Reflections on workism

I learned a new word from an article I read yesterday in The New York Times. I'll get to the article in a moment. The new word is 'workism'; it is defined as follows: 

What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work........(https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/)

The article itself was the transcript of an interview between Rogé Karma, the staff editor for The Ezra Klein Show, and Sarah Jaffe, an author who has written a book called Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Transcript: Rogé Karma Interviews Sarah Jaffe for ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com). I sent the link to a few of my friends whom I know will enjoy reading it, because we have discussed several aspects of this topic earlier. The interview provides food for thought and discussion but not concrete solutions for how to deal with the problem, and it clearly is a problem (Workism Is Making Americans Miserable - Marcellus). There are a lot of research studies being conducted about the effects of workism on the lives of Americans. 

Americans have been overworking for years and the word workaholism was often used to describe the almost addictive behavior that many workers exhibited. They had to be at the office no matter what, and it was not uncommon for them to announce that whenever you ran into some of them. They wore their workaholism like a badge of honor, even though it affected their physical and mental health. They worked overtime, on weekends, during their free time. They lived, breathed and ate work at the expense of their family and social lives. I personally know a woman (in New York) who had a high-powered job for which she sacrificed her social life. That meant rarely getting together with good friends; her husband worked at an equally high-powered job so apart from their jobs and raising two children with the help of a live-in nanny, their lives were quite socially isolated. I'm not sure how she feels about her choices today as a sixty-five year old woman, but back in the 1980s 'marrying your job' was almost encouraged for women. Women had to get ahead, make inroads, compete with and in the same way as men. Women's magazines (e.g. Ms. magazine) encouraged this way of thinking. It was hard not to be affected by it all, because the allure of work was already strong without the hype surrounding it. Remember, we grew up in an America where the work ethic was alpha and omega. It was drummed into us that having a strong work ethic was important, that getting a good job (well-paying) was important. A college education would make the latter possible. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Nose to the grindstone, whether it meant studying hard or working hard or both. I remember it well. I started working part-time jobs when I was fourteen, and each summer I got agitated if I couldn't find a summer job. In my twenties, I worked at my first lab job and finished my biology master's degree at night. I switched jobs (another lab job) and began an MBA program after work. When my father died I realized that I couldn't do it all and quit the MBA program in order to focus on my work and on having free time to be together with friends (not always easy when your commute to and from Manhattan was about two hours long). When I moved abroad I worked sixty-hour weeks, as did my husband. We were scientists working in the lab and we loved what we did. I spent six years doing my PhD alongside my job. I don't think we worried about whether our jobs loved us back. But a certain amount of our identity came from our work. We were concerned with doing good research and publishing the results of that work, and we did that well until the way of doing research changed drastically around 2005. I'll come back to that. But suffice it to say that we overworked ourselves for many years. Do I regret it? No, I don't. We were not real workaholics because we did not sacrifice our personal lives for our work. We got together often with friends and family, raised a child, pursued our hobbies, took vacations, and did all those things that make for a good life outside of work. Now that I'm retired, I do wonder if one of the reasons I retired early is because I literally ran out of steam, physically. I was tired. Perhaps no wonder. Having retired, I don't miss work nor do I miss the workplace atmosphere of competition and politics. 

When I moved to Norway in my thirties, it took me quite a while to get used to having four weeks of summer vacation. In the States, I hardly used my summer vacation so that it accumulated and my workplace had to remind me to take my two weeks each year. I remember sitting by the pool at the apartment complex where I lived on a few of those vacation days during the hot New Jersey summers, wondering what I was going to do and how I would use the time. I spent one vacation visiting a friend in Kentucky; another time I visited another friend who had moved to Michigan. But by and large I really didn't know what to do with 'all that free time'. The same was true for several years after I moved to Norway. And then it changed. Slowly I began to look forward to summer vacations. My husband and I traveled around Europe. I traveled back to New York for a week or two at a time to visit family and friends, and still do that each summer. I began to relish having free time. The only time I had ever had so much time off (four weeks) was when I was still working in Manhattan and had a major operation that forced me to recover at home for six to eight weeks. I couldn't do much physically so I had to learn to lie on the sofa and take it easy, read, listen to music, write, do photography, and play with my cats. I wasn't married then so I spent that time by myself. It was an eye-opener and quite valuable, as the forced time off showed me that I had an identity apart from 'employee'. 

'Workism' has apparently taken over American work life. Work has become an all-consuming activity and the sole source of a person's identity according to the articles I've been reading. Companies want more and more from their employees without paying them more. At the same time they want them to be motivated and happy workers. Companies are interested in efficiency and production and have developed all sorts of novel ways to measure both. Control of employees is paramount. Smart phones have made it possible for work to invade all aspects of life at all times of the day. Employees feel obligated to answer emails at all hours of the day. Leadership courses promote the idea of motivation as being paramount for a good workplace environment; the idea of transactional work, going to work to get a paycheck and doing just what you need in order to get that paycheck, is discouraged. Nowadays you go to work to get motivated, to enhance your life and your identity. Work provides your identity and the main purpose of your life. Nowadays your work should feed your soul, heart, body and mind. But what if work doesn't do that? The majority of employees don't experience work in this way, yet they are told the opposite. It is a recipe for misery, yes. 

Has workism taken hold in Norway? Yes, it has to a large degree. I can only speak for the scientific community, but my impression is that many scientists derive their identity and life's purpose from their work and that they have bought into the workism hype. The workism hype includes all the tricks that workplaces (university hospitals and universities) use to maintain control over their employees, to keep them efficient and productive. Around 2005, the way of doing science in Norway changed. Policies surrounding the way that science was organized and conducted changed, determined by the government. First came the large centers of excellence (idea adapted from the USA and England), where one or two group leaders received huge amounts of funding to organize research centers devoted to one specific field of research, e.g. molecular cancer or personalized medicine. These centers created extensive networks with other centers, nationally and internationally. The emphasis was on creating large research groups at the expense of small ones; the latter were left to their own devices, most of them without further funding, so many of them ceased to exist after a time. Those who carried on did so knowing they would not get funding and knowing too that they would be harassed, mocked or ignored. At the same time, researchers were told that their output was to be controlled and measured continually via progress reports, internal reports, impact factors and H-indices. All of these determined your worth and identity as a scientist. The greater the output (publications in high-impact factor journals, PhD students, book chapters, courses, etc.) and the higher your H-index, the greater your chances of getting funding and the better you were as a scientist. I've written about this many times before. Scientists with funding in Norway are considered to be 'good' scientists; those without are considered to be 'bad' ones. Black and white, no in-between. Think big and dream big (and throw in the buzzword innovation) and you're a 'good' scientist, think small and you're not. Scientists without funding don't 'work hard enough' in the view of the 'good' scientists. The 'good' scientists are those who find a way to constantly remind others (the bad scientists) that they're the best--they work the hardest, they're at work all the time, they get the most funding, they live/breathe/sleep science, and they have the most students (translated, they're popular). Their identity is totally wrapped up in their work. They have no insight into themselves or others and possess little empathy for others. They complain a lot. They complain that they work too hard but they wear their overwork like a badge of honor. They complain that they have hundreds of emails to answer, too many meetings to attend, but they would never trade away the irritations for the 'boring' lives of the scientists they label as 'bad'. They like to complain because that's part of their identity. They have little else in their lives that motivates or drives them, and in some cases they resort to borderline ethical behavior in order to keep what money they've gotten, e.g. trying to intimidate granting agencies into giving them money they mean is rightfully due them as the great scientists they are. They can't wait for the 'bad' scientists to quit or retire, because that frees up more money for them or their cronies. The hype surrounding them is that they are important; the reality is something else again. The undercurrent in Norway at present is that you should be working, always, and that extends even to retirees. Whenever I bring up volunteer work as a possible activity for retirees, people get quiet. They don't know what to say. You should be working and getting paid for it. After all, we're talking identity, we're talking prestige, status, importance. Retirement is not looked upon favorably here as it is in America. It rankles several people in their seventies whom I know here that they 'had to retire' because they had reached retirement age. They resent being made to feel old; the truth is that they derive their identities from their jobs. They resent the loss of their identities. That does not describe me. 

Social interactions, faith/religion, and extracurricular activities outside of work used to contribute to a healthy self-image and identity. The idea that work will be the sole contributor to creating our identities is a very misguided one. When things are going well at work, we don't think about our vulnerability in the workplace. It is not until we are threatened with the loss of our jobs that we 'wake up' and realize that we may be spending too much time at the office and that the rest of our lives deserve as much if not more attention and focus. It is not until we burn out or hit the wall that we realize that we can actually lose our motivation for a job and that sometimes it is nearly impossible to get it back. That forces us to rethink things. I think it's healthy to hit the wall, even though it's painful and uncomfortable. It's our minds and bodies telling us that they have had enough, that they cannot continue doing what they've been doing anymore. 

I am flying in the face of every leadership and motivational course I have attended during the past ten years when I say that we should return to or adopt a transactional approach to work, as in, I the worker will do the work stipulated in the contract I sign with my workplace for a set salary. If I do more work than stipulated then I will receive overtime for it. If the workplace wants me to be available after hours and on weekends, then they must pay for that. White collar workers, e.g., academic research scientists, typically are not unionized (in Norway they are) and the idea of transactional work would not appeal to most of them. They are used to giving their all and working long hours to make it in order to obtain permanent jobs and tenure. Most don't obtain these things; the hype in Norway is that you will after four years in one position and it's one big lie. Scientific academia is an elite profession populated by elitists who have no interest in opening up the field to all. It is not a profession populated by truly great visionary scientists, teachers and writers, although you do find them. So therefore I think that a transactional approach to the profession is warranted. Some of the younger scientists here are starting to think in that way; science is a job, like any other. They want a 9 to 5 life with weekends and evenings free and time for family and friends. Why shouldn't they have that? Just because the reigning powers that be say otherwise?

You find out how much you are worth to your workplace when you are sick, need time off for personal issues, or when management has to get rid of a certain percentage of its workforce. If the company needs to fire you, they will, no questions asked, no mercy. Firing is transactional; there is nothing motivational about it, as in, we need to fire you, you need to leave, you will get unemployment etc. until you get a new job. No emotions involved, just pure efficiency. That's how it should be when an employee decides to quit his or her job. No emotions, just do it. The reality is something else again because workers grow attached to their co-workers. But if we had a less work-centered approach to life, we could leave workplaces behind much easier, and that would contribute to changing how workplaces deal with employees. My recent reading has indicated that up to the pandemic year, most power was centered in workplace management. Post-pandemic, much less so. Employees simply don't want to return to 'what was' and many have quit their jobs. The pendulum swung too far in the wrong direction, where employees were little more than pieces on a chessboard, moved around at the whims of their employers. Told to accept any and all changes at a moment's notice (don't be resistant to change--that's anathema to management). Told to be available at all hours in order to increase efficiency and productivity, regardless of what that does to employees' personal lives. Time will tell in terms of what develops, but I hope that younger employees especially retain their newfound power and that necessary changes in policies are made so that Americans (and others) can get their lives back. 

Cultivating gratitude

Cultivating gratitude. How easy is it to do that, to learn to be grateful for what we have? When we're young, we really don't think much about it. When we're older, we do, because we have more time to look back on and reflect on our lives and how we've lived them up to this point. We look around us and see the lives of other people, the struggles and the good times, and we look at our own lives and reflect on the same. I've thought a lot about gratitude during the past decade especially. When life doesn't go the way you thought it would, when disappointments abound (and they will inevitably appear), they push you in the direction of reflection and eventually gratitude or bitterness. The latter is a recipe for doom. If you choose bitterness because your life didn't work out the way you planned, then you essentially tell yourself that the rest of your life is not worth living and exploring. Because here's the kicker--you have no idea how the rest of your life will turn out. If you close yourself off and wallow in bitterness, you will not experience what God wants for your life. If you let your bitterness lead you down the path to self-destruction in the form of different physical addictions, you will not honor the life that God has given you. Nothing is set in stone. Unhappy times can lead to happy ones. Life can change for the better. Life is not static, it is constantly moving, flowing onward, changing. Life is fluid, and thank God for that. 

If you choose gratitude eventually after having gone through hard times and disappointments, you will free yourself. It sounds hard but it is not over time. Gratitude is what develops in our minds and hearts when we are patient with ourselves and others, when we forgive ourselves and others. When we let go of whatever millstones we are dragging around that tell us that we failed because we didn't measure up to this or that level that someone else said we should have reached. Whenever we drag around the 'should-haves' for our lives, we won't be grateful--should have worked more, should have been richer, should have traveled more, and so on. When we let go of the should-haves, we learn to be content with good enough. We are good enough as we are. That doesn't mean that we can't try to be better people each day. It means that we accept ourselves for where we are in this moment, grateful for what we have--families, friends, good health, hobbies, material wealth, a good life. None of these are guaranteed anyone. I have friends who no longer have good health; they mourn that loss but they are not bitter people. They could have been. They are adjusting to their new daily lives patiently, sometimes with irritation or anger, but overall in a spirit of wanting to continue to live life as normally as possible. They have not given up, and they would say they are thankful that they have the material wealth that provides them with the support they need. Not everyone has that. 

I've read many columns in the last few days about gratitude and what it means. Most of them point out that being grateful one day a year, on Thanksgiving Day, is not enough. They're right, it isn't. Cultivating gratitude on a daily basis, that's a worthwhile pursuit. One of the books that has helped me through the years, given to me by a good friend after a particularly sad time in my twenties, is Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women (Hazelden Meditations) by Karen Casey (Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women (Hazelden Meditation Series): Karen Casey: 9780866835015: Amazon.com: Books ). This little green book is worth its weight in gold. I am grateful for the messages it contains but also for the friend who cared enough to give it to me. Whenever I find myself moving toward bitterness, I pick it up and find in it what I need to steer me toward a spirit of gratitude. 

Happy Thanksgiving

We have much to be thankful for, and on this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for who I am and for being able to live freely and responsibly, grateful for all that I have, and most importantly, grateful for all those in my life whom I love. Despite setbacks, disappointments, sadness and loss, life is good. God has been and is good to me. Happy Thanksgiving--enjoy the day and give thanks for all your blessings. 

The 'market value' of men and women

And now we've reached this point, at least in Norway, where journalists, psychologists, tv personalities and celebrities are now discussing the 'market value' of men and women. But not just any men and women; men and women over a certain age. Over the age of 40, when market value apparently decreases drastically, especially for women. In line with my post from the other day, I am now relating what some of these 'experts' have to say on the matter. But mostly I know what I want to say in response to all of it. One major comment--it should come as no surprise to media honchos that many people are cancelling their newspaper and magazine subscriptions. They simply don't want to be bothered with these types of articles and discussions. 

According to the so-called experts (psychologists and journalists), single women over 40 apparently don't want to get together with men in their 50s and 60s because those men are apparently bombastic, archaic, old-fashioned, domineering, and only interested in women under 40. These women want to be together with men in their 30s and 40s because younger men are apparently less bombastic, archaic, etc., but apparently those men are only interested in women under 40 as well. So what's a woman over 40 to do? Some male psychologists step up to the plate to say that women over 40 are perhaps too picky. They don't want older men, who in turn don't want them. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If older single men find out that women their age don't want them, perhaps they will aim for younger women. Or is it the other way around? Women over 40 have experienced rejection after rejection from men their age, so they aim for younger men, who again aim for younger women. This imbalance is not a problem for most younger people; as I wrote the other day, the majority of young men and women find partners their own age. So what is a single woman or man over 40 (over the hill?) to do? I don't have the answer to that question. I tried to offer some solutions in my recent post, among them not defining yourself in terms of how others view you. Your worth as a human being is not dependent upon what others think of you. But perhaps I am just yelling into the wind. 

I think we have a huge problem in society when we reduce men and women to their 'market value'. What are people now, commodities? Products on a store shelf that have an expiration date? Apparently yes. I don't know who first used this term in connection with describing people, but if I met him or her, I'd tell him or her the following: Take a long walk off a short pier. Why do I care, you ask. Read on. 

We've reached the point of saturation with articles written about this nonsense. I'm tired of reading about what experts think, experts who haven't managed to get their own lives in order. Additionally, expertise is relative. You may perhaps have had something worthwhile to say ten years ago, but not now. We should be looking at the market value of some of these 'professions' that dispense out hip wisdom to their readers/patients. My point is that this is an individual's job here on earth--to prevent garbage in. If we take in a lot of garbage, there will be a lot of garbage going out. We will just pass on the garbage spiel to others, ad nauseam. Do we want to do that? No. 

I envision a world where we ordinary people rise above the new-speak, the hype, the garbage, the trendy, the hip, the fake outrage, the woke mentality, the non-woke mentality. I envision a world where individuals take responsibility for their own intellectual and spiritual evolution. It's hard work, yes it is. But God it's worth it. Because once you've risen above the things that want to keep you down in the muck, you will see these 'experts' for what they are--money-hungry grifters and grubbers, bottom feeders, out to make a buck at our expense. You will not buy their books, watch them on tv, or feed into their PR hype. You will instead tune them out and turn off the tv or social media and promote and prioritize your own life, your own good values, your spouse, your family, your soul. You will realize just how much time is wasted on useless discussions and debates, and you will find something worthwhile to focus on. God knows there are a myriad of projects out there just waiting for you to get involved. And if you're single, you just might meet someone while you're focusing on something worthwhile, rather than wasting your time on dating sites. I know I don't have street cred because I am married and have no idea about these sites, but I do have single women friends, and from what I've heard about these so-called dating sites from them, I surmise that they're mostly a waste of time. If I was single, I wouldn't waste my time on them. I'd be traveling, visiting friends and family, or outdoors biking, in my garden, walking, doing photography, or indoors writing, reading, cooking and trying new recipes. My life is full and I'm grateful for that. Our lives are as empty or as full as we make them. If experts deem that people have a market value or a shelf life, then let the experts live and think that way. Let them debate ad nauseam and stir up a lot of false outrage or write the nth self-help book about it. If the masses feed into it, that's their problem. The way we live our ordinary lives--full of meaning--will give us the strength to rise above the nonsense.  

Righteous anger and forcing change in the Catholic Church

I've written about the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church several times, the latest post being in October of this year: A New Yorker in Oslo: French clergy and the latest sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com). I had a suggestion for how to force the Church to change, and that was to hit them in the pocketbook. Ordinary parishioners, men and women alike, should be angry enough to cease their financial support of the Church at least for the period of time it takes the Church to clean up the mess it's made globally. If the Church needs money, it can sell some of its Vatican treasures; that way it will learn the true value of behaving ethically and decently toward its faithful, be they young or old. 

A couple of days ago I read an online article by a former Norwegian Catholic who was outraged that more churchgoers weren't up in arms about the sex abuse scandals. He said he felt ashamed that more of them didn't vocalize their anger. I understand his anger. At the same time, he really has no idea how many Catholics are or aren't outraged by them. But he's correct that parishioners at least haven't vocalized their anger in their churches. He has left the Church and no longer considers himself a Catholic, unlike me. I will always be a Catholic even though I'm not always a regular churchgoer each Sunday. I keep hoping that the priests will talk about these scandals from the pulpit. So far, they haven't, and I'm not sure why. The victims of these crimes are not even mentioned in the prayers of the faithful. We could pray for them for starters. 

Some of the young priests who preach from the pulpit now seem to be more aware of the problems in society generally and are more willing to bring them up, and that tells me there's hope for change. A few of the older priests also seem aware, but most are not. I am not interested in listening to the same old spiel preached by many of the older priests who deliver company/party line without much insight or reflection. If I know they will have a particular mass I tend to avoid it. They are the types who preach that we should do this or that because that's how the Church wants it done, the Church meaning the Vatican and the men running the Church. They attribute many things to Christ that I doubt Christ would have stood for. I think they would be surprised that Christ would not be willing to look the other way in the face of the sex abuse scandals. Christ did show outrage when he saw that the temple was being used as a marketplace; he tossed the sellers out of the temple. He was angry, and his anger is characterized as righteous anger Righteous Anger - Catholic Daily Reflections (catholic-daily-reflections.com) 

"Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”  John 2:13b-16

He lectured the Pharisees in ways that made them angry. He lost no opportunity to needle the Pharisees, who thought they were wonderful people simply because they followed church laws to a tee. In other words, justifiable anger was allowed. The definition of that type of anger can be discussed, but I certainly think that the sex abuse scandals qualify as the type of crime that can justify righteous anger in Catholic parishioners. After all, we are the Church; the Church is not the Vatican or the clerics in Rome. We have a huge say in how we want the Church to be; we have the power to force it to change. We should use that power. 

As Christians, we must be aware of what goes on around us and not sit back and accept all behavior in the Church simply because it is our Church. If we accept everything, what is the point of trying to recognize good and to do good? We can just stop trying to do so. We must learn to separate the wheat from the chaff--distinguish the good from the bad in all things, be they people, laws, behavior, or material things. The Vatican and clerics have no right to tell us how to feel or think. I think we've reached the point where there is too much passivity in the face of the bad behavior in the Church. People have lost their capacity for righteous anger and protest, willingly or unwillingly. Many become outraged about insignificant things (the loss of the Latin mass being one of them) and stay silent about truly significant things like the sex abuse scandals and the huge harm they have done to the Church. Those Catholics who only want to sweep these scandals under the rug and 'carry on' with the way the Church has always done things are true hypocrites who do not love their Church. 

We must learn to discern what is truly righteous anger and what is anger that will only harm us and others. The former is allowable, the latter is not because the latter often leads to mob rule, violence and vigilante justice. We don't want that. What we do want is justice for the sex abuse victims and punishment for their abusers; the punishments should be public trials in courts of law and long jail terms for the abusers and large financial payments to the victims. These scandals should cost the Church considerably. I've already set in motion my particular brand of punishment; I eliminated my regular monetary contribution to the Church. I will continue this until I see that the Church begins to open its doors to real discussions from the pulpit about these scandals, what they have done to the morale and faith of loyal parishioners, and what is being done about them. I think it is healthy for parishioners to exercise righteous anger and to stand up to what is wrong or evil in society and in the Church. I hope more Catholics begin to protest in this way, because the Church cannot continue on the path it's on without major changes if it hopes to survive. 

 

Learning to be less concerned about what others think

Do men really prefer younger women rather than women their own age when looking for potential partners? This question came up at a recent couples' dinner party where the men sat talking together at one end of the table about cars, motorcycles and the stock market and the women sat at the other end talking about work, leadership, and eventually movies and television series. At one point one of the women brought up a recent survey that purportedly says that men really do prefer younger women rather than women their own age as partners; dating sites seemed to confirm this from their statistical data. Older women had a harder time finding a suitable partner on most dating sites because most of the men on the sites, even men their own age, preferred younger women. She thought that was very unfair to older women (namely women our age) and brought it up for discussion to the entire table of guests; the men wisely avoided the subject so the topic didn't get discussed much further. What should the men have said anyway? That it's not true? They cannot say that it's not true nor that it is true. Older men may be more interested in younger women than in older women on these dating sites, but no one really knows how the game plays out. Do the younger women actually go out with the older men? Or do they end up preferring men their own age?

What I found interesting is that any of the women sitting at that table would even care about this topic. All of them are in good relationships. All of them are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves financially if their husbands left them for younger women. They all make/made very good salaries and have good careers. Yes, it would be unfair, unkind, abominable, etc. if their husbands left them for younger women. We can all agree on that. My mother would have called them cads. But the women would survive. My major question is the following: why do women even care about what men think in this regard? Why do women need to see themselves in the eyes of men at all after many years of doing so? Because when you are younger you compete with other women for available men, you are looking for potential partners for marriage and children, you are looking for someone to perhaps take care of you financially, and so on. Competition is part of the picture when you are young. Much of this is built into who we are as human beings; the human race needs to continue and the instinct is to reproduce. That instinct leads to finding a partner with which to accomplish that. Men are looking for fertile women, and those women are usually young, under the age of fifty, because the childbearing years usually end around that time. Most young couples end up being together with partners their own age; some marry younger partners, some marry older. But the majority of young people marry within their own age group. So should older women be mad at evolution and the biology that renders women infertile after a certain point? Of course not. They shouldn't even be preoccupied with these thoughts after a certain point. Why should they? Why should they be at all preoccupied with what men or society at large think about them as older women? Trying to compete with younger women (or younger men in the case of older men) is just plain foolish. And if the older women I know, who are accomplished career women with no financial problems are concerned about this, then what about women who are less fortunate, financially or otherwise? 

My point is that older women should be less concerned about what men and society think of them and more concerned about enjoying their lives and their good fortune whether or not a man is in the picture. Nice if you have a good man with whom you can share your life, but what if there is no good man in the picture? Should you lay down and die? No. You should take your rightful place at the table of life; you've earned it. You should 'take up space', make your presence known, bring up your interests and hobbies, be yourself and live in harmony with yourself. Pursue your interests as far as they take you. If you have good health, be happy. Be happy in your own company. Take the trips you want to take by yourself. Do what you want to do. If you don't 'live' and merely wait around for a man to do these things with you, how long are you willing to wait? When will you do the things you want to do, when you are eighty years old? Forget about whether men will like you. Stop trying to mold yourself to please them. Don't define your worth in terms of whether you are together with a man or not. Why spend the last chapter of your life worrying about whether your husband would prefer being with a younger woman? If he leaves you for one, let him go, he wasn't worth hanging onto anyway. Look at your life as the adventure it really is, with its ups and downs and detours. It's your life, no one else's. I cannot imagine a worse fate than spending my entire life trying to mold myself to fit any man's preferences, rather than having lived my life being true to myself. 

 

'Get busy living or get busy dying'

'Get busy living or get busy dying'. One of the most memorable lines from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, which I watched again the other night for about the fifth time. The quote is actually from the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, on which the movie is based. 

Andy says this to Red right after Andy has spent more than a month 'in the hole' (solitary confinement) for trying to get the warden to arrange for a new trial for him after new evidence turns up that he is actually innocent of murdering his wife and her lover. But the warden won't hear of it and goes about destroying all possibilities for this. The warden has his reasons, none of them ethical or good. It is his refusal to help Andy that pushes Andy to make the choice to escape prison, but not without bringing down the warden along the way. Get busy living is another way of saying 'focus on the positive', on what you can positively do about a difficult situation. It's about having hope, because hope is what man needs to keep him going and to keep him alive. Without hope, man can just lay down and die. As Andy says in the film 'Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies'. And that is Andy's point. You either have hope and move toward the positive, or you don't and then you move toward the negative. You give up all hope and get busy dying. Get busy living is also about adjusting to the curve balls that life throws at you. You have to be proactive, to take the reins of your own life, to change and to grow in order to deal with the tough times. You have to have hope that you'll come through them. 

The Shawshank Redemption is a remarkable film. I can't imagine two better actors playing the parts of Andy and Red than Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman respectively. The bond of friendship that develops between them is beautiful to see. Andy was a generous soul, whose prison term allowed him to develop into a man who truly cared about others. He managed to maintain his humanity in the morass of inhumanity that prison often is. He offered hope to his fellow prisoners without pushing it on them; he just lived according to his principles and that had an effect on those around him, especially Red. 

If you've never seen the film, I recommend it highly. It's violent and tough to watch in places. It doesn't present a rosy view of prison or of Andy's experiences in prison. The beauty of the film is in watching Andy slowly decide what he wants and how he wants to live out the rest of his life, and it's not in prison. He makes his decision without hurting his fellow prisoners, whom he has often helped. He offers Red the chance to join him, leaving the decision up to Red, after they've discussed how they want to live the rest of their lives. Andy never tells Red about his escape plans, thus protecting Red from possible repercussions. But he provides the means (money) for Red to eventually join him and he makes Red promise that he will try to find the place in Maine where Andy has buried something for him. He never tells Red what he's buried, which piques Red's curiosity and gives him the motivation to survive life outside of prison. We need more films like this in the world--films about hope, friendship, generosity (fiscal as well as spiritual), integrity, and goodness. 

Revisiting 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People'

I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey during the 1990s (it was first published in 1989) and recently reread it. I enjoyed rereading it, now that I have the perspective of someone who was in the workforce for over forty years and just recently retired. He imparted his wisdom as a leader and a teacher, much of it practical, but he also emphasized the necessity of reflection in order to help us make the choices we need to make. His book is really a primer for how one should live one's life, even though the book is often utilized as a primer for how to be more effective in the workplace. 

The seven habits are as follows:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first 
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the saw

I'm not going to give detailed analyses or summaries of each habit, as I encourage you to read the book and reflect upon his advice. I agree with much of what he writes. It is important to be proactive, not reactive in most situations where there is an actual choice, and it is beneficial to try to understand the other party first before wanting to be understood. Those two habits alone will help you in the workplace but also in most interpersonal relationships. I would add that it is important to try to understand oneself as well because that will also contribute to better relationships with others. 

Many people don't understand what proactive means. I've written before in this blog about being proactive. Proactive is a conscious choice to act instead of react. It is a choice for rather than against positive change. It could mean facing a difficult situation and taking the reins oneself in order to try to solve it instead of passively waiting for someone to come along and solve it for us. Often we wait for the latter because then we have someone to blame if the situation doesn't work out. We may not consciously want to blame others, but it's the easy way out, so we 'choose' it. You'd be surprised at how many people play the blame game; whether they need to play it or like to play it is inconsequential. The point is that playing the blame game is reactive behavior. But sometimes the division between proactive and reactive is not so clear. There are situations in life (personal and work) where you have tried everything and nothing works to solve a specific problem. Inertia rules the day. You've tried being proactive and reactive. So you let go and move on because taking care of yourself becomes the priority. 

I would have liked to have met Stephen Covey and discussed some aspects of work life with him. I would have asked him for his reflections about specific situations, e.g. when you have bent over backward trying to understand frustrating and incompetent workplace leaders, when you have been proactive and positive and tried to help them and give them what they say they want, but there is no response. You meet a wall of no response no matter what you do. After a period of time where you give them the benefit of the doubt, you let go and move on. Because that is best for your health--physical and psychological. 

The main misconception that most advice-givers and motivational teachers have is that workplace leaders are very invested in their employees' career advancement and overall job satisfaction. But sometimes they are not. Sometimes all they want around them are yes-people who make no waves and who demand nothing. Some leaders just want to be left alone so that they don't have to deal with those they view as bothersome employees. Covey doesn't really address such situations in his book. In other words, most of the situations he presents are win-win for both parties--the success stories. That's great but it's not always real life because both sides have to think win-win, and it's not all the time that both sides do. 

I'm glad I reread his book, because I realized that I've figured out a lot for myself by myself over the years, even though I have on occasion sought advice in such books. I mostly didn't rely on others to solve my workplace issues and I came through them a changed person--stronger and more capable of dealing with bullshit-dispensing leaders or leaders who simply didn't care about their employees. The latter exist, make no mistake about that, and those are the leaders with whom I've had to deal sometimes. The problem with people who believe that there is a solution to all problems is that they believe their own hype. I believe in trying to find solutions to problems, yes, but I also believe in letting go and moving on when it no longer makes sense to hang around. That may not be viewed as a positive solution by those who want to solve all conflicts in a positive manner, but sometimes leaving forces change in the people who need to change, including the person who leaves. 

Updating our smartphones--I can definitely relate

Yesterday's Pearls Before Swine. Haha, I can definitely relate, as I'm sure many people can. I delay updating my phone and my laptop for as long as possible, especially my phone, for the reason Pig mentions. I had an iPhone 6 up until April 2020 and would have kept it except for all the updates that I reluctantly installed that slowed it down until it was almost unusable. I bought an iPhone SE 2020 because it resembles my old iPhone 6, which I loved. I dislike intensely the incessant push to get us to buy new smartphones every year or every other year. Why do we need to? What is so revolutionary about the new ones that we need to trade up every year? I won't do it; I'm not interested in being a sheep that just does what she's told to do by corporations, advertising and social media. Find another patsy. 

'Maybe You'll Be There' sung by Diana Krall

Back in mid-September 2001 Diana Krall released her album The Look of Love, a collection of jazz, bossa nova and traditional pop songs that was hugely popular. It contains songs by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Victor Young and Edward Heyman, Arthur Hamilton, Hoagy Carmichael and Jane Brown Thompson, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Rube Bloom and Sammy Gallop. It quickly became one of my favorite albums. We were lucky to get a chance to see Diana Krall in concert at the annual jazz festival in the town of Kongsberg in 2003; it had to be one of the most popular concerts in their history.  

I was listening to her album tonight while I was making dinner, and it brought back memories as it always does when I listen to it--some sad and some happy. I bought the album the same year my mother died, so it always reminds me of her. It also reminds me of my own walks after dark (but not after midnight) during the autumn months of 2001. I had been sick for several months that year after my mother died in March, and when I finally got well all I wanted was to be outdoors and to walk. Each night I walked around one of the nearby parks and listened to this album, a memory I find oddly comforting. I think my mother would have liked Diana Krall's versions of many of the songs on this album because they were songs she grew up with. I can almost feel her presence as I listen to them. I have my favorites; one of them is Maybe You'll Be There by Rube Bloom and Sammy Gallop. The lyrics are really poetry, and the song itself is beautiful and melancholy. Enjoy Diana Krall's rendition of this beautiful song and the lyrics. 

Maybe You'll Be There

Each time I see a crowd of people
Just like a fool I stop and stare
It's really not the proper thing to do
But maybe you'll be there

I go out walking after midnight
Along the lonely thoroughfare
It's not the time or place
To look for you
But maybe you'll be there

You said your arms would always hold me
You said you lips were mine alone to kiss
Now after all those things you told me
How can it end like this

Someday if all my prayers are answered
I'll hear a footstep on the stair
With anxious heart
I'll hurry to the door
And maybe you'll
Be there

Songwriters: Bloom Rube / Gallop Sammy

Maybe You'll Be There lyrics © Wb Music Corp., Sammy Gallop Music Company

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Tarrytown in September

When I was visiting Tarrytown in September, I took some photos of the Hudson River, the lighthouse, and the new Tappan Zee Bridge. It was early evening when a good friend and I decided to have dinner at the boat club. It was a beautiful clear evening with perfect weather, just right for taking some photos. Whenever I look at these photos I am reminded of how beautiful my hometown really is. We were fortunate to have grown up there. Enjoy.....

In honor of Veteran's Day

We learned to recite this poem in grammar school in honor of Veteran's Day. The first two lines of the poem have remained in my mind even though the rest of the poem has not. The poppy is a symbol of remembrance and hope according to what I have read online. I can remember being given a red paper poppy to pin to my school uniform on Veteran's Day. I always wondered what it symbolized and now I know. We are acknowledging that we remember and support all the armed forces in the world, and that we hope for a peaceful future. 

Poppies grow in my garden; the flowers are lovely but fragile. I'm not sure what type of poppies they are, just that they're red. When the wind blows through the garden it scatters the red petals that are torn off the flowers by the wind. But poppy seeds spread well in a garden and a gardener can end up with a small field of red poppies blowing in the wind. 

In Flanders Fields

BY JOHN MCCRAE

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

 Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

 In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Pushing back against the hype

I have always had a deep mistrust of anything that is hyped, be it a book, a movie, a song or a lifestyle trend. It doesn’t matter what; whenever ‘experts’ use their pulpits to push ad nauseam this or that wonderful book/film/song/lifestyle trend, my hackles go up. I don’t mind reading what professional reviewers of books, movies, and music have to say, but frankly, as I’ve gotten older, I no longer really trust what they have to say. They have a lot invested in keeping the status quo going, and that means promoting the same modern authors, movie directors, and musicians over and over.

Take books alone. Whenever I read about the new ‘hot’ book being pushed by professional reviewers for the mainstream media (often in top-notch publications), I find it on Amazon and read the ‘verified purchase’ reviews submitted by ordinary readers, not those of the publishing houses, media houses, established reviewers or journalists invested in keeping the status quo going. I read the 5-star reviews and the 1- and 2-star reviews. Many people dismiss the latter as the rantings of disgruntled or envious individuals, and while that may be the case sometimes, in my experience it is not the case most of the time. In the same way that not all the 5-star reviews are believable; you get the feeling that this is too good to be true. The 1- and 2-star reviewers are surprisingly honest when they write ‘I couldn’t get into this novel no matter how hard I tried’, or ‘I got to the halfway point and couldn’t get any further’, or ‘I’ve read other books by this writer that are very good, but this one missed the mark’. And so on. I read those reviews because that’s often how I feel when I am reading a book that was pushed on me by the media or by literary pundits. I think to myself, I am going to write a review of this book that I don’t like, even if most readers did like it. And sometimes I do. I mostly post them on Goodreads, but sometimes on Amazon as well. Nowadays it’s difficult to push back against the hype, but sometimes you have to, and I say that as a writer that has gotten reviews that both like and don’t like what I’ve written. As long as the less-than-stellar reviews are not rude or unprofessional, I accept them as being part and parcel of being a writer. You can’t win them all, but of course you hope for stellar reviews. But accepting the negative ones about my own work means that I am also free to write about what I dislike when it concerns others' work. I am free to be negative about a book/movie/song as long as I remain polite and professional about it.

I can’t tell you how many Kindle books I’ve downloaded to my iPad to read over the past decade or so. I persist with some books that I simply cannot abide, merely to finish them so that I can have an opinion if the book comes up in conversation with someone. But I have given up on two or three books in my lifetime; I found them either so boring as to put me to sleep or so chaotic and unintelligible that I simply didn’t want to waste my time trying to sort out the plot or the lack of one. I lost interest, plain and simple.

I am currently reading Joan Didion’s works, and have gotten through Play It As It Lays (fiction) and Slouching Towards Bethlehem (essays). I’m halfway through another collection of essays The White Album. I have not prioritized reading her books earlier. Joan Didion is considered to be one of America’s great writers, an icon as it were. She spent years as a journalist documenting an era in American life (the 1960s and 1970s) where everything seemed topsy-turvy, where conservative values were tossed out the window, albeit by a minority of the population, in favor of free love and a hippie lifestyle. She writes about the hippie lifestyle in California at that time, as well as the privileged life in Hollywood where anyone who was ‘anyone’ hobnobbed with actors, actresses, celebrities, movie directors, agents, and wanna-bes. Her writing is permeated by a sense of anxiety about the meaninglessness of life. She and her husband wrote screenplays for major movies and were quite successful at it. It all sounds glamorous but it isn’t and wasn’t; she makes sure that you know that. She managed to remain outside of all of the nonsense and hype for the most part, documenting it as the keen observer she was during those years. She’s a very good writer, I'll grant that, but what she writes about holds very little appeal for me. I’ve never really wondered about or been interested in most of the lives or topics she documents and I’m not sure what that says about me. I grew up in the era she writes about, but in New York and not California. I remember a lot of unrest and political turmoil from that time, but her presentation of California creates a feeling of hopelessness. It seems to be a wasteland of sorts. I did not like Play It As It Lays because of those feelings of hopelessness and nihilism. What was the real point of the book? It portrays a wasted life in a wasteland filled with wasted people who are wasting their lives, living in a bubble where they think they are so important. We all know they are not. Perhaps that is her point, to show that these people are lost. If so, she succeeds, but I don’t find anything really uplifting in her writing. It could be due to her desire to remain detached, I’m not sure. Her writing comes across as rather flat emotionally, indicative of a depressive state of mind. Adam Kirsch wrote in The New York Sun in 2006 that “She always seems to be writing on the brink of a catastrophe so awful that her only available response is to withdraw into a kind of autism.” That is a very good description of her writing, in my opinion. For all the chronicling of her life and the lives of others, she remains an enigma and that is rather strange considering that she often writes about herself and her life. Perhaps that is not enough to discover who you really are. As a writer, you can hide behind your descriptions of yourself, especially if you don't want to be known. Perhaps the best explanation for why she is who she is can be found in her essay On the Morning After the Sixties in the collection of essays The White Album. She writes 

"We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate. To have assumed that particular fate so early was the peculiarity of my generation. I think now that we were the last generation to identify with adults. That most of us have found adulthood just as morally ambiguous as we expected it to be falls perhaps into the category of prophecies self-fulfilled: I am simply not sure. I am telling you only how it was. The mood of Berkeley in those years was one of mild but chronic “depression...Only one person I knew at Berkeley later discovered an ideology, dealt himself into history, cut himself loose from both his own dread and his own time. A few of the people I knew at Berkeley killed themselves not long after."

The problem for me is that it's hard to tell if this mood describes many people at Berkeley during that era in American life or just a few. When you are depressed you have a tendency to 'see' that in the world around you. She is honest in saying that perhaps she doesn’t really know what she thinks or feels about a particular situation. Perhaps she says it best when she describes herself as a writer but not an intellectual, not a thinker. When I googled the definition of an intellectual, I found that she is literally correct. The formal definition of an intellectual is ‘a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society, and thus gains authority as a public intellectual’ (Wikipedia). Didion observes and writes about what she sees in society in a coolly detached way, but she does not reflect very much upon her observations, which is what an intellectual might have done. She is an observer and a reporter. I miss the reflections and critical thinking. But that’s me. She is an example of a writer that has been praised to the hilt but one that I cannot really relate to no matter how hard I’ve tried, and I've read two essay collections and one novel by her. I find myself just wanting to be finished with the essays in The White Album. I know that their essences will not stay with me because they have had very little impact on me. 

Other authors who have been hyped in recent years and whose books I really did not like/did nothing for me are Sally Rooney (Normal People), Camille Pagán (I’m Fine and Neither Are You), Andre Aciman (Call Me by Your Name), Dana Spiotta (Innocents and Others), Anna Burns (Milkman), Michael Crichton (Prey), Teresa Driscoll (I Am Watching You), Camilla Läckberg (Gullburet—The Golden Cage), Charles Lambert (The Children’s Home), Matt Marinovich (The Winter Girl), Ian McEwan (Machines Like Me), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight #1), Sayaka Murata (Convenience Store Woman), and Scott Sigler (Infected #1), among others. These are modern novelists, but I am not a huge fan either of some of the ‘classic’ writers who were pushed on us as teenagers and young adults. I think of J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Philip Roth (any of his books), and others. We had to reflect on the symbolism in some of these books and write about it for class; these books did nothing for me and I found analyses of them tedious.

You can agree with me or not; it’s fine. That’s what makes the world an interesting place—the heterogeneity of individual opinions. You can say that I have eclectic taste, and you might be right. You can say that I’m opinionated at times, and that would be true. But I’m not going to follow the crowds running headlong to overpraise overhyped writers. A number of the modern writers I’ve listed in the previous paragraph are mediocre in my opinion. But they enjoy a huge following and they sell a lot of books. There’s no accounting for taste. But I do know what I like and don’t like. Writing about what I don’t like helps me push back against the hype. It’s becoming more necessary for each day that passes.

 

The need to breathe--dealing with psychological suffocation

What happens to us when we are constantly bombarded by a barrage of outrage fomented by news and social media, or nitpicking courtesy of the news pundits and social media, or constant noise, or people/events that clamor for our constant attention? My friend Jean came up with the term 'psychological suffocation' to aptly describe how we can feel when faced with all of this--smothered, unable to breathe. Psychological suffocation--when the heart and mind can't breathe--can affect us physiologically. Both she and I agree that modern society as we know it is too focused on fomenting outrage and division instead of peace and harmony, too 'in your face', too noisy, and too 'on' all the time. Even if all these things are not intentionally designed to suffocate us psychologically, they have that effect far too often. As she says, the feeling of psychological suffocation makes her want to throw open the windows and the door to breathe in the air, the peace, the quiet of nature outside her door. When I reach that point, all I want to do is go to my garden or for a long walk or bike ride. Just to get away from it all--from the influences that get the heart pounding in anger and outrage and that make it difficult to breathe. 

The ultimate solution to dealing with the things that psychologically suffocate us is to prevent them from having that power over us. That means keeping them at bay--shutting out the news or walking away from people and situations that want us to be continually outraged. It means being selective about what we let into our minds and hearts. Garbage in, garbage out, as the old saying goes. It's like junk food; if all we eat is junk food, then our bodies will not be healthy. Likewise our minds; they will not be healthy if all we feed them is outrage, aggression, anger, and more outrage. We are constantly being told how to think and how to feel. I'm surprised that doesn't bother more people. 

Both the regular media and social media are invested in riling us up with what I call fake outrage because that's how they drag in viewers. More viewers, better ratings, more money. It's all about the money. If they were really interested in solving the problems in society, they would come up with solutions to problems, even if those solutions were on a small scale. Because I ask you, what is the point of getting riled up if we don't come up with a solution, however small, to deal with whatever problem is brought up? If we do nothing about the problem that we are told to be outraged about, then the outrage is pointless and by extension, false. Additionally, false outrage is demotivating and leads to feelings of hopelessness and despair. As Christians, we are called to act as well as to have faith and to pray. An old Chinese proverb that was adopted by the Christian inspirational group The Christophers as their motto says 'it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness'. I understood this already in my twenties when I discovered The Christophers. If you wait for the big solutions to occur to solve any problem whatsoever, you'll wait a long time. Better to start small. As Mother Teresa said, we can start by loving and showing charity in our own homes and families, before we worry about the rest of the world. She understood that if we managed to do this in our own homes, we would find it less difficult to extend love and charity to strangers. Additionally, if more people did this in their own homes, a number of family problems might actually be solved. Her focus was on starting where we find ourselves on a daily basis--home or work for most people. This makes sense because most of us will never live a life like Mother Teresa's. But she is an inspiration for us when we feel psychologically suffocated, when hope feels like it has disappeared, when outrage and despair take center stage. 

Hope. Hope counteracts psychological suffocation. Hope is found in nature, which exists outside of us and carries on despite what goes on in the world. There is the promise of hope in each new season. Prayer also counteracts it, regardless of how we define prayer or of how we pray. Prayer centers us and leads us to a quiet place, far away from the talking heads in the television studios and their obsession with outrage that borders on monomania. Hope and prayer give us the energy to deal with the problems around us. Continual outrage does not; it may seem like it would, but in the final analysis the energy we expend on continual outrage does nothing but exhaust us, leaving very little positive energy with which to work on the problems in the world.