Psych-Out

’“An olive won’t ripen any quicker, however much you mess with it.” (Tuscan Proverb)

Olive grove

We are time–addicts. Time-sick. We’ve come to feel our lives as tiredly, time-deprived. Time is our heroin. We mojo our lives trying to find ways to score more and more. Let’s add time for me. Time for you. There’s work, there’s exercise. There’s family time. Special time for e-mail. Oh, and then there’s organizing those seven hundred thirty-six digital photographs. I’ll save that for next month. That novel I’ve always wanted to read? I’ll make time next year.

We gorge ourselves, yet never end up satisfied. Our solution? More activity at even a faster pace. Speed reading, speed meditating, speed yoga.  Let’s keep that rat-wheel turning. Speed up. Keep moving. That fix is coming. “I’ll move faster. Schedule my time better. I’ll find that plan so I can finally squeeze in every want, desire and need.”

We hire personal coaches, buy the latest scheduling technologies, we read dozens of books by time gurus. But, like a drug deal gone bad, the best laid plans go astray. We can’t open that vein to slip that last half-dozen activities in. Depression and anxiety ensues.

Queen, Under Pressure

In his book Slowness, Carl Honoré writes, “In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts.”

We get a kick from going fast. Literally. Think roller coasters, and downhill skiing, and snowmobiles. Even rushing to and from work, or the yoga center, will give us that kick. There’s a heady surge of sensory input when we go fast. Adrenaline and noradrenaline shoot into our blood stream. Two chemicals released during sex; two chemicals tied to our most basic stress response. Fight or run.

When we start off our mornings in a mad-dash rush, we signal to our bodies DANGER DANGER. Even if we’re just driving to the library. We trigger our sympathetic nervous system into high gear. Then, it stays there for the rest of the day. Fight-or-flight with nothing really to fight, and nowhere to flee. Day in, day out. More hours in the day than not. It’s not the place in our bodies where we’re meant to make our home.

Our sympathetic nervous system is meant for special occasions, or periodic spurts during the course of the day. Say, when that lion is chasing us, or we haven’t eaten in days and we need that kill. Or, when times are good and we’re up for mating. Little surges of challenge here and there during our days are okay. Some stress is good for us. It invigorates our spirit, makes us more resilient. Like that sports car that occasionally you need to take onto the highway and rip open full-throttle.

Still, it’s the opposing parasympathetic nervous system where we find our true home. Eating figs by the watering hole, with nothing much to do but rest and digest, whether it’s food, or the day’s experiences.

It’s here in our parasympathetic nervous system where we consolidate memories, heal our bodies, digest our food, organize our thoughts, solve our problems, restore our sanity. We’re most creative when we slow down. Have a problem you’re trying to work through? You’re more likely to find that creative solution taking a bath, or brushing your teeth, or taking a stroll, or lollygagging in the back yard, than when racing into and through that next activity fix. Albert Einstein would sit in his Princeton University office for hours staring into space. He changed the world.

Our time addiction can be slowed. Take a day a week, or even just an evening or two, and ignore those Time tyrants. Forget those plans. Bring a spontaneous revolt to your soul. Throw off the self-help books, blackberries, e-mail, to-do lists, or that novel you were intending to read. To hell with yoga, meditation, the kid’s soccer game, the book club, and weeknight hockey. Tell your gurus and those pushers of personal growth to go jump in the lake.

Go outside and stare into the sky. Take off all your clothes. Or, turn off all the lights, build a fire, and watch the flames flicker and dance. Dare yourself for a day, a night, or even just an hour to live in the glow of knowing that time is forever and always at hand.

Simon and Garfunkel, Sound of Silence

Imagine. You are running. The sun warms your skin. You feel the drumming of the pavement against the bottoms of your feet. Your arms move in rhythm to your steps. Beads of sweat trickle down your forehead. Smell the freshly mowed grass. Birds flutter and chirp along the tree lined street. An occasional car passes. You hit stride. You are running with more energy than you’ve ever run before. A feeling of health and animal pleasure glow inside your body.

If you stayed with the above fantasy, the same regions of your visual, olfactory, and kinesthetic brain circuits lit up as would have if you really were taking that run. It’s the same if you imagined tapping out a pattern with your fingers, hitting a tennis ball, or imagining your cat hop onto your lap.

We’ve known for some time that experience changes the function and structure of our neural wiring. We call this learning. But what has become increasingly evident is that thinking alone, with no input from the outside world, can also change the physical structure of our brain.

Researchers asked one group of subjects to visualize practicing a 5-finger right-handed piano exercise over and over again for several hours. They were not to touch the keys, but only imagine themselves doing so. The same regions of the brain that controlled the right fingers expanded in the same way as those subjects who were instructed to actually practice the piece touching the piano.

The mere thought of doing something has the capacity to change your brain structure, and thus your performance. It’s something that sports psychologists have know for a long time. If you can see it, you’re training your brain and your body to make it happen.

Researcher Gary Klein found that imagination, or mental simulation, is one of the most important decision making tools for combat commanders, fireman, chess masters, ER doctors, ICU nurses. In the heat of the moment, experts don’t follow rules and procedures. Nor do they use formal logic. Instead, they create mental images based on their experiences. As one fire commander confided, “To be a good fire ground commander, you need to have a rich fantasy life.”

Klein writes, “he was referring to the ability to use the imagination, to imagine how the fire got started, how it was going to continue spreading, or what would happen using a new procedure. A commander who cannot imagine these things is in trouble.” (1)

Visualization is not just for athletes or experts under fire. It can be a crucial tool for navigating your day to day, especially if depressed, anxious, or finding yourself facing some uphill battle. If we practice the scene in our imagination and build into the fantasy as much positive emotion as we can muster, then we have brought ourselves several steps closer to accomplishing whatever challenge is before us. If you can see it, you are crucial step closer to making it happen.

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(1) Klein, Gary. Sources of Power. US: MIT Press, 1999. (p. 45.)

Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, Rembrandt

A letter makes it personal.  It reaches us like a whisper.  We may steal off to some private corner to unseal the envelope, if only to better reflect on the words without distraction.  We go off to that corner because we can.  A letter can be carried anywhere.  We can secret it between the pages of a book, or in a pocket, or in your bosom beneath your blouse.

To sit down and compose a letter means taking your time, distilling your intent.  There’s paper to choose.  The right pen.  The envelope.  The stamp.  In days of old we’d seal our letters closed with wax.

La Lecture de la Lettre, Picasso

When writing the letter, the words must fall carefully to avoid starting over again.  Of course, we can leave in the scratch-out, the fingerprint, the smudge, the spill of coffee.  To the spouse, lover, or dear friend the misfortune is not a stain, but your actual presence on the page.  Leave it, you create a deeper intimacy.

Letters can be heart-filled, or poisoned.   A letter can be sensual, tearful, raging, philosophical, mundane.  A letter has a weight and texture that we can know through our hands.  It can carry a lock of hair, or the trace of perfume.

Napolean scolded his Josephene, “You never write to me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters give him yet you cannot even manage to write him half a dozen lines, dashed off in a moment! What then do you do all day, Madame? What business is so vital that it robs you of the time to write to your faithful lover?”

One way or another, a letter begs the writer’s attention and time.

A letter is handled.  Held.  Touched.  Read.  Reread.  Folded.  The envelope is licked and addressed.  The stamp is carefully, or carelessly, secured in its corner.  One way or another, you are worth the time and the 42 or some odd cents.

Ask the soldier on the front what it is to receive a letter.  If it’s from a wife or lover, he might hold it to his nose hoping to catch her scent.  He might kiss it.  Lick the envelope’s glue as if seizing the taste of her lips from afar.

Captain Joseph Bush wrote to his wife from Vietnam, “If my mail means as much to you as yours does to me then I know how you feel when the mailbox is empty.  Whether or not I get a letter determines if it’s a good day or not.” (1)

A letter holds the other’s presence.  It demands thought.  Reflection.  A sense that the distance between us matters.

“ooooh, my baby she wrote me a letter…”, that soulful Joe Cocker

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from Dear America:  Letters Home from Vietnam, edited by Bernard Edelman.