So here’s the tragedy about
D R E A M I N G
. . .we only think it’s for the young
that it has an age limit attached to it
that after a certain time, a certain age
it’s no longer viable
a n d
we do little to
DISPROVE IT. . .
AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO
What would you do?
o r
is it
WHAT DO YOU DO. . . ?
It’s the First Lecture of a brand new semester. . .
The professor enters the lecture hall. He looks around. . .
“You there in the 8th row. Can you tell me your name?” he asks a student.
“My name is Sandra” says a voice.
The professor asks her, “Please leave my lecture hall. I don’t want to see you in my lecture.”
Everyone is quiet. The student is irritated, slowly packs her things and stands up.
“Faster please” she is asked.
She doesn’t dare to say anything and leaves the lecture hall.
The professor keeps looking around.
The participants are scared.
“Why are there laws?” he asks the group.
All quiet. Everyone looks at the others.
“What are laws for?” he asks again.
“Social order” is heard from a row
A student says “To protect a person’s personal rights.”
Another says “So that you can rely on the state.”
The professor is not satisfied.
“Justice” calls out a student.
The professor smiling. She has his attention.
“Thank you very much. Did I behave unfairly towards your classmate earlier?”
Everyone nods.
“Indeed I did. Why didn’t anyone protest?
Why didn’t any of you try to stop me?
Why didn’t you want to prevent this injustice?” he asks.
Nobody answers. . .
THE SILENCE LITERALLY SHOUTS OUT A BLARING
W H Y ?
“What you just learned you wouldn’t have understood in 1,000 hours of lectures if you hadn’t lived it. You didn’t say anything just because you weren’t affected yourself. This attitude speaks against you and against life. You think as long as it doesn’t concern you, it’s none of your business. I’m telling you, if you don’t say anything today and don’t bring about justice, then one day you too will experience injustice and no one will stand before you. Justice lives through us all. We have to fight for it.”
“In life and at work, we often live next to each other instead of with each other. We console ourselves that the problems of others are none of our business. We go home and are glad that we were spared. But it’s also about standing up for others. Every day an injustice happens in business, in sports or on the tram. Relying on someone to sort it out is not enough. It is our duty to be there for others. Speaking for others when they cannot. . .
The difference is being a caring catalyst and
ACTING LIKE A CARING CATALYST
. . .which ONE are you
We’re all way past asking what would you do. . .
we are right here, right now, showing
WHAT DO YOU DO
(or. . .d o n ‘ t)
MARY MERRY
INVITATION
OH do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.
MARY MERRY
Mary has a way of
making Merry
that allows a
marrying between
Who we are
and Who we’ve yet to Recognize
The Who we are now
in a Forest yet to be walked
A Lake yet to be swam
A bird, an animal yet to be
Observed or named
A Universe yet to know
Another Sun’s rays
A poem
not yet to be written
even as it ever is being
composed
not so deeply within us
as it rises to surfaces
waiting to support
new FoundationsIt was the birthday of best-selling poet Mary Oliver, on September 10; she was born in Maple Heights, Ohio (1935). As a child, she spent most of her time outside, wandering around the woods, reading and writing poems.
Oliver went to college in the ’50s at Ohio State University and Vassar, but dropped out. She made a pilgrimage to visit Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 800-acre estate in Austerlitz, New York. The poet had been dead for several years, but Millay’s sister Norma lived there along with her husband. Mary Oliver and Norma hit it off, and Oliver lived there for years, helping out on the estate, keeping Norma company, and working on her own writing. In 1958, a woman named Molly Malone Cook came to visit Norma while Oliver was there, and the two fell in love. A few years later, they moved together to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Oliver said: “I was very careful never to take an interesting job. Not an interesting one. I took lots of jobs. But if you have an interesting job you get interested in it. I also began in those years to keep early hours. […] If anybody has a job and starts at 9, there’s no reason why they can’t get up at 4:30 or 5 and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day — which is what I did.”
She published five books of poetry, and still almost no one had heard of her. She doesn’t remember ever having given a reading before 1984, which is the year that she was doing dishes one evening when the phone rang and it was someone calling to tell her that her most recent book, American Primitive (1983), had won the Pulitzer Prize. Suddenly, she was famous. She didn’t really like the fame — she didn’t give many interviews, didn’t want to be in the news. She once wrote in an introduction to a poetry collection, “I have felt all my life that I was wise, and tasteful, too, to speak very little about myself — to deflect the curiosity in the personal self that descends upon writers, especially in this country and at this time, from both casual and avid readers.”
When editors called their house for Oliver, Cook would answer, announce that she was going to get Oliver, fake footsteps, and then get back on the phone and pretend to be the poet — all so that Oliver didn’t have to talk on the phone to strangers, something she did not enjoy. Cook was a photographer, and she was also Oliver’s literary agent. They stayed together for more than 40 years, until Cook’s death in 2005.
Oliver said: “I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.”
Oliver’s books of poems include No Voyage (1963), The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems (1972), Twelve Moons (1978), The Leaf and the Cloud (2000), Owls and Other Fantasies (2003), Red Bird (2008), Dog Songs (2013), and Velocity (2015). Her most recent collection, Devotions, comes out in October of this year.
#TheWritersAlmanac
I’ve always been a Mary Oliver fan
but I’ll also admit that I’ve read much more of her
now that she’s dead
than when she was alive
I suppose which not only makes her
not only more Alive
than ALIVE
but still doing
what she did the best
(and still is)
S H A R E
As I page
through this Anthology
I often have a rainbow of feelings
as she gently pulls off the scabs
of some of my most tenderest wounds:
The Uses of Sorrow | Mary Oliver
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
No matter what the poem,
Mary has a way of letting us know that
when you need a prayer
notice that nothing all around you
is miraculously short of that
with the worldly unspoken invitation:
WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE A PRAYER
B E
O N E
(The only true prayer you’ll ever need
is the one you are)
|
|
A MORE GENTLE, HUMBLE YOU
Is today
T H A T
D A Y
you’ll make a
DIFFERENCE
you’ll be a
DIFFERENCE
you’ll feel a
DIFFERENCE
Being a consistent CARING CATALYST
is a great way to take the
MAYBE
of it all
out of the equation
for you making
for you giving
a great day
for Others
for Yourself. . .
A new study finds that when we practice intellectual humility, we have less animosity toward the “other side” of political debates. . .
But. . .when it comes to social and political issues, many Americans feel hostile toward those they disagree with. Unfortunately, those feelings of contempt can affect our ability to cooperate, keeping us from working together on solutions to the big issues of our day—like our economy, climate change, poverty, and racism.
How can we engage with each other with less rancor and hostility and all out hate? According to a new study, we might want to practice a bit more intellectual humility.
In this study, Glen Smith of the University of North Georgia analyzed data from surveys in 2020 (prior to the presidential election) and 2021, where over 1,700 participants reported on how strongly they opposed or supported political issues of the day (making college free, legalizing marijuana, imposing higher tariffs on foreign goods, and abolishing the death penalty). For each issue, the participants were also asked if they thought their views could be wrong, if they might be overlooking evidence that contradicts their position, and if they might change their view if presented with additional evidence or information—all questions related to intellectual humility.
Afterward, the participants also reported how they felt about people who had a different viewpoint from theirs on each topic—meaning, how warmly they felt toward opponents and how smart, honest, moral, and open-minded their opponents were.
After analyzing the results, Smith found that those who held more intellectually humble attitudes on a topic viewed opponents in a more positive light—more warmly and as more smart, honest, moral, and open-minded. In fact, their own intellectual humility was a better predictor of their hostility toward others than their own ideology, political party, political knowledge, or strength of their opinion.
This tendency held true even within an individual. If people held more humble views on a specific topic, they were less likely to dislike or dismiss an opponent in comparison to topics where they held more arrogant views. This suggests intellectual humility can be variable and context-specific, which could be a good thing for reducing political animosity.
“When people hold opinions with humility, they feel less hostility toward those who disagree, while the more people think they know about an issue, the less humble they are and the more hostile they are towards other people,” says Smith.
Why would being humbler affect us like this? Smith says that we tend to assign negative qualities in our minds to people who disagree with us—maybe thinking they’re less educated or have a moral defect—which, in turn, makes us dislike those people. But, when we hold some doubt about the rightness of our beliefs, we’re more open to listening to others without feeling hostile just because they see things differently.
“If I’m humble, there’s an implication there that I might be wrong and you might be right. And, if that’s the case, then why would I hate you? It doesn’t make any sense,” he says.
Nudging people to be humbler can lessen hostility
This finding doesn’t necessarily prove that being humbler causes less animosity. To get at that, Smith did an experiment where he tried to increase people’s humility.
In the experiment, 306 participants were asked to rate the strength of pro and con arguments on whether marijuana should be legalized, while told to ignore how they personally felt about the issue. In some cases, people read just one pro and one con argument; in other cases, they read a third argument in which the author expressed uncertainty about the potential effects of legalizing marijuana—saying they didn’t know enough about it—and, because of that, they were afraid of legalizing it.
Afterward, the participants were asked if the arguments they read changed their opinion. They also reported how humble they were around the topic of legalization and how they felt about people who were making arguments against their own position. Smith found that none of the arguments made a big difference in people’s opinions on the topic. But those who read the humbler argument felt more humility than those who read just the pro and con arguments, even though they rated the humble argument as the least convincing. And, as a result of feeling more humility, they also felt less animosity toward opponents.
“Humility doesn’t have to change your mind on the underlying issue, but being exposed to an expression of humility has an independent effect on how you feel,” says Smith. “It can make you both humbler and more accepting of disagreement.”
Perhaps this means that humility can be cultivated in particular contexts—at least to some extent. Nudging people toward expressing less certainty and more humility around their knowledge of sociopolitical topics might lessen other people’s defensiveness, leading to less hostility and more productive conversations.
Of course, Smith’s results don’t necessarily mean that intellectual humility will always be helpful. When it comes to other, more contentious issues—like climate change or abortion rights—it may be harder to encourage people to reconsider their position or listen to the other side without hostility. Nor do the results imply that politicians and others who benefit from increased polarization will be eager to embrace intellectual humility.
But it does provide some hope. By practicing more humility, we can foster more positive dialogue, at the very least, says Smith, and maybe make a dent in political polarization.
“If you can approach arguments by admitting that you don’t know everything, it’s contagious. Other people start to question how much they know and take a less defensive approach,” he says. “If we can become humbler and accept that people disagree with us for good reasons, we can reduce some of the acrimony.”
T S U N D O K U
THERE IS THE LITERAL VISUAL DEFINITION OF
T S U N D O K U:
A
S T A C K
O F
B O O K S
The value of owning more books than you can read
- Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf.
- Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know.
- The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.
Kevin Dickson recently wrote an article for BIG THINK that caught the attention of my friend, a fellow Book Lover like myself that immediately took the weight of a severe guilt I carry and am reminded of even as I type and watch the AMAZON person drop me off another book selection I just recently read about.
Kevin confesses: I love books. If I go to the bookstore to check a price, I walk out with three books I probably didn’t know existed beforehand. I buy second-hand books by the bagful at the Friends of the Library sale, while explaining to my wife that it’s for a good cause. Even the smell of books grips me, that faint aroma of earthy vanilla that wafts up at you when you flip a page. Hmmmmmmmmmm. . . .
The problem is that my book-buying habit outpaces my ability to read them. This leads to FOMO and occasional pangs of guilt over the unread volumes spilling across my shelves. Sound familiar?
But it’s possible this guilt is entirely misplaced. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these unread volumes represent what he calls an “antilibrary,” and he believes our antilibraries aren’t signs of intellectual failings. Quite the opposite.
LIVING WITH AN ANTILIBRARY
Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling bookThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.
When Eco hosted visitors, many would marvel at the size of his library and assumed it represented the host’s knowledge — which, make no mistake, was expansive. But a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco’s library wasn’t voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he desired to read so much more.
Eco stated as much. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he found he could only read about 25,200 books if he read one book a day, every day, between the ages of ten and eighty. A “trifle,” he laments, compared to the million books available at any good library.
Drawing from Eco’s example, Taleb deduces:
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. [Your] library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
Maria Popova, whose post at Brain Pickings summarizes Taleb’s argument beautifully, notes that our tendency is to overestimate the value of what we know, while underestimating the value of what we don’t know. Taleb’s antilibrary flips this tendency on its head.
The antilibrary’s value stems from how it challenges our self-estimation by providing a constant, niggling reminder of all we don’t know. The titles lining my own home remind me that I know little to nothing about cryptography, the evolution of feathers, Italian folklore, illicit drug use in the Third Reich, and whatever entomophagy is. (Don’t spoil it; I want to be surprised.)
“We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended,” Taleb writes. “It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations.”
These selves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. Jessica Stillman calls this realization intellectual humility.
People who lack this intellectual humility — those without a yearning to acquire new books or visit their local library — may enjoy a sense of pride at having conquered their personal collection, but such a library provides all the use of a wall-mounted trophy. It becomes an “ego-booting appendage” for decoration alone. Not a living, growing resource we can learn from until we are 80 — and, if we are lucky, a few years beyond.
T S U N D O K U
I love Taleb’s concept, but I must admit I find the label “antilibrary” a bit lacking. For me, it sounds like a plot device in a knockoff Dan Brown novel — “Quick! We have to stop the Illuminati before they use the antilibrary to erase all the books in existence.”
Writing for the New York Times, Kevin Mims also doesn’t care for Taleb’s label. Thankfully, his objection is a bit more practical: “I don’t really like Taleb’s term ‘antilibrary.’ A library is a collection of books, many of which remain unread for long periods of time. I don’t see how that differs from an antilibrary.”
His preferred label is a loanword from Japan: tsundoku. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for the stack(s) of books you’ve purchased but haven’t read. Its morphology combines tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books).
The word originated in the late 19th century as a satirical jab at teachers who owned books but didn’t read them. While that is opposite of Taleb’s point, today the word carries no stigma in Japanese culture. It’s also differs from bibliomania, which is the obsessive collecting of books for the sake of the collection, not their eventual reading.
THE VALUE OF TSUNDOKU
Granted, I’m sure there is some braggadocious bibliomaniac out there who owns a collection comparable to a small national library, yet rarely cracks a cover. Even so, studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.
One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults. Exposure to books, the researchers suggested, boosts these cognitive abilities by making reading a part of life’s routines and practices.
Many other studies have shown reading habits relay a bevy of benefits. They suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills. And that’s just fiction! Reading nonfiction is correlated with success and high achievement, helps us better understand ourselves and the world, and gives you the edge come trivia night.
In her article, Jessica Stillman ponders whether the antilibrary acts as a counter to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that leads ignorant people to assume their knowledge or abilities are more proficient than they truly are. Since people are not prone to enjoying reminders of their ignorance, their unread books push them toward, if not mastery, then at least a ever-expanding understanding of competence.
“All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people,” Stillman writes.
Whether you prefer the term antilibrary, tsundoku, or something else entirely, the value of an unread book is its power to get you to read it.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Now if you’ll excuse me. . .
THERE’S
THIS
B O O K. . .
Eco stated as much. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he found he could only read about 25,200 books if he read one book a day, every day, between the ages of ten and eighty. A “trifle,” he laments, compared to the million books available at any good library.
Drawing from Eco’s example, Taleb deduces:
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. [Your] library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. [Emphasis original]
IT’S NOT ALL GEOMETRY
It may not all be geometry, but it is something else. . .
I recently stumbled on a brief article written by the professional speaker, Lou Hacker who’s been in the business of speaking/consulting and coaching speakers and business on service for well over 40 plus years now. He started out by saying he had been thinking about Peyton Manning and a tree service professional; he got me thinking about them, too. He related that he had read an interview once with former pro quarterback Peyton Manning where he was asked how he could so quickly spot potential receivers and then fire a forward pass a long way as they ran under it and made the reception. “”It’s all geometry,” was his answer. He said he was able to compute the angle and their speed and put the pass right where he wanted it. This past week there have been a lot of local tree services who have been taking down a lot of trees in the area because of some really bad storms last week in the Northeast Ohio area. I remember asking a guy who once took down several of our trees in the front and the back of our house who climbed the 60-70 feet to begin the process what the secret was to his amazing skills to saw the tree in sections and with the help of his crew, lower them safely to the ground. His response: “It’s all geometry!” WHAT??? I remember almost all of the Math teachers I ever had saying, “You just never know when Math will come in handy later in your life.” I never believed that, mostly because I’ve always had a fairly unhealthy relationship with
Mathematics. . .
BUT. . .
I believe each of us has a super power that if discovered and used properly fuels our ultimate success. Crazy as it sounds, I knew from my very early years that I would always be in front of an audience. What made most of my friends quiver and sweat made me feel great — speaking in class, handling the public address systems, reciting a book report, leading youth group sessions, well, that led me to more than 40 years as a professional speaker, keynote speaker, master of ceremonies, wedding and funeral officiant, and workshop leader/teacher. In your field, maybe it’s not some mathematical integers or put bluntly, “all geometry,”
B U T. . .
Do you know what your super power is? More importantly are you nurturing it, growing it and using it to benefit others?
It may not all be geometry, but it is something else which begs me to ask you.
What is your something else. . . ?
I’m a Math
never quite to be understood
A Geometry with no angles or straight lines
An Algebra without integers
A Calculus without Numbers
A Trigonometry without symbols
And though I don’t often
Add Up
And often feel Divided
I’m searching for a goodness
that multiplies whatever can never
be subtracted
PHRASES PERSONIFIED
SO. . .
ARE WE MORE THAN OUR WORDS. . .
WHAT ONE PERSON SAID:
“I have reached the pinnacle of success in business.” In other people’s eyes my life is a success.
However, aside from work, I’ve had little joy.
At the end of the day, wealth is just a fact I’ve gotten used to.
Right now, lying on my hospital bed, reminiscing all my life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth I took so much pride in, has faded and become meaningless in the face of imminent death.
You can hire someone to drive your car or make money for you, but you can’t hire someone to stand sick and die for you.
Material things lost can be found again. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost: Life.
Whatever stage of life we are currently at, in time we will face the day the curtain closes.
Love your family, spouse, children and friends… Treat them right .
Cherish them.
As we get older, and wiser, we slowly realize that wearing a $300 or $30 watch both give the same time
Whether we have a $300 or $30 wallet or purse, the amount inside is the same.
Whether we drive a $150,000 car or a $30,000 car, the road and the distance are the same, and we reach the same destination.
Whether we drink a $1000 or $10 bottle of wine, the hangover is the same.
Whether the house in which we live is 100 or 1000 square meters, loneliness is the same.
You will realize that your true inner happiness does not come from material things of this world.
Whether you travel first class or economy class, if the plane crashes, you go down with it…
Therefore, I hope you realize, when you have friends, brothers and sisters, with whom you discuss, laugh, talk, sing, talk about north-south-east or heaven and earth,… this is the real happiness!!
An indisputable fact of life:
Don’t raise your children to be rich.
Educate them to be happy.
When they grow up, they will know the value of things and not the price. “
THE
A N S W E R![]()
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
Anyone can deliver a good line
few can
p e r s o n i f y
or
l i v e
them. . .
(Thank you Steve Jobs for continuing to live a life you never dreamed possible
and making good–Better)
Anyone can deliver a good line
few can
p e r s o n i f y
or
l i v e
them. . .
(Thank you Steve Jobs for continuing to live a life you never dreamed possible
and making good–Better)
A LITTLE GOOD NEWS TODAY
It’s really good to hit the rewind button sometimes
even if it’s all the way back to 1983
to know now
what we were shouting for then
and way before THEN. . .
NEWS FOR THE REAL WORLD
Gloria Heffernan
This morning, I want to wake up
with no headlines.
I want to find that my New York Times
has been replaced
with a worn-out copy of The Velveteen Rabbit,
and the Skin Horse
is inviting me to love the world
in all its broken realness.
I want to touch the Earth
where the soft fur
has been rubbed off
and see it with my fingertips.
When I feel the need to know who
is fighting with whom,
and what disaster occurred overnight,
I want to hear
the wind chimes in my backyard
whisper in the breeze,
“I am as real as anything you
will find on the front page.”
When the hard facts are just too hard,
I want to press
the tattered velveteen ears to my cheek
and remember that the hot cup of tea,
and the warm blanket,
and the beloved sleeping by my side
are every bit as real as the rage
that fuels the news,
and for today I want to embrace
the real I can touch
with my hands and see with my eyes,
and let the world rage on without me.
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
The best way for a little good news today
IS TO MAKE IT
AND ASSURE THAT EVERYONE IS A PART OF IT
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
JOIN ME
C E L E B R A T I N G
I once put in a Work Suggestion Box that
E V E R Y O N E
should have their Birthday off
. . .in fact, it would be a fireable offense to work on your Birthday
. . in fact, not only should you have your Birthday off
but the day before and the day after, too. . .
IF YOUR BIRTHDAY
falls on the weekend, even better,
you’d either get the Friday before or the Monday after
. . .uhhhhh, THAT IDEA
never even got a reaction let alone approval
(I thought it would be an absolute MORALE BOOSTER
saying, YOU COUNT; WE VALUE YOU)
I always take off Birthday’s. . .
THE WHOLE WEEK
Mine and Erin’s. . .
we really don’t do much or go anywhere all that special
in fact, our Birthday weeks this year in March and now finishing up this week in August, we were both kind of under a cloud but always with a few rays of sunshine among some of the raindrops
WHICH MEANS WE SHOULD NEVER CELEBRATE
FOR A WEEK AGAIN
(maybe we should actually take off two weeks)
But before the fireworks get canceled
p a u s e
(ever so briefly)
and RAMP UP the
C E L E B R A T I O N
even more. . .
Like a Trick Candle
my life has ignited
Blazingly
Sparkingly so
Only to be blown out
e x t i n g u i s h e d
just to sputter back up into
a glimmer
that tricks the dark
into thinking
it matters
So many
HAPPY BIRTHDAY’S
HOW YA DOING’S
THINKING ABOUT YOU’S
WELL WISHES
. . .some from people I’m not sure I even know
as they came across the many forms of
social media
Which not only tells me that the Celebration never ends but continues on in a variety of surprising ways if we take the time to not just notice but to abundantly EXPERIENCE
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
here’s a secret to keeping
YOUR CELEBRATION
g o i n g
REGRETS. . .WE’VE HAD A FEW
We are all
s h a t t e r e d
in so many places
we can barely call it
B r O k e N e D
so we reframe it and call it
R E G R E T S
and not always the ones that
Frank Sinatra
belts out in
MY WAY. . .
which is exactly why we need to understand
How Regrets Can Help You Make Better Decisions
A new book explains what makes people prone to regret and how it affects our lives, for better and worse.
:
Have you ever regretted something you did or didn’t do in life?
If you’ve lived a long life, you probably carry many regrets, large and small. Some of my own regrets relate to my career (why did I never become a teacher and a basketball coach; a full-fledge writer), past relationships (why did I lose a good friend over a small disagreement), and parenting (why didn’t I respond instead of react well to my kid’s worries and unmet expectations?). No matter the regret, it’s hard not to wonder how things might have turned out if I’d only made a different—and better—choice at the time. I thought I was reading this book to help some of the patients I families I meet every day in the hospice setting. . .well. . .
Ruminating on past mistakes is a downer and can lead to depression or anxiety if it continues unabated. But a new book by psychologist Robert Leahy, If Only…Finding Freedom from Regret, suggests that regrets don’t always have to bog you down. If you understand how regrets work, recognize their effect on your decision making, and find ways to manage life’s inevitable disappointments, you can suffer less from regret and, instead, use your regrets as helpful guideposts for your life.
“Regret is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to take over and hijack you,” he writes.
The nature of regret
Regret can come in different forms—for something we did (like overeating or hurting our loved one) or something we didn’t do (like not graduating from college or not asking someone out on a date). Most people have a mixture of both types, though the latter tends to make us feel worse, writes Leahy.
According to research, the most common sources of regret involve our education, career, romance, and parenting (in that order). That’s because we tend to regret things that reflect bigger concerns and opportunities in life, rather than what we ate for breakfast.
Culture can affect how people experience regret, too, with people from more individualistic cultures usually having more regrets about their personal situation (like achievement or career) and those in collectivist cultures having more regrets about their relationships. And women and men differ some in how they experience regret, with women typically regretting romantic and sexual relationships more than men and men regretting inaction more than action.
Regret is associated with unpleasant emotions, like sadness, disappointment, guilt, and shame. But people also regard it as one of the most beneficial negative emotions, because it can be instructive. For example, if we regret how we behaved the last time we drank too much, we’re less likely to order a third round the next time we’re at the bar. Or, if we regret yelling at our child when angry, we may take a breath the next time we’re upset and respond with compassion.
Our regrets can teach us about ourselves, help us to avoid repeating mistakes, and encourage us to make better decisions in the future. On the other hand, if we use our regrets to beat ourselves up, or if we ignore them completely, they will not lead to growth. The key is finding the right balance, says Leahy.
“Regret doesn’t have to lead directly to self-recrimination,” he writes. But “never feeling regret is not a sign of wisdom or righteousness. It may be a sign you don’t learn from your mistakes.”
Why some people suffer from regret more
Some of us are more prone to regret than others, and Leahy provides multiple questionnaires within his book to help you identify where you fall on that scale. Though there is no way to eliminate regret completely—and the world would be worse if we did—there are factors that increase our chances of experiencing regret in a more negative way and suffering from it, says Leahy. Here are some of those risk factors.
Not tolerating ambivalence. Many life choices have pros and cons, and there are no guarantees about the future. But, if you can’t stand uncertainty, you are bound to avoid making hard choices, leaving you vulnerable to later regrets.
If Only…Finding Freedom from Regret (The Guilford Press, 2022, 246 pages). Falling prey to biases. We all have cognitive biases, but some influence regret more than others. If you suffer a lot from negativity bias (discounting or not even seeing the positives in your life), black-and-white thinking (thinking things are either all good or all bad), or catastrophizing (thinking that if something goes wrong, you won’t be able to handle it), it’s bound to affect how much you suffer regret.
Worrying about “buyer’s remorse” or how bad we’ll feel in the future. If you’re the kind of person who often anticipates feeling awful for making a choice, it may keep you from deciding on a course of action that could bring you happiness, increasing the potential for regret.
Having too many choices. “Regret is an opportunity emotion—the more opportunity we see, the more likely we are to regret something,” writes Leahy. For example, a college graduate with multiple job offers might regret taking one over another, especially if it doesn’t pan out. Having too many choices increases your potential for making the “wrong” one.
Being a perfectionist. If you expect to have an ideal, happy life all of the time and are not easily satisfied, you will be more prone to regret. “Maximizers” (people who seek out optimal outcomes) tend to feel more regret than “satisficers” (people who are content with good-enough outcomes), unless they can take steps to lessen their maximizing tendencies.
How regret can guide our decisions
“Regret is a possible element of any decision that we make,” writes Leahy. “But the likelihood that you will regret your decisions will depend on how you think about making your decisions and how you cope with living with the result.”
If you’re someone who lets past regrets fester in your mind, Leahy recommends that you fight against irrational thinking and think more realistically about where you are in life. He suggests using approaches from cognitive-behavioral therapy to question your assumptions. Here are some of his tips.
Remember that you don’t know things would have turned out better.If you imagine your life would have been better “if only…,” keep in mind that your assumption is not based on real evidence. Instead of focusing on where you might have been, turn toward the future and remember it can change based on the choices you make now.
Focus on the positive aspects of your current life, to balance out the negative feelings that come with regret. Your negativity bias can keep you preoccupied with what’s wrong rather than what’s right. So, it’s a good idea to practice gratitude for the good in your life—even for the small, simple things.
Don’t forget that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to, even with your most thoughtful planning. Life can hand you lemons, but that’s not necessarily your fault. You cannot be omniscient; so, you need to accept that sometimes you will regret your choices. But that doesn’t mean you should criticize yourself endlessly. Better to learn from your mistakes than to punish yourself.
Accept tradeoffs and compromises. Not everything has to turn out just the way you wanted it to. You will stymie your progress if you insist otherwise and make yourself miserable in the process. So, aim to be a satisficer rather than a maximizer.
Overall, Leahy advises that, once you’ve learned whatever lessons regret can teach you, you can let go of unrealistic expectations about what might have been, enjoy your life as it is, and start planning for a better future.
“Look around you at what is in the present moment and hold on to it with a warm embrace,” he writes. “Because your regrets will only keep you from what you have and who you are and trap you in a fictional world that never was—and never could have been.”
Life isn’t always
(forgive the pun)
CRACKED UP
what it’s suppose to be
but then again. . .
when it comes at us in
BITE SIZE
Pieces
We have a better way of
NOT REGRETTING
and savoring all of the goodness out of it
we can. . .
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