I Resolve to Drive Faster in 2011

"Racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty" --Peter Egan

It was my birthday on Friday - a celebration of the 42 trips I've made around the sun.  I don't really do the New Year's resolution thing, though I appreciate the idea that I'm turning to the first blank page of a fresh ledger book anticipating all of the as-of-yet unwritten potential there.  Roundabout this time of year though, I do throw some of my energy toward reflection, and hope (I can't deny the optimist that I am) for things that will be.  I love imagining what a new year might hold.  Remember when absolutely anything seemed possible?  Like back in my early twenties when I was finishing college and trying to decide which direction to take.  The possibilities weren't quite endless, but they sure felt like they were.  For the most part, I still feel that way.

Anyhow, the hubster and I went down to Savannah mid-January for a weekend away that included no children, driving cars at Roebling Road, the company of some great guys (because again this year I was the lone female driver), and good food and wine at the Olde Pink House 

- but mostly, it was about driving as fast as we dared on track.

I confess, I LOVE fast cars.  Some of my favorite high-school car memories include driving my friend Gumby's '65 Mustang on a busy suburban road and getting a trial-by-fire feel for its chunky manual transmission and its unassisted brakes that required me to practically stand on them with my full body weight to keep from rear-ending the family sedan in front of me.  I also credit Joe Cowart for his fine instruction in the art of the burnout.  We had a fun time doing those in his Mazda RX-7 one cold, snowy Atlanta night.

Few things thrill like driving a performance car as it was designed to be driven - at speed on the track.  It demands total focus and being completely present in the moment.  Is it better than sex?  I don't know about that, but it's entirely possible to finish a driving session and feel like you just had a cargasm.  I can thank my sweet husband for introducing me to my first hit of track crack.  I'm pretty sure he really just wanted a partner in crime so he would catch less grief for the numerous track weekends that he envisioned on his future calendar, but I am a willing accomplice.

A little backstory here.  When I was heavily pregnant with our second daughter, Steve decided he needed to buy himself one of these:

2001 Boxster S

because becoming a family of four definitely required owning a car that would only seat two.  He couched this purchase as his "midlife crisis" car, and since he could afford it and he wasn't into drugs, booze, or screwing around with women who weren't his wife, who was I to put up a fight?  Unbeknownst to me, because he'd managed to hide his car lust so well during our early, broke years of marriage, Steve had been itching to become a Porsche owner ever since he'd stolen his friend's father's 911 in high school and taken it for a joy ride.

So he came home with his Boxster and in no time flat signed up with the Peachstate chapter of the Porsche Club of America doing quarterly track days at Road Atlanta.

He quickly began to worry that wadding up the Boxster on the track might be expensive.  So arguing with the zeal of a back-cover-of-the-phone-book trial lawyer who's just stumbled upon the class action lawsuit that's going to pay for that McMansion he's had his eye on, Steve began to lobby for getting his racing license so he could race Mazda Miatas.  He methodically made the case that driving a race car with a full roll cage, fire suppression, and other safety features was a smart, calculated risk, and that it would be cheaper to fix/replace if he wrecked it. (Bwaa ha ha ha!  Side note: No matter what anyone says, even the cheap end of the racing spectrum isn't really inexpensive.)  But his argument was sound, so I agreed, and faster than a drug mule unloading his stash after a long international flight, Stevie-D was at the Panoz racing school learning how to drive like a racer.  Good thing he's comfortable with his manhood because the number of "skirt wearing", "secretary-car driving" jokes that Spec Miata drivers hear is substantial. 

Steve's addiction to cars and speed soon became crystal clear as that first purchase begat three more race cars and a "midlife crisis" car version 2.0, complete with license plate as disclaimer.

Steve's 1st Miata

Steve's 2nd Miata

And just for grins, a new class: Steve's BMW Spec E30

"Midlife Crisis" car #2: '03 Turbo - at least it seats four.

Might as well be honest about it.

So, when our younger daughter was eight months old, Steve got me out onto the track (Little Talladega in Alabama) in the Boxster, and that was all she wrote.  I was hooked and already jonesing for my next fix.  My instructor showed me just how hard that car could be driven and then he encouraged me to work my way up to finding out where the car's limits were for myself.  I had no idea how late one could wait to brake hard before entering a turn or just how fast I could go through a curve without losing control.  And while going fast in a straight line is fun (I've only hit about 135 mph myself on a straight, but that felt plenty fast while I was doing it), the real fun is seeing how fast you can go through the corners and still manage to stay on track!  After accruing some seat time, gaining confidence in my driving skills, and learning to trust the equipment (my kingdom for a fresh set of sticky tires during a mid-afternoon session on a clear, dry day!), I couldn't get over what an incredibly satisfying, exciting, couldn't-wipe-this-grin-off-my-face-if-I-tried kind of thing driving a fast car on a track is.

Five years later, I've driven the aforementioned tracks plus a couple of others in the Southeast - Road Atlanta (my favorite by far with its elevation changes, the Esses, a long backstraight that ends at a 90-degree left-hander followed immediately by a right-handed one, and turn 12 - a blind, hill cresting entry into a "grow-a-pair-and-keep-your-foot-on-the-gas" fast downhill, right curve onto the front straight!) and Barber outside of Birmingham.  And as long as I can continue to find the money to get onto a track and drive, I intend to keep doing it.  I think more women should give it a try because it's a confidence booster in a lot of ways.

Here are a few things I've learned while driving on the track, some of which transfer neatly over to life, metaphorically speaking:

• The fastest way around a track is via the most efficient driving line; find that and speed will naturally follow.
• Understanding the physics of driving improves skills tremendously because those rules always apply (for example, the most efficient way through most curves is in a controlled, 4-wheel drift - but letting the back end slide out too far only slows you down).
• If steering, shifting, braking, and accelerating inputs aren't smooth, you will unsettle the car. The faster you go, the more important this is because all those inputs happen in close succession and the tires are already at their limit.
• Figuring out the limits of the car is best done by methodically ramping up your speed with each successive lap.  You don't really want to be the jerk who spins out under a yellow flag in the first couple of laps of a session.  Not cool at all.
• The car's limits are a moving target affected by weather conditions, track temperature, tire temperatures, etc.  You should be aware of that and adjust your driving accordingly.
• "Slow in and Fast out" is the best way to take a curve so you hit the apex (the point at which the car reaches the inside of the track in the corner) just right and carry as much speed as possible on the way out, otherwise you'll either scrub off too much speed on exit, or if you turn too soon or "early apex" a curve, you are going to end up running off the track, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

As Steve says, if you aren't scaring yourself at least once during each lap, you aren't pushing hard enough.  My overarching hope for the year, both on and off the track, is to push the limits and experience the thrill of living just this side of the edge while maintaining overall control.  Or, if I do go spinning off the track, I hope I at least stop short of hitting a wall!

Christopher Hitchens - Topic of Cancer

I'm working on a post, which will be up soon.  In the meantime, read this.  Vanity Fair contributing editor, world-renowned author and atheist Christopher Hitchens discovered his body was riddled with cancer last summer.  His writing is so eloquent it makes me ache.  My Dad is in the late stages of metastatic colon cancer, so I read this piece with that in mind.

Try And See It My Way

I was having lunch with a dear friend of mine recently.  She's known me since I was thirteen so if you are doing the math that's almost 29 years.  I met her when she started teaching the teenagers Sunday School in our "New Age" church.  She knows me in all the ways that actually matter.  She knows my entrenched adolescent parts, and she has watched the sometimes glacial progress of the evolution of the parts of me that I didn't allow life to irretrievably harden into little black lumps of coal.  She's known me since the time I moved beyond willingly and fun-lovingly doing stupid human tricks to amuse my parents' friends, to the time when I began to notice that the world was noticing me, appraising me, and deciding if I was worth pursuing.  She was an important sounding board as I moved through toxic relationships into the one that has meant everything.  And she's watched me navigate my way through education, career, setting career aside and putting children first until, well, now.

Karen was the first adult in a position of authority who dignified my teenaged self by engaging in serious discussion when the agnostic in me reared its head and started to question everything I was being told by the "powers that be" about what God was and how the universe supposedly worked.  (Hear the attitude in that last part right there?  That's been with me for a LONG time.  And that skepticism?  I've been a questioner practically from day one.)  At times throughout my life, Karen's either been a catalyst for, or played a role in my effort to expand.  She has said things to me that cracked my locked heart open when no one else could, try though they might.  She challenges me to be my best self, and she holds me accountable.  Like a few other key people I hold dear, Karen represents the institutional memory of my life.  So to say that she's important to me is an understatement.

Anyhow, as we ate Karen and I meandered from subject to subject and finally rolled around to talking about how two people, even those whom it seems would have almost identical relationships to an event (e.g. siblings) can have radically different perspectives, and therefore make very different judgments, about said situation or set of circumstances.   And as is typical of most of my post meet-ups with Karen, after we parted ways, our conversation triggered a bunch of thoughts for me with respect to this topic.  I got to thinking about why it sometimes seems like such a crap shoot to try and suss out how someone, even someone I think I know pretty well, is likely to view or respond to a situation or a person's behavior.  I mean, really, sometimes I think I know what someone's reaction is going to be and I end up being so far from right that it's just plain ridiculous.

I don't know about you, but there's this recurrent conversation I have with my closest friends about how we think others view and judge us - our actions, our choices, our lives, our things.   My perception of how I think I am being judged can affect both the decisions I make, and / or how much I choose to tell the world about the decisions I've made.  Admittedly, some of that is good.  But it also means that I don't ever show all of my cards.  I don't live completely out loud.  I dream about it.  I imagine the intense freedom that would go along with it, but I don't do it because I was "raised right". 

So when this conversation comes up, it inevitably ends at the same conclusion - that a judgment someone makes about another is more about the person making the judgment than the person being judged.  (No doubt one of the nice things about this point-of-view is that it helps take the sting out of being on the receiving end of harsh judgment.)  So, do you buy that?  I do.  My take on it is that we are all just beings who have no choice except to be egocentric.  We can't help but view the world from a singular perspective, through a lens that's been cut and polished from the hardened and compressed layers of our unique set of experiences that get laid down one atop another atop another over a lifetime.  They are things like the beliefs our parents pressed into us; our position in a sibling line-up and how that affects how we relate to others and they to us; what we've bought into from society; the parts of ourselves that we've managed to develop into either good, solid qualities or nagging insecurities; the baggage we drag along from past relationships; etc.

There is actually only one place from which I can assess the world - from the place where my body takes up space, via my senses, especially my eyes.  I can earnestly try to imagine something from another person's point of view, but I can never truly have that point of view as my own.  I only get the one that I've spent my lifetime developing.  And this makes sense if you think about it for just a second.  Even conjoined identical twins, arguably the best possibility of two people being able to have an identical filter through which they view the world, still see the world from two different angles.  It's true that the space that separates those angles seems infinitesimally small in the scheme of things, but still they receive information about the world from two different positions.  And that difference makes a difference.

I'm not suggesting that we can't rise above our ego centrism, feel empathy, and act in ways that reflect that, I'm only saying that it is the default position from which our worldviews emanate, where we forever ask the question, "how does this affect me?"  I tend to judge harshly something that challenges or threatens my worldview, and I tend to proclaim my support for people, things and situations that support my worldview.  It's overly simplistic, unmindful, and habitual, but I know I'm not the only one who does this.

When a harsh judgment is unequivocally declared and hurled in my direction, usually after my thin skin has been pierced and I've licked my wounds, I marvel at how I managed to be surprised yet again by how strongly held an opinion can be.  Ever notice how an opinion that's being bear-hugged for all it's worth usually comes along with a total lack of willingness to consider the possibility that any other legitimate point of view exists?  I got a real-life version of this today.

I was at the gym getting ready for a class and listening to this one trainer rail on unsympathetically with his rigid opinions about all manner of things political.  Ever heard the expression "sometimes right, never in doubt"?  (Side note: he's a middle-aged hardass of a guy who used to have a hand in training the Georgia Tech football team.  He's gruff, hardcore, and will push you until you are lying flat on the floor, your body in full-scale revolt begging for mercy.  Then he'll tell you to get your ass moving because it isn't quitting time yet!  So some of his no-nonsense, "I know what's best for you" ways are beneficial.)  After he spent himself verbally spewing his thoughts, he loudly threw out a jab line or two about all the "bleeding-heart liberals" running around these days and the trouble they cause.  (I couldn't help but smile to myself because no doubt he would put me straight into that category if we discussed issues.) But it made me wonder why he was so unbending.

Listen, I'm as guilty of proclaiming a judgment about something as the next gal.  But as I age, I notice a lot sooner when something seems to have unreasonably gotten my knickers in a twist, and I'm glad that I'm softening rather than becoming more rigid in my thinking.  I've always been pretty open-minded, but I find I'm increasingly willing to consider other viewpoints, or at least hear what they are, even about something that's considered quite controversial.  And I also find myself asking why it is that something has gotten me all riled up when it has.  If I have a particularly strong reaction to something, I need to look at what that's triggering for me, and that can sometimes be uncomfortable.

Maybe you agree with me.  Maybe you don't.  It's okay if you have a different opinion.  Your opinion would be wrong, but I'm okay with that.

You Want to Know What?!

Brian's five-year-old, pip-squeak voice piped up from the backseat, "Mom, what are drugs?  What do they look like?  How do drugs make you feel?  Why do people take drugs?  Have you ever taken drugs?"  My friend, Mindy, kept a steady hand on the wheel while thoughts pinged through her head with machine gun-like rapid fire: What the?  Oh, Sh-t!  Isn't it a little early for this sort of inquiry?  Why is he asking me these questions?  Where is this coming from?  How truthful do I need to be?  What was it that parenting class said about handling kids' out-of-the-blue, tough questions?  Oh yeah, breathe, gather information, calmly tell him only what is necessary to satisfy his curiosity, then divert his attention to more innocuous subjects without lying, if possible.  A half-truth is definitely alright in this case.  Okay, I can do this.

"Why do you ask, honey?" asked Mindy.  Turns out that Mindy's Mom, who sometimes takes care of Brian, uses the time-tested strategy of many modern day Grandparents caring for energetic, young children while their own children are out doing something fun, they plop those little suckers down in front of the television and encourage them to quietly catch up on the local news with Grandma rather than tearing the house apart.

Calling the local news "news" these days is charitable at best.  It's more like a laundry list of salacious, fear-inducing, sensational stories that the "journalists" were able to put together that day, usually chock full of cheesy stunts and props just to add to the theater of it all.  As my reporter friend says, "if it bleeds, it leads."  So Mindy's Mom was getting her daily fix of scaring the crap out of herself when a story about Senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp came on.  It was yet another of those all-too-common stories of someone in a position of power and authority partying like a reckless rock star the minute he leaves the respectable space of his public life, and taking ramped up risks until he crashes and burns.  Apparently, when he wasn't handing down harsh sentences from the bench in his courtroom, His Honor had developed a taste for a stripper as his piece on the side, cocaine, marijuana, and prescription pills, and his fall-from-grace story is precisely the kind that the "news" organizations love to feature.

This particular story had created a whole bunch of questions in Brian's young brain.  After hearing what led to his incessant questioning, and cursing her Mom under her breath, Mindy began to try and answer / divert.  "Well, Bri, drugs are medicine.  You know, like pills that the doctor gives you.  Why do people take drugs?  Sometimes people take them because they are feeling nervous or anxious and they want to feel a little calmer and more relaxed.  On the other hand, sometimes people feel a little too relaxed and they want to have more energy, so different drugs or medicines have different effects on people.  I have taken drugs, you know, medicine that was given to me by my doctor.  Remember when I was in that car accident and my back was hurt?  I took medicine then to help make my back feel better.

Brian, with a perplexed look on his face finally spoke up one last time and said, "but Mom, what about the milk drugs and the orange juice drugs?"  "Milk drugs and orange juice drugs?  What are you talking about?" asked Mindy.  "You know, the milk drugs and the orange juice drugs that we have at our house.  What about them?" said Brian.  "Brian, I think you mean jugs not drugs", said Mindy.

"Seriously?!" she said to herself.

He Is More Than a Hero

I'm not really a consumer of poetry, but during a college Literature course I fell in love with one poem in particular. The poem "He is more than a hero" was written by Sappho, an Ancient Greek female poet born on the island of Lesbos in the 600s BC.  Since reading this poem, I don't think I've come across a more achingly clear description of desiring someone, in this case another woman.  Read it and tell me if I'm wrong.

He is more than a hero
he is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you — he

who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't

speak — my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me.

What a stunning depiction of desperately longing for that which is right next to you, but isn't yours.  Lately I've been thinking of this poem from a different perspective.  I have a dear friend who, about a year and a half ago, found herself falling head over heels in love with another woman.  That in and of itself isn't unusual, but all of this happened while she was a married, stay-at-home Mom to two children, enjoying a very comfortable, secure life and fitting neatly into her little corner of society.  It was the kind of thing that wasn't supposed to happen.

My friend, S, is one of the most intriguing women that I know.  When we first met, it took all of fifteen minutes for her to start grilling me.  If I hadn't found it so interesting, I would've been put off by it.   The thing about her is that she's super curious about what makes others tick, and if she likes you, she wants to know everything about you.  It didn't take long for me to learn that she grew up under a set of circumstances so tough they leave me amazed she's as sane as she is.  She's intense and edgy, but has a huge heart.  She's like a scrappy, little street fighter - full of strength and courage, and willing to walk right up to a situation and deal with it, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be.  Yet she usually manages to find the sweet spot between all of those qualities that allows her to confront without being overly confrontational.

She and I can, and do, talk about everything.  There isn't an off-limits subject between us.  As her new love was developing, she did me the great honor of trusting me enough to let me fully into her world.  I closely observed, and tried to be the best sounding board I could be for her as she stepped off of the safe, solid ground that was her married life, and plunged into the foggy unknown of a new relationship with another woman.

Over some period of time, before I knew anything about this, her feelings for her new love were deepening from mere friendship into something she couldn't ignore, but it was far too overwhelming for S to even think about the ramifications of that.  This blossoming situation was without a doubt the wrecking ball that would lay waste to the carefully constructed building that was her married life, and it had the potential to render everything she knew unrecognizable.  In those early days, she wouldn't admit even to herself what those feelings really meant, so she told no one.  But when the message that her heart kept trying to send to her brain ratcheted up from a whisper to a scream, she couldn't ignore it any longer, and she began to spill her secret to me, which she tentatively described as her crush on a red-headed, spirited, pixie of a woman.

Nothing physical had transpired between S and her friend at that point, but the emotional intimacy had become very real, and it was unlike anything S had felt before, including what she had with her husband.  Her marriage, which had had issues for quite a while, began to feel like an unbearable sentence in purgatory as she wrestled with staying put and shooting for absolution by trying to make her marriage work, or following her heart and blowing her family apart.  I watched her struggle with admitting how she really felt to herself, and then I watched her agonize over not wanting to hurt her husband, her children, and her extended family.  She worried and wondered about which of her friends might turn their backs on her if she left her husband and entered into a lesbian relationship.  And she worried about being on the receiving end of bigotry from her very southern family and from people in the wider world.

Ultimately, after untold hours of talking with her husband, her therapist, their couple's therapist, her friends, and the woman she knew she was in love with, S took steps to dissolve her marriage.  With her typical gusto, once she made the decision to live her truth and go down this path, she decided to just be who she was and let the chips fall where they may.   S and her love have now been a couple for a little over a year.  It's had its share of very tough moments, but I have to give all three of the adults involved a lot of credit.  I have marveled repeatedly at how mature S's ex-husband has been through all of this.  He's had some not-so-pretty moments to be sure, but far fewer than most guys in his position would have had.  Mostly, he and S decided to put aside pettiness and focus on doing whatever was best for the children to help them adjust to this new reality.  It has generally gone well.

As for S and her girlfriend, well women are complicated in and of themselves, but put a couple of them together in a love relationship and the amount of time spent talking through issues can be extensive to say the least.  That has been the case this past year.  But that's mostly due to S's desire to deal with things as they are happening, to be totally honest about how she's feeling and what a situation is dredging up for her, and to walk right up to it and talk it out.  While I've watched from the sidelines all of the tough moments these two women have managed to work through this past year, I can only say that there's no denying that the kind of tough-love, courageous, honest communication S regularly employs would be completely off-putting, if it weren't so darned effective.

Bad Habits

This is something I wrote about a year ago after a tough parenting day.

My daughter's lips were moving but I couldn't make out what she was saying.  "What?" I said, pulling off the headphones and pausing my iPod for about the fiftieth time that day.

I'd rolled out of bed that morning and quickly realized it was going to be one of those days.  I was tired and as my Grandma used to say, I had no ambition to do anything.  The irritations started bright and early as my children bickered vigorously with each other and threw fits.  I had a long "to-do" list filled with things that I had zero interest in actually doing.  Top all of that joy off with a gray, drizzly day as the backdrop for a family who had already spent too much "quality time" together during summer break, and cabin fever had definitely staked a claim in our house.

Everything and everyone I encountered that day felt like they came with sharp edges.  By mid-afternoon, as annoyances piled atop one another, my mood turned pitch black.  I had barked at the kids continuously, refused to do anything that would actually make me feel better, and resorted to listening to my iPod with headphones in an effort to cocoon myself from my daughters' unending, fingernails-down-the-chalkboard shrills.

By the time the babysitter arrived, my own personal storm cloud hovered just above my head, and it was clear that I wasn't going to be good company for anyone.  Since one of the ways that I escape the unrelenting, mundane tasks that can bury a stay-at-home Mom is by ensuring that I get some solitude periodically, it seemed that the only sensible thing for me to do was to go sit in a dark theater and watch a movie.  Nothing about attending a movie solo in the middle of a weekday invites conversation, and that suited me just fine.

Shutting out the world and being entertained by a decent movie for a couple of hours lifted my spirits enough to come home, make dinner and get the children into bed with minimal yelling.  Now I fully admit that I may live a little too much in my head, but I really do need a break from the day's chatter to think, reflect, assess my behavior, plan, and hopefully evolve in the process.  So once the house got quiet, I looked back on the day and realized that this had turned out to be yet another day, in a collection of them since my children were born, capped with self-doubting, remorse-tinged thoughts that "I could have done better" and "tomorrow, I'm going to try harder."

Late into that evening as the black tide began to ebb, in an effort to connect with that quieter, knowing part of myself, I read some things that felt poignant to me.  In this case, I read part of the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and a magazine.  The novel dredged up deep sadness in me as I read about a little girl who was so lonely throughout her young life, and who was consistently, profoundly disappointed by most adults, especially those closest to her.  It made me think of my own little girls and wonder how often I may have stung them with words or made them feel as if they were invisible or unnoticed by me.

In that fine state of mind - regretting my less-than-stellar parenting efforts earlier in the day - I started thumbing through O magazine and got to the article "31 Ways of Looking at Power".  What I read in the section about Pema Chödrön struck me.  A native New Yorker in her 70s with four decades of study and contemplation under her belt, Chödrön is a Buddhist nun, prolific author, and respected teacher.  The article presented her take on the Power of the Pause.  "[I]f right now our reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it's because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time."  She went on to say that, in the midst of the frenetic day-to-day of our lives, "...we could choose to stop, to slow down, to be still for a few seconds."  This pause "creates a momentary contrast between being completely self-absorbed and being awake and present", and can give us time to reset ourselves if we breathe and take in the stillness of that short pause.

This turned out to be a pretty serious clarifying moment for me.  As a 40-year-old with bouts of extreme moodiness over the past few years (my poor family!), I know with certainty that hormones are a significant contributor, but I hadn't connected with the fact that, for a good part of my life I'd habitually responded to a hormone-induced funk by disengaging from the world and indulging myself in a quiet but palpable fume, single-handedly turning an emotional dull throbbing into an acute hammering.  I had always thought of my mood swings as biochemical, uncontrollable things that were just part of the landscape of being female.  Until I read Chödrön, it hadn't occurred to me that a large part of my bad moods was caused by habitual response, and was therefore changeable.

Interestingly, none of what Chödrön was saying was particularly new to me.  I consider myself to be open-minded and fairly self-aware.  I have done my time thinking deeply about what my core issues are and why I do the things I do.  I make a regular effort to take stock of my behavior and to change what isn't working.  But occasionally, something that's been said before manages to reach in and grab hold in a different way, and rather than just passing through my brain for a short visit, it sticks.  This was one of those times for me.

It occurred to me that if my moody days are mostly habitual, then what I need to do is remember this when those days come and adjust my perspective about my crappy mood by accepting that it's just where I am instead of struggling against it.  And though it will probably feel about as uncomfortable as rolling around in a fluffy pile of fiberglass insulation, I need to muscle through and force myself to do the things that I know will make me feel better in those moments.  And honestly, it was liberating to think that I didn't need to do a lot of navel-gazing to divine the deeper "why" behind my bad habits, I just needed to change my actions.

Having absolved myself of worrying about the "why", I was all set to work on the "how".  But as so often happens, a few days later all sorts of relevant information about the "why" showed up in the form of a New York Times article.  Entitled "Brain is a co-conspirator in a vicious stress loop", it offered up scientific research results that explained to a degree the "why" behind bad habits that get established during tough times.  Basically, scientists studying rats have discovered that prolonged stress creates changes in brain physiology that reinforce a tendency to make choices that in no way help those rats get out of the stressful situation in which they find themselves.  This was oddly comforting, so I ran with it and took the liberty of applying this to myself.   (a) I have created bad habits in my life, and (b) it's possible that my brain rewires during stressful times so that I am most comfortable continuing to make choices that are unlikely to help me get out of the bad place. 

That was a rather amazing revelation to me.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for holding myself accountable, but sometimes it just feels like I'm flogging myself because I can't seem to manage to "do better" even though I have every intention of pulling myself out of the mire.  To know that my brain may in fact be working against my better efforts is helpful, and I'm pretty sure that knowing this will allow me to be a little gentler with myself.  The silver lining here is that the research also showed that, just as the brain can wire negatively during prolonged periods of stress, it can essentially be rebooted to default neural settings that help us make better choices as soon as we start to take care of ourselves again (e.g. eating well, getting adequate sleep, exercising).

So here's what I know:  I've got some bad habits.  I'm going to have to work with some uncontrollable things (hormones), some potentially tough but malleable things (stress-induced changes to brain physiology), and fortunately, some things well within my control but which will require extra diligence (my behavior patterns) in order to change my bad habits.  Should be a piece of cake! 

Was It "Good" For You?

Have you ever had something happen in your life that you thought you REALLY wanted only to discover later that it led you face-to-face with something you would rather have plucked out every last hair on your body one-by-one with a set of tweezers than face?  Ever been dealt a horrible card that justified viewing the world from behind a high wall of righteous anger until, further down the road, it dawned on you that without that card and the path it put you on, you never would have reached the much better place you eventually found yourself?  Ah yes, nothing quite like being shoved kicking and screaming out of the comfort zone and just plain having to deal with it!  How do we know whether the thousand little things that happen in our lives every day can be classified as "good" or "bad"?  It's such a temptation to judge something definitively when it's happening, especially if it fits into our "bad" category, rather than to try and talk ourselves off the ledge and slow down our hyperventilating long enough to see what will come next.

In terms of how people size up a situation, I think there are "black and white" people in the world and there are "shades of gray" people.  I definitely fall into the latter camp (probably why I almost went to law school), though I'm still working on learning to talk myself down from that ledge quicker these days than in the past.  Thank goodness for time and the clarity that comes with hindsight.  I believe the ability to see both the good and the bad of a situation or a person is what allows us to live civilly and to maintain some level of compassion and humility in a situation that we don't otherwise truly understand.

A while back I was listening to one of the podcasts that I follow, NPR's Planet Money.  Between February and July, Planet Money did several episodes that followed a Haitian businesswoman named Yvrose Jean Baptiste.  Her story is, I think, a tidy example of why it's tricky to conclude that something is "good" or "bad" in the moment.  (For the record, I am summarizing the excellent reporting done by Adam Davidson, Chana Joffe-Walt, and Caitlin Kenney.)  It goes like this:  Yvrose, a married mother with four children, was introduced to podcast listeners in a Haitian marketplace.  She was carrying a big tub of chicken necks on her head and selling them for pennies in the local marketplace shortly after the earthquake.  Before the earthquake, she'd had a stable business as a small level wholesaler, which depended on her obtaining regular microloans at a certain rate, purchasing inventory (food items), and extending credit to small retailers under terms that racked up a modest profit for her as she fronted them items to sell at the retail level, and then collected her money a couple of weeks later.  This was certainly a sound business model.  It's what US bankers do every day, with the difference being that Yvrose operated with such a thin margin of error, that it was essential that everything go right, always.  And for a time in her life, it did.  She was able to help purchase a home for her family and send her children to school - rather serious success for a women with only a fifth grade education.  And then the earthquake hit.

Not only did Yvrose's house collapse, but all of the homes of her 10 small retailers were destroyed (a few died in the quake), along with every last bit of the $500 U. S. dollars worth of goods she had distributed to them on the day before the earthquake.  But the bank survived, and as she still owed approximately $100 U. S. dollars, payment was expected.  So in an act of what I imagine must have been desperate optimism, Yvrose borrowed from a loan shark at a much higher interest rate to buy the chicken necks to sell in hopes of making enough money over time to pay back the microloan, and stay ahead of the loan shark. 

The podcast aired and some listeners wanted to help her.  An account was set up in her name through a microlending institute in Haiti, and $3,860.00 was donated to her.  In March, she withdrew it all (several years' worth of wages), more money than she had ever seen or held in her hands.  She immediately paid off her debt, put some in the bank, refused to buy anything she considered non-essential, and paid for her four children to go live in the countryside with relatives and attend school.  The rest of the money she invested in her business. 

As a result, Yvrose now has a tin-roofed, semi-permanent stand in a local marketplace where she maintains a broad selection of items.  She currently makes $20 to $30 per day, which is life changing money for her and her children.  If affords her the ability to access medical care when necessary.  Her goal is to get her children through high school, and she no longer has to interrupt their education because she can't pay the school fees.  Her cash flow has stabilized and debt no longer hangs over her head.  

It sounds like everything had turned around for Yvrose, and that life was on a good course, except for one dark spot in her story. Shortly after receiving the money and paying off her debts and re-establishing her business, Yvrose's husband left her. Turns out that the power shift in their household was too much for him to take. Now she worries that she has no man in her tent (she still lives in temporary shelter) to protect her from potential thugs who might want to steal from her, or worse. Despite this, she said that she is generally optimistic about her future for the first time in her life, and who knows, even her husband leaving may prove to be a good thing eventually.

I think the twists and turns of this story are a prime example of why it is a seductive misstep to conclude that something is "good" or "bad" in the moment.  Every situation contains what appears to be "good" and "bad" in varying measures, but even those we judge one way or the other, when viewed from some distance may end up looking like the exact opposite of what we initially thought them to be.