least 15 years, according to the Census report, while 35 percent have celebrated their 25th anniversaries and a special
S I X P E R C E N T
have made it to 50 years.
The Social Scientists are giving us all kinds of reasons why couples have not only leveled off the divorce train but actually turned it around:
Better Communication
More Equal Rights and Pay
Being Friends First
Compatibility
Financial Stability
Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia tells us,
“Marriage is actually becoming more stable in America and divorce is becoming less common.”
He goes on to say,
“There is sort of more of a soul mate model of marriage today. . .50 years ago, this was one of the things you did when you became a young adult. You found a boyfriend or girlfriend and if you were pretty happy you’d go ahead and get married. . .Today the bar for marriage is much higher because people want a soul mate, not just a spouse. And a soul mate should be someone who is capable of providing you with emotional fulfillment, an intense relationship.”
What do I know after 35 years?
I know
that I can give the World, but Erin can bring me home.
I know
that we can show each other what we can never see by ourselves
I know
that she’s a beautiful blue ocean and I’m an extensive sandy shore
I know
that her Better
conquers my Worse
I know
that her Richness
obliterates my Poverty
I know
her Health
cures my Illnesses
I know
her Love is my never ending Christmas Day
I most ultimately know
I’m not
the strongest,
the bravest,
the smartest,
the brightest,
the thinnest,
the fastest,
the surest,
the most handsome
but no one can ever convince me
that I’m not the
l u c k i e s t
The one thing after all of these years
I absolutely-for-the-life-of-me-cannot-figure-out:
Why she said
Y E S
but I’m in heaven now and forevermore
because she
did. . .
Great relationships aren’t the ones that last a lifetime,
they’re ones that last a second past eternity.
I don’t know what the percentages of
T H A T
a r e. . .
but when you have it. . .
you no longer care;
It’s a Math
you can’t figure out
but adds up
a n y w a y
(and we just can’t stop smiling)
A HALLELUJAH MEMORIAL DAY
Happy Memorial Day.
How can you assure it?
One simple word:
R E-M E M B E R I N G
–literally, by putting together the Pieces of your Life that have meaning and significance to you the Ones who make those Memories worth
RE-Membering–Putting back together. . .
The World will debate and argue, but the greatest forces in and out of this World
are our Memories and the Love that makes those memories
significant,
meaningful
and always worth
observing and celebrating. . .
It’s easy to
J U S T
Limit these Memories to our Veterans
or for those who have recently died,
but any day we truly
RE-Member,
that we actually put together those snipets of
Once Upon a Times
and ‘Remember When’s’
that put all those glorious colors to the
Tapestry of our Lives,
becomes a true Memorial Day.
Like any Holiday,
it really is celebrated most,
not so much on it’s Noted,
Dated Day,
but when fully Recognized,
Realized,
Revitalized
again and again and again with,
yes, that one single,
beautiful thing called
M e m o r y
So, on this Memorial Day,
R E – M E M B E R :
It’s not enough for us to just merely
Remember,
but for us to just simply Re-Member one thought,
one memory
past Eternity.
T r u l y:
Give thanks not so much for those who have died;
but for those who still fully live within us all. . .
F i v e W o r d s:
H a p p y M e m o r i a l D a y. . .
T H A N K
Y O U
YOUR MIDNIGHT LIBRARY
The Pandemic hasn’t been all BAD. . .
BECAUSE IT HAS GIVEN ME MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO
R E A D
A voracious reader
from the even before I could read
I have loved books
and have loved passing on my
LOVE OF BOOKS
from the very first one
I can ever remember
having
To the one
I just started last night
And the
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
so many in between. . .
which brings me to the opening pages of:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:
One of the reasons I’ve always loved reading
is because it
has inspired
WRITING
SPEAKING
FREE-THINKING
that I have no
ON/OFF
Switch
(and one I’m not seeking or ever hoping to find). . .
It’s made my
EYES, HEAR
NOSE, TASTE
EARS, SEE
IMAGINATION, FANTASIZE
IT HAS MADE ME
M E
and my idea of a perfect death
is having
FAMILY
FRIENDS
BOOKS
surrounding me. . .
It allows me
WONDER
as I
WANDER
and to
P O N D E R
even now
AM I MORE
IF/BUT
or
CAN/WILL
KIND OF A PERSON. . .
Y O U ?
So here’s the
D E A L
We have a Pen in our hands
with Blank pages before us
waiting not just for a written word
or a secret message
but that one single sentence
that can only come from
Y O U
THE WORLD
desperately needs to not have written
but
specifically
intentionally
purposely
intimately
R E A D
(NO PANDEMIC NECESSARY)
For the HEALTH of IT
Spending Time With Friends Is One of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Health
TRUE or FALSE
Jamie Ducharme from TIME MAGAZINE asked that question and took to finding out the TRUE and the FALSE of it all. . .
When someone sets out to improve their health, they usually take a familiar path: starting a healthy diet, adopting a new workout regimen, getting better sleep, drinking more water. Each of these behaviors is important, of course, but they all focus on physical health—and a growing body of research suggests that social health is just as, if not more, important to overall well-being.
One 2019 study published in the journal PLOS ONE, for example, found that the strength of a person’s social circle—as measured by inbound and outbound cell phone activity—was a better predictor of self-reported stress, happiness and well-being levels than fitness tracker data on physical activity, heart rate and sleep. That finding suggests that the “quantified self” portrayed by endless amounts of health data doesn’t tell the whole story, says study co-author Nitesh Chawla, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame.
“There’s also a qualified self, which is who I am, what are my activities, my social network, and all of these aspects that are not reflected in any of these measurements,” Chawla says. “My lifestyle, my enjoyment, my social network—all of those are strong determinants of my well-being.”
Chawla’s theory is supported by plenty of prior research. Studies have shown that social support—whether it comes from friends, family members or a spouse—is strongly associated with better mental and physical health. A robust social life, these studies suggest, can lower stress levels; improve mood; encourage positive health behaviors and discourage damaging ones; boost cardiovascular health; improve illness recovery rates; and aid virtually everything in between. Research has even shown that a social component can boost the effects of already-healthy behaviors such as exercise.
Social isolation, meanwhile, is linked to higher rates of chronic diseases and mental health conditions, and may even catalyze cellular-level changes that promote chronic inflammation and suppress immunity. The detrimental health effects of loneliness have been likened to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s a significant problem, especially since loneliness is emerging as a public health epidemic in the U.S. According to recent surveys, almost half of Americans, including large numbers of the country’s youngest and oldest adults, are lonely.
A 2019 study conducted by health insurer Cigna and published in the American Journal of Health Promotion set out to determine what’s driving those high rates of loneliness. Unsurprisingly, it found that social media, when used so much that it infringes on face-to-face quality time, was tied to greater loneliness, while having meaningful in-person interactions, reporting high levels of social support and being in a committed relationship were associated with less loneliness. Gender and income didn’t seem to have a strong effect, but loneliness tended to decrease with age, perhaps because of the wisdom and perspective afforded by years of life lived, says Dr. Stuart Lustig, one of the report’s authors and Cigna’s national medical executive for behavioral health.
Lustig says the report underscores the importance of carving out time for family and friends, especially since loneliness was inversely related to self-reported health and well-being. Reviving a dormant social life may be best and most easily done by finding partners for enjoyable activities like exercising, volunteering, or sharing a meal, he says.
“Real, face-to-face time with people [is important], and the activity part of it makes it fun and enjoyable and gives people an excuse to get together,” Lustig says.
Lustig emphasizes that social media should be used judiciously and strategically, and not as a replacement for in-person relationships. Instead, he says, we should use technology “to seek out meaningful connections and people that you are going to be able to keep in your social sphere. It’s easy enough to find groups such as Meetups, or to find places to go where you’ll find folks doing what you want to do.” That advice is particularly important for young people, he says, for whom heavy social media use is common.
Finally, Lustig stresses that even small social changes can have a large impact. Striking up post-meeting conversations with co-workers, or even engaging inmicro-interactions with strangers, can make your social life feel more rewarding.
“There’s an opportunity to grow those kinds of quick exchanges into conversations and into more meaningful friendships over time,” Lustig says. “People should take those opportunities wherever they possibly can, because all of us, innately, are wired from birth to connect”—and because doing so may pay dividends for your health.
A HAPPINESS DISPENSER
The problem with
H A P P I N E S S
isn’t that we don’t have it to give
so much as that we just often
D O N ‘ T
. . .after nearly fifteen months of
social distancing
we almost shrug with an overdramatic sigh
WHAT’S THE USE. . .
WELL
If You Want to Be Happy,
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Dare Making Someone Else Happy
A new study shows that doing kind things for others is an important path to happiness.
JILL SUTTIE, a journalist for Greater Good Magazine did a little more than pulling back the Happiness Curtain to show us what’s not so much hidden but in plain sight for us to SEE. BE. FREE in ourselves and others.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he assured Americans of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This idea seems to lead many Americans to chase after new gadgets and hedonistic pleasures. But what if that approach is wrong? What if happiness comes from aiming to make others happy, instead of doing nice things for yourself?
That is exactly what a recent study found.
In the experiment, college students reported on their happiness and on their sense of autonomy, competence, and connection to others—all what researchers consider “basic psychological needs” for well-being. Then they were randomly tasked to do something to either make themselves happier, make another person happier, or socialize. (Assigning one group to socialize helped determine if seeking happiness for another had an effect above and beyond simply being in someone’s presence.)
Later that day, after doing their tasks, participants reported what they did, and then filled out their happiness and needs questionnaires again. Those who’d done something to make another person feel better were much happier themselves than participants in the other groups, and their greater happiness was tied to a stronger feeling of connection to that person.
This finding was not too surprising to lead researcher Milla Titova, who says that it fits in with prior research on happiness that found giving to others makes you happier than giving to yourself—and that pursuing happiness directly for yourself sometimes backfires.
“Making others happy is more meaningful for people than just socializing with them or doing something to improve our own happiness,” she says. “When we aim to make others happier, we feel connected to them—our relatedness needs are better met—which is important for us.”
In another part of the study, she and her colleague tried to rule out the possibility that making someone else happier makes you happier because of how emotions spread between people, which is known as the contagion effect. To do this, they repeated their experiment, but this time asked participants to identify the recipient of their kindness and to say how much happier that person appeared to be. Then, they contacted the recipient and measured their actual happiness levels.
The researchers found that a recipient’s happiness level did not seem to be related to the increased happiness of the person trying to make them happy, which suggests something beyond emotion contagion is going on. However, if the participant perceived that their efforts made a difference in another’s happiness, that made them happier.
“If we think another person is feeling pretty good, that’s enough for us to feel pretty good ourselves,” says Titova. “We’re just not always accurate about assessing other people’s feelings.”
She and her colleague also looked at how this effect might play out between strangers. People parked on a city street were approached by researchers and given two quarters for filling out surveys about their well-being. In some cases, they were simply given the quarters to keep or were given the quarters to feed their own meter before filling out the surveys. In other cases, they were told to feed another person’s meter, with some being asked to leave a note on the dashboard of the stranger’s car explaining what they’d done.
Afterward, the researchers compared the four groups’ happiness and how much their needs felt fulfilled. Those who’d put money in someone else’s meter were significantly happier than those who’d put money in their own meter or just kept the quarters. Leaving a note increased a person’s happiness even more.
Titova thinks this makes sense, given that making someone else happier makes us happier through increasing our relatedness to them. But it could also be that people like getting credit for a good deed, too—or that the note is actually another act of kindness, augmenting connection further.
Whatever the case, it appears that doing something kind for anyone is better for our happiness than getting something for ourselves.
“It doesn’t require you know the person you’re trying to make happy, nor does it require an actual physical interaction with that person,” she says. “It still works—even with a stranger.”
This is a preliminary study, mostly done with a limited population, and Titova cautions against applying the finding to other cultural contexts. This is wise, as studies have found not all happiness practices translate to other cultures.
Still, they do suggest that focusing on making others happy may be a key to happiness worth considering.
“It’s counterintuitive for some people, but if you’re not having the best day, you should think about doing something nice for your significant other or your roommates instead of concentrating on yourself,” she says. “That may not be what comes to mind naturally, but it’s probably more effective.”
It’s a shame
isn’t it that
once again the
EMPHASIS
has to be on an
I F
but you being
A Caring Catalyst
HAPPINESS DISPENSER
just may depend on that
IF
u n l e s s. . .
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