Wha' Da Ya Know?

I’ve been working at mindfulness meditation pretty regularly this week, but not every day like I should.  It only needs take a few minutes, as few as five or as many as you choose.  I believe it will be very worthwhile, considering that the mind doesn’t come with a user’s manual and we generally don’t give serious attention to what it’s doing or how it could be improved.  If you’re like me, random thoughts come and go through your head all the time.  Generally I devote quite a bit of attention to my idle thoughts.  When I’m trying to read, my mind wanders.  When I’m trying to listen, my mind wanders.  When I’m driving, my mind wanders.  When I go downstairs to get something, my mind wanders and I forget what I went down there for.  This sort of thing is happening in my head all the time.  But I can learn to better maintain focus.  That’s what meditation is about: learning to attend to your thoughts and your thinking, managing your mind instead of letting it manage you, practicing by focusing on one thing--anything--and gently resisting being side-tracked by the random chatter in your head.  I would love to learn to focus better when it’s important...to be able to really listen, to concentrate on what I’m reading or doing or trying to think about, to turn down the background mental noise.  Seriously, I have found that my mindfulness attention span is about 15-30 seconds.  With practice, I will learn to do better.  If my 6 month old grandson can do it, so can I.

My latest reads have been really fascinating, and have reinforced my Doubting Thomas inclinations.  Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts, by Barbara Oakley tells of a 2006 murder of a man by his wife; rather than the wife being the abused victim, the author makes a case for the opposite: with her codependent nature the woman repeatedly sought out troubled male companions who needed fixin’.  She then basically made their lives so miserable that they distanced themselves, leading to her enhanced sense of abandonment, neglect, and abuse.  The story was much more nuanced than that, but one of the points I got from the book is that “battered woman syndrome” has never been properly researched, it’s just became mainstreamed in the 1980’s and is an accepted legal defense.  There’s much more to it than innocent victims being abused by evil spouses, but just try explaining that to the jury, especially when there are already laws on the books.  To quote psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat, “In virtually all of the psychiatric disorders…the shadow of our ignorance overwhelms the few dim lights of our knowledge.”  We think we’re sooo smart, but maybe we’re not.  

What else do we believe that ain’t necessarily so?  How about the theory of evolution?  In Darwin’s Doubt author Stephen Meyer addresses a topic that Darwin himself acknowledged was an important weakness in his evolutionary theory: the “Cambrian explosion.”  Without boring you further (or demanding that I attempt to explain the concept more carefully), suffice to say that there are huge discrepancies between what evolutionary theory proposes and what the fossil record shows, and the discrepancies loom more and more significant as paleontology research advances.  Not likely that you’ll hear about it, though, because the theory of evolution is a scientific sacred cow.  Eventually the truth will out, but who knows how long it will take?  We can be very closed-minded when we think we’ve already got things figured out.

Of course, carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming; that’s been all figured out.  Ha!  I suspect time may show that the situation is not at all that simple, and that ‘global warming’ may well be a crock.  But we’re so gullible and trusting that we’re actually unwilling to be objective.  The whole business has become way too politicised.  And it feels so good to have a cause to believe in.  And to be in the right.

If history teaches anything, it’s that, generally speaking, what used to be considered as truth eventually was shown to be not, or at least greatly over-simplified.  We are adverse to the possibility that we might be wrong.  Or that we don’t know everything.  I think we should embrace the concept.

Still reading?  Man, this is a boring blog.  I’ll try to do better next time.

Being a Better Grandpa

I was listening recently to a series of lectures on self-control.  I find this subject fascinating but also vitally important to living a good life.  Anyway, as I was listening it dawned on me that this is something grandparents could very effectively help their grandchildren with: delayed gratification, self-discipline and self-control.  Studies have shown that a student’s self-discipline is more important than I.Q. in getting good grades.  Other studies found that 5-year-olds who choose delayed gratification (1 marshmallow now or 2 marshmallows in 15 minutes) where found 20 years later to be happier, healthier, wealthier and generally better off than their immediate gratification counterparts.  Like I said, this is important stuff.

Some of it we appear to be born with...or without.  Beyond that, I believe these traits can be taught and learned and re-inforced in every child; adults, too, come to think of it.

If grandparents planned and prepared, they could make visits with the grandkids more fun and more meaningful than just ‘doing things together.’  We would start by developing a list of jobs around the house that are age, duration, and skill-level appropriate.  For example, cleaning the baseboards, wiping out the dirty inner-tracks of window frames, doing the dirty dishes, cleaning out/organizing the closet, making the bed, changing the bedsheets, etc.  This first step is very important, in part because devising such tasks is not something I am good at.  I would need to work it up in advance, maybe get some ideas from you parents and future parents.  Developing a lengthy list would make it easier to pick the right task for the right kid for the available time and circumstances.

The next step for the grandparent would be to develop a list of rewards.  A trip to Coldstone for ice cream, a trip to Family Dollar to spend the money they’ve earned, the opportunity to choose what’s for dinner or dessert ...again, the longer this list, the better.  How about a trip to Family Dollar to window shop, then ask the kids if they found anything they’d like to be able to buy?  Yes?  Well, maybe we can work something out...

Yes, we will be going to Coldstone; would you like a small or a medium or large?  (or like, love, lust or whatever they call it; see, I need to do my homework).  The idea would be to engage the grandkids in the decision-making process and the responsibility for making it happen.

So, I would ask for any ideas you might have, suggestions for jobs, rewards, & strategies.  Perhaps you have feedback; I would love to hear it.  Maybe you have other ideas for teaching self-discipline and delayed gratification to children; I’d love to hear about that, too.  hummmmm....if you write them down and share them with me, I’ll let you choose whatever you want at Coldstone!