People are Busy Bees Too

Yesterday I opined on the behavior of bees. Their efficiency as they grazed from flower to flower impressed me. It occurs to me as well that as former hunter gatherers, we also show a strong tendency to remember where our food is.

This was brought home to me in a most powerful way by Steven Pinker in his book, "The Language Instinct". Besides proposing that the acquiring of language is an instinctive feature of infant development, he suggests a list of more than a dozen "families of instincts" on page 437 that are hard-wired in to every human being. Notably missing is "love", though it might be included under his designated instincts of Kinship and Mating.

I've been thinking about the instincts as Pinker describes around Intuitive Biology, Mental Maps of large territories, and Food means that we build habits in our day around what we eat, when we eat, and where we find it.

The bees follow a routine. They come back to the same place around the same time of day and expect to find their reliable source. They prefer reliable sources.

Similarly, we like our routines. Since I am attempting to change my base habits around food, I am acutely aware of the portions I take in. If absently I put down a half-eaten piece of toast or a partially finished can of pop, a niggling reminder remains that it is "not finished yet". If hubby manages to interfere by scooping the half-completed can of pop when I am distracted, I am upset. I have a sense of being deprived.

Over time, I can reset my stomach settings of what "complete" means. Being aware that I am fighting base biology rather than personal weakness provides some comfort.

It also makes me wonder about the ever increasing portion sizes that the food industry has foisted on us here in North America.

I remember as a child that a restaurant cup of orange juice came in a tiny glass (by today's standards). Why? That little glass represented a whole lot of squeezed oranges. Over time, that portion became larger and larger. We lost track of where those oranges came from, and how much work it represented.

The cup sizes and portion sizes we take for granted today are all out of proportion for our needs.

I do see a trend towards "less is more"; the 99 c burgers and the 100 calorie snacks for instance. Perhaps this is a sign that our society now worships conservation rather than excess; not only for our own bodies, but for the world.

Am I a workaholic if I love what I do?

There's lots of talk about work/life balance these days. And it's true that there are those who sacrifice all - relationships, friends, health - for a misplaced passion. Workaholism in my mind shows all the marks of other addictions. There's the shame/reformaton/abstension/fall cycle to them all, whether it's reaching for the dirty syringe, the liter bottle of wine, or the fatty doughnut.

But on the other hand, I think we underestimate the rich benefits of community that work provides. We spend time with some of our co-workers than we do with some of our family and friends. All that investment of time and commitment very often builds in to something good.

Then there's the matter of how much time I have to invest. I'm in the happy place of middle age where my children have flown the nest and are building their own lives. If I want to spend an evening working on a proposal, I can; and I do so without sacrificing time elsewhere.

So am I workaholic? I am not slaving away at the tasks with no thought to time, health, or relationships. The time I invest I enjoy, and what I produce is it's own form of creativity. I don't hide away when I spend on these activities.

Creativity can be all-consuming, but I don't think that is necessarily bad. In those moments I can enter a flow state. These are moments of intense pleasure, with no fear of a subsequent crash.

Which brings me to a pet peeve of mine. There's talk of limiting hours that workers can access their work account. Due to my peculiar cycle of hot flashes, I am often my most creative and productive at 3:30 in the morning. I know this is unorthodox, but it's me. When I am engrossed in an idea, the fastest way to rest is to put the idea down. Then I am at rest. If I were limited to government hours, it would increase my distress, not reduce it.

I borrow the picture from nature.com

Despondency is a luxury of the rich

Or rather, despondency that leads to inaction is a luxury the poor can't afford. What brought this on was some photo essays from Life magazine. We picked up a discounted copy of their seventieth anniversary edition, and I spent hours absorbing the photographs. Two images are imprinted forever. The first is of a girl lugging twenty-four loaves of bread to the public ovens (page 58). This bread will feed her family for a week.

http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/research/students/Bhalil/FoodandClothes.htm

The second is a twelve year old boy feeding his baby sister beans and rice, and later lying exhausted on his mat (page 65). He feeds the family while his parents work, and suffers from bronchial asthma and malnutrition. He says, "I am not afraid of death. But what will they do after?"

It is horrifying in our modern society to see such stark examples of poverty and child labor; of life reduced to it's fundamentals. Our world is at a crossroads, facing the consequences of our excess. It may very well be that our children and grandchildren will have to work harder and make do with less. They may never experience the luxuries we take for granted. Will it get so hard as these two examples? I don't think so.

Can we afford to lay down?

Only if we have excess. At our most fundamental, we must get up from our mat and determine a better day. Every day.

Gentle Change is not TV Friendly

This thought has been percolating for a while. Our television is flooded with "reality" shows where people are prodded, insulted, and put through incredible pressure in order to bring about dramatic change. http://www.realityshows.com/ Along the way there are many casualties. I fear with so many models put in front of us that people may come to believe that this sort of drama is normal or necessary to bring about change.

On the contrary, I suggest that gentle change is the norm and my gut tells me it is much more successful. I have my own life to show for it, too.

So why does television do it? Because dramatic television depends on confrontation, conflict, and high emotion to grab the viewer's interest. Gentle change is boring to watch. From my own example though, slow personal change does have high reward. The bootcamp mentality even, set me up for a succession of failures through the years. So here I am, forty-eight, and I am finally catching on to my own rythm and respecting it. I'll share what I've learned so maybe you can gain new confidence that personal change is not out of reach.

So how did I get bought in to the bootcamp mentality? Dad did it. A graduate from the Army reserves, he believed in pushing us harder, faster. His revelation, which he tried so hard to share, is that one reaches a moment when all reserves are exhausted and you go on anyways. Why do you do it? Because your sergeant told you to. How did you do it? You find out that you have greater reserves than you ever imagined. You dig deep in your gut and make it happen. Dad tried dearly to pass on that lesson, but it fell off me like water off a duck's back.

I have a vivid memory of "doing laps" in the pool, and reaching a personal best, "Look dad, what I did", he smiled indulgently and asked me to do ten more. I couldn't do it. I wilted, and I lost what I wanted most in the world, my dad's approval. I am sure he felt the failure, too. It wasn't like he wanted me to feel bad. He wanted me to have that same experience he did. But it was not to be. I thrive on play and frequent rewards. The more often you tell me I'm doing a great job, the more I will do.

So finally, at forty-eight, I am putting that voice in my head to rest, "Onward, higher, more, more." I'm exercising and dieting with greater success. I've got a great support team for me, all gentle cheerleaders, and I have a new voice in my head.

Some of my great support people this time around, are all gentle in their suggestions. There's my doctor, who shyly suggests that perhaps a reasonable goal is to shed ten percent of my current weight, not to achieve my "ideal" size. As I consider what she says over the following weeks, I start building myself a new picture of what success looks like. I'll still be rotund, but how much more a svelte rotund I will be. With greater energy and mobility, too.

My massage therapist, as well, as she prods my muscles to new shapes, is an oasis of calm and reason. Massage is new to me but I already love it. I get all tongue-tied when I talk of the experience, though. Her fingers drum a message that speaks to the inexpressible parts of my soul. So I'll leave it at that. If you want to know what massage can do for you, try it.

My hubby from the first, approaches me with new habits with a gentle persistence that is disarming. His tidiness gene is much more activated than mine. He lives for an empty sink and a clear counter every day. Every day for the past eight years, he gently suggests we get the dishes done together. Every night I consider, and most nights I concede. Without really noticing, my kitchen and my home has gained a sense of order and tidiness. I only notice when he's gone for a few days. For whatever reason, he never tires of asking, and he is never angry or impatient in his request. The ritual of asking is part of our routine and is strangely soothing.

He also is part of my support team, challenging me when I choose to break my fast. By now he knows the dietary rules I have made for myself, and challenges me when I choose to break them. I'd like to say I listen, but most of the time I don't. But perhaps I cut the binge to one piece of toast instead of a half-dozen. He's the added voice of reason when I choose to live in a haze of denial for a while.

Nowadays I forgive myself frequently. Every day is a new day. Slip-ups happen to normal people, and every good choice is a success. I am enjoying myself, I am having fun, and I bask in the praise of small successes. It works, so why fight it? I'm not a television show "reality" contestant. I won't be voted off, no-one revels in my drama, and my ultimate success, though painfully slow to watch, is great living.

Dramatic interventions I also suspect have only limited success, whether it be to help an addict face his demons, or a cultist the danger of his religious choice. I've only watched "Intervention" once, but the story was terrifying in it's reality. The addict did finally accept treatment, but only for a short while. He died within weeks of leaving the treatment facility. I suspect as dramatic as an intervention is (and maybe with these extreme cases is the only hope) that a gentle coaxing to new ways of thinking and doing has more success. It's only "gut" now, but I'd like to search out if my gut is true.

An open letter to e-mail broadcasters everywhere

I would love to hear from you once in a while but I have an allergy. I am allergic to forwarded e-mails. No matter how lovely the poem, how profound the sentiment, how cute the picture, how urgent the plea…every forwarded e-mail gives me hives and indigestion. They are just too easy and just a little too much like a chain letter.

The only e-mails that don’t make me queasy are original and written from the heart. I like meeting and knowing original people. Do please keep in touch, but if you do write me, let it be something you want to say.

Your ever friend,

Me

The Grazers of Edmonton, or Hard Core Dumpster Diving

I've seen very little about this activity in the media, but I know through my son that it is going on. The group my son was involved called themselves "grazers" and were quite happy to live off the excess of modern society. They "harvested" from back yard gardens and dumpsters. I did a quick google search and see that this activity is starting to show up on the web.

Here's a dumpster diver in Calgary. http://shaneonabike.wordpress.com/2007/01/10/checkin-out-of-dumpster-divers-anonymous/

And here's a meetup site looking for local dumpster divers. http://dumpsterdiving.meetup.com/cities/ca/ab/edmonton/

There's a cachet to this sort of activity. After all, there's evidence of excess everywhere. For some people, it can become a mission to reduce that environmental load. Kind of like a modern Robin Hood and his merry men. They get to know the disposal cycles of the stores and where the best "takes" can be found. My son casually mentioned, for instance, the great finds of pre-packaged and expired sandwiches he was able to pick up behind a local convenience store. The "grazers" held a lot of appeal for my son, as he has a very strong miserly streak (I recently broke him from picking up cigarette butts when he's out walking with me). For him at least, the activity also had a side benefit of saving enough money to re-invest in drugs.

Which is the grimmer side of the grazer culture. It tends to pick up people who, for whatever reason, are not fully engaged with society. They could be suffering from untreated illness or addiction. They can literally drop off the grid. Living on the streets in Edmonton is doubly hard because winters can kill.

I won't comment either way on the wisdom of the grazer lifestyle, but I am worried that it's a quiet subtext in our society that no-one is talking about.

Excess

I've often wondered what a person from the third world would think of some of our television shows. I don't always have to guess. My girlfriend from Uganda was horrified when she first came to this country by what she saw on the screen. And not for what you might think. We get hung up on nudity and sexuality. But what bothered her was the gratituous violence. After all, she'd seen enough of the real thing to never want to see it again...let alone glorify it. A commentator on Access television gave me insight on how we have given ourselves permission to see horrible things done to one another. Make the villain very, very evil. Have him harm innocents on screen. For the rest of the movie, we are given permission to cheer his and his associates' destruction. In the most horrible way.

But I didn't mean to talk about violence today. What I wonder about these days are the shows that help us deal with our excesses. I think of shows "Clean Sweep" and "The Biggest Loser" that helps people shed their excess. Whether it be a household out of control, or a body out of control. What would such a pile of goods look like to people outside of our bubble of prosperity? Our problems must appear vacuous, silly. But they are real. We do really struggle to pare down.

Perhaps a leaner society would be a happier society. I'm thinking of planting a victory garden this coming spring, in commemoration of our survivor past.

As a closing note, have you ever seen Time's photo series, "What the World Eats"? Well worth a visit.