The 101 Books Project August 3, 2020

Several years ago, I purchased a book entitled 101 Letters to a Prime Minister by Canadian author Yann Martel.  Martel had gained fame with Life of Pi; with Letters he turned his attention to Stephen Harper, who was Prime Minister at the time of its writing.  Every two weeks, Martel sent Harper, an anti-intellectual in the vein of our current President, a short work of great literature along with a letter of recommendation for it.

“One of these days,” I thought to myself when I perused Martel’s pages, “I am going to read all of these.”

That day has come.  What better time to delve into a book project than when one is stranded by COVID?  I have nothing if not time these days – no job, no family living nearby, no destinations.  So in late-June, after our public library opened up for curbside pickup, I launched into the COVID reading project.

To date, I’ve read 20 of Martel’s recommendations, not counting the ones I had read in the past.  What I like about this process is that I’ve committed to reading all of them, regardless of whether I think I will like them in advance.  This isn’t the usual way I would select a book (more on that another time, perhaps), but it has the virtue that it is opening my eyes to new authors, approaches, and ideas.  Also, since the books are generally short, reading each one isn’t a huge investment in time if it fails to excite. 

And what a rich collection it is!  Martel’s commentary tells me why he chose the book and what to look out for, and this is all part of the adventure. I know that you might not want to take on this kind of a crazy challenge, so I’ll recommend a few to you:  Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Sagan, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway.  There were books I somehow had missed in school, like To Kill a Mockingbird (what a great read!), or somehow avoided because they just seemed too out-there (Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Becket’s Waiting for Godot).  It’s quite a literary marathon, and I wish there were someone doing it with me.  Any takers?

Athena to the Rescue June 13, 2020

In a previous post, I alluded to a book entitled “Goddesses in Every Woman” by Jean Shinoda Bolen.  I discovered it on my daughter’s bookshelf while prowling around for something to read.  After my “well-being” course and after spending some time trying to make sense of the enneagram, I was intrigued by the idea of archetypes and what makes each of us tick.  I was starting to appreciate how very different we all are from each other in terms of our motivations and what brings meaning to our lives. This realization was beginning to have a deep effect on me and on my relationships with those closest to me.

Bolen explores seven Greek goddesses, and I immediately saw my reflection in Athena.  Athena, who sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus, knows what she wants, and she knows what other people want – or should want – and dons her amour, ready to assist.  She is the ultimate strategist, a force to be reckoned with.

I hadn’t realized I was so Athena-like, but certainly people around me can see it.  My friend Yang commented on a hike recently that I’ll never be happy until my daughter Annie finishes college or my friend Jeannette finishes her will.  These are no wispy wishes on my part; I inflate myself with the wind of logic and try to breathe sense and motion into family and friends.

Now that I recognize Athena, I see her in so many of my interactions. Injustice? Let me help you!  Can’t decide about a retirement community? Let’s sit down with a cup of tea.  Painting your house? Here’s a palette that would look nice.  You voted Republican?  I will lead you out of the dark side.

I am comfortable being an Athena, but I wish I could invoke her for myself.  I need someone fearless at my side to guide me in making decisions.  But I have to say, once I pick up that spear and shield and don that helmet, I do know how to fight for myself.

The PhD in Loneliness May 6, 2020

Nearly two months ago, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times that sadly resonated for me. The author checked in on his elderly mother by phone to gauge her health and happiness.  She replied, “Don’t worry about me; I have a PhD in loneliness.”

That’s it!  I have lived alone for so long now that I know how to do this. No one to touch. No one to share a meal with. No one to share a life with. No one who is checking in to tell me how his day went or to listen to mine. 

This is a PhD that is neither striven for nor craved; it is awarded out of sheer endurance.  I remain alone, unwilling or incapable of jostling myself out of the trajectory that an unintentional course of life events - divorce, death, drugs – hurled me into.

This is not COVID talking.  This is real, every day, pervasive loneliness.  COVID just gives me, and many others like me, the unhappy chance to experience it more fully and, perhaps, the permission to say it. 

The Curriculum under COVID April 17, 2020

Tomorrow I enter my seventh week in isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic.  I am no stranger to loneliness, but this stretch brings new meaning to the concept.  No physical touch, no casual hug, in fact no face-to-face greeting whatsoever, other than the crinkled eye above a mask in recognition and gratitude to a grocery worker.  Everything – the symphony, the ballet, choir, and a visit from my daughter over the Easter weekend – has been cancelled.

So, in an effort to remain calm and focused, and maybe even to accomplish something, I devised a daily curriculum for myself.  (I’m guessing you have, too!)  I even developed a physical map for my activities so that I could more fully appreciate and enjoy my home, not to mention avoid falling into in a spatial rut. (You may not have gotten this geeky!)  Indeed, I have started to feel fully 4-dimensional. 

And if you think this is a very boring blog post, I couldn’t agree with you more, but it’s all I’ve got for now.

I leap out of bed around 6 am, shower and change my clothes (very important!), feed the cat, make the coffee (also very important!), grab the newspaper (yes a real one!), make some breakfast, and curl up with the cat in my study’s enormous white canvas-covered chair (from IKEA) for a few hours of contented news-digesting, crossword puzzling, and email corresponding.  Sometimes, I even write a real letter to my daughter or a friend. 

Midmorning, I climb up to my newly cleaned and re-organized attic to take a ZOOM yoga class through my Point Reyes Station studio.  That brings me to 10:30-ish, when I descend back into my study and settle into my desk to work on my latest Coursera class.  Right now I’m taking a course in Ancient Roman Architecture, and I started a fresh sketchbook to make quick drawings of the monuments as we encounter them. It’s this month’s moon cycle project (see post of March 8), so I have to be diligent to fit an entire semester into one month. 

Next is lunch in the garden (my first moon cycle project!) with the cat, followed by more coffee (very important) and reading.  For this module, I re-position myself (and cat) in my quiet attic, which is refreshed by a breeze through casement windows at its lengths. Now four stories above the street, I have a lovely view of San Francisco when I look up to relax my eyes and settle more deeply into the afternoon.  With so much time to explore, reading can get kind of crazy up there.  In addition to our book club selections (this month’s were haiku poet Basho’s “Narrow Road to the Deep North” and “The Pine Islands” by Marion Poschmann), I’m taking in Jean Shinoda Bolen’s “Goddesses in Every Woman” (possibly more about this in a future post) and Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe”, two books that just happened to be lying about (and now I have no excuse not to read them).

Then, if I manage to stay awake through all that, I might pull a few weeds or tidy up one room or another before venturing outside for a late afternoon walk, uphill to the Sutro forest trails, downhill to Kezar Stadium and Golden Gate Park, or comparatively flat to my neighborhood in Cole Valley or the Inner Sunset.  Later, it’s whipping up some kind of dinner on my beloved indoor grill followed by the PBS NewsHour online.  (Miss you, Gwen Ifill.)  And after all of that, I give in to mindless sloth as I crawl back into bed with the cat, a jar of almond butter and a spoon, and succumb to binge-watching one series or another – Chernobyl, recommended by my daughter (it is amazing!) or my personal guilty pleasure, The Big Bang Theory.

OK, I’m just rambling now, but when one has been doing this for six weeks, perhaps she can be forgiven.

Meeting this Moment March 27, 2020

As I sat down to meditate the other day, I set the intention of meeting this moment. 

I love that expression, “meeting this moment”.  It is a call to the present, echoed again and again by teachers of mindfulness.  I can even hear the voice of Jon Kabat-Zinn, with his distinctive way of lingering on the word “moment”, as if to savor it, then drive it home. 

And what a moment this is, with coronavirus transforming our lives.  It has both captured us and captivated us, stripping us from the richness of our interactions with art, music, sports, work, religion, and culture, but most of all, from each other.

How do we meet this moment?  How do we maintain calm and adapt to this new way of living?  How do we see this moment for what it is – a challenge that peels away the inessential and brings us closer to our truest selves.  A moment that maybe brings out the best in us.  Can we use it to dig deeper?  I am taking this moment to breathe in the goodness of our lives with gratitude. 

The Toll March 20, 2020

Lately my friend Laura and I have been enjoying a bevy of explorative walks in the Bay Area, checking out architecture and other points of interest.  Last Thursday we were supposed to have done the final third of the San Francisco Crosstown Trail, a 17-mile pathway through parks and neighborhoods. 

But that morning I got a call from her, and her voice immediately told me that she was in a little distress.  Laura suffers from asthma and other lung issues, and she is well into an age demographic that is vulnerable to coronavirus infection.  I could sense some worry as she told me that she was not feeling so well and we needed to postpone. 

I hung up and found myself with an epiphany.  Someone I know, maybe even someone I love, may not survive this epidemic.  I went through the mental list of the people who seemed the most vulnerable to me – friends in their 70s and 80s, friends who had bouts with cancer, friends who work in the medical profession, mothers and fathers of friends.  Some of these people will undoubtedly get sick.  They will suffer and some may succumb. 

Of course, loss is inescapable.  People in our lives will leave us, unless we leave them first.  But thoughts of loss don’t come to the front of our mind unless something happens to jostle them into that place, and this is what coronavirus has done to me.

The thought of losing Laura frightens me.  As close neighbors, she and I raised our daughters almost as sisters.  We have shared all of our hopes and frustrations with each other over the 28 years of our friendship. 

Laura, get well and stay well.  The hike will still be in our future.

Pushing the Pause Button March 20, 2020

In the midst of my career as a professor, coupled with single motherhood, I often wished for a pause button that could grind the world to a halt.  There would be no scientific papers being published or reviewed, no bills due, no meetings, no one rushing to work, and no news.  Instead, we could insert a few moments or a few days of tranquility to catch our breath and to appreciate simple pleasures and each other.

Enter Coronavirus.  We are now in a world that has slammed on the brakes, but perhaps to an extent that even my wishes couldn’t have had imagined.  San Francisco went into lock-down three days ago, with many adults working from home and kids being instructed online. The San Francisco Ballet and Symphony, two of my staples, have shuttered for the season.  Colleges throughout the nation have folded up for the semester.  Libraries, gyms, restaurants, bars, pretty much any place you might want to go is out of business.  Only the groceries, the pharmacies, and a few hardware stores remain open.

And suddenly, a huge opportunity for humanity has opened up.  People are spending time with their families.  Instead of sweating it out at a spin class, people are taking their bikes into the fresh air.  Dogs see their masters.  My cat and I are nearly inseparable, and my garden is getting some long-overdue attention. 

But in my imagined scenario, we could also push a play button and, like a song paused in midstream, we would pick back up just where we had left off.  The stock market would be unaffected, no one would have lost his job, kids would be back at school and proceed to graduation, weddings and reunions would proceed as planned.

The coronavirus shutdown isn’t going to be like that, and the longer we pause with that button pressed, the direr the consequences will be for our mental health and for our economy. I am starting to wonder whether the cure, in the long run, will prove worse than the disease. 

The Coursera Course. Part 3. Reflections on Happiness March 20, 2020

I am writing this post on International Happiness Day, an occasion brought into being by the United Nations to promote happiness and wellbeing as a human right.  What a nice way to celebrate the completion of the Coursera course on wellbeing!

Despite my many blessings, I often struggle to be happy, which is why I signed up for the course to begin with.  At the outset, we students were asked to gauge our happiness through two metrics, Authentic Happiness and PERMA, run through the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, respectively.  At the conclusion of the course, we were prompted to take the quizzes again.  I’m “happy” to report that both tests registered my increased feeling of wellbeing.  And yes, I’m just plain … happy!

In my two recent posts, I talk about particular aspects of the course that resonated for me and strategies that I learned to augment wellbeing.  Here, I just want to take a moment to reflect on the impact of the course overall.

One aspect of the project that kept me engaged was our professor’s presentation of data gleaned through careful psychological experiments.  As a scientist, I really appreciated that rigor, though I have to say that often the studies seemed a little “underpowered”, as measurements often lacked error bars or statistical significance.  Still, one got the impression that overall, there really was something there.

These vignettes opened up new avenues in my thinking, leading to insights into both my own attitudes and behaviors as well as those of others around me.  Here’s a little nugget, for example: did you know that spending money on experiences, like a dinner with a friend, rather than a thing like a new gadget, is a better return on your investment towards happiness?  Memory, it turns out, has no hedonic adaptation, but stuff does.   Or that the mind doesn’t think in absolutes, only relatives?  No wonder that we try to keep up with Joneses, rather than being satisfied or grateful for what we already have.  Or that developing a “growth” mindset, rather than a “fixed” one promotes happiness?

Finally, I have to ask myself, would my happiness have gone up if I had completed any other 10-week Coursera course?  I love learning and I love projects, so maybe if I taken a course in Greek history I would be feeling the same buzz now.  Unless one does the control, we will never know if I’m feeling better because I’ve been studying happiness, or just studying.  What do you think?  Seems like somebody should study that.

The Coursera Course. Part 2. WOOPing it up March 16, 2020

Week 6 of the Coursera wellbeing course (described in the previous post) was the second most impactful week for me.  The nugget offered up that week was a nuts-and-bolts strategy for getting to the place you want to be.  It is a four-part technique called WOOP, developed by Gabriele Oettingen, which stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, and Plan.

The idea is that just wishing or envisioning some desired future is insufficient to make it happen, because we don’t realistically account for the various obstacles that might derail us, nor do we develop a plan to overcome them. 

Oettinger suggests finding five minutes of uninterrupted quiet and calm to focus on the task, and ask yourself four questions:

What is my most important wish for today?  Search for it, and try to boil it down to three or four words.

What would be the best outcome?  Again search for it, imagine it, and clarify it with a handful of words.

What stops me? What is it within me that is the obstacle?  Search for the obstacles. Imagine the habits, beliefs, and criticisms within me and try to experience them.

What is an effective action or thought that will allow me to overcome these obstacles?  Make an “if-then” plan.  If I encounter this obstacle, then I will take this action.

Oettinger emphasizes that WOOP takes mental effort, but that eventually, the mechanisms will become automatic.  She also says that one must let go of wishes that are not feasible; presumably this process will indeed clarify which dreams have some hope of coming true.  The idea is that motivation heightens energy and that pushing against the obstacles is part of the process.  She recommends WOOP-ing on a daily basis and promises that it can provide much awareness and clarity in life.

I enjoy goal setting and problem solving, so I enthusiastically succumbed to dreaming.  What is my deepest wish?  I am already blessed with everything a human being could possibly want, except for one thing: a partner to share my life with.  So that wish had to be top of the list.  What is the best outcome?  Being in a committed relationship with a man who is brilliant, curious, healthy, generous, thoughtful, energetic, and kind.  (OK – that was way more than four words.)  What are the obstacles? Oy!  Well, first there’s the statistical problem of simply meeting someone that satisfies that Venn intersection. Then there is the delicate process of getting to know someone intimately and trying to navigate a life together. Also, underneath it all lies the mishugas of my own psychology: could I actually let someone into my life?  This wish seemed to fall into the category of challenging to the point of hopeless, so I abandoned it (for the moment).

Instead, I decided to try something theoretically simpler.  I had gained some weight during architecture school, and I made a decision to shed those pounds.  My wish is to lose weight.  My desired outcome is to be twenty pounds thinner by June.  The obstacles to that are clearly eating too much and maybe not eating the right things.  I settled on a realistic eating plan: a low-carb diet, but flexible enough to indulge myself in certain food groups I wasn’t willing to give up, specifically tomatoes in any form, chocolate on long hikes, a treat at my monthly book club meeting, and a glass of wine if I am out to dinner with a friend. I’m about three weeks into it as of this writing.  Come June, I'll let you know how it worked.