The Caring Catalyst

SOMETIMES, UP ON A BOX

ChuckBehrens — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:00:34 +0000

It’s true. . .
You may never get an Answer
if you don’t ask a Question
but it’s just as true
that sometimes the best Answers
require no Questions. . .

THE CONFUSING

ChuckBehrens — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 11:00:00 +0000

I Question
what I QUESTION
A L L
W A Y S
and the
BIGGEST
QUESTIONING OF ALL
is when I
QUESTION
NOT AT ALL
and this
in
UN-MATHEMATICAL TERMS
is
THE CONFUSING
. . .GET IT?
It’s the most precarious
balancing act
of all time:
THAT
razor thin line
bEtWeEn
CURIOSITY
(which we know kills the cat)
and
QUESTIONING
wanting to truly
experience
the
WHY
the
HOW COME
the
WHAT FOR

THE CURE. . .
QUESTION EVERYTHING
HOW COME,
IT
WHAT FOR,
IT
WHY
IT
like a little kid
asking for an ice cream cone
on a hot Summer’s Day
before Dinner
you’re not going to get
until later
and keep
A S k I n G
until you get the
p r o v e r b i a l
“BECAUSE I SAID SO”
and then risk
the ice-cream cone
the late dinner
an early bedtime
an extended
TIME OUT
by starting all over again
with a not-not-so-whimpered:
W H Y. . .

THE MORAL:
Never give up the
Q U E S T I O N I N G
for a
JUST BECAUSE
. . .sometimes the greatest way to remove
THE CONFUSING
is the be
(the inexplicable)
the cause of it

. . .OR THE CHIEF REMOVAL OF IT

PERSPECTIVE

ChuckBehrens — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 11:00:00 +0000

A SIMPLE QUESTION :

JUST HOW DO YOU USUALLY READ A SITUATION. . .

FROM THE TOP
D O W N

o r

FROM THE DOWN
U P

Such a
s i m p l e
QUESTION
but the
A N S W E R. . .

YOUR HEART

ChuckBehrens — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Have you ever lost your heart. . . ?
Loaded question, huh?
Well?
What makes it such a touch question
is just trying to figure out
is that a
Physical
Emotional
Psycho-Social
Spiritual
L I T E R A L Question. . .
Ohhhhhhhh how you should know by
NOW
and all nearly some 800 Blog Posts later
that I’m a Sucker for the Sap Movies
and this one,
LAST CHRISTMAS
is maybe the sappiest of all
and it’s leaked a glue over me
that I can’t wash away
(and most likely don’t want to, anyway)
Nothing seems to go right for young Kate, a frustrated Londoner who works as an elf in a year-round Christmas shop. But things soon take a turn for the better when she meets Tom — a handsome charmer who seems too good to be true. As the city transforms into the most wonderful time of the year, Tom and Kate’s growing attraction turns into the best gift of all — a Yuletide romance. . .
Sa-Sa-Saaaaaa-SAPPY, right?
ba-ba-baaa-but
it made me think
IT MADE ME FEEL
the times I’ve lost my
h e a r t
Uhhhhhhh not so much
physically
emotionally
psycho-socially
spiritually
so much as
uh-ohh. . .
dare I write:
metaphysically. . .
and I guess I’m inviting you
to ask
to reflect
a time(S)
you’ve actually lost your heart. . . ?
Can I help answer?
Are you the same you were
10
20
30+
years ago?
What changed from the time you were an infant
to the time you became a toddler
to the time you became a preschooler
to the time you were in elementary school
to the time you were in junior high
to the time you were graduating high school
to the times of different jobs
to the the times of continuing education
to the times of getting married
to the times of having children
to
N O W
. . .just how many,
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU LOST YOUR HEART
and maybe better still. . .
FOUND IT?
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Here’s to all of the times to come
and all the Seasons
that’ll allow
the prompting of the question:
WHO AM I?
(MAY THE ANSWER CONTINUALLY BE DIFFERENT
as it has countless times before)

O Happy DAY (s)

ChuckBehrens — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 11:00:33 +0000

I s H A P P I N E S S

a l l t h a t

H A P P Y

4 lessons from the longest-running

study on happiness

gives us a hint. . .

Stocksy

Essential, data-derived advice for leading a happy, healthy life, shared by researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger.

Have you ever wished you could fast-forward your life so you could see if the decisions you’re making will lead to satisfaction and health in the future? In the world of scientific research, the closest you can get to that is by looking at the Harvard Study of Adult Development — a study that has tracked the lives of 724 men for 78 years, and one of the longest studies of adult life ever done. Investigators surveyed the group every two years about their physical and mental health, their professional lives, their friendships, their marriages — and also subjected them to periodic in-person interviews, medical exams, blood tests and brain scans.

With a front-row seat on these men’s lives, researchers have been able to track their circumstances and choices and see how the effects ripple through their lives. Psychiatrist Robert J. Waldinger, the study’s director and principal investigator, shared some of the major lessons in a popular TED Talk (What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness). He says, ”We’d been publishing journal articles with our findings for 75 years, but we publish in journals about lifespan developmental research that few people read. The government has invested millions of dollars in the research, so why keep it a secret?”

The big takeaways from that talk: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier, and loneliness kills. But there were, of course, many more lessons to be learned — the study has yielded more than 100 published papers so far, with enough data for “scores more” — and Waldinger shares four of them here.

1. A happy childhood has very, very long-lasting effects.

Having warm relationships with parents in childhood was a good predictor you’ll have warmer and more secure relationships with those closest to you when you’re an adult. Happy childhoods had the power to extend across decades to predict more secure relationships that people had with their spouses in their 80s, as well as better physical health in adulthood all the way into old age. And it’s not just parental bonds that matter: Having a close relationship with at least one sibling in childhood predicted which people were less likely to become depressed by age 50.

2. But … people with difficult childhoods can make up for them in midlife.

People who grow up in challenging environments — with chaotic families or economic uncertainty, for instance — grew old less happily than those who had more fortunate childhoods. But by the time people reached middle age (defined as ages 50–65), those who engaged in what psychologists call “generativity,” or an interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, were happier and better adjusted than those who didn’t. And generativity is not dependent on being a parent — while people can develop it by raising children, they can also exhibit it at work or other situations where they mentor younger adults.

3. Learning how to cope well with stress has a lifelong payoff.

We’ve all developed ways of managing stress and relieving anxiety, and Waldinger and his team have found that some ways can have greater long-term benefits than others. Among the adaptive coping methods they examined are sublimation (example: you feel unfairly treated by your employer, so you start an organization that helps protect workers’ rights), altruism (you struggle with addiction and help stay sober by being a sponsor for other addicts), and suppression (you’re worried about job cuts at your company but put those worries out of mind until you can do something to plan for the future). Maladaptive coping strategies include denial, acting out, or projection. The Harvard researchers found the subjects who dealt with stress by engaging in adaptive methods had better relationships with other people. And their way of coping had a cascade of beneficial effects: It made them easier for others to be with, which made people want to help them and led to more social support, and that, in turn, predicted healthier aging in their 60s and 70s. Added bonus: people who used adaptive mechanisms in middle age also had brains that stayed sharper longer.

4. Time with others protects us from the bruises of life’s ups and downs.

Waldinger has said “it’s the quality of your relationships that matters” is one significant takeaway from the study. Well, the researchers have found that quantity counts, too. Looking back on their lives, people most often reported their time spent with others as most meaningful, and the part of their lives of which they were the proudest. Spending time with other people made study subjects happier on a day-to-day basis, and in particular, time with a partner or spouse seemed to buffer them against the mood dips that come with aging’s physical pains and illnesses.

Waldinger continues to marvel at the researchers’ findings, even though he freely acknowledges how skewed their research group is — “it’s the most politically incorrect sample you could possibly have; it’s all white men!” (In fact, the group originally included John F. Kennedy.) With “only a handful” of the original subjects left to study, the Harvard team is now moving on to the men’s 1,300 children who’ve agreed to participate (a group that’s 51 percent female). But he’s painfully aware that the proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health could end even their long-running study. “Our kind of research might be one of the first projects to go. Our work is not urgent; it’s not the cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s,” he says. “But we have a way of understanding human life that you can’t get anywhere else and it lays the foundation for important, actionable things.”

So maybe here’s the most important question of all:

A R E Y O U H A P P Y ?

or maybe it’s not the question at all. . .

IT’S YOUR ANSWER. . .

I Don’t Know (IS AN ANSWER)

ChuckBehrens — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 11:00:00 +0000

I don’t know. . .

is a terrible answer.

Does I don’t know ever sit well with anyone, for anyone?

Does I don’t know ever make the heart beat lighter, the mind more peaceful, the soul more settled after a room full of Doctor’s all through out the day parade in, giving theories, hypothesis, checking, re-checking, testing, re-testing and after IT all

I DON’T KNOW

is the end all answer Erin and I were given after five seizures, five nights at Cleveland Clinic, numerous tests, a spinal tap, blood work and more worry than two mixed up minds could possible comprehend.

“BUT SOMETIMES, SOMETIMES, ‘I DON’T KNOW’ is the only answer there really is,” the Doctor told us before we went home.

He told us to take solace in all of the things we now know IT IS NOT: A mass or tumor, a hemorrhage or a bleed, or a stroke.

Maybe we’ve come to expect too much when it comes to our modern day medicine and our sophisticated ways of diagnosing and prognosing infections and diseases?

But out of all of the Punctuation we use or is used against us, none is more haunting or frustrating than

THE QUESTION MARK

In the three weeks, home now from the hospital, there have been a few more question marks that have arisen but most of them have become more vapor-like because as the Doctor’s promised,

“These symptoms of the headaches, ear pressure, dizziness and endurance will diminish over the next three weeks, going along with our theory that it was a viral infection that we just can’t prove in the lab.”

So life. . .like it so often does,

from the Mt Everest’s to the Dead Seas

goes on. . .

The clock’s have ticked their Toc’s

The Calendar pages have been ripped away and discarded

The Sun has risen and the moon has become full

Medicines have been taken

Meals eaten,

L I F E G O E S O N

with Periods, Commas, Exclamation points, Hyphens, Semi-Colons,

QUESTION MARKS

. . .and that IT GOES ON

dims. . .if not in fact, eliminates the

making the other side of the sheets a little more bearable

(This is the third installment of four of the ROUGH SIDE OF THE SHEETS: These are some of lessons experienced, learned, and how hopefully, shared. It’s my hope that you enjoy these journey-ings, and more, take the time to share a few of yours so that we can all learn a little more about those razor blade laden sheets…and in the sharing, soften them a little)

And The Answer I S . . .

ChuckBehrens — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:00:37 +0000

I really think it’s Time Magazine’s answer to Sport’s Illustrated, “The Swimsuit Issue,”

THE ANSWERS ISSUE

Outstanding. . .some 53 pages of A N S W E R S

But wait. . .is that really what we need more of: Data, Information, Content, Subject Matter. . . ?

TIME

Covered:

Who is Exceptional

Questions We Should Be Asking

Questions We Didn’t Know We Had

Questions Wd Didn’t Know We Had Answers

What’s This All About?

Do You Vote Your Lifestyle

And my personal favorite:

WHAT DEFINES US ?

HOLD ON. . .SEAT BELTS MIGHT BE REQUIRED AND USED:

82% of U.S. College Alumni who said they cheated during their undergraduate careers. . .

16% of American Kids who attend a school that provides every student at tablet or laptop. . .

30% of Tinder (An online dating app) users are married. . .

5% of Americans who are married or in a committed relationship met their partner online. . .

45% of U.S. federal prisoners report having a mental-health issue. . .

Around the World there are now 3,317 da Vinci surgery robots used for complex minimally evasive procedures…

71% of U.S. Catholics say Pope Francis represents a major change in direction for the Catholic Church. . .

There are over 700 million people in China who are religiously unafilliated; the most of any Country. . .

73% is the estimated growth rate of the global Muslim population from 2010 to 2050, making Islam the only major religious group projected to grow faster than the world’s overall population. . .

Seriously. . .out of all the data, all the world’s content, all of the information, all of the subject matter, there really is none greater, none more important than

This Question; This Answer:

WHAT DEFINES YOU ?

Is it what you believe?

Is it how you learn?

Is it how you police yourself?

Is it how you heal?

Well, ONE Thing is for sure. . .

It’s a much more important question than what came first, the Chicken or the Egg?

(Yeah. . .it’s THE EGG, Most Scientists say)

What say you?

What Defines You?

50% who just read this thought it was a question about the egg. . .

10% who read this actually might think about what actually defines them. . .

40% are wondering exactly what a definition is. . .

Thank you TIME

for the annual ANSWERS ISSUE