Dress Rehearsal of Life

Now that I live in the southeast, I have been able to observe the change of seasons. This fall I have reveled in the utter beauty of the trees and the grace with which they begin their striptease. Once they’ve completed the slow conversion of their leaves from greens to brilliant shades of yellows, oranges, burgundies and browns, they slowly, deliberately begin removing their summer-spring coats with the help of fall breezes.

A couple of weeks ago, I set out to jog on a familiar track and was mesmerized when an urgent breeze began plucking leaves from nearby trees. It felt like nature’s New Year’s Eve as a confetti of multi-colored leaves rained down around me. I paused to enjoy the wind caressing my face and to watch the leaves cascading through the air until they gently seesawed to the ground. And in that moment of beauty, I realized that each year, we are made witness to the following dress rehearsal of life:

In Spring, we are given examples of rebirth and revitalization. The grass returns, and flowers bloom. Trees cover themselves in leaves and return to looking vibrant and plush. Fruits begin to grow weighing down parental branches and life is made clear to us in obvious, obvious ways. It is nature in its infancy.

In Summer, abundance is apparent. Warm breezes and sunshine caress us all as the cycle of life continues. Nature in its adolescence and young adulthood delivers the best of its creative forces. The first batches of fruits are replaced by ones of more extreme succulence. The first flowers, having completed their dress rehearsals, are now replaced by more experienced ones with aromas and colors that are ultimately more pronounced. As nature’s adulthood completes its final maturity, Summer comes to a close.

In Fall, vibrance and youth begin to ebb as flowers and trees lose their luster. Fullness and fruitfulness are lost as the twilight of nature’s life cycle begins. It is nature’s way of describing old age. All that is vital begins to whither and the beginning of the end becomes painfully apparent.

And finally, in Winter, nature plays its final act. Trees assume their final resemblance to skeletal remains. Any leaf that has tried desperately to cling is torn away, withered and old. The ability to visualize blossoms or fruit is lost and spring-summer grass browns into a veritable astro-turf. And so nature completes its dress rehearsal with winter’s death as the final act. That is until it all begins again with the return of Spring.

As soon as we re-establish our connection to these cycles, we can resume our rightful roles in nature. It is only through our futile attempts to circumvent these cycles, that we are plunged into confusion and misunderstanding as to how we fit into it all. So many of us refuse to acknowledge that we, who are a part of nature, will eventually lose our luster, wither and then die. Oftentimes, we would like for Summer and Spring to repeat indefinitely, but alas, this is not to be.

Whatever you do, be true to yourselves and pay close attention to what is being shown to you day after day. With all of the rehearsals we are shown, we should be amply prepared to play each cycle of our live's roles with excellence.

Thanks for Nothing!

Each year around this time, feelings of resentment and animosity arise in me. I know these are not festive feelings, but their arrival is sometimes beyond my control. Consider how it feels to learn that a trusted friend has been dishonest with you and then you’ll understand the source of my Thanksgiving Day chagrin.

Since childhood, my family has celebrated Thanksgiving with a traditional turkey dinner. Each year, either our kitchen [or the kitchen of whoever was hosting] would explode with everything from turkey, ham, roast beef and chicken to greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, ambrosia and much, much more. Each feast was a veritable exercise in gluttony and excess. Even when the guests departed with “to go” plates, we would still find ourselves with several days of leftovers in the refrigerator. Because Thanksgiving was tradition, I rarely questioned the origins of the holiday. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I began learning about the pilgrims and how the Native American had helped them when they were suffering through their first winter. The pilgrims were so thankful, they created a holiday of remembrance to celebrate what they’d received during an intense time of need.

But surely there must have been a better way to thank the Native Americans. Perhaps the pilgrims could have thanked them by not stealing their land. Or maybe it would have been nice had they not disparaged their beliefs, thinking it fit to force a completely foreign “self-serving” belief system upon them. In fact, I think most of us would agree that a “thank you” should be designed to show appreciation for the party who was helpful and not for the one who was helped.

Fast-forward to present day, and the current state of the Native American Nation is quite dismal. The survivors, who are quite few, are often relegated to reservations where poverty and alcoholism are rampant. And even though the American government has seen it fit to make amends by offering free education and by allowing tribes to profit from gambling, neither of these has shown an impact by bringing about any kind of resurgence in Native American communities.

It is sad how many examples there are of cruelty and barbarism in the world, but for me, what makes it even more disturbing is our refusal to acknowledge and accept the realities of such history. President Lincoln didn’t awake with the epiphany of slavery’s inhumanity and then decide to abolish it as it was (is?) taught in elementary school. And the mere concept of Thanksgiving as it is recounted is disingenuous if not ludicrous. I, too, find some of these atrocities difficult to digest, but it doesn’t suffice to simply revise history into a nice package with a bow on top. Even when the truth hurts, it is preferable to lies and deceit.

Years ago, I made a pact with myself to acknowledge Thanksgiving, not for the pilgrims’ successes, but as a time to be thankful for all of life’s blessings. I am thankful for my mother who was never anything but loving and supportive. I am thankful for my father who taught me many of life’s valuable lessons. And I am thankful for my extended family of relatives and friends who have shown me affection and support throughout many trials and difficult times. With this said, I also believe it is incumbent upon all of us to acknowledge the truths of our history, even when they aren’t pretty, and to understand how to move forward in ways of kinder wisdom.

Happy Thanksgiving! May all of you find blessings in truth, kindness and compassion.

Your Most Valuable Contribution

If each of us carried an attaché case with our most valuable contribution inside, what would you wish to be held within yours? Briefly ponder an answer to the question, “Inside of my case is contained ____.”

Over this last year I have learned a tremendous amount about energy, so much in fact that it has astonished me how little we pay attention to our own energy imprints. I’m sure all of us have experienced that uncomfortable feeling of noticing we’re being stared at, or perhaps we have stared only to have the object of our attention become aware and then turn to face us. It is the presence of energy that makes this phenomenon possible. Every action we perform brings a specific kind of energy to the table and more often that not that energy is perceptible if we only we are willing to pay attention to it. And don’t forget at the end of the day, we are all varying forms of energy anyway, made up of protons and electrons alike. And each of us can choose how we’d like our energy to impact the world, whether it’s with a positive, negative or neutral effect. With that said, I believe our most valuable contribution has everything to do with the energy we bring into existence.

But here’s the tricky thing about energy. Scientific methods dictate that negative charges will attract positive ones, which is how magnetism works with negatively charged electrons becoming attracted to positively charged protons. These scientific principles have been proven, but they do not apply when it comes to personal energy. The energy that we spin into existence instead adheres to spiritual principles, which in fact behave according to the opposite rule that like energies will attract one another. If someone creates positive energy by doing something nice, we are likely to be pleased and will respond with niceties and positivity ourselves. In this sense, positive energy attracts positive energy.

At the same time, if we are confronted with negative energy, we are likely to respond in kind. For example when someone cuts us off in traffic, negative energy is generated. I’m sure most of us can relate to the energy we often respond with when this happens. I have many times honked, cursed and waved obscene gestures at the offending drivers. So, again, negative energy attracts equally negative responses. These are principles that enable mob mentality to occur. When intense negative energy is generated, a snowball effect begins with the potential of everyone around being sucked in. It takes a strong, self-aware individual to combat the contagious nature of negative energy.

These are the same rules that explain karmic principles. If we choose to carry negative energy in our attaché cases then we can expect to attract negative energy into our lives. Should we instead decide it is positive energy that we choose to bring forth, positive energy will also be attracted into our lives, or in other words, what goes around comes around.

So now is the time to share just what did you choose for you case?

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To Tell the Blurry Truth

More than ever, our powers of observation are in need of fine-tuning. We must all equip ourselves with uncanny abilities to discern and differentiate between what is real and what is fiction.

Last week I went to see “The Fourth Kind,” a movie, which purports to be based on true accounts of alien abductions in Nome, Alaska. In the movie, the audience is shown dramatized reenactments of what is supposed to be true footage of abductees undergoing hypnotherapy. Although it is by no means a great film, the hypnosis sessions were sometimes compelling as the patients were videotaped completely recalling their utter horror having suffered through close encounters of the fourth kind. The movie uses an interesting device where the original “true footage” is at times intercut into the film and is sometimes even juxtaposed beside the dramatizations (which was mostly distracting).

So, here’s the thing, as is it so happened, I was slightly tardy in making it to the theater. For this reason I entered just after the start of the movie. The woman who was on screen when I walked in wore slightly too much makeup and her hair was perhaps a little too unkempt. It was clear to me that the “hair and makeup” department had gotten this wrong when they were shooting the film. As the movie continued, I realized this woman was being sold as the actual doctor in the true story. In theory, this was supposedly raw “documentary” footage. For the rest of the movie, I kept studying this woman’s face trying to figure out if a real woman would ever style her hair or apply her makeup in such a fashion. And the answer I kept coming up with is no.

And this brings me to today’s question. Are we better or worse off if the lines between fact and fiction are continually blurred? From a creative standpoint, it is actually quite interesting to think of new ways to impress, shock and fool your audience. But the audience (and that’s us, folks) must then be tasked with the ability to discern the difference between truth or fiction.

A few years ago, I read a book whose title I won’t mention, but the author claimed the story was fictionalized. I am still fuzzy on exactly what this means. Is fictionalized a way of saying based on fact, but beefed up with fiction? In any event, the entertainment world is eagerly selling improvised and/or scripted as reality with the end result that the two genres are now imitating each other and neither seems entirely authentic.

In case you didn’t know, in scripted entertainment, whether it’s television or film, the production process first requires a written script before any footage is shot. In reality entertainment, it is the opposite where footage is filmed at the beginning and then later the writers sift through it to figure out where the story is. But even these techniques have been modified. In Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a story outline is delivered instead of a script. The players know what the story is, but they improvise their lines. At the same time, movies like “Paranormal Activity” and “The Fourth Kind” are written to have a “reality” feel to them, but the truth is they are scripted. Personally, I like to think of it as practice. The more these lines are blurred, the easier it will become for us to tell the difference, not only in entertainment, but also in our everyday lives.

A Mind of My Own

What is Groupthink?

Wikipedia describes it as “a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness... During Groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking...

Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.”

The question I am posing is how guilty are we of Groupthink? Many of us feel or suspect that we are critical and independent thinkers because we come from free and democratic societies, but is this really the case? George Orwell’s “1984” explored the ideas of Groupthink, but I fear very few of us realize just how much we participate in it.

Here’s one place I see Groupthink at work -- pharmaceutical drugs. Each time I see a commercial I am reminded of Groupthink’s effectiveness. Through its use, big pharmaceutical companies have gained our acceptance for the most absurd of drug treatments. Each time I spot a drug commercial, I shake my head wondering how a “treatment” with such drastically dangerous side effects could be approved. For example, there is:

Symbicort – The first commercial I noticed for this drug offended me. It featured the “silhouette” of a woman walking around explaining the drug’s benefits. My reaction to the campaign was that the pharmaceutical companies were laughing at us, wondering just how ridiculous they could become and still have us accept the product. In my opinion, they were too embarrassed to put an actual face to the voice explaining the drug’s “benefits.”

Symbicort is used to treat asthma, but get this... It may increase the risk of asthma-related death. WHAT?! So, it may contribute to death from the condition that it is supposed to treat? Interesting. A few other side effects include headaches, throat pain, and upper respiratory tract infection. Of course these are all things that an asthma patient hopes for when seeking relief from the condition.

Pristiq is used to treat depression, but it can cause any of the following side effects: Bizarre behavior, hallucinations, worsening of depression, suicidal thoughts or ATTEMPTS!!! WHAT?!

So, should I become depressed and go to my doctor for help, I may be given a drug that will make me more depressed or even suicidal? Interesting, yet, somehow this market continues to thrive with doctors pushing these treatments on us.

As if that were not enough, Pristiq has an extremely long list of other side effects, which I will not completely list for fear of boring you. A few of them however are: hives, itching, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue; blood in the stools, chest pain, fainting, fast or irregular heartbeat and many, many more.

I could continue listing big pharmaceutical drugs that have numerous, unpleasant side effects, but it would just be more of the same. In fact many of these treatments require other drugs to manage their side effects. During my own cancer treatment, it was recommended that I take a daily injection to reduce the effects of radiation. But there was a catch because the injections caused nausea. I was then prescribed an anti-nausea medication even though my doctors denied my request for medical marijuana. I am sure this is another area where the big pharmaceutical companies are having a laugh. In economics, we would call this a multiplier because the sale of one drug leads to increased sales of another.

And why do we accept these preposterous prescriptions? A few months ago, I was discussing exactly this topic with one of my best friends, who is actually a bright and independent thinker. His response to me was “yes, some people are injured by these drugs, but isn’t it worth the collateral damage if the majority of people are helped by them?” This is precisely how Groupthink works. Collectively, we accept what is offered even though the absurdity of it is pointed out to us every day (in the fine print). And once a practice gains acceptance by the group, it then becomes unorthodox to question it. The hypothesis of Groupthink is the following: If everyone else accepts it, then it must be true.

To this reality I say no, there must be a better way. What about treatments that improve, or even cure a condition? Although we are led to think there are few to none, they do exist.

But before we can expect better, we have to cure one of our biggest illnesses, which is Groupthink itself.