The Game is only half over

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On New Year’s Day, 1929, a University of California football player named Roy Riegels made Rose Bowl history. He was playing defense when an opposing Georgia Tech player dropped eh ball. Roy grabbed the fumble and took off on a gallop for the end zone. The wrong end zone. For a moment, all the other players froze. Then, one of Roy’s own teammates, Benny Lom, took off in pursuit. After a spectacular fumble return of 65 yards, Lom caught and downed the confused Riegels just before he scored for his opponents. Cal took over the ball with their backs to their own goal line. Tech’s defense refused to give and California had to punt. But Georgia Tech blocked the kick in the end zone and scored a two-point safety (which was the ultimate margin of victory). That wrong-way run came shortly before the end of the second quarter. And as the teams left the field at halftime, everyone watching the Rose Bowl that day was wondering the same thing: “What will California Coach, Nibbs Price, do with Roy Riegels in the second half?”

The California players silently filed into the dressing room and found places to sit, on benches and floors. All of them except Riegels. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, sagged to the floor in the corner, put his face in his hands and cried like a baby. Football coaches usually have a great deal to say to their teams during halftime. But that day Coach Price was quiet. No doubt he was trying to decide what to do with Riegels. Finally, the timekeeper stuck his head in the dressing room and announced: “Three minutes till playing time.” Coach Price looked at his team, glanced over at Riegels and said simply, “Men, the same team that played the first half will start the second.”

The players stood and moved quickly for the door. All but Riegels. He didn’t budge. The coach looked back and called to him again: “Riegels.” Still he didn’t move. Coach Price walked slowly over to the corner, looked down and asked softly, “Roy, didn’t you hear me? I said, ‘The same team that played the first half will start the second.” Roy Riegels lifted his head. His eyes were red, his cheeks wet. “Coach,” he said, “I can’t do it. I’ve ruined you. I’ve ruined the University of California. I’ve ruined myself. I couldn’t face that crowd in the stadium to save my life.” Coach Price reached out, put his hand on the player’s shoulder and said to him, “Roy, get up and go on back; the game is only half over.” Roy Riegels went back out on that field. And the Georgia Tech players said afterward that they’d never seen anyone play as hard as Roy Riegels played that second half.

When I think of this story, I think “What a coach!” And then I think about all the big mistakes I’ve made in my life and how God is willing to forgive me and let me try again. I take the ball and run the wrong direction. I stumble and fall and am so ashamed of myself that I never want to show my face again. But God comes to me and bends over me in the person of his son Jesus Christ, and he says, “Get up and go back; the game is only half over.” This is the gospel of the second chance. Of the third chance. Of the hundredth chance. And when I think of that, I have to say, “What a God!”

author unknown

Reasonable Evil

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A couple of old-time Baptist deacons approached me after seeing a performance of an Easter drama that I had written about Judas Iscariot. I expected complaints. The focus was on what might have caused the disciple to turn against Jesus. One of them said, "What Judas did really made sense. It was the reasonable thing to do."

They got it. The bad guy doesn't always wear a black hat, yell at old ladies, or steal treats from little children. Judas might have done what seemed reasonable to him. Perhaps he thought giving Jesus a little shove would force the reluctant king into taking his rightful place. What seemed like the right thing to do could have been completely wrong.

Evil doesn’t always show up in outrageous clothing. An obvious temptation is not nearly as difficult to brush aside as an evil that approaches us clothed in common sense.

Stephen Goforth

The Benefits of letting your mind wander

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Allowing our minds to wander can also give us opportunities to process emotions, Elisabeth Netherton, a psychiatrist and regional medical director with Houston-based Mindpath Health, said. Some of her patients keep their brains busy to avoid certain feelings, which then come flooding out when their minds slow down. Providing some time for introspection during the day can help manage those emotions and reduce anxiety. Although mind-wandering has been linked to increased anxiety and depression, the results of a 2019 study suggest that intentional mind-wandering can mitigate anxiety, depression and stress.

Counterintuitively, mind-wandering may also help us get more done. Although we’d never expect our bodies to run all day long, Olga Mecking, author of “Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing,” said, “we somehow expect our brains to be on 24/7.”  The high value society places on productivity means we often keep working, even when we notice ourselves slowing down or making mistakes. But by preventing such issues, taking breaks might make us more productive. Meanwhile, Dane points out that, if our minds never strayed from the current task, we wouldn’t remember the other tasks we need to complete. Research shows a link between mind-wandering and the fulfillment of goals.

Pam Moore writing in the Washington Post

It’s not time management, it’s attention management

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In his book “When,” Dan Pink writes about evidence that your circadian rhythm can help you figure out the right time to do your productive and creative work. If you’re a morning person, you should do your analytical work early when you’re at peak alertness; your routine tasks around lunchtime in your trough; and your creative work in the late afternoon or evening when you’re more likely to do nonlinear thinking. If you’re more of a night owl, you might be better off flipping creative projects to your fuzzy mornings and analytical tasks to your clearest-eyed late afternoon and evening moments. It’s not time management, because you might spend the same amount of time on the tasks even after you rearrange your schedule. It’s attention management: You’re noticing the order of tasks that works for you and adjusting accordingly.

Adam Grant, writing in the New York Times

A Common Prediction Mistake

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Suppose you’re told that a man named John is extremely well-educated, smokes a pipe, and wears tweed jackets with patches on the sleeve—is he more likely to be a particle physicist or a janitor? A physicist, you immediately think. But you’d likely be wrong, because janitors are common and particle physicists rare. The chances that you’d happen upon a very well-educated, tweed wearing, pipe-smoking janitor are higher than those that you’d meet a physicist who meets the same profile.

Laurie Abraham writing in Slate

Watch a Flower

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Some years ago, a few close friends were (at the home of a friend who had survived cancer that should have killed him decades ago), eating and drinking out in his garden. It was dusk, and he asked us to gather around a plant with small, closed flowers. “Watch a flower,” he instructed. We did so, for about 10 minutes, in silence. All at once, the flowers popped open, which we learned that they did every evening. We gasped in amazement. It was a moment of intense satisfaction.

But here’s the thing I still can’t get over: Unlike most of the junk on my old bucket list, that satisfaction endured. That memory still brings me joy—more so than many of my life’s earthly “accomplishments”—not because it was the culmination of a large goal, but because it was an unexpected gift, a tiny miracle.

Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

Puzzles and Positive Moods

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Puzzle-solving is such an ancient, universal practice, scholars say, precisely because it depends on creative insight, on the primitive spark that ignited the first campfires.

And now, modern neuroscientists are beginning to tap its source. 

Researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine. 

“What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles. 

Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto (says) “It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos. And once you have, you can sit back and say, ‘Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.’ ” 

Researchers at the University of Toronto found that the visual areas in people in positive moods picked up more background detail, even when they were instructed to block out distracting information during a computer task.

The findings fit with dozens of experiments linking positive moods to better creative problem-solving. “The implication is that positive mood engages this broad, diffuse attentional state that is both perceptual and visual,” said Dr. Anderson. “You’re not only thinking more broadly, you’re literally seeing more. The two systems are working in parallel.”

Benedict Carey writing in the New York Times

4 Ways to tell if your Relationship will Survive

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John Gottman runs Seattle’s Love Lab. He believes he can accurately predict which couples stay together based on his lab studies, and his guesses largely revolves around supportive/destructive comments.  So destructive is the effect of certain behaviors on marital happiness, in fact, that he calls these behaviors The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  The first horseman is criticism: "attacking someone's personality or character" rather than making some specific complaint about his or her behavior. The difference between saying, say, "I wish you had taken care of that bill" (a healthy and specific complaint) and "You never get the bills paid on time!" (a generalizing and blaming attack) is very significant to the listener. Criticism often engenders criticism in return and sets the stage for the second horseman: contempt. 

"What separates contempt from criticism," explains Gottman, "is the intention to insult and psychologically abuse your partner." Negative thoughts about the other come out in subtle put-downs, hostile jokes, mocking facial expressions, and name-calling ("You are such an idiot around money"). By now the positive qualities that attracted you to this person seem long ago and far away, and instead of trying to build intimacy, you're ushering in the third horseman. 

Defensiveness comes on the heels of contempt as a seemingly reasonable response to attack -- but it only makes things worse. By denying responsibility, making excuses, whining, tossing back counter-attacks, and other strategies ("How come I'm the one who always pays the bills?!"), you just accelerate your speed down river. 

Once stonewalling (the fourth horseman) shows up, things are looking bleak. Stonewallers simply stop communicating, refusing to respond even in self-defense. Of course, all these "horsemen" drop in on couples once in a while. But when a partner habitually shuts down and withdraws, the final rapids of negativity can quickly propel the marriage through whirlpools of hopelessness, isolation, and loneliness.

The bottom line is that flooding is physically uncomfortable, and stonewalling becomes an attempt to escape that discomfort. When flooding becomes chronic, stonewalling can become chronic, too. Eighty-five percent of the time the stonewaller (among heterosexual couples) is the man.  Though flooding happens to both men and women, it affects men more quickly, more intensely, and for a longer period of time.

Repair attempts are a way of talking about how you're communicating with each other. "Can we please stay on the subject?" "That was a rude thing to say." "We're not talking about your father!" "I don't think you're listening to me." Such statements, even when delivered in a grouchy or complaining tone, are efforts to interrupt the cycle of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling and to bring the conversation back on track. 

"In stable relationships," explains Gottman, "the other person will respond favorably: 'Alright, alright. Finish.' The agreement isn't made very nicely. But it does stop the person. They listen, they accept the repair attempt, and they actually change" the way they're relating. Repair attempts are "really critical," says Gottman, because "everybody screws up. Everybody gets irritated, defensive, contemptuous. People insult one another," especially their spouses. Repair attempts are a way of saying "we've got to fix this before it slides any deeper into the morass." Even people in bad marriages make repair attempts; the problem is, they get ignored. 

Training people to receive repair attempts favorably -- even in the middle of a heated argument -- is one of the new frontiers in relationship therapy. According to Gottman, "Even when things are going badly, you've got to focus not on the negativity but on the repair attempt. That's what couples do in happy marriages."  

Alan Atkisson writing in the New Age Journal (Sept/Oct 1994 issue)

Love is judicious

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Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. The word “judicious” means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision-making.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The last of the human freedoms

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We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. –Viktor Frankl (born March 26, 1905)

It was so much fun!

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When Albert A. Michelson, the first person in the United States to win a Nobel prize in science, was asked at the end of his life why he had devoted so much of his time to measuring the velocity of light, he is said to have replied, “It was so much fun.’ And lest we forget, Einstein wrote his most influential papers while working as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. These and the many other great scientists one could easily mention were not handicapped in their thinking because they were not “professionals” in their field, recognized figures with sources of legitimate support. They simply did what they enjoyed doing.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow