How Does It Feeeeeeeeeel

Stop Asking Kids (and everyone else) How They Feel

Well worth reading.

“Asking somebody ‘how are you feeling?’ is inducing negative feelings. You shouldn’t do that,” said Michael Linden, an expert in mood disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. Why? “Nobody feels great,” he explained. “Never, never ever. Sit in the bus and look at the people opposite from you. They don’t look happy. Happiness is not the emotion of the day.”

(Stop laughing because he’s German.)

I learned this from Laverne’s Pop on LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY a long time ago. NOBODY’S HAPPY!!!!

Whew, that’s a relief.

Seriously, the point of the article is to stop with the emotional check-ins. They never once use the word “mindfulness”, but it certain feels to me like a refutation, and a sorely needed one. Maybe not for everyone all the time. Maybe mindfulness works for you and that’s OK!

But some of us are systems thinkers, which is an excellent strategy, both for achieving goals and for sprouting happiness as an unintended byproduct.

Weight Watchers makes a perfect case study for what is meant by systems thinkers. Say you join WW with a typical goal. “My goal is to weight 120 pounds. And I will achieve it by following this diet whereby I eat 28 points a day, until I weight 120 pounds.” Then every single day you are on the diet, you fail. You haven’t reached your goal.

Say you join WW with this attitude. “My goal is to eat 28 points a day every day until I weigh 120 pounds.” Then every single day you are on the diet, YOU WIN. You ate 28 points that day? You win. You’re a success.

I maintain the latter person is more likely to reach 120 pounds. I maintain the latter person will be ‘happier’, though happiness was by no means the goal. I maintain the latter person will also be healthier even if 120 pounds never happens, because the first person will eventually quit, but the latter person will be having so much fun being a success every day.

Some of us just fit into systems thinking like a groove. I realize it’s not for everyone at all times. But you never hear about it out there in popularland. You hear about mindfulness CONSTANTLY. Screw mindfulness.

Book Corner 2024.14

The End of Race Politics

by Coleman Hughes

I wish this book had come out before my book club did HOW TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST. I knew ANTI-RACIST didn’t sit well with me, I still think that color-blindness should be the goal. The argument for anti-racism seems to be: We tried color-blindness, it doesn’t work, look at all the problems we still have! But you’re ALWAYS going to have problems. You don’t give up working towards the goal, if the goal is worthy, and what could be more worthy than living up to our nation’s promise and treating all of our fellow human beings equally!

It’s like complaining that even with umbrellas, even with raincoats, even with very good weather forecasts, people still sometimes get wet… so you argue to do away with umbrellas and raincoats.

Book Corner 2024.13

We Could Be… Bowie & His Heroes

by Tom Hagler, edited by Tony Visconti

A few sentences or more about every celebrity Bowie ever crossed paths with. A bit silly but highly addictive.

If I may quote a reviewer on Library Thing named Michael Rimmer: “Initially, it feels shallow and disposable, but it starts to cohere the more you read, like looking close-up at a mosaic and gradually stepping back to resolve a portrait made of individual tiles.”

Sometimes I’m in the Mood

Sometimes I want to live alone, with few possessions, all of the absolute finest quality, and be a selfish jerk, and be perfectly fine with that.

Sometimes I want to be a hermit woman who lives alone in the middle of Montana or Maine or Alaska. Tytania, you hate the cold. Shut up, this is a fantasy. I live alone in a little cottage with few possessions. Every day I hike, then come back and cook myself something delicious like macaroni and cheese. I listen to a radio and read fine periodicals and books. No internet.

Sometimes I love the life I have.

Book Corner 2024.11

Hamnet

by Maggie O’Farrell

I hated this book. Such one-dimensional characters (and way too many characters, too). Shakespeare’s abusive father John is all bad. Agnes’ stepmother Joan is all bad; no drop of affection whatsoever for two children she raised from babies. Shakespeare’s mother Mary is a dolt; I never thought less of the two main characters, with whom we’re supposed to feel sympathy, than when they literally laughed at Mary behind her back for being upset that her son was moving to London.

A couple of the characters see Agnes not as a mysterious woodsprite but as an imbecile. I thought it was an interesting perspective and chose to see her this way through the remainder of the book, which helped me get through it.

And hate it I did! I wanted them all to get the plague.