Archive for May, 2010
The Dialectic of Personal Progress
The dialectic of progress states (and this is in my own words, as I understand it) that in the world of human problems, solutions always bring about new problems to solve. The modern world is full of examples of this. Pollution as a result of technology that has vastly improved the quality of life. Obesity and other health problems as a result of an abundance of food. Increased emphasis on materialism and superficial values as a result of a consumer-based economy (say some). The list goes on and on. No matter how good the solution to a problem, it will always bring about new problems to solve. There will never be a time when mankind is problem-free; outside of our silly fantasies, there will never be such a thing as utopia. If there were, we’d all be pretty bored in a hurry–and that would be a new problem, wouldn’t it?
It’s occurred to me that there is also a dialectic of personal progress. Every problem an individual solves creates a new set of problems that, in turn, have to be solved. There will never be a point, short of death, that a person has no problems to solve. This is life’s unavoidable nature, certainly not a bad thing or something to be dreaded; how awful, in fact, to think of being stuck with the same problems throughout your life!
The question for an individual, then, is not how do I avoid having problems? for it is completely unrealistic to think this is possible. Rather, the right question to ask is do I have the kinds of problems that indicate forward progress in my life? Or, rephrased, Do I have better problems now than I did ten years ago? Five years ago? Even one year ago? Because the best a person can do, barring circumstances beyond her control, is to continuously improve the quality of her problems.
For example, by the time you’re thirty or so, it’s a positive sign if you’ve moved beyond concerns like How am I going to support myself? to How can I advance my career? Also by this age, it’s good if you’ve figured out the kind of romantic partner you want and perhaps even be settled down happily with him or her. Or maybe, if you were like me, you had to pause to sort through some issues in your twenties (addiction, depression, fear of intimacy) before you could move on to better problems. But even though recovery from a serious problem like addiction slows the timeline a bit, it also creates a certain circumspection and self awareness that’s hard to get any other way. Addiction isn’t something I’d wish on anybody, but overcoming it is an amazing experience that changes a person indelibly for the better.
While the problems should be getting better as a person gets older, they also get harder to solve. In your twenties, you had less to lose because you had less, period. If you’re making progress, then you will have more at stake as you age. Not just financially and materialistically, but emotionally and intellectually as well. You will have made some choices and advanced down some paths that are not as easy to reverse as they once were. Perhaps you’ve invested time in a marriage or career you’re now questioning. Maybe you’ve always done what people expected of you and that doesn’t feel good anymore. Or maybe you’ve developed the courage to take some risks you’ve been afraid of up until now. Such doubts and shifts in thinking are all signs of progress in your life, of movement in a positive direction. But putting them into action–making actual changes–can put a lot at risk. Whichever way you go can have tremendous repercussions, not just on you, but on many people in your life. This makes these higher-end problems extremely difficult ones to solve.
So yes, better problems sometimes means you have more to lose–but this is far from a bad thing. It is, in fact, exactly what we should be striving for, because having more to lose means you’re doing something right.
Also, as we age we begin to see our limitations and think about the finite nature of life, which makes us understand how important it is to live the life we want, in a way we can’t really comprehend in our youth. Such circumspection is also an indication of progress, in the forms of emotional maturity and intellectual honesty, but this kind of awareness can make decisions more poignant, and thus harder to make. If you’re progressing, then with age comes wisdom–but the wisdom ushers in new problems impossible to foresee from the vantage point of youth. Almost everything in life becomes more complicated as we age, but that’s just as it should be, too. Complexity makes us human, and dealing with life’s moral ambiguities and infinite shades of gray offer some of the most challenging, yet most satisfying, problems of all.
If you’re making good decisions, your problems get harder to solve as you age because you have more at risk and have accrued some circumspection on your journey: this is the dialectic of personal progress. But having more to lose is a good thing, and gaining circumspection (which is really wisdom) is something to be grateful for. In fact, it’s what makes growing older worthwhile.
Everybody Wants Approval
Along the same lines as understanding that people’s behavior is never about you is understanding that everybody wants approval. That is, everybody wants to feel liked, appreciated, and respected.
Maybe this is obvious. But I think it’s worth looking at, because many of us think we’re the only ones worrying about what other people think, and this is simply not true. Wanting approval is a universal human trait. While you are trying to gauge what a person is thinking about you, chances are very, very good that the other person is doing the same thing with you. This is ironic because much of the time, we’re so concerned with getting approval that we have a hard time really seeing and hearing the other person in a way separate from what we want from them.
This idea was driven home to me at, of all places, my mother’s funeral. Circumstances conspired for me to have this awareness on a very profound, visceral level which has stayed with me for several years now. First, I had just returned from a ten day, silent meditation retreat, so all my “channels” were open and receptive in a way they’d never quite been before; there’s nothing like an extended period of silence to alter the way you view your everyday world. Second, it was the largest gathering of relatives I’d been with since I was a child, making for an excellent opportunity to observe people I shared a common background with–and thus understand in a way I wouldn’t have understood a group of strangers–interact. And third, the sense of loss had probably made me more circumspect than usual.
Anyway, I was watching my aunt, an incredibly intellectual woman who I’d never thought of as needing anybody’s approval, talking to my father, whose approval I’d been trying my whole life not to need, and I had this overwhelming awareness that neither was really paying much attention to what the other was saying. They had all the trappings of an engaged conversation, but it was clear to me that they were both mostly waiting to talk. Not just to talk, though; they were both waiting for the opportunity to impress each other with their wittiness and intelligence. But this was not out of selfishness (or at least, not out of pompous selfishness). Quite the opposite, in fact. They were both deeply concerned with what the other one thought. They were both vying for each other’s approval. So much so, that their neediness prevented them from really communicating with each other.
It was so clear, I wondered why I’d never noticed it before. I felt like I’d risen above the room and was able to see everybody’s insides as they interacted, and they were all doing slightly different versions of the same thing. Everybody was trying to get everybody else’s approval. Most of my father’s family did it by trying to be clever and witty. Most of my mother’s family did it by trying to be funny. Others had other means that were less apparent to me. But very, very few were actually present in a meaningful way; that is, in a way that wasn’t about somehow gaining another person’s approval. Certainly, none of my relatives were. I felt like I was watching a roomful of children competing for attention–needy, narcissistic, and seemingly incapable of anything more.
As harsh as that may sound, I don’t mean it as a criticism. Rather, it was like a wave of awareness washing over me, flooding me with compassion for how needy most of us really are–so much so that we are rarely able to get past our own desire for approval and be truly present with another person–that is, able to see and hear a person in a way that has nothing to do with our own ego. And this includes myself, as well. But the silent retreat had given me temporary respite from my typical way of interacting, and the gathering of family members provided the opportunity to really notice it.
In this way, I got lucky.
So maybe as I said, this is obvious to most people. Common knowledge. But even if it is, I think this is not so in a useful way much of the time. We might know in the back of our minds that approval is something we want, and maybe even that it’s something other people want, too. But how often do we really think about it? How often do we notice that other people are behaving as they are because they want approval? How often do we notice that even behavior that seems to not be about approval–actually, especially behavior that seems to not be about approval–is about approval, that the rebels and defiers of convention actually want approval more than anybody? How often do we notice approval seeking in ourselves? And, having noticed, how often has that awareness changed how we communicate? Increased our compassion, for instance, or prompted us to really listen to the best of our ability?
I find it sad how little we hear each other so much of the time, how incapable we are much of the time of being present for each other. This, I believe, is the core grief in my dysfunctional family of origin. But once we understand this, we can make different choices. We can work at being present, at seeing and hearing people beyond how they affect our own egos. We can make a conscious effort to quiet the noise in our heads so we can hear what’s going on around us objectively. And we can face our grief with greater compassion and understanding.
From the neediest glommer-ons to the prickliest people you know, everybody wants approval; this is part of the human condition. It’s a boat we all share, so we might as well get used to the company.
How to Avoid Hurt Feelings and Defensiveness
First level thinking is, of course, the most rudimentary type of hand reading. This player is making no effort to narrow down his opponents’ holdings or figure out their patterns and strategies. While it is probably unfair to call such a player a self-absorbed person, at the poker table he certainly is, and his skill level will not improve until he begins to take better note of his opponents. The self-absorbed player is the most common type; it is the level at which all poker players begin, and the level at which most casual players remain–and that comprises most of them.
Hand reading in poker provides a good analogy for how most of us think about other people’s behavior in general–or more accurately, how we don’t. Most of us are so concerned with how other people see us that we make little effort to understand what must be going on with them. The noise in our own heads–our fears, our insecurities, our anxieties, our desire for approval, or, in short, our self-absorption–is so loud that we have trouble seeing other people’s behavior as reflections of their own emotional state, having nothing to do with us.
You will be wise to remember that other people’s behavior has nothing to do with you. Even in a worst-case scenario, if behavior is motivated by dislike for or anger at you, it’s still not about you; people’s reactions are their own regardless of what precipitated them. But rarely is it such a scenario. People bump up against each other all the time without a clue about each other’s internal world, mostly because it is not possible to share that internal world. Even two people who are close get to see only a fraction of each other’s internal workings. This is not bad or even sad; it’s just the nature of the human psyche. How many thoughts have you had in the last five minutes? How many diverse and bizarre turns has your mind taken in that short time? It is impossible to say, even to yourself. Add to this your shadow–that giant murky pool atop of which your consciousness floats–and you begin to see the true complexity of the human mind and the general impossibility of ever fully knowing another human being.
Being aware of this should actually make it easier to gauge other people’s behavior. When you accept the basic premise that it is never about me, you can relax a bit, hush the noise in your head, and be on the lookout for clues as to what might be going on with a person. Most behavior–and its underlying reasons–falls into into a few basic categories:
- Anger. Anger is almost always a manifestation of fear. A wife gets angry at her husband for staying out too late because she feels threatened by his independence. Parents get angry at their children because they’re worried about them. Drivers get angry at each other because driving is dangerous, so inattentiveness can mean dire consequences. Bosses get angry at employees because they are afraid of looking incompetent to their bosses. The exception to this is getting angry at disrespectful treatment, which is a healthy response to injustice. So when somebody gets angry at you, try to understand: have you been disrespectful, or has your behavior been perceived as disrespectful? If not, then what is this person afraid of? Have you threatened him in some way? Or is the anger about something triggered from the past? Asking these questions should go a long way towards not taking the behavior personally and achieving understanding.
- Lack of response. Have you ever had a friend not respond to your calls, letters, or emails, only to pop out of the woodwork weeks or months later as though nothing was wrong? This is puzzling behavior, and difficult not to take personally. But it almost never should be. My theory is that people do this because they’re feeling bad about themselves. When you’re feeling bad about yourself, connecting with other people can feel like the hardest thing in the world, and people simply don’t have the energy to make the effort. For whatever reason, many, if not most, people struggle with bouts of sadness, hopelessness, shame, and other dark emotions. (A multi-billion dollar drug industry hinges on this fact.) I always knew this was the case for me, but when I was going to AA, I got a golden opportunity to see that I was far from alone. People would show up at meetings after long absences and actually explain that this was the case. This helped me realize that when people drop out of sight, it’s usually because they’re feeling bad about themselves. Of course, this can be difficult to tolerate if you’re left hanging on the other end of this behavior, and you are free to decide how you want to deal with it (and if you choose to cut this person out of your life, or at least stop making plans with her, it’s perfectly understandable), but understanding that this person is almost certainly dealing with something more complex than irresponsibility or self-absorption might help you look at the situation with a little more compassion and a little less annoyance.
- Turning down repeated invitations. If a person repeatedly turns down invitations, this is a pretty clear message that she doesn’t want to hang out with you. But this doesn’t necessarily mean she dislikes you. If you have a cordial relationship that seems like it could go somewhere yet doesn’t, it is likely to indicate that this person has some feelings of inferiority or insecurity about herself. She probably shies away from close relationships with everybody. I’ve had a few experiences with this, and while sometimes I never find out what was going on, the times I have usually involved the person feeling in some way intimidated or anxious; rarely has it been out of dislike for me. It could also mean the person is as busy as she says she is or that she has some other personal reason for not being able to get together. If a person does not respond to repeated attempts to get closer, give her the space she seems to want, but try not to take it personally.
- Being overreactive. If a person overreacts to something you said or did–that is, if a person gets too emotional for the situation–this is the biggest clue of all that it isn’t about you. Which can be hard to see, because the person certainly seems to be making it about you. Overreaction is different than straight out anger; overreaction can be any emotion that doesn’t match the situation, from over-the-top anxiety to completely shutting down. When a person overreacts, she is no longer present. Current circumstances have stirred something old and deep, and it is that internal trigger to which she is reacting. A person rarely understands this in the present (if she did, there would be no overreaction), so the best thing to do is respectfully refuse to engage. If a person overreacts frequently, and it has become a problem in her life, then she may be dealing with post-traumatic stress, and she may need help dealing with it. (And by the way, most people who had painful childhoods have some level of post-traumatic stress; it’s far more common than people think.)
Unless they have worked very hard to learn how not to, people always give away what’s going on with them. Learning to put your own reactions in perspective and recognize these clues can go a long way towards understanding people’s behavior, and just as importantly, not taking it personally.
Sugar and Spice: Maybe Not So Nice
The other day, a friend of mine told me that artificial sweetener is just as unhealthy as eating sugar because it makes your body crave sugar. Now, she said, when she and her husband want something sweet, they eat something made with “real” sugar–and feel good about it. Nutritionally speaking, this was just about the last straw for me. Now we’re supposed to eat sugar??
I don’t necessarily believe this information; in fact, that’s exactly the point: who knows what to believe? Nutritional information changes so rapidly, it’s impossible to keep up with it. Just since I’ve been paying attention, which is about the last fifteen years, new studies contradict old information only to be contradicted themselves, ad infinitum. But that doesn’t stop people from jumping on whatever bandwagon is currently playing the popular nutritional message. Remember when we were kids and everybody was eating margarine? Or when news came out that oatmeal lowered cholesterol? How about the low carb craze of ten years ago? Today, it’s the evils of corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, and of course, organic, organic, organic.
I also don’t necessarily disbelieve any of this information, either. My point is not to prove or disprove any nutritional claims made by anybody. Without a PhD in human biochemistry, it’s hard to know much of anything about how the human body metabolizes food; even with one, it seems the evidence is muddy, inconsistent, and hard to interpret. This makes perfect sense, given the phenomenally huge number of variables scientists must try to control to achieve sound results (Examples of hard-to-control variables include the diets, general health, and genetic predispositions of all people [or even lab animals] participating in a study, as well as all the myriad different organs and compounds involved in digestion.) Such control must be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. This could explain why different independent studies, each performed by strict scientific methodology and free of sponsorship that might slant the data in a particular direction, can have such drastically different results. The science probably isn’t full-out wrong, but due to the complexity of what it is trying to understand, it is likely to be incomplete a fair amount of the time.
I’m not saying people should ignore the studies completely, or that all nutritional science is hokum. They shouldn’t, because it isn’t. But I don’t get too worked up about the latest findings. There’s just too much possibility that they won’t withstand further testing. The miracle food of today might be the pariah of tomorrow. I’ve believed this for a long time, and just kind of ignored all the nutrition hype that bombards me from all media sources, believing most of it to be more about selling products than about any actual scientific evidence.
As far as the artificial sweetener thing goes, I have a couple of opinions. They kind of contradict each other, but only in the sense that nutrition is a multi-faceted issue that should be considered from many different angles. First of all, I believe the science may indicate that artificial sweeteners increase sugar cravings. From the Internet research I did, I found that most of the data is traceable to one study that came out in February of 2009. This study does show that rats fed artificial sweetener ate more than rats fed sugar. Now that’s interesting, and probably important to pay attention to. But it is just one study, and so many things can go wrong in an experiment, which is why substantiation of results by other scientists is so important. While that may have happened, I wasn’t able to find any articles about it. So I’m going to pay attention to how my cravings and appetite change according to my artificial sweetener intake, but I’m not going to dump all my diet soda down the drain–yet.
My other opinion is more cynical. Sugar has been a nutritional pariah for decades now, but in the past few years this has changed with all the bad press high fructose corn syrup has been getting. Where labels used to shout out Now Sugar-free! or Contains less sugar than other leading brands!, they now proclaim Made with real sugar! What better timing for an anti-artificial sweetener study to reach the public? There’s a weird attitude now about the superiority of sugar to all other sweeteners. If you go into any health food store, you can find myriad forms of sugar: table sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, evaporated cane juice, sucrose, dextrose, maple syrup, honey, and I’m sure many others. But you can’t buy a diet soda in these stores, or any type of diet food, or any artificial sweetener whatsoever. Organic foodies have long been anti-artificial sweetener, and now with the “green” movement permeating mainstream culture, the pro-sugar mentality falls right in step with the other buzzwords: organic, all-natural, free-range, and the like. (Deciphering the meanings and validity of these claims is another project altogether, but one I recommend to anyone interested in moving past the marketing hype and towards genuine understanding of the issues involved.) Are artificial sweeteners bad for you, or are they simply being painted with the same brush as corn syrup and anything “non-organic”? I believe it’s some of both, and sorting out the facts from the fads will take time and effort.
Once again, I’m not saying the organic food movement is wrong. But organic food is a particularly complicated maze to work your way through, fraught with misinformation and strong opinions, which makes approaching it with care highly advisable. I think it’s probably a good idea to eat fruits and vegetables treated with fewer poisons, and I’m staunch about eating animals that had a good quality of life before being sacrificed to the human food chain. I just don’t automatically believe all the latest news, studies and findings until they are substantiated by other research and accepted by the scientific community.
What has been substantiated and is generally accepted as fact are the basics of nutrition: the body needs a certain ratio of protein, carbohydrates, and fats, delivered by a certain daily number of calories. It also needs vitamins and minerals. Amounts vary depending on many factors such as age, gender, and level of physical activity, but the amounts have been worked out and are easy to determine for any individual. If these ratios are out of balance, or if you aren’t getting enough vitamins or minerals, your health will suffer because of it.
The solution, then, is simple: eat nutrient-dense foods in the proper amounts for your individual needs. Vegetables, fruits, meat, whole grains, nuts, and some dairy. From these categories, there are literally millions of choices and options so nobody ever has to feel deprived or bored with their diet.
Yet a lot of us do feel deprived if we eat this way. Fat and sugar taste good, and pre-packaged food is easier to prepare than raw meats, grains, and vegetables. And there is a huge industry telling us their packaged, vitamins-added products are good for us, and we want to believe it, so we do. But deep down we know it’s not true (and all we need to do is read a label to convince ourselves), so we keep looking to science to come up with reasons it’s okay to eat this stuff anyway. As is so common in human nature, we’re once again looking for excuses to do what we want. As far as the sugar thing goes, I find it highly ironic that people are now seeking out “real” sugar after years of avoiding it. Yes, sugar is probably better for you than corn syrup and maybe even artificial sweeteners, but the truth is that refined sugar in any form is not good for you, period. It has no nutrients and the body converts it to fat if eaten in excess. The goal should not be to change refined sweeteners, but to minimize them or even eradicate them from your diet completely.
People, myself included, want the magic bullet that will let them eat what they want and stay healthy. I’ve finally realized that the opposite approach is necessary: learn to enjoy healthy, nutrient-rich food and stay away from packaged, prepared food, and junk food, and use unknowns like artificial sweeteners sparingly, if at all. It’s been staring me in the face my whole life–how simple!
I’m a little embarrassed it’s taken me so long to figure it out. I suppose I could blame that on my tendency to soothe anxiety with carbohydrates, but that’s just another way of saying I can’t when the truth is, “I won’t.” Understanding this will go a long way towards dealing with the cravings, I think, and probably provide a new avenue to self-awareness.
Not a bad trade-off at all.