The Vulnerability Myth

The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous. When we spend our lives pushing away and protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable or from being perceived as too emotional, we feel contempt when others are less capable or willing to mask feelings, suck it up, and soldier on. We’ve come to the point where, rather than respecting appreciating the courage and daring behind vulnerability, we let our fear and discomfort become judgment and criticism. 

Our rejections of vulnerability often stems from associating it with dark emotions like fear, shame, grief, sadness, and disappointment—emotions that we don't want to discuss, even when they profoundly affect the way we live, love, work, and even lead. What most of us fail to understand and what took me a decade of research to learn is the vulnerability is also the cradle of the emotions experiences that we crave. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual eyes, vulnerability is the path.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Our Difficult Side

Knowledge of our own neuroses is not at all easy to come by. It can take years and situations we have had no experience of.  Prior to marriage, we’re rarely involved in dynamics that properly hold up a mirror to our disturbances. Whenever more casual relationships threaten to reveal the ‘difficult’ side of our natures, we tend to blame the partner – and call it a day. As for our friends, they predictably don’t care enough about us to have any motive to probe our real selves. They only want a nice evening out. Therefore, we end up blind to the awkward sides of our natures. On our own, when we’re furious, we don’t shout, as there’s no one there to listen – and therefore we overlook the true, worrying strength of our capacity for fury. Or we work all the time without grasping, because there’s no one calling us to come for dinner, how we manically use work to gain a sense of control over life – and how we might cause hell if anyone tried to stop us. At night, all we’re aware of is how sweet it would be to cuddle with someone, but we have no opportunity to face up to the intimacy-avoiding side of us that would start to make us cold and strange if ever it felt we were too deeply committed to someone. One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with.

The Philosophers’ Mail

pursue meaning

People pursue happiness, but it’s always temporary. Pursue meaning instead.  -Emily Esfahani Smith  

Three Goals for 2018

“Kierkegaard cries out for us to live passionately, and worry more about the problem of living life than trying to fit the social order. His philosophy is all about living this way, even to the point where an outside viewer will be unable to understand your motivation,” writes Scotty Hendricks at BigThink.

1. Be passionate,

2. Focus on living not fitting into some predetermined social role,

3. You will know you are on the right track when people have trouble grasping what motivates you.

Three worthy goals for 2018.

Stephen Goforth

one's labors

One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.

Erich Fromm

Glory in the Flower

That though the radiance which was once so bright

be now forever taken from my sight.

Though nothing can bring back

the hour of splendor in the grass,

glory in the flower.

We will grieve not,

rather find strength in what remains behind.

William Wordsworth

Figuring out What’s Wrong with our Prospective Mate

Other people are stuck at the same low level of self-knowledge as we are. However well-meaning they might be, they too are in no position to grasp, let alone inform us, of what is wrong with them.

Naturally, we make a stab at trying to know them. We go and visit their families, perhaps the place they first went to school. We look at photos, we meet their friends. All this contributes to a sense we’ve done our homework. But it’s like a novice pilot assuming they can fly after sending a paper plane successfully around the room.

We need to know the intimate functioning of the psyche of the person we’re planning to marry. We need to know their attitudes to, or stance on, authority, humiliation, introspection, sexual intimacy, projection, money, children, aging, fidelity and a hundred things besides. This knowledge won’t be available via a standard chat.

In the absence of all this, we are led – in large part – by what they look like. There seems to be so much information to be gleaned from their eyes, nose, shape of forehead, distribution of freckles, smiles… But this is about as wise as thinking that a photograph of the outside of a power station can tell us everything we need to know about nuclear fission.

The Philosophers’ Mail

after a lapse of time

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. -George Elliot

Answers to Christmas Quiz

1. What did the angels sing to the shepherds?

Nothing. Luke 2:13,14 tells us, "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and SAYING, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests." No where in the Bible does it say that angels sing. Of course, Scripture never says they don't either.

2. In what direction did the Wise Men look to see the star in the sky?

The West. Matthew 2:1,2 reads, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." The Wise Men were in the East and they saw the star in the Western sky. Had they been traveling toward a star in the East, they would have started from somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea.

3. Where did the wise men go to see the baby?

The house--not the stable. Matthew 2:9-11 says, "After (the Wise Men) had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the HOUSE, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him…" By the time the Wise Men would have arrived, Mary and Joseph would have left the stable. It would have taken a while for the Wise Men to arrive. Perhaps a couple of years, since Herod killed children in Bethlehem under the age of two.

4. How many wise men were there?

We don't know. Three is the traditional number, but Scripture only tells us of three gifts.

5. In which season of the year was Jesus born?

Probably Spring. Luke 2:8 tells us, "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night." It is unlikely they would have been living in the fields during Winter. Spring is the most likely time.

6. What did Mary ride on to Bethlehem?

We don't know. Christmas cards may favor a donkey, but Scripture doesn't tell us.

7. What did the wise men ride on?

We don't know. Christmas cards may favor a camels, but Scripture doesn't tell us.

8. In what country did the Christmas tree originate?

Germany

9. In what century did Christmas celebrations begin?

The 4th century. Christmas carols began in the 14th and 15th centuries. Christmas cards were first sent in the early 19th century.

10. Was there ever an original, real Santa Claus?

Yes. In the 4th Century AD, Nicholas showed acts of kindness and charity early in his life. He served as bishop of Myra (now in Turkey) and was considered a saint since the 6th century.

11. What Christmas tradition commemorating the birth of Jesus did St. Francis of Assisi begin?

The nativity scene.

12. What is frankincense?

    a. a precious metal

    b. a precious fabric

    c. a precious perfume

    d. an Eastern monster story

Answer:  c. a precious perfume

 13. What is Myrrh?

    a. an easily shaped metal

    b. a spice used for burying people

    c. a drink

    d. aftershave lotion

Answer:  b. a spice used for burying people

14. Did Jesus tell us to remember his birth?

 No.

15. What did Jesus tell us to remember?

He told us to remember his death.  "…Do this in remembrance of me" Luke 22:19.

Note: All verses from the New International Version

The Digital Deluge

Distractions clearly affect performance on the job. In a recent essay, Dan Nixon of the Bank of England pointed to a mass of compelling evidence that they could also be eating into productivity growth. Depending on the study you pick, smartphone-users touch their device somewhere between twice a minute to once every seven minutes. Conducting tasks while receiving e-mails and phone calls reduces a worker’s IQ by about ten points relative to working in uninterrupted quiet. That is equivalent to losing a night’s sleep, and twice as debilitating as using marijuana. By one estimate, it takes nearly half an hour to recover focus fully for the task at hand after an interruption. What’s more, Mr Nixon notes, constant interruptions accustom workers to distraction, teaching them, in effect, to lose focus and seek diversions.

The Economist

doing evil

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Blaise Pascal

We prefer the Apps

The family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together. They are, in writer Sherry Turkle’s formulation, “alone together.” You are where your attention is. If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.

No wonder we prefer the apps. An entire universe of intimate responses is flattened to a single, distant swipe. We hide our vulnerabilities, airbrushing our flaws and quirks; we project our fantasies onto the images before us. Rejection still stings — but less when a new virtual match beckons on the horizon.

Andrew Sullivan writing in New York Magazine

Feeling Like Getting Married

Part of the reason we feel like getting married is to interrupt the all-consuming grip that love has over our psyches. We are exhausted by the melodramas and thrills that go nowhere. We are restless for other challenges. We hope that marriage can conclusively end love’s painful rule over our lives.

It can’t and won’t: there is as much doubt, hope, fear, rejection and betrayal in a marriage as there is in single life. It’s only from the outside that a marriage looks peaceful, uneventful and nicely boring.

The Philosophers’ Mail

living in opposition

Living purely in opposition to something, rather than for something, hollows you out inside. To be a whole human being, you have to spend your life building something good.  -David Wong

being good

I'm pretty sure that most of what we consider being good in this culture is just having disdain for the right things. David Wong

I Used to Be a Human Being

In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out. Four bronchial infections in 12 months had become progressively harder to kick. Vacations, such as they were, had become mere opportunities for sleep. My dreams were filled with the snippets of code I used each day to update the site. My friendships had atrophied as my time away from the web dwindled. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?”

But the rewards were many: an audience of up to 100,000 people a day; a new-media business that was actually profitable; a constant stream of things to annoy, enlighten, or infuriate me; a niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation; and a way to measure success — in big and beautiful data — that was a constant dopamine bath for the writerly ego. If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.

Andrew Sullivan writing in New York Magazine

happiness depends

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.  –Leo Tolstoy

Desensitized to Lying

When you’re exposed to a strong smell, at first the smell is extremely noticeable, but eventually you stop noticing it as much. With time, any stimulus — a loud noise, a strong perfume, etc. — is likely to provoke a smaller response. The same goes with lying.

We get desensitized to our own lying as the areas of our brain that correlate with negativity become less active. This makes it easier for us to lie in the future.

“The first time you cheat — let’s say you’re cheating on your taxes — you feel quite bad about it,” Tali Sharot, a University College London neuroscientist. But then the next time you cheat, you’re less likely to get that negative feeling. That makes it easier to lie again. And the cycle escalates from there.

Brian Resnick writing in Vox

Matching your tasks to your Energy

When considering how to best match your tasks to your energy it’s helpful to consider all the different kinds of work you do, and when would be the best time to do them. Even if you know that you’re naturally a morning person, for example, that alone may not help you best arrange all of your activities, since you can’t do everything first thing. Are you writing? editing? coding data? researching citations for a literature review? creating slides? preparing lecture notes for class? For each activity, consider when you would be best able to do that work well.

You might not know the answers to all those questions yet — so simply observing when you are intuitively drawn to do certain kinds of work, and how difficult or easy it is to complete the task at different times of day, can help you design your schedule to better match your tasks to your energy.

Natalie Houston writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

Play and creativity

Play has a positive impact on creativity because— in addition to helping us both mind-wander and diversify— it stimulates positive emotion, which research shows leads to greater insight and better problem solving. Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that positive emotions increase our cognitive resources by expanding our visual attention. When we feel good, we gain the ability to pay attention to a wider range of experiences. We see the big picture rather than getting bogged down in the details. In other words, if you feel stuck in a rut or you can’t think yourself out of a problem or don’t see a way out of a situation, play may be a way of getting “unstuck” and coming up with innovative ideas.

Just as joy and fun can make you more creative, creativity in turn enhances your well- being. The more creative you become, the more joy you invite into your life. Nikola Tesla wrote, “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. . . . Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”

By naturally tapping into your inner creativity, you reconnect with the joy you had as a child playing. You engage in a positive feedback loop that continues to replenish you with joy and creativity. It makes for an adult life rich with delight and inventiveness.

Stanford psychologist Emma Seppälä writing in the Washington Post