T H O U G H T S ?
DO ANY OF THESE STRATEGIES WORK FOR YOU?
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Don’t tell anybody, but I turn to music to feel better in almost any situation, You?
(My thanks to Polly Castor for the graphic.)
FEEL BETTER
Who Cares - What Matters
T H O U G H T S ?
DO ANY OF THESE STRATEGIES WORK FOR YOU?
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Don’t tell anybody, but I turn to music to feel better in almost any situation, You?
(My thanks to Polly Castor for the graphic.)
FEEL BETTER
We did a lot of traveling last week, to Niagara Falls to Dayton with nary a time for a quick car wash and my car literally got BUGGED. The car wash couldn’t remove all of the mix mash of bug guts; it needed some more than unusual elbow grease and with sweating dripping down my face and slow diving off of the tip of my nose, I stood and wiped my face and THERE, there it was; a thought and then a flood of words that found its way into a poem, not just about bugs on a bumper and crusted across my windshield but about the randomness of our living and our dying; the vast unpredictability of
IT ALL. . . HENCE: SPLAT
Is it all willie nillie
some hocus-pocus predestinated Chance
A random bullet
Out of control car
Avalanche
Shark bite
A fallen tree limb
An elevator cable snap
Plane crash
All
wrong places at the wrongest of times
ALL so unmathematically
equating into a
SPLAT
No one ever sees coming
WE
like the Severely unsuspecting unnamed Bug
SPLATTED
It was never my intention to
harm, maime, Kill
Yet, just the same,
SPLAT
It ended up a glorious Yellow
but so very indistinguishable on my bumper
across my windshield
And Now
just like that
as I turned on the Shower
I spied a spider
frantically trying to get out
of the fast sucking swirlingly
towards the Drain—too late
for a rescue attempt
The Splat became a deadly Splash
Proving it’s always more than One Way
but always, still, A Way
S P L A T
What Pow, What Splash, What Kerplunk
SPLAT
Awaits us
If a bug, a flailing spider
not exempted
what of us
I don’t know
But make no mistake about
Knowing it does
Sometimes the greatest
F I S H
caught are the ones
you never put a line in the water
to catch. . .
In fact,
those fish swim everywhere
in, out, through your imagination
for the greatest tales ever. . .
When this not-not-so-small-minnow
jumped into my boat
I wasn’t ‘fishing’ for it but
it caught me way before I even thought of reeling it in. . .
It birthed
almost immediately these
poetic thoughts:
FIRST TIMES
I don’t remember
the first time
I sucked a lemon
but I’m sure it
prepared me for the
second time
I knowingly wouldn’t
suck up to pucker up
again. . .
Candle flame burns
Electrical outlet shocks
Black ice falls
Hit the thumb instead of the nail hammerings
Hot pans on hotter stoves
Stumbles off of shaky branches
All First Times
that make a
Second Time
not so much a lesson learned
as one to be remembered
to ever be taught
again. . .
FISHING BEFORE YOU KNOW HOW TO FISH Courtney Martin Through the pines and the one maple I hear her. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. There she stands legs impossibly long pink and black polka dot swimsuit baggy pole in her hands and a little oval sunfish impossibly on her hook. I don’t tell her, but I do think Oh, sweet girl, life is always like that. Fishing before you know how to fish. Leaving before you know how to leave. Speaking before you know how to speak. Fighting before you know how to fight. Loving before you know how to love. Dying before you know how to die. We are all the child with the pole worrying about who we’ve hurt. And we are all the fish on the hook, hoping for mercy. Her aunt hears her muttering prayer and though she hasn’t unhooked a fish in 30 years grabs the wriggling innocent in her hands and dislodges metal from cheek. And this, too, is all of us. Saved again and again by prayer we didn’t know we were saying and a witness we forgot was listening. Thank you, Miss Courtney for taking us Fishing before we knew we even had a pole, bait and some not-always-needed-know-how. . . . |
THE PHONE ZONE
. . .hardly right?
Most don’t remember phones like this that sat on end tables or night stands securely wired to the wall and many more might be wondering, “HOW DO YOU TEXT WITH THIS THING?” or Google or TikTok or SnapChat or. . .
M A Y B E
Maybe years from now the Psychologists will tell us how telling it has been for us to be sooooo PHONE DEPENDENT; for now JILL SUTTIE Psy.D., who is Greater Good’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine explores the subject that we are so subject to: OUR PHONES. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good.
If you commute on a bus or train, you’ve probably noticed that most people spend the ride looking at their cell phones. No doubt, they assume doing nothing but sit there would be boring, so they prefer distracting themselves. This squares with past research showing people will do almost anything to avoid boredom—even administer electric shocks to themselves.To
But results from new research suggest we should rethink that choice. We are probably underestimating how enjoyable and interesting it is to do nothing but pay attention to wherever our thoughts take us.
In a series of experiments, researchers brought Japanese university students into a lab and told them that they would soon be going into a room without their belongings to wait and do nothing but sit for 20 minutes. They were further instructed that, while waiting, they could think about anything they wanted to, but were not allowed to sleep, walk, or exercise; look at a smartphone; or consult a watch.
Before entering the room, they were asked to predict how much they’d enjoy waiting and thinking, how interesting or boring it would be, and how much it would engage them so that they’d lose track of time. Then, they went in the room to wait. Afterward, they reported how waiting actually felt—how engaging, pleasurable, interesting, or boring it was. (In some variations of the experiment, they waited in a dark room without any stimulation.)
Either way, researchers found that the participants were not good at predicting how much they’d enjoy doing nothing but think. Even in a dark room with no stimulation, they ended up being more engaged and interested than they’d anticipated.
“People don’t appreciate the real value of waiting/thinking,” says researcher Kou Murayama of the Motivation Science Lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany and coauthor of the study. “Once they engage in it, though, they appreciate it.”
To test this idea further, Murayama and his colleagues recruited another group of students and repeated the experiment. But first they asked students whether they’d rather have a 75% chance of being in a room without any stimulation or with a computer they could use to check the news. Not surprisingly, most students wanted the latter and predicted they’d enjoy waiting more if they had computer access.
Then, the researchers randomly assigned students to have a computer in the room or not and asked them to report afterward how the experience went. Despite predictions, there were no significant differences between those who waited with or without a computer; both groups liked the experience equally.
Why would this be? The students didn’t report on their actual thoughts, so it’s hard to know exactly where their minds went. But spontaneous thinking often involves mind-wandering, daydreaming, thinking about the future, or recollecting memories, all of which can have upsides. For example, daydreaming and mind-wandering have been found to improve our mood, creativity, goal-setting, and job performance (especially during a repetitive task). And thinking about the past in a nostalgic (rather than ruminative) way can make us happier and more resilient to stress.
Though it’s hard to know if these results with students would apply to the rest of us, Murayama did at least compare German students to Japanese students and found both groups underestimated the pleasure of waiting to a similar degree. This implies that it’s not necessarily a culturally-driven phenomenon, though more research would need to be done to verify that.
Overall, says Murayama, the results suggest we rethink whipping out our cell phones every time we are waiting or bored. Instead, we might benefit from having a moment to think freely about whatever catches our fancy—and enjoy ourselves just as much.
“If you find yourself checking mobile phones when there is nothing to do, try to take a moment to entertain yourself with thinking,” advises Murayama. “You may have new refreshing experiences that you did not expect.”
Words scribbled across
crumbled paper
read the same way
More than mere thoughts
Thunk
More than expressions
Stated
More than feelings
Shared
More than Adventures
Experienced
More than memories
Not yet created
We are all raw poetry
crumbled up on pieces of paper
with scribbled
sometimes unlegible
sentiments
scratched on stained
scrapped posted notes
not so much to be
re-membered
as much as to live on
Be Found
Read
Re-experienced
when needed most
RAW POETRY
we are more
(so much more)
than scribbled words
on pieces of discarded scrapes of paper. . .
a C t
L i K e
i t
DID YOU SEE THE MOVIE YET. . .
It really doesn’t matter. . .
I think it should be mandatory. . .
It really doesn’t matter. . .
The reason I am sharing the clip is because
of the SPONTANEOUS REACTION
that Hugh Jackman and the Cast had
when the song,
F R O M N O W O N
over took them. . .
THEY HAD NO CONTROL;
Q U I C K:
what reaction did you have seeing this?
Don’t watch it again. . .
What is your REACTION:
Mine?
It took me to a Wednesday Night
A funeral home
5 year old boy
allegedly killed by his mother
buried in his backyard
private service
family minister not comfortable doing the service
a small group of people
wanting an answer to the questions of
W H Y
W H A T F O R
H O W C O M E
I answered by asking a question:
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE STORY
Several were told
T E A R S
L A U G H T E R
S I L E N C E
A STANDING OVATION
for a boy who could only speak 3-4 words. . .
for a boy who probably never heard a
‘That’a boy’
. . .I was in the car riding home
and I heard this song
FROM NOW ON
from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN
and when it got to the part of:
FROM NOW ON
THESE EYES WILL NOT BE BLINDED BY THE LIGHTS
FROM NOW ON
WHAT’S WAITED FOR TOMORROW STARTS
TONIGHT
LET THIS PROMISE IN ME START
LIKE AN ANTHEM IN MY HEART
FROM NOW ON
FROM NOW ON
I began to weep
but when it got to:
AND WE WILL COME BACK HOME
AND WE WILL COME BACK HOME
H O M E A G A I N
I pulled the car over and
sobbed
shook
shuddered
and I cried for this young boy
I cried for past funerals conducted
I cried for current patients and their families
I cried for past hurts
I cried for lost opportunities
I cried for Erin
I cried for my children
I cried for grandchildren
I cried for friends hurts and disappointments
I C R I E D
and healed
. . .music does that
S P O N T A N E O U S L Y
Y O U ?
I shared the video with a colleague of mine
and we both cried. . .
She had not seen the movie
but told me the clip took her to her mother’s bedside
who had just recently died. . .
I told her of the young boy. . .
I’m interested. . .
what did the spontaneity
spontaneously bring out in
Y O U ?
Did it open a door
that’s been safely locked
maybe even hidden
never knocked on
peeked behind
noticed. . .
what KEY
opens THAT door
for you?