P.S. A Column On Things

In The Zone/Flow

First, let me say I hope you have been “in the zone” at least once in your life. And it you haven’t been I sincerely hope you will someday have that magical experience. It is breathtaking and transcendent. And, of course, a little weird, unsettling and creepy. You’ll find it is literally true, “time flies when you’re having fun,” however fun is defined for you.

I am going to separate the useful from the merely interesting in this item, about being in the zone and how to be there more deeply. This part will be about Tamara Levitt’s advice on how practices from meditation can improve your flow. The next item, Paul in the Flow, explains how I got to this item and the way I have experienced the phenomenon over the years.

The Daily Calm clearly prefers Tamara’s talks to be evanescent; they disappear from the website at the end of the day and they are not transcribed. I occasionally transcribe them when they touch my heart, as did the one on flow.

Tamara’s talk began, “From time to time you've probably tapped into a state of flow. You might be streaming your guitar, writing a song and the music just pours out of you without thought. You might be playing basketball and [it is] almost as if the game is in slow motion.”

She described flow as complete absorption in an activity.

Wikipedia says: “In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”

Tamara said the key to achieving the state is to be focused yet relaxed. “It takes just the right amount of Gentleness and Firmness to hold our mind in place to stay focused on your task. We achieve a flow state by finding just the right balance.”

She teaches meditation and advises using the “skills of your practice to access the state of flow.” Specifically, “Allow your breath to slow. Allow tension to soften, and heart rate to calm. With practice you'll achieve better and better performance. And you'll enjoy the process far more deeply.”

I plan to see if she’s right. You should too.

She quoted a world champion Formula One driver; I looked up the exact quote on the Internet.

Describing the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna said, "I felt as though I was driving in a tunnel. The whole circuit became a tunnel... I had reached such a high level of concentration that it was as if the car and I become one. Together we were the maximum. I was giving the car everything and vice versa... Suddenly it was as though I woke up and noticed that I had somehow been on a different level of consciousness. I was really shocked, and I went straight back to the pits - and I didn't drive any more that day. I realized that I had been in a kind of unending spiral. Faster and faster, closer and closer to perfection... But also more and more vulnerable, with less safety margin...”

What a blessing!

Paul In The Flow

I experienced flow early one morning last week. Then two hours later, I was flabbergasted when the Daily Calm talk by Tamara Levitt described, in precise terms, what had just happened to me.

My wife uses the term synchronicity for these oddities.  Whatever it is, I have been enjoying/suffering a great deal of it during 2020; it is apparently associated with a spiritual awakening. Or, as I also like to describe it, “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

What are the odds of hearing a talk on flow on the same day as an experience of flow? Unity, apparently.

It all began in the bathroom as I was dressing quietly to avoid waking my wife, who gets up an hour later than me. Half-dressed, I felt a compulsion to dictate couplets into my iPhone. An hour later, a dozen of them coagulated into an adequate love poem. This has happened to me before this year, and I’ve described it previously in my column as a visitation by my muse. I still like that metaphor, but it was a textbook example of flow (synonymous with “being in the zone.”)

It is not an experience I have had often as an adult.

I vividly remember my first experience of flow as a freshman at MIT. I was learning Cobol. One night, I sat down at my desk to program. I missed dinner. I missed a night’s sleep. I suspect I would not have noticed if either my polyester pants or the building had caught fire. When I looked up, it was morning, and I was aghast: 1.10 (classes at MIT are numbered; it was Introduction to Computing) started a few hours later. But at least my program was done (or so I thought; the IBM 1130 computer in the Civil Engineering Computer Lab would make the call as soon as I had punched it all into cards).

 I wondered if I had fainted, slept, or had a stroke because of the complete loss of time. I felt great, exhilarated, despite the lack of food and sleep.

As soon as I described it to Charlie, my roommate, he told me what every other upperclass MIT student told me when I asked. “Oh yeah. I’ve been there.” MIT was apparently full of people in the zone.

It happened again in 1980, also while computer programming. I was writing a word processor, communications package, and expense account program in Z80 assembler on an Exidy Sorcerer. I lost an entire day. But I walked out with three competent programs.

Alas, it didn’t happen (that I recall) during the decades when I was writing only prose. So, I went a long time without it.

Next time Flow comes upon me I intend to allow my breath to slow, my tension to soften, and my heart rate to calm: the exact opposite of my usual reaction.

This and That

Gary Larson Returns

I was a huge fan of Gary Larson’s cartoon The Far Side, so much so that I owned all his books, which I gave away, and his boxed set, the only cartoon collection I still own. Thank God, the New Yorker told me he was back, so I went and saw his new cartoons.

…

Weight of Hatred

There is a famous, albeit totally unscientific, study that once suggested you could measure the weight of a soul, and that it was 21 grams. Well, I have conducted a similarly unscientific study on an even smaller group: one (me). From this study, I have reached the conclusion that soul-crushing hatred weight 20 pounds, because that’s how much weight you lose when it leaves your body.

Wisdom

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
==Confucius

RIP: Groovy

I was talking to my 39-year-old daughter this week about the word groovy, because I had just found myself humming and then ordering the 59^th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel (fading cultural reference), aka “Feeling Groovy.”

“Groovy is still a thing, right?” I asked her. “No Dad. It wasn’t even a thing in the 90s.”

Given that groovy is, at most, 65 years old, it seems to have died young. I can still remember Firesign’s sketch, Returned for ReGrooving. Since her flat statement took my breath away, I asked about cool. “Yeah, cool is still around.”

How did “cool” (I thought it was from the 50’s; the Internet says it is from the 30s) make the cut after almost a century, while the relatively young “groovy” didn’t?

It got me to thinking about idiom. In my teens, I heard Bob Hope on television saying “Hubba Hubba” while looking at pretty girls. There’s a sentence full of faded or disappeared culture references: “Bob Hope,” and “Hubba Hubba:” gone. Television:  fading fast.

My dad, born in 1934, told me Hubba Hubba was the residue of a phrase, “Hubba Hubba, Ring-a-ding, Baby you got everything, woo-woo.” I found Bob Hope’s attitude to women a little creepy; add to that my growing feminist consciousness, and I haven’t said hubba hubba in a half century.

I now realize I was about as far from the regular use of “Hubba Hubba” as my grandson Mihir will be from “groovy.” Maybe I’ll play Firesign Theater for him some day, and explain that, as well as “I don’t have a key, I had to split it with the sound effects man.” I don’t think he’ll need an explanation of “You can wait here in the sitting room, or sit here in the waiting room,” except I doubt he’ll have any idea what a sitting room was.

Groovy. We hardly knew ye.

While we’re on the subject, my dad also told me a phrase that was 20 years out of date when he was a boy, that he heard from some of his elders. “Hey baby, you’re a swell flapper. What do you have under the flap?” Why yes, it was sexist double-entendre.

Movie Review: Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe was a 2008 romantic comedy starring Ryan Reynolds. The plot device is Reynolds telling his daughter how he met and proposed to her mother. It is a complicated story, involving a number of different lovers, some simultaneous. My younger daughter recommended it to me because “it reminds me of you. You love talking about your former lovers. And where he tells stories about working for Clinton, you tell stories about working for UPI.” I have to admit, she got me dead to rights. It is a cute device, and a cleverly written film. I defy you to pick out which woman he ends up marrying before the film tells you.

Also, definitely, maybe could describe my wife’s reaction when I proposed to her 40 years ago. It was my third marriage proposal (and the first to actually produce a marriage). The first proposal was accepted on the spot, the second after a day. My wife took two weeks deciding to say yes. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Covid Research

I did a brief on this last week, and on sober reconsideration, decided it was worth more than that. Steve Kirsch was sports editor of The Tech, and despite that has gone on to quite a career as an entrepreneur and philanthropist, with his own panel of expert scientific advisors. Best of all, he’s a guy who doesn’t get up in the morning without checking the best available science. You can look him up. He was interviewed on KCBS-AM (find it here, search for Covid Research). The whole interview is a good read; I recommend it. But as a content creator, I don’t like to reprint whole articles unless they seem in imminent danger of disappearing.

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As the world awaits a corona virusvaccine in anticipation of returning to a "normal life," scientists are still seeking funding to find the most effective ways to treat the virus with existing drugs.

Steve Kirsch is the founder of COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) [CLICK AND DONATE] and wanted to look at what's being done, and not being done, by talking to researchers he's helped fund over the years to try and find a way to treat the virus early as someone who faces multiple risk factors himself.

Kirsch said CETF needs $17 million more to test the eight different approaches it has identified for treatment.

---------end excerpt-----------

One listener donated $200,000 after hearing the interview. There’s a stretch goal. If you donate more than $200,000 let me know!

Meta Alert: Post About This Column: Uninverted Pyramid

The journalists among you may notice that my weekly posts are intended to be in the journalistic style known as an inverted pyramid. That way, if you run out of steam while reading, you’ve seen what I think is most interesting/important that week. Well blow me down. I was away for the weekend, and when I set up the column to autopost last week, it was upside down. The least important stuff came first (and it was in the opposite order of my reminder email). Either no one noticed or no one thought it worth mentioning. It pained me, albeit only slightly. With luck, this week will be right side up… although… how does this rank as most important item?

Unhapiness is a Mistake

Rich Buck tipped me off to Mike Manson’s Life Advice Blog. On the subject of happiness:

-----begin excerpt----------

Unhappiness is a mistake – 

If you’ve read a number of articles or books about happiness, you’ve probably come across, at some point, the following equation:

Happiness = Expectations - Reality

It’s pretty common. In fact, I even shared it in this newsletter once, many moons ago. I always figured it was a cute thing that came from some happiness researcher or self-help author.

But, it turns out that it actually comes from Schopenhauer! Here’s the man himself:

“All happiness depends on the proportion of what we claim and what we receive. It is immaterial how great or small the two quantities of this proportion are, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the first quantity as by increasing the second.”

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Federal Troops: Not The Same

As far as I know, I only have one Southern reader, and I doubt he will make the false claim I have heard, but can’t find on the Internet, that Northerners are being hypocritical—again—by objecting to uninvited federal troops when the same thing happened in the South in the 60s.

Not the same thing. That deployment was to protect rights, not destroy them. For the specifics, check this detailed opinion piece. Enforcing federal court orders is different than using the excuse of protecting federal property to allow unmarked militarized federal agents to arrest unarmed peaceful protestors and throw them into unmarked cars.

And, if you think a big old load of horseshit would make your breakfast go down easier today, check out the DHS unbelievable load of crap about the Waffen-SS… sorry… federal agents crushing protest in my home town of Portland, Oregon.

Trump’s lickspittles claim the troops have unique identifiers. I can’t find them on the Internet, protestors can’t find them anywhere on the masked gunmen who have invaded an American city. I found a single reference to “TZ1” as a unique identifier. I assume they all wear the same number for purposes of economy. TZ1=Enemy of the People.

Hate your Job? Leave it

Once again, I have had the ashes of illusion removed from my eyes. I always loved my jobs, as did most of my friends. So I assumed this was the general rule among boomers. I mentioned it at breakfast, and my wife, a psychotherapist, set me straight: lots of people hate their jobs, and stay out of economic necessity.

I quite deliberately chose a career based on satisfaction rather than income potential—journalists don’t make all that much money.

My father, like his father before him, did the hard physical labor of providing home delivery of milk. Lots of jogging. Lots of heavy lifting. Lots of exposure to the weather. At our house, the weather portion of the evening news was the most important five minutes of the broadcast. What would Dad face the next day?

Snow days? “No one allowed on the road except essential personnel?” Well, that was my dad.

When I was 12 years old, he said, “I hate my job. I hate it every day.” What a thing to tell a 12-year-old! But, it lead to my dual resolves, by which I have lived ever since:

• never work at a job you hate
• Accept nothing but clean, indoor work, preferably air-conditioned, that doesn’t get my fingernails dirty (thank God carbon paper was gone by the time I turned pro!)

Before I retired, I got up every day, full of enthusiasm for work I loved and found fulfilling and useful. Another reason I missed out on the widespread dissatisfaction was that, with one exception, I lived with women who loved their work as well.

So, hate your job? Hate is poison. Get out.

A quick concluding note; I now leap out of bed (albeit a bit more slowly) every day, looking forward to projects I love and find useful and fulfilling, even though I don’t get paid to do them.

The Invisible Witness

          The Invisible Witness.

The film’s self-description: “A locked-room mystery with a twist: A slickly successful businessman wakes up next to his dead lover and becomes the chief suspect. His defense lawyer's never lost a case, but can even she help him?”

I loved this film, but there are several requirements for you if you are going to love it. You have to like locked-room mysteries, you have to put up with subtitles unless you speak fluent Italian, you have to love slow-paced European cinema, and you have to accept the fact you aren’t going to understand what’s going on about half the time. Clearly, there were no notes from the studio about “This will confuse people.” Over-explaining is my least favorite part of American cinema; the Italians are not yet guilty of this.

All these things thrill me. The writing is brilliant. My favorite movies are those that are impossible to predict. Although I can’t write a screenplay, I can predict the next line of dialog in most American movies, and have a .500 average of guessing the ending halfway through. In Invisible Witness, I never once successfully predicted the next line, and I didn’t know how it was going to end when there were only 10 minutes left in the movie.

The link above will let you stream the movie with credit to the International Film Showcase, a program that runs at the Orinda Theater, when there is an Orinda Theater. Efi Lubliner, the programmer of the series, has infallibly good taste, as proven by this tour-de-force. Try to watch it in one sitting if you can; otherwise you may be hopelessly lost

Disappointed in Self: Reading Edition

Frankly, I had been expecting to finally make a dent in my large backlog of books during Covid. While I do have some extra time now (frankly, for a retired guy whose wife is still working at home, Covid isn’t much of a change), I have fallen prey to a lifelong habit of mine: prioritizing periodicals.

A few years ago, I realized no one was ever going to give me a prize for reading every word in the New Yorker, nor would they arrest me for not reading every word. I have tried to cut back to just the cartoons, and Shouts and Murmurs, but sometimes the headlines are just so alluring. The habits of a half-century (the length of my subscription) are hard to break.

Then there is my funny stuff: the British satirical bi-weekly (the last faint echo of Britain’s Big Bang of satire in the 70s) Private Eye, the Midwest’s gift to cartoon/narrative humor lovers, Funny Times, and Santa Cruz’s gift to same, The Santa Cruz Comic News. I used to recycle these to my late father. I still recycle Private Eye to my virtual trainer. If anyone wants hand-me-down tabloid newspapers full of cartoons and funny columns, let me know; they are yours—although, of course, you should just subscribe to them yourself.

What about the books my daughters bought me for my birthday and Christmas? What about the books recommended by my friends? Why aren’t there 30 hours in a day?

I have successfully limited myself to just an hour of TV a day in the evening. I have tried to reserve the last half-hour before bed for books, not periodicals. And yet…

False Modesty

People from the West are not as familiar with this phenomenon as people from the East, so I am surprised Scott Adams knew it, but maybe he runs into a lot of Harvard people at Comicons.Or ran into them, back when you could still hold a convention. In any case, I have been entertaining people for years with a version of this, quoting someone saying "I went to school in Cambridge," and suggesting they took the mandatory class, false modesty 101, since the only people who say "I went to school in Cambridge" are Harvard graduates. It especially tickles MIT people, since MIT is also in Cambridge, Mass. We have a saying at MIT; "Hell is Up The River," which refers to Harvard's inferior position along the Charles River.

Astoundingly, when I looked for it on Google just now, "Hell is up the river" wasn't there. In a few days, it will be.

There is an MIT version: "I went to a little technical school in Cambridge." Ironically, in 1904, 12 years before MIT moved to Cambridge from Boston, there was consideration of it becoming Harvard's school of engineering. Since I neither went to a prep school, nor had a father and grandfather who went to Harvard, I'm lucky that didn't work out.

This and That

 

I have always been proud of my alma mater, but never more than now. Check out this letter to the editor of The Tech: Use technology to allow students back on campus. And then there is this proposal, from fellow The Tech staffer Steve Kirsch:
What top CEOs could do today to stop the virus (instead of fretting)

…

I’ve plugged it before, but let me plug it again: Angels’ Daily Message, run by an MIT classmate of mine. One especially apt message this week: “If you can laugh at your own human foibles and dramas, then you can more easily forgive yourself, and truly believe that God has not stopped loving you during your errors.  In fact, God never saw your errors at all, and has always and will always keep Seeing and supporting the Idea of Love that you really are. As you let go of more and more of the shallow aspects of the human dream, you will be able to laugh and Love freely, all the while letting the Good of you shine through those errors until they can be seen for the illusions they were.”

Amen.

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Here’s a treat for my New York and ex-New York readers. Marjorie Wolfe, a long-time contributor to this column, sent along this walk down memory lane: a recent talk she gave at the Glen Cove Senior Center.

The Three B’s: Brooklyn, The Bronx, & The Bungalows of Rockaway Beach.

It was described thusly: Memories are one of the secret weapons of happiness. Reminisce with Marge Gottlieb Wolfe about the Brighton Beach Baths, Mrs. Stahl’s knishes, the Brooklyn Bridge, a Charlotte Ruse, Little Odessa, the Bronx Botanical Gardens, Pitkin Avenue and the bungalows of Rockaway Beach. Special thanks to the SAGE foundation for this wonderful program.

…

From Untamed by Glennon Doyle: “All of our suffering comes when we try to get our resurrection without allowing ourselves to be crucified first.”

Love, Medicine and Miracles

Love, Medicine and Miracles
By Bernie Siegel, M.D.

Subtitle: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon's Experience with Exceptional Patients.

Although it was first published in 1984, I just read this book. It should be handed out by any oncologist to any patient whose diagnosis is cancer.

I had an amazing experience of synchronicity while reading this book. I got an email from a college classmate, explaining that he beat cancer by being an exceptional patient. I mentioned the book; he said people gave it to him after he was diagnosed. So I ordered four copies to have on hand for any friends who need it in the future.

Especial thanks to the cherished friend who turned me on to this book as a result of some of my recent experience of mind/body interaction.

I realize that representing a complicated book with a series of context-free quotes tends to reduce a complex and nuanced book to reduction ad absurdum, but these are the things that leapt out at me:

Doctors should “offer people a friendship they can feel just when they need it most.”

Doctors have higher rates of drug use, alcoholism and suicide. “Would you take your car to a mechanic who couldn’t get his own car to run?”

“True healing teaches patients how to live.”

He cites a case where shots of water cured a patient’s cancer, because the patient believed they would.

Increase your odds of survival? “Independence, optimism, faith and trust in your doctor.” He asks patients to share their drawings and dreams.

William Calederone had AIDS. “He achieved peace of mind by forgiving people he felt had hurt him.” His AIDS literally disappeared. This one strikes home because I have just been through the exercise of forgiveness, and found it stunning. My blood chemistry this week is the best it’s been in 20 years, and I know why: forgiveness.

“Telling a person their day of death has no place in medical practice,” no matter how much they beg you for an estimate.

A doctor who simply calmed a patient’s anxieties was rewarded with a tumor that shrank by half without ANY other treatment.

People who meditate regularly have a lower physiological age than those who do not, Siegel noted. So a big thank you to the whole string of people, going back to 1976, who set me on a path of regular meditation.