The Caring Catalyst http://thecaringcatalyst.com Who Cares - What Matters Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:25:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 52309807 WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY MIGHT NOT http://thecaringcatalyst.com/what-makes-you-happy-might-not/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/what-makes-you-happy-might-not/#respond Wed, 02 Aug 2023 11:00:20 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5988

Surprising Things You Think Are Making You Happy—But Are Doing the Opposite

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Angela Haupt from Greater Good Magazine recently did a deep dive on HAPPINESS…what we think it is and maybe.   .   .what it’s really not.      .      .Fat salaries and corporate success aren’t the gateways to happiness they’re cracked up to be. But it makes sense that we might think they are. “We’re fed such an incredibly dense diet of popular media and marketing that shapes our understanding of happiness in a way that actually gets in the way of it,” says Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “I think we as a society, particularly in the West, have a bit of an illusion about where happiness comes from and how to get more of it.”

Researchers have long sought to sort fact from fiction when it comes to pinpointing what increases happiness. Here are six surprising things we often think are making us happy—but that might actually be doing the opposite.

Dodging your negative emotions

Being happy is a lofty goal. Squashing negative emotions like anger, fear, and resentment is surely a step in the right direction, right?

It turns out the opposite is true—and experts say that’s the No. 1 thing most people get wrong about the pursuit of happiness. “We have the mistaken idea that a happy, meaningful life means feeling good all the time and avoiding our negative emotions,” says Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University. “But the evidence suggests that suppressing our negative emotions can be a recipe for making those emotions worse.”

Research has concluded that suppressing negative emotions is a “barrier to good health.” One study suggests bottling up emotions like frustration or disgust can make people more aggressive; another indicates that the habit can lead to lower social support and fewer close relationships. Additional researchhas linked suppressing emotions to an increased risk of early death from any cause.

It’s much healthier to reframe how we think about happiness, Simon-Thomas says, and to accept that it includes the full spectrum of emotions. Remind yourself that when you’re scrolling past beaming faces on social media, you’re only seeing part of the story, and it’s not possible or healthy for anyone to constantly be happy.

Once we redefine what happiness means, “there’s a way to relate to our unpleasant emotions that’s more restorative—more growth- and learning-oriented,” Simon-Thomas notes. It’s important to practice self-compassion, and to recognize that when we feel bad, the answer isn’t to stifle those emotions or berate ourselves. “Rather, we need to understand what they’re for,” she says. Practicing mindfulness can help some people figure out how to acknowledge and cope with difficult emotions in a healthy way, as can a specific framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. The approach helps teach people to accept their inner emotions instead of avoiding them.

Living in a city

Some of the great American cultural icons—from Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z—have waxed poetic about life in metropolitan areas like New York. But waking up in a city that never sleeps isn’t necessarily good for inner peace.

Research has found that urban living often translates to stress, anxiety, and plain old unhappiness. According to one study, people who resided in cities were 21% more likely than those in rural areas to experience an anxiety disorder, and 39% more likely to have a mood disorder like major depression. In another study, those based in areas with lots of road noise were 25% more likely to report depression symptoms than people living in quiet neighborhoods. (One potential reason: Noise can interrupt sleep, which is a crucial component of mental health.) Research has linked simply being in the presence of high-rise buildings to worse moods and feelings of powerlessness.

One reason why cities have these impacts is that our brains are only wired to live in social groups of about 150 people, says Colin Ellard, a neuroscientist at Canada’s University of Waterloo, who studies how natural and built places affect emotion and physiology. Of course, most places have a bigger population than that—but in a smaller town, you won’t pass all of them on the street during your morning commute. “Once the size of our group exceeds that, we’re basically in a situation where we’re living among strangers, and that is cognitively and emotionally taxing,” he says. Feeling crowded in a high-density area can, for example, lead to higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Plus, “people struggle mentally in situations where they don’t feel in control over their circumstances,” which is common in cities—there’s nothing you can do to get the taxis to stop honking or to clear a crowded sidewalk.

Fortunately, if you’re a city-dweller and plan to remain one, there are ways to protect your mental health. Even brief exposures to natural areas like urban parks can help, Ellard says, as can trading a bus commute for a walk or bike ride. And investing in black-out curtains and a white-noise machine can help improve sleep quality in loud, bright neighborhoods.

Having tons of free time

Researchers have long known that having enough discretionary time is crucial for wellbeing—but it turns out that having too much free time may be almost as bad as having too little.

According to a study published in 2021 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, wellbeing increases in correlation with free time, but only to a certain extent. The benefits level off after about two hours, and decline around five hours of free time per day. “What we found is that if you have a lot of discretionary time, you’re not necessarily happier, and in some cases, you’re actually less happy,” says study author Marissa Sharif, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “The reason for that is you don’t feel like you’re productive anymore, and you feel like you lack purpose and meaning.”

Still, how you spend your free time matters. When people with more than five hours spent it with others—or felt like they were passing it in a productive, meaningful way—they didn’t experience a drop in well-being. Some of the activities that helped participants feel like they were optimizing their time included exercising, participating in group activities, and pursuing a hobby like gardening or studying a new language. Scrolling through social media or using the computer, on the other hand, made people feel less happy about how they’d spent their free time.

“If you do happen to have lots of time, just think consciously about how you’re spending it,” Sharif says. “Think about how to use that time in a way that makes you feel like you have meaning, or purpose, or like you’re productive.”

Chasing success

From the time we’re little kids, many of us are taught that if we work hard, we’ll land the perfect, high-paying job, get a flashy promotion (and then another), and live happily ever after. It’s the American Dream.

But experts say checking off those accomplishments won’t actually make you happier—at least not for long. The false notion that achieving success will lead to long-lasting happiness is called the arrival fallacy, says Tal Ben-Shahar, co-founder of the online Happiness Studies Academy. “Most people believe that if you win the lottery or get that raise or promotion, or win a tournament, then you’ll be all set,” he notes. “This actually leads millions—if not billions—of people on the path to unhappiness. Because at best, what success does is lead to a temporary spike in our levels of wellbeing, not to lasting happiness.”

Almost as soon as we achieve one goal, we often become fixated on the next, ending up trapped in an endless cycle of not appreciating what we have. Plus, success frequently translates to more stress and less time for things we care about, like our families. In one classic study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, professors who had either received or been denied tenure were asked to rate their happiness, and both groups had similar scores. (That’s despite significant career differences, including higher pay and job security.) When assistant professors who weren’t yet eligible for tenure were asked how achieving such a milestone would affect them, they tended to overestimate how happy the change would make them.

Discovering the fleeting nature of happiness following a big accomplishment can feel like a letdown. But there are ways to stretch out the positive feelings success initially brings, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California Riverside and author of books including The Myths of Happiness. For example, if you change jobs, aim to keep feelings of novelty alive by seeking out new challenges and opportunities: “Meeting new people, learning new things—if we’re able to do that,” we’ll fend off feelings of staleness, she says. So sign up for an online course in some new skill you’d like to explore, and schedule networking coffees with colleagues you don’t know very well yet. Doing so may lift your spirits and invigorate you.

Anonymity

It’s natural to want to blend in some of the time: to keep our heads down, avert eye contact, and mind our own business. But the pursuit of anonymity isn’t doing us any favors, says John Helliwell, one of the founding editors of the World Happiness Report, a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a nonprofit launched by the United Nations.

He references an experiment in which participants were asked what might happen if they lost a wallet with $200 in it. How likely did they think it was that a police officer, neighbor, local clerk, or stranger would return it? People who believed they lived in an environment in which someone would return their wallet were much happier than those who didn’t think they’d get it back. “We found it was really important for people to feel that they live in a society where other people care about them,” Helliwell says. “If you believe that other people will return your wallet, you’re more likely to return their wallets—and you’re likely to feel happier because these are the people who watch out for your kids when they’re walking to school, who tell you to ‘watch out’ if you’re about to run into a curb.”

To foster this sense of community belonging, Helliwell issues a few challenges. The next time you’re walking down the street, think to yourself: “These are all people who would return my wallet if I dropped it,” and offer them a smile instead of quickly looking away. Or start a conversation. “Turn your next elevator ride from a place to read your mail, or to look at the elevator inspection certificate, into an opportunity to say hello to someone,” he says. “Because it’s that connection that’s going to make both of you happy.”

Buying fancy things

Money and happiness have a complicated relationship. Earning a decent salary does improve how happy you are—but only to a certain point. Researchsuggests that Americans tend to feel happier in correlation with the amount of money they make up to about $75,000 a year per person (and $105,000 per yearin more expensive North American areas); after that, emotional well-being levels off.

But exactly how we spend our money can also impact happiness, says Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the book Happy Money. Research suggests that buying stuff—designer clothing, shiny new cars, the latest gadgets—doesn’t make us happy. Rather, as people become more materialistic, their well-being plummets.

People who spend money on experiences instead of material things, however, tend to enjoy greater happiness. That’s likely because fun activities facilitate social connection and can be appreciated for what they are, not compared to someone else’s experiences (which isn’t the case with consumer goods). Experiences don’t need to be big vacations, either: “Going out for lunch with a friend instead of buying yourself some [trivial] thing” counts too, Norton says.

Spending money on others rather than on yourself can also improve happiness, Norton’s research indicates. “Giving really does pay off more than spending on yourself,” he says. “And it’s not like you have to do a billion-dollar foundation.” Only have $5 to give? “That day is going to be a happier day.”

HERE IS TO HAPPINESS.         .         .
WHAT IT IS
WHAT IT ISN’T
WHAT WE THINK
WHAT WE CAN’T IMAGINE.       .        .

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/what-makes-you-happy-might-not/feed/ 0 5988 MORE HEART, LESS ATTACK http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-hear-less-attach/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-hear-less-attach/#respond Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:00:58 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5973 

Much to ponder in this song performed by the award-winning Becky Buller.
Let your mind paint the picture your Heart needs to see that'll give you more Heart and less attack.   .   .  

MORE HEART, LESS ATTACK

Be the light in the crack
Be the one that's been there on a camel's back
Slow to anger, quick to laugh
Be more heart and less attack

Be the wheels not the track
Be the wanderer that's coming back
Leave the past right where it's at
Be more heart and less attack

The more you take the less you have
'Cause it's you in the mirror staring back
Quick to let go slow to react
Be more heart and less attack

Ever growing steadfast
And if need be the one that's in the gap
Be the never turning back
Twice the heart any man could have

Be the wheels not the track
Be the wanderer that's coming back
Leave the past right where it's at
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack

I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I'm nearly sanctified, I'm nearly broken
I'm down the river, I'm near the open

I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I'm near the sanctified, I'm near broken
I'm down the river, I'm near the open

I'm down the river to where I'm going


(My thanks to Becky Buller and friends.)
]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-hear-less-attach/feed/ 0 5973 More Than A LISTENING http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-than-a-listening/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-than-a-listening/#respond Fri, 14 Jul 2023 11:00:41 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5969

Viktor Frankl, one of the great psychiatrists of the twentieth century, survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. His little book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is one of those life-changing books that everyone should read, SEVERAL TIMES

Frankl once told the story of a woman who called him in the middle of the night to calmly inform him she was about to commit suicide. Frankl kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living. Finally she promised she would not take her life, and she kept her word.

When they later met, Frankl asked which reason had persuaded her to live?

“None of them”, she told him.

What then influenced her to go on living, he pressed?

Her answer was simple, it was Frankl’s willingness to listen to her in the middle of the night. A world in which there was someone ready to listen to another’s pain seemed to her a world in which it was worthwhile to live.

Often, it is not the brilliant argument that makes the difference. Sometimes the small act of listening is the greatest gift we can give.

WHEN YOU HOLD SOMEONE’S SPACE; when you unconditionally accept, listen, hear, validate, affirm, you just don’t hold their space, you hold something even more sacred: THEIR SOUL.           .            .
THEY have trusted you with their whole, wounded, vulnerable Soul for the price of your offering to A LISTENING they never before had but desperately needed.        .        .

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-than-a-listening/feed/ 0 5969 THE MEANING OF LIFE IN TWO MINUTES http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-meaning-of-life-in-two-minutes/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-meaning-of-life-in-two-minutes/#respond Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:00:54 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5967

S  O
do you agree
disagree
or do you have a better
two minute spiel.          .          .
Maybe what the World has been trying to tell us
not just NOW, but especially NOW
is that I really don’t care what you think
or what words you use
or how you arrange them
so much as
HOW DO YOU LIVE
how have you Verb’d them up for
O T H E R S
or maybe
N         O        T
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
I don’t think you can tell the meaning of life in two minutes
IT JUST TAKES A SECOND
of your Caring Catalyst Self
to a Caring Catalyst Other.          .          .

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-meaning-of-life-in-two-minutes/feed/ 0 5967 THE KINDNESS COST http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-kindness-cost/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-kindness-cost/#respond Fri, 07 Jul 2023 11:00:30 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5960

A Lady asked an old street vendor: “How much do you sell your eggs for?” The old man replied“0.50¢ an egg, madam.” The Lady responded, “I’ll take 6 eggs for $2.00 or I’m leaving.” The old salesman replied, “Buy them at the price you want, Madam. This is a good start for me because I haven’t sold a single egg today and I need this to live.”

main-qimg-75fc9c51507193f830419e1ac42592d1.jpeg

She bought her eggs at a bargain price and left with the feeling that she had won. She got into her fancy car and went to a fancy restaurant with her friend. She and her friend ordered what they wanted. They ate a little and left a lot of what they had asked for. So they paid the bill, which was $150. The ladies gave $200 and told the fancy restaurant owner to keep the change as a tip.

This story might seem quite normal to the owner of the fancy restaurant, but very unfair to the egg seller. The question it raises is;

Why do we always need to show that we have power when we buy from the needy?

And why are we generous to those who don’t even need our generosity?

I once read somewhere that a father used to buy goods from poor people at a high price, even though he didn’t need the things. Sometimes he paid more for them. His children were amazed. One day they asked him “why are you doing this dad?” The father replied: “It’s charity wrapped in dignity.”

Being A Caring Catalyst won’t cost you anything but it’ll make you richer than any lottery winning. Invest in what compounds by one kind moment to the next one and it’ll no longer be about mere facts and figures, because it’ll figure much more than any known fact.      .      .     .
MAKE SURE YOUR CUP OF KINDNESS
IS ALWAYS FULL ENOUGH 
FOR ANOTHER GULP
SO THAT OTHERS
MAY DRINK DEEPLY
WITH A QUENCHING
THAT’LL NEVER KNOW
ANY OTHER THIRST.          .          .

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/the-kindness-cost/feed/ 0 5960 MUCH-NESS (Continued) http://thecaringcatalyst.com/much-ness-continued/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/much-ness-continued/#respond Fri, 23 Jun 2023 11:00:54 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5944

John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company, the first billionaire of the United States of America and once the richest man on Earth was asked by a reporter, “How much money is enough?” He calmly replied, “Just a little bit more”

Is John D. right?  Is JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE, really enough or is there ever an ENOUGH-NESS that’ll satisfy.          .          .When Rockefeller was asked this question he had a net worth of about 1% of the entire US economy.  He owned 90% of all the oil and gas industry of his time.  Compared to today’s rich guys, Rockefeller makes Bill Gates, Jeff Besos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet look like paupers; and yet he wanted
“JUST A LITTLE MORE.”

Maybe before we can know how much is ENOUGH, we’ve got to define
E         N         O         U         G          H
.          .          .and dare consider
ENOUGH
is more than just an amount
(but also an attitude)
MUCH-NESS

HOW MUCH
is never a question
to be Asked
yet is always Answered
HOW MUCH
isn’t found in an
Enough-ness
Much-ness
is daring to Give
a More-ness
than you can expect
to ever receive in a
Getting-ness
MUCH-NESS
is when a
Giving-ness
means so much more
than a piddle Getting-ness
MUCH-NESS
takes on an unimaginable hue
that can’t be found
on a painter’s palate
but always at the end
of your Soul’s brush
waiting to paint anew
the landscape scene
that completes us all
as it becomes a
Giving-ness
eclipsing the horizon of any
Getting-nesses  

.           .          .S O M E T I M E S
the shiny empty plate
waiting to be
SHARED
more than
PASSED
is all the
ENOUGH-NESS
necessary
I  F
it’s indeed more than a
passing partaking.        .      .
May your ENOUGH-NESS be Another’s as well.          .           .

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/much-ness-continued/feed/ 0 5944 PANDEMIC’D http://thecaringcatalyst.com/5895-2/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/5895-2/#respond Wed, 17 May 2023 11:00:29 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5895

W               O               W
it was just months ago or 3 years
and our Masks were wearing MASKS
and now it seems like it’s far enough in the
Rearview Mirror
to actually doing some
REARVIEW MIRROR
reflecting
(which you knew was coming)

The Pandemic Didn’t Really Change

How Americans Think About Sickness

Getty Images
 JAMIE DUCHARME  who writes for Time Magazine did some of our looking back for us.

Thomas McDade, a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University, still remembers an advertisement for cold medicine he saw in late 2019. The ad showed a visibly sick businessman walking through an airport, “and the message was, ‘You can solider through this. You can make it,’” McDade says.

That message didn’t age well. Only a few months later, the virus that causes COVID-19 began spreading across the globe, prompting health officials to beg people to stay home no matter what—but especially if they felt sick. Suddenly, soldiering through an illness wasn’t seen as admirable, but irresponsible, selfish, and dangerous.

Since then, countless op-eds and articles have argued that the pandemic would usher in a “new normal” where people were more thoughtful about disease, companies were more generous with sick time, and everyone stayed home when unwell. It looked like it was happening, at least for a while. Millions of people worked and learned from home, many for the first time; comparing symptoms became a national pastime; and photos of at-home test strips crowded out vacation shots on social media.

But now, with the pandemic effectively over—at least in terms of the federal response, if not epidemiologically—it seems that the promised new normal never fully materialized.

Eric Shattuck, an assistant professor of research at the University of Texas at San Antonio, studies “sickness behavior:” the constellation of behavioral changes that people adopt when they’re ill, like lethargy, social withdrawal, and decreased appetite. Much of sickness behavior is biological, driven largely by inflammation in the body. But the extent to which people perform these behaviors is informed by cultural norms about how we’re “supposed” to act when sick, Shattuck says.

Though pushes to stay home and “flatten the curve” changed behavior early in the pandemic, they weren’t enough to enduringly alter dominant cultural messages about sucking it up and soldiering through, Shattuck says—in large part because they weren’t backed up by supportive policy changes, like expanded access to paid sick leave and affordable child care.

“We may see that people are paying more attention and listening to their bodies more,” Shattuck says, “but if the conditions aren’t there for them to be able to stay home or work from home…it may not actually change the large-scale behaviors.”

The start of the pandemic brought a flurry of new sick- and family-leave policies, but many were temporary or didn’t apply equally to all workers. As of March 2022, 77% of private-industry workers had access to paid sick time, only slightly more than the 75% who did in March 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But that top-line statistic doesn’t tell the whole story.

While 96% of people working in the management, business, and financial sectors had access to paid sick time in 2022 (along with the option to work remotely in many cases), only 62% of service-industry workers did—up slightly from 59% in 2020. Only about 40% of the lowest-paid private-industry workers had paid sick time in 2022, versus nearly all of the highest earners, BLS data show.

Overall, during the first two years of the pandemic, only 42% of work absences related to illness, child care, or personal obligations were compensated, according to a report from the Urban Institute, an economic and policy research institute. Many workers, especially those least able to afford it, still have to choose between getting well and getting paid. It’s hard to fault people for choosing the latter.

Even people who have paid sick time often work through their illnesses, and that didn’t change during the pandemic. In some respects, says Kai Ruggeri, an assistant professor at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health who studies population behavior, the rise of remote work actually made it harder for people to justify taking sick time. Lots of people seemed to think, “‘What’s the difference, if you get some things done from your laptop in bed?’” Ruggeri says.

In 2020, researchers surveyed people with COVID-like symptoms about whether they worked while sick. (About a quarter of them ended up testing positive for COVID-19, while the rest had other respiratory illnesses.) About 42% of people with COVID-19 worked either remotely or in-person while sick, and 63% of people sick with another respiratory illness did so. One 2023 study even found that, within a group of about 250 health care workers with symptomatic COVID-19, half worked at least part of a day anyway.

That may be because many workers still feel pressure—spoken or unspoken—from their employers to show up no matter their health status, says Terri Rhodes, CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition, which provides employers with guidance on workplace absences. The pandemic didn’t change that. “The general feeling that I get from employers is, ‘We just want to be done with [the pandemic],’” Rhodes says. “There’s a big push right now for productivity and earnings and ‘just get back to work,’ as opposed to mental health, well-being, taking sick days.”

The old normal—the one valuing stoicism, productivity, not stopping for a second—has proven hard to uproot. But there have been changes around the way we think about illness: the fact that people are even talking about sick-leave policies and forming opinions about the merits of vaccinations and masks (for better or for worse) suggests there’s been a culture shift around health and sickness, Ruggeri says.

As director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Hall Jamieson oversees research projects that assess how much the U.S. population knows about health and science. Over the course of the pandemic, Jamieson says, she’s seen two contradictory things happen in parallel: overall scientific literacy grew, even as more people began to believe conspiracy theories and misinformation.

The fact that most of the U.S. population got vaccinated and wore masks at the height of the pandemic suggests most people generally understood how the virus spreads and how to slow transmission, Jamieson says. In a survey fielded around the time COVID-19 vaccines became available to the general public, around three-quarters of respondents correctly answered questions about the safety and efficacy of the shots. Results like those show “an astonishing level of public literacy about a topic that we knew nothing about in January 2020,” Jamieson says.

Concepts once foreign to most of the general public—like incubation periods and airborne transmission—also became part of regular conversation. “Nobody knew what an R value was” before, Ruggeri says. “I had people calling me, asking me to explain it to them.”

For many people, the pandemic was a first introduction to a “blind spot” in the medical world, as a 2022 research review put it: post-acute illness. Viruses ranging from influenza to Epstein-Barr can cause potentially debilitating long-term complications, but that reality went mostly unnoticed until scores of people developed Long COVID symptoms—ranging from brain fog and memory loss to chronic fatigue and pain—within roughly the same period of time. For some people in both the medical field and the general public, these long-term symptoms reframed what a seemingly “mild” illness could do.

In addition to increased scientific literacy, Dr. Yuka Manabe, a professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine who specializes in infectious disease, has noticed a stronger desire for “diagnostic certainty” among patients. In 2019, someone with a respiratory illness might have been content to say they were sick and leave it at that, but many patients now want to know exactly what they have and where they caught it. “I hear a lot of people say, ‘I have a cold, but don’t worry because it’s not COVID—I tested myself,’” Manabe says.

The unprecedented availability of at-home tests likely contributed to that desire for certainty—and consumer demand for COVID-19 diagnostics seems to have carried over to other conditions, too. In a 2022 survey, 82% of adults ages 50 to 80 said they were at least somewhat interested in using at-home tests in the future. And they may indeed get the chance. In February 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the first combined at-home influenza and COVID-19 test.

But while COVID-19 turned some people into amateur disease detectives, many others—about 40% of U.S. adults, according to federal data—delayed or avoided health care during the pandemic. One 2022 study found that lower-income people and those with preexisting conditions were likely to delay care in 2021, which suggests that financial stress and fear of the virus played a role. Another study from 2022 found that people were more likely to skip doctors’ visits during the pandemic if they’d previously had bad experiences with medical care.

It makes sense that people who’d had previous bad experiences—a group that tends to include people of color, lower-income people, those without insurance—may have shied away from the medical establishment during the crisis, even as others literally trusted it with their lives. Throw in partisan polarization, which made even basic practices like masking and vaccination feel like political statements, and it’s no wonder that people responded very differently to the same health threat. How could there be a single new normal when the old normal varied so much by race, class, gender, and age?

Despite the divisions, however, Jamieson says she’s optimistic that at least some of the knowledge gained during the pandemic will stick around, ready to be deployed if and when there’s a similar threat in the future. For many people, behaviors like masking and handwashing became habitual during the pandemic, and “you don’t unlearn habitual behaviors,” Jamieson says.

Although far fewer people wear masks now than at the height of the pandemic, Manabe says she’s noticed that people are now quicker to wear one when they have respiratory symptoms—a sign, she thinks, that people understand how pathogens spread and want to protect others.

“This kind of social altruism is really welcome, from my point of view,” Manabe says. “We’re trying to move forward as a society in the post-COVID era.”
We know where we have come these past some 36 months but like always we’re not all that clear to just exactly where we are as if it’s still yet to be determined.  

It seems like the World has not just turned upside down but actually changed its Shape.  The Caring Catalyst in us has either become more Caring or less of a Catalyst for a loving change.          .           .

Did this pandemic actually really change us.        .        . Was it for the better;
was it for the worse or really, is it just business back to usual once again?  It all really not only determines how we normally become, but hopefully continue to be as a Caring Catalyst, that we always were, and still are, and always hope to be.    .    .
Or maybe that’s the real Pandemic, One with no vaccine or protected by the safest of Masks; The One that separates us; keeps us apart; sheltering out of place, forever out of place.          .           .

 

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/5895-2/feed/ 0 5895 A CARING CATALYST AT LOSS http://thecaringcatalyst.com/a-caring-catalyst-at-loss/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/a-caring-catalyst-at-loss/#respond Fri, 12 May 2023 11:00:41 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5891

This nearly 68 year old man who has been ordained now for 43 years and a hospice chaplain for nearly 29 years and usually averages conducting 26 funerals every month, grieves.     .     cries.     .     .feels loss.     .     .has once-upon-a-time-don’t-know-how-I-can-go-on-kind-of-days; TRUTH!  And some of the harshest losses I’ve ever grieved are some of our pets over the years.  I never turn down an offer to do a pet funeral for not just children or young families, but lots of grieving seniors who find comfort in CELEBRATION OF LIFE services for their beloved pets.  I like that my heart can be broken and never beat the same by some of the unconditional love my pets have shown me and how I’ve spilled my guts to them with things I’ve never told another human being.
So when I came across this story a couple of days ago, uhhhhh, yeah it took me back to a place where no pictures were necessary to do this sacred thing we call:
          R            E            M            E            B            E            R            I            N            G

Our 14-year-old dog Abbey died last month. The day after she passed away my 4-year-old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so, and she dictated these words:

Dear God,

Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick.

I hope you will play with her. She likes to swim and play with balls. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.

Love, Meredith

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letterbox at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies.’ Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page were the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:

Dear Meredith,

Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help and I recognized her right away.

Abbey isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by.

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. By the way, I’m easy to find. I am wherever there is love.

Love, God

Don’t say you’re too busy to Share this. Just go ahead and do it

Suspended Coffees You will all be happy to know this wonderful story is 100% true, please don’t take offense to the reference of God, it’s part of the story.

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.”

image.png

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
r  i  g  h  t.         .        .

So here’s the thing about Love.          .           .
It MATTERS enough that it doesn’t MATTER  if it’s between Another person or yes, even a pet.         .       .
The Cost of Caring
is high
higher than any passing cloud
in any endless-looking sky
and yes, better still,
P        R        I        C        E        L        E        S        S
Psssssssssssssssssssssst:
Make
T  H  A  T
investment
the
R  O  I
is out of this world
(literally)

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/a-caring-catalyst-at-loss/feed/ 0 5891 O T H E R W I S E http://thecaringcatalyst.com/o-t-h-e-r-w-i-s-e/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/o-t-h-e-r-w-i-s-e/#comments Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:00:13 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5878

Jane’s poem and some commentary of it has found me twice in less than a week which shouts:
PAY ATTENTION
and 
S H A R E
Have you ever had some
OTHERWISE
moments.          .          .          ?

 

While in the recovery room from a colonoscopy a very kind and attentive nurse told me I should get a mole checked on my shoulder.  I did.  But the mole I got checked was fine but there were two others ones that were discovered because of that visit that were not; they were successfully removed after being discovered that were cancerous.        .        .but it could have been OTHERWISE


*                                                        *                                                    *

I suffered through a agonizing night of urinary retention which resulted in an early morning Emergency Room visit before a busy day of two funerals and a wedding; while the young nurse was catheterizing me, she asked me what I did for a living and when I told her among other things, I was a hospice chaplain, she asked me what hospice and when I told her Hospice of the Western Reserve, she stopped and looked down at me and told me that her daughter of 8 months had been on our services and had recently died from brain cancer.  It was her first day back after her daughter’s death and her taking off three months to grieve her.  As we were finishing up with paperwork she asked me, “How did you know that I needed you to come in today?  I told her at that moment being there for both of us was the only thing that made sense and that we helped each other.          .          .but it could have been OTHERWISE

*                                                             *                                                  *

I had a stye on my eyelid but in my mind it had to be cancerous that would cause a hideous deforming blindness and as luck would have it the eye doctor was open late on this Monday night and had an opening for me.  He confirmed that it was a simple stye and could be managed with some hot compresses.  I told him I hadn’t been to see him in the 20 years that I’ve had success lasik eye surgery but then thought but there’s other reasons to visit him just to make sure my eyes were in good shape.  Tests were run and it was determined I have a cataract in both eyes that will eventually need repairing and pressure in both eyes that indicate early detection of glaucoma.  It was a less than a routine visit for a stye that could have easily been taken care of by Dr Google and it could have been OTHERWISE

*                                                                  *                                               *

What’s been your OTHERWISE moment?  Like the poet, Jane Kenyon, to be sure we all have those OTHERWISE moments, most likely more than we pay much mind.  “ONE DAY” as Jane says at the end of her poem, “IT WILL BE OTHERWISE”

One day, for a sure certainty, there will be a visit that will leave me so very much different coming out than when going it, if I come out at all, and I will not so much fall as drift softly into the arms of whatever’s next–a world that can’t be glimpsed from here.          .          .
But until that Sunrise that’ll never set I hope that I, and sincerely hopefully, like you, we will truly rejoice in the happy OTHERWISE-NESS of being alive, of being here, NOW

]]> http://thecaringcatalyst.com/o-t-h-e-r-w-i-s-e/feed/ 2 5878 MORE or less http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-or-less/ http://thecaringcatalyst.com/more-or-less/#respond Mon, 10 Apr 2023 11:00:36 +0000 http://thecaringcatalyst.com/?p=5861

Give MORE and take less.          .          .
Can we.     .     .     ?
THEY SAY:
Giving to others brings a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that cannot be achieved through material possessions or personal gain. It  can also have positive effects on our mental and physical #health. Research has shown that people who regularly engage in acts of kindness and giving are more likely to experience lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety.          .          .

S                    T                   I                    L                    L

In this for real
DOG eat Dog
world
we can still see how
We Mutts can still learn
(or forever RE-LEARN)
New Tricks
without so much as
ROLLING OVER
or worse
PLAYING DEAD

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