*
PRIMA APRILIS
“Look, it’s snowing!”
I turned around and around,
but saw only a shimmering
emptiness in the air.
My father laughed: Prima aprilis!
The First of April, the fools’ holiday.
I chanted it all day long,
my new incantation:
prima aprilis, prima aprilis.
Some children twisted it to
prila aprila. I enunciated precisely.
With such a headstart in Latin,
I went on to ask my mother
what phallic meant.
Still, I never liked the game.
I was a born April fool.
“You wear your heart
on your sleeve,” a man told me.
“That’s a polite way
of saying you’re a sucker.”
Maybe it’s the persistent
April of my mind,
the world so magical
anything’s possible.
“An iceberg is drifting
along the coast of California” —
and I stand open-mouthed,
silly with wonder.
I fall in love
even faster than that.
Look, it’s snowing.
Mary:
Perhaps that April "fool's holiday" is truly the artist and writer's holy day, in that creation requires not only the capacity for wonder but its expectation. An attentive "readiness" to see and recognize connection, resonance and necessity can make room for the kind of revelation that inspires. That "stillness in the midst of chaos" the quiet attention, listening, waiting, allows and invites the dance of words, images and sounds that becomes a poem, novel, painting, song. There must be an open, active sense of "listening" to make space for something other than the constant petty distracting chatter of our daily lives.
Oriana:
Yes, there must be that inner listening, the mental space for it, and the holy fool’s readiness to accept whatever surprising connections come up from the unconscious. What I find most destructive to creativity is having to take care of a gazillion of practical concerns. And then yes, the daily chatter, which these days includes Facebook and the overwhelming craziness of the news. We must remember that silence is holy.
Hence the wisdom of those who establish a creative routine and make it a priority. For me, that includes “gazing at the world.” Larry Levis noted that his students wrote obsessively only about themselves, so he required that they go somewhere and describe what’s out there. Nature imagery is especially conducive to drawing the unexpected out of our minds. The Chinese poets are great teachers here.
Odilon Redon: Cloud Flowers, 1903*
ADVICE ON WRITING FROM SAUL BELLOW
~ “As a young man Rilke made a pilgrimage to Russia to see Tolstoy. As I have heard the story, he followed the impatient old man around filling his ears with his problems about writing. Tolstoy couldn’t bear it. He had exchanged art for religion and all this seemed very trifling to him. “Vous voulez écrire?? he said. “Eh bien, écrivez donc! Écrivez!” [You want to write? Oh well, then write! Write!] What else is there to say? Do it if you must and don’t fuss so about it.
Nevertheless there are certain distractions. ~ Saul Bellow, in “Distractions of a Fiction Writer”
~ I wonder whether there will ever be enough tranquillity under modern circumstances to allow our contemporary Wordsworth to recollect anything. I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. (The Paris Review)
~ The essence of our real condition, the complexity, the confusion, the pain of it, is shown to us in glimpses, in what Proust and Tolstoy thought of as “true impressions.” . . . The value of literature lies in these intermittent “true impressions.” . . . No one who has spent years in the writing of novels can be unaware of this. The novel can’t be compared to the epic or to the monuments of poetic drama. But it is the best we can do just now. It is a sort of latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter. A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. –from Bellow’s Nobel Lecture, 1976” ~
https://lithub.com/the-best-argument-is-a-good-book-writing-advice-from-saul-bellow/?fbclid=IwAR18dSlZ3IYrvXza7N5R21TOfGXYO72VOEqm1HIX9PPfZ5QNsW4WO06b_qg
*
"Have you ever said Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you have said Yes too to all woe. All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored." ~ Nietzsche
Bacchus and Ariadne by Guido Reni, 1619-1620, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Ariadne certainly knows about woe at this point, but her eye-roll may be Reni’s little joke.*
FREUD: HAPPINESS COMES FROM CONTRAST; GOETHE: “NOTHING IS HARDER TO BEAR THAN A SUCCESSION OF FAIR DAYS”
“One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation’. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is by its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things. Goethe indeed warns us that ‘nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.’ But this may be an exaggeration.” ~ Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Come to think of it, Goethe lived for a while in Italy. But nothing like Southern California if you want to discover how much you love clouds and rain. By the way, Freud really makes an excellent point about happiness. The most intense kind is based on contrast. Fortunately there is also contentment (“mild contentment” is fine with me) and a sense of well-being.
Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley*
WAS DAVID HUME FAMILIAR WITH BUDDHISM?
~ “In 1734, in Scotland, a 23-year-old was falling apart.
As a teenager, he’d thought he had glimpsed a new way of thinking and living, and ever since, he’d been trying to work it out and convey it to others in a great book. The effort was literally driving him mad. His heart raced and his stomach churned. He couldn’t concentrate. Most of all, he just couldn’t get himself to write his book. His doctors diagnosed vapors, weak spirits, and “the Disease of the Learned.” Today, with different terminology but no more insight, we would say he was suffering from anxiety and depression. The doctors told him not to read so much and prescribed antihysteric pills, horseback riding, and claret—the Prozac, yoga, and meditation of their day.
The young man’s name was David Hume. Somehow, during the next three years, he managed not only to recover but also, remarkably, to write his book. Even more remarkably, it turned out to be one of the greatest books in the history of philosophy: A Treatise of Human Nature.
In his Treatise, Hume rejected the traditional religious and philosophical accounts of human nature. Instead, he took Newton as a model and announced a new science of the mind, based on observation and experiment. That new science led him to radical new conclusions. He argued that there was no soul, no coherent self, no “I.” “When I enter most intimately into what I call myself,” he wrote in the Treatise, “I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.”
Hume had always been one of my heroes. I had known and loved his work since I was an undergraduate. In my own scientific papers I’d argued, like Hume, that the coherent self is an illusion. My research had convinced me that our selves are something we construct, not something we discover. I had found that when we are children, we don’t connect the “I” of the present to the “I” of the past and the future. We learn to be who we are.
But here’s Hume’s really great idea: Ultimately, the metaphysical foundations don’t matter. Experience is enough all by itself. What do you lose when you give up God or “reality” or even “I”? The moon is still just as bright; you can still predict that a falling glass will break, and you can still act to catch it; you can still feel compassion for the suffering of others. Science and work and morality remain intact. Go back to your backgammon game after your skeptical crisis, Hume wrote, and it will be exactly the same game.
In fact, if you let yourself think this way, your life might actually get better. Give up the prospect of life after death, and you will finally really appreciate life before it. Give up metaphysics, and you can concentrate on physics. Give up the idea of your precious, unique, irreplaceable self, and you might actually be more sympathetic to other people.
How did Hume come up with these ideas, so profoundly at odds with the Western philosophy and religion of his day? What turned the neurotic Presbyterian teenager into the great founder of the European Enlightenment?
In my shabby room, as I read Buddhist philosophy, I began to notice something that others had noticed before me. Some of the ideas in Buddhist philosophy sounded a lot like what I had read in Hume’s Treatise. But this was crazy. Surely in the 1730s, few people in Europe knew about Buddhist philosophy.
Still, as I read, I kept finding parallels. The Buddha doubted the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God. In his doctrine of “emptiness,” he suggested that we have no real evidence for the existence of the outside world. He said that our sense of self is an illusion, too. The Buddhist sage Nagasena elaborated on this idea. The self, he said, is like a chariot. A chariot has no transcendent essence; it’s just a collection of wheels and frame and handle. Similarly, the self has no transcendent essence; it’s just a collection of perceptions and emotions.
I discovered that at least one person in Europe in the 1730s not only knew about Buddhism but had studied Buddhist philosophy for years. His name was Ippolito Desideri, and he had been a Jesuit missionary in Tibet.
In 1728, just before Hume began the Treatise, Desideri finished his book, the most complete and accurate European account of Buddhist philosophy to be written until the 20th century. The catch was that it wasn’t published. No Catholic missionary could publish anything without the approval of the Vatican—and officials there had declared that Desideri’s book could not be printed. The manuscript disappeared into the Church’s archives.
Desideri sailed from Rome to India in 1712. In 1714 he began walking from Delhi across the Himalayas to Lhasa—a trek that lasted 18 months. He slept on the ground, in the snow, and struggled with snow blindness and frostbite. At one point he made his way over a rushing river by clinging precariously to a bridge made of two vine ropes. To get through the Ladakh desert, he joined the caravan of a Tartar princess and argued about theology with her each night in her tent.
In his book, Desideri describes Tibetan Buddhism in great and accurate detail, especially in one volume titled “Of the False and Peculiar Religion Observed in Tibet.” He explains emptiness, karma, reincarnation, and meditation, and he talks about the Buddhist denial of the self.
Desideri overcame Himalayan blizzards, mountain torrents, and war. But bureaucratic infighting got him in the end. Rival missionaries, the Capuchins, were struggling bitterly with the Jesuits over evangelical turf, and they claimed Tibet for themselves. Michelangelo Tamburini, the head of the Jesuits, ordered Desideri to return to Europe immediately, until the territory dispute was settled. The letter took two years to reach Tibet, but once it arrived, in 1721, Desideri had no choice. He had to leave.
Almost at the end of Desideri’s book, I came across a sentence that brought me up short. “I passed through La Flèche,” he wrote, “and on September the fourth arrived in the city of Le Mans.”
La Flèche? Where Hume had lived? I let out an astonished cry. The librarians, accustomed to Rare Book Room epiphanies, smiled instead of shushing me.
“On the 31st (August) around noon,” Desideri wrote, “I arrived at our Royal College at La Flèche. There I received the particular attention of the rector, the procurator, Père Tolu and several other of the reverend fathers. On the 4th I left La Flèche.”
But Desideri visited in 1727. David Hume arrived at La Flèche eight years later, in 1735. Could anyone there have told Hume about Desideri?
In 1723, after his extraordinarily eventful and exotic career, [one of the Jesuit missionaries], Charles Dolu retired to peaceful La Flèche for the rest of his long life. He was 80 when Hume arrived, the last surviving member of the embassies, and a relic of the great age of Jesuit science.
And I discovered something else. Hume had said that Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary was an important influence on the Treatise—particularly the entry on Spinoza. So I looked up that entry in the dictionary, which is a brilliant, encyclopedic, 6 million–word mess of footnotes, footnotes to footnotes, references, and cross-references. One of the footnotes in the Spinoza entry was about “oriental philosophers” who, like Spinoza, denied the existence of God and argued for “emptiness.” And it cross-referenced another entry about the monks of Siam, as described by the Jesuit ambassadors. Hume must have been reading about Buddhism, and Dolu’s journey, in the very building where Dolu lived.
I’d learned that Hume could indeed have known about Buddhist philosophy. In fact, he had written the Treatise in one of the few places in Europe where that knowledge was available. Dolu himself had had firsthand experience of Siamese Buddhism, and had talked at some length with Desideri, who knew about Tibetan Buddhism. It’s even possible that the Jesuits at the Royal College had a copy of Desideri’s manuscript.
Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure what Hume learned at the Royal College, or whether any of it influenced the Treatise. Philosophers like Descartes, Malebranche, and Bayle had already put Hume on the skeptical path. But simply hearing about the Buddhist argument against the self could have nudged him further in that direction. Buddhist ideas might have percolated in his mind and influenced his thoughts, even if he didn’t track their source.
But I learned that they were all much more complicated, unpredictable, and fluid than they appeared at first, even to themselves. Both Hume and the Buddha would have nodded sagely at that thought. Although Dolu and Desideri went to Siam and Tibet to bring the wisdom of Europe to the Buddhists, they also brought back the wisdom of the Buddhists to Europe. Siam and Tibet changed them more than they changed Siam and Tibet. And his two years at La Flèche undoubtedly changed David Hume.” ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-an-18th-century-philosopher-helped-solve-my-midlife-crisis
Oriana:
I left out a paragraph that in retrospect I find important:
~ “It’s easy to think of the Enlightenment as the exclusive invention of a few iconoclastic European philosophers. But in a broader sense, the spirit of the Enlightenment, the spirit that both Hume and the Buddha articulated, pervades the story I’ve been telling. The drive to convert and conquer the “false and peculiar” in the name of some metaphysical absolute was certainly there, in the West and in the East. It still is. But the characters in this story were even more strongly driven by the simple desire to know, and the simple thirst for experience. They wanted to know what had happened before and what would happen next, what was on the other shore of the ocean, the other side of the mountain, the other face of the religious or philosophical—or even sexual—divide.” ~
Mary:
On Hume, the Buddha, and the self, and in the spirit of less metaphysics and more physics...perhaps we are too stuck on seeing ourselves as constant particles, when we are far more like waves that sometimes act as particles, and can't be precisely fixed without reduction and falsification.
(Just a bit of April foolery with these ideas!)
Oriana:
Oh, but this is wonderful! I love the idea that we are waves rather than particles! And I think David Hume would love it too. Bundles of constantly shifting perceptions — this sounds like a quantum perspective.
*
“Well," Brahma said, ”even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred." ~ The Mahabharata
Teaching can certainly seem like that . .
WHEN PARENTS CONTROL THEIR ANGER, THEY ARE TEACHING CHILDREN TO CONTROL THEIRS
~ “Across the board, all the moms mention one golden rule: Don't shout or yell at small children.
Traditional Inuit parenting is incredibly nurturing and tender. If you took all the parenting styles around the world and ranked them by their gentleness, the Inuit approach would likely rank near the top. (They even have a special kiss for babies, where you put your nose against the cheek and sniff the skin.)
The culture views scolding — or even speaking to children in an angry voice — as inappropriate, says Lisa Ipeelie, a radio producer and mom who grew up with 12 siblings. "When they're little, it doesn't help to raise your voice," she says. "It will just make your own heart rate go up.”
Even if the child hits you or bites you, there's no raising your voice?
"No," Ipeelie says with a giggle that seems to emphasize how silly my question is. "With little kids, you often think they're pushing your buttons, but that's not what's going on. They're upset about something, and you have to figure out what it is.”
Traditionally, the Inuit saw yelling at a small child as demeaning. It's as if the adult is having a tantrum; it's basically stooping to the level of the child, the anthropologist Jean Briggs documented.
"Shouting, 'Think about what you just did. Go to your room!' " Jaw says. "I disagree with that. That's not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away."
And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. "When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like 'I'm starting to get angry,' we're training the child to yell," says Markham. "We're training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems."
In contrast, parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same, Markham says. "Kids learn emotional regulation from us."
I asked Markham if the Inuit's no-yelling policy might be their first secret of raising cool-headed kids. "Absolutely," she says.
TEACH THROUGH STORIES
"Kids learn well through narrative and explanations," says psychologist Deena Weisberg at Villanova University, who studies how small children interpret fiction. "We learn best through things that are interesting to us. And stories, by their nature, can have lots of things in them that are much more interesting in a way that bare statements don't."
Stories with a dash of danger pull in kids like magnets, Weisberg says. And they turn a tension-ridden activity like disciplining into a playful interaction that's — dare, I say it — fun.
"Don't discount the playfulness of storytelling," Weisberg says. "With stories, kids get to see stuff happen that doesn't really happen in real life. Kids think that's fun. Adults think it's fun, too.”
What Briggs documented is a central component to raising cool-headed kids.
When a child in the camp acted in anger — hit someone or had a tantrum — there was no punishment. Instead, the parents waited for the child to calm down and then, in a peaceful moment, did something that Shakespeare would understand all too well: They put on a drama.
"The idea is to give the child experiences that will lead the child to develop rational thinking," Briggs told the CBC in 2011.
In a nutshell, the parent would act out what happened when the child misbehaved, including the real-life consequences of that behavior.
The parent always had a playful, fun tone. And typically the performance starts with a question, tempting the child to misbehave.
For example, if the child is hitting others, the mom may start a drama by asking: "Why don't you hit me?”
Then the child has to think: "What should I do?" If the child takes the bait and hits the mom, she doesn't scold or yell but instead acts out the consequences. "Ow, that hurts!" she might exclaim.
The mom continues to emphasize the consequences by asking a follow-up question. For example: "Don't you like me?" or "Are you a baby?" She is getting across the idea that hitting hurts people's feelings, and "big girls" wouldn't hit. But, again, all questions are asked with a hint of playfulness.
The parent repeats the drama from time to time until the child stops hitting the mom during the dramas and the misbehavior ends.
Ishulutak says these dramas teach children not to be provoked easily. "They teach you to be strong emotionally," she says, "to not take everything so seriously or to be scared of teasing."
Psychologist Peggy Miller, at the University of Illinois, agrees: "When you're little, you learn that people will provoke you, and these dramas teach you to think and maintain some equilibrium."
In other words, the dramas offer kids a chance to practice controlling their anger, Miller says, during times when they're not actually angry.
This practice is likely critical for children learning to control their anger. Because here's the thing about anger: Once someone is already angry, it is not easy for that person to squelch it — even for adults.
But if you practice having a different response or a different emotion at times when you're not angry, you'll have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments.
Just be sure you do two things when you replay the misbehavior, she says. First, keep the child involved by asking many questions. For example, if the child has a hitting problem, you might stop midway through the puppet show and ask,"Bobby wants to hit right now. Should he?"
Second, be sure to keep it fun. Many parents overlook play as a tool for discipline, Markham says. But fantasy play offers oodles of opportunities to teach children proper behavior.
"Play is their work," Markham says. "That's how they learn about the world and about their experiences.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3qHKCYaJhWM8gU7OSbfRBRpwpd1EAB4wHK6V_xqaIxJcSScjlwLFqoIks
from another source:
~ “Households with regular shouting incidents tend to have children with lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression. A 2014 study in The Journal of Child Development demonstrated that yelling produces results similar to physical punishment in children: increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression along with an increase in behavioral problems.
It doesn’t make you look authoritative. It makes you look out of control to your kids. It makes you look weak. And you’re yelling, let’s be honest, because you are weak. Yelling, even more than spanking, is the response of a person who doesn’t know what else to do.
But most parents — myself included — find it hard to imagine how to get through the day without yelling. The new research on yelling presents parents with twin problems: What do I do instead? And how do I stop?
Yelling to stop your kids from running into traffic is not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about yelling as a form of correction. Yelling for correction is ineffective as a tool and merely imprints the habit of yelling onto the children. We yell at our kids over the same stuff every day, and we yell at them some more because the original yelling doesn’t work. Put your clothes away. Come down for dinner. Don’t ride the dog. Stop hitting your brother.
In the 1960s, 94 percent of parents used physical punishment. A poll in 2010 found the number had declined to 22 percent. There are probably many reasons, including the influence of a number of childhood development educators. But surely one reason has to be that the reason to spank your kids evaporates if there’s a more effective way to change their behavior that doesn’t involve violence. Why spank if it doesn’t work? The same applies to yelling: Why are you yelling? It isn’t for the kids’ sake.
Ultimately, techniques of discipline have to be about effectiveness, about getting through the day while trying to get your kids to do what you want and not do what you don’t want. Praise works. Punishment doesn’t.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/well/family/why-you-should-stop-yelling-at-your-kids.html
Reader’s comment:
“So my dog trainer says not to yell at the dog because it shows that I am not the Alpha because I am out of control. He suggests (and it works) long hard stares, calm commands with a voice of expectation. Letting the dog know I am the alpha through other methods and expectations and to give lots of praise when she meets those expectations. This commands respect from the dog. When she does wrong, be bold (but not yell, don't hit, be in control). As he put it, the way you would raise your child. hmm...food for thought here.”
Another reader:
Kazdin says we punish because it serves our social need for "justice" but really has little effect on achieving behavior change. In fact, Skinner said, "never punish." What Kazdin describes instead is pure Skinnerian behavior shaping, achieving the behavior you want from your child through rewarding of successive approximation of the desired behavior, followed by fading out the rewards once the behavior is established. It works. (It can even work on spouses).
Yelling now and then is human and at best an occurrence only by accident, followed by an apology for losing one's temper. It should not be a strategy, however, for raising kids — or for having relationships with other adults.”
*
I’ve seen many dogs that have known nothing but love. Children? Maybe one. “As someone who was brought up in the 50s and 60s in a household where yelling, hitting, and spanking were common, virtually daily occurrences for myself and/or my siblings, I can attest to the lifelong damage this environment created for the children who grew up in it. From middle age, I refused to participate when my mother still seemed to feel the need to periodically yell at me, like she could not let one of my rare and short visits end without a yelling episode. I feel sad for my mother and my childhood family that could not establish a loving environment, and I fervently hope that today's families find better ways of being, as discussed by the author and many commenters of this piece.”
Perhaps the best comment:
“Better to ask, how do I get through the day without yelling at my friends? Co-workers? Boss? Turns out, the only people we yell at are our kids. Why? One, because we can get away with it, and two because we think our job is to control our kids. We can't get away with it with adults, and neither can we control adults. So we don't yell at them. Until we treat our children with as much respect as we do a friend, client, co-worker or boss, there will be no improvement in the emotional environment our children experience. Children are eager to please, eager to cooperate, eager to explore and learn, eager to do pretty much everything that turns them into wonderful adults. Why must we mess with that and try to program behaviors that come naturally? Read Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting for a good guide.”
*
Mary:
On the effects of unregulated anger in a child's life, I can corroborate all from my own experience. My siblings and I grew up with the constant threat of wild, explosive, violent anger erupting, sometimes when we misbehaved, but sometimes seemingly without cause, at any time. It was loud and physical, furniture and small bodies both targets unable to escape. To this day loud angry words can shake me to the core, to the point where I can’t think coherently.
My own anger becomes debilitating, makes me tremble and feel not strong, but ready to collapse. And yes, there is always the feeling of unworthiness and guilt, that you must be essentially bad and deserving of punishment. It may take most of a lifetime to work yourself free, and I'm sure many never do.
With so many examples of negative parenting in the world, the Inuit seem eminently wise and loving in their methods, and I have no doubt those children grow up well and strong.
Oriana:
My parents were reasonably nurturing, though I definitely could have used more praise to offset the damage done by the harshness of others — not just the church constantly drumming into you that you were a wretched sinner deserving of eternal punishment and yes, probably heading for it, but also teachers and other adults thinking it was perfectly OK to yell at children, to call them names and shame and demean them in all kinds of ways. And children of course imitate adults, and use physical aggressiveness as well.
“Children, like fish, should be seen but not heard” was a saying I heard constantly. And the really old, the grandparent generation, were firm believers in physical punishment, and urged parents not to hesitate to use the belt. Being a girl helped — but I knew boys who were subjected to downright cruelty.
And the crazy concern that a child must not become “spoiled” through too much affection. Harshness was seen as prevention — because, above all, a child must not spoiled! The idea that the more love a child receives, the better would be considered a very unsettling heresy.
And, as Mary points out when she speaks of feeling guilty and unworthy, one dreadful consequence of harsh child upbringing is that you internalize the harshness. You don’t know how to be gentle and loving to yourself — how to appreciate and respect yourself, much less love yourself. Here the books by Louise Hay were of great help to me. “Immediately stop attacking and criticizing yourself” was a life-changing piece of advice.
On my trips back to Poland, I was glad to see that the old abusiveness (never acknowledged as such — it was regarded as normal and perfectly fine) wasn’t in evidence. I wonder if perhaps the spread of psychological advice played a part here. Another factor is probably the rise in education. The educated are more likely to talk to the children and explain rules to them rather then yell and hit.
What frightened me when I was growing up was that an any time I could be accused of breaking some rule that I didn’t even know existed — the adults (often under heavy stress, it must be admitted) did not bother to take the time to explain the rules. A child was such an inferior being compared to the mighty adult. I learned the word “hierarchical” at some point in my teens, but understood it more deeply only later, especially after experiencing the greater egalitarianism in America, the much greater respect with which people were treated here, including the way teachers spoke to children.
I think I’ve done a lot of recovery work — understanding the power of circumstances has helped me enormously. “It was not my fault — it was the circumstances” proved a very effective way to make peace with my past. But if the stress is heavy enough, I revert to being that frightened four-year-old thrust who assumes it must be my fault. That feeling of unworthiness and irrational guilt — I know it all too well. It’s wonderful that the world is moving toward greater kindness, gentleness, compassion.
BIGGEST WASTES OF TIME WE REGRET AS WE GET OLDER
~ “Not asking for help.
“You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don't get it because you failed to ask.”
As dumb as you might feel asking questions, it's the fastest way to get an answer.
Here's another way to look at it: if you're not asking for help, you're probably not challenging yourself enough. If you have all the answers, you're not learning new skills, trying new things or moving forward and out of your comfort zone. There are a handful of reasons we don't ask for help, but it's usually because we're too proud or scared, and that's a huge waste of time, because it keeps you from moving forward.
Trying to Make Bad Relationships Work
Relationships require maintenance, but there's a difference between maintaining a good relationship and trying to force a bad one that doesn't make much sense to begin with.
There's a lot of emotion in romance and friendships, so sometimes it's hard to tell when you should keep trying or you should just call it quits. Like a lot of people, I made some common bad decisions that wasted both my time and the time of the person I was with.
At the same time, it's hard to say all bad relationships are a total waste of time, because you learn a lot about yourself from them. That's a valid silver lining, but still, the sooner you learn those lessons, the better.
Similarly, not dealing with the emotional impact of a breakup is also a big waste of time. When a relationship ends, we usually go through the typical stages of grief associated with loss. It's easy to get comfortable with denial and convince ourselves we don't really care and we're fine. In reality, ignoring the pain only prolongs it. Our work suffers; the rest of our relationships suffer.
Dwelling on Your Mistakes and Shortcomings
Learning from your mistakes is one thing. Dwelling on them wastes your time, diminishes your confidence, and keeps you from getting on with your life.
Dwelling also makes you more apt to repeat your mistakes. In a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, researchers asked subjects to spend money during an imaginary trip to the mall. Before "shopping", some subjects were asked to recall a past financial mistake. They found those subjects were more likely to incur debt.
When you think about your own experiences, it probably makes sense. Dwelling on the past makes you feel like a failure. When I feel like a failure, it's easy to tell myself there's no point in trying, because I already suck. (Hence, getting further into debt when you already feel like an overspender.)
Instead of dwelling on the past, Haws said, her research into behavior suggests that setting goals for the future can positively change present behavior. In short, if we want to have better self-control, "Look forward," Haws says. "Don't look back.”
Worrying Too Much About Other People
It's easy to waste time worrying about other people, too. Don't get me wrong — your friends and loved ones mean a lot to you, and you want to spend time nurturing them. But we also spend a lot of time fretting over problems that don't matter in the long run.
Once you understand why you feel jealous or envious, you can take action to take care of the problem, whether that means processing the emotions or coming up with goals for yourself. Either way, that's a lot more productive.
Most of us are probably guilty of all of these at some point, and really, they're human nature. Regret is another big waste of time, so there's no point in beating yourself up over these. The sooner you learn from them, though, the sooner you can free up your time and energy to live the life you want.” ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-biggest-wastes-of-time-we-regret-when-we-get-older?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oriana:
This reminds me of Milosz’s motto that helped him end depression: “Escape forward.” Escape into work, which builds the future.
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HUMANIZING THE WORLD: LET’S GIVE MORE CREDIT TO WRITERS AND ARTISTS — AND TO WOMEN
The journey out of the Catholic cult of suffering and its medieval odors was pretty inevitable for me, given that I was well-read and had the riches of literature, the arts, science (I loved paleontology). The great novels presented a world that was nothing like the biblical world — full of “unclean spirits,” alien, cruel, repugnant.
But already Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, presented a rich world of their own, and even if there was a friar, he was a minor character. The lovers, sunk in each other, both anguished and ecstatic, had no need of religion.
The novels, the plays, Beethoven’s symphonies — it was already a god-free world that had a different kind of transcendence, e.g. the beauty of language, the joy of the senses, of simply existing.
True, some people who love classical music say that this is the closest we can get to the divine. But make no mistake: those who deeply love music have no need for religion.
Come to think of it, the secular culture started already with the troubadours. Even Dante was strongly affected by it and set up Beatrice as his female savior.
There have of course been religious poets, always tending to heresy, I think (Milosz certainly admitted to gnosticism), but overall the arts were at least as corrosive as science. Not enough credit is given to the arts. Or to women for having been beautiful and tender enough to inspire love, the human love that was humanizing our world.
Raphael: Lady with a Unicorn (apparently painted in later by one of Raphael’s assistants)*
SWEDENBORG: CHRIST IS THE ONLY GOD; GOD IS A MAN
“God is a man. That is why the Bible has that passionate tone not found in other religions dominated by metaphysics. God does not practice metaphysics.” ~ Oscar Milosz, quoted by Czeslaw Milosz in “The Land of Ulro”
For the theologian Swedenborg, the prophecy contain in the Apocalypse had come to pass in his own time. Of the Christian Church all that was left was “the abomination of desolation.” The decline of religion — the mouthing of words in which the hearts no longer believed — was, in his opinion, facilitated by two doctrines.
The first, the doctrine of the Trinity, adopted by the Council of Nicaea in 325 as a weapon against the heresy of Arius, constituted an enigma resolved only by the mind’s imposition of three gods instead of one. Christianity in effect became polytheistic, the consequences of which would not be apparent until centuries later.
Though a rationalist, Swedenborg refused to concede the Arian argument that Christ was a man only. On the contrary, there was no other God but the God-man, Creator of heaven and earth, who was born of a virgin, died, and was resurrected. Christ, in other words, was not “consubstantialis” with the Father but was himself the Father; hence that “Divine Human” signifying the Creator of the Universe. This was the great secret revealed to Swedenborg: our heavenly Father is a man. Heaven has a human shape.
The second fatal doctrine was the act of Redemption by which Christ obtained God’s forgiveness for the sins of mankind. From Mary, Christ received a human, that is, sinful nature, and His life was a succession of temptations overcome, thanks to which human nature became divinized.
Here Swedenborg was challenging the Catholics, for whom Christ’s human nature was without sin, and the Lutherans, who professed that man was saved by faith alone, that salvation was made possible through Christ’s bloody atonement.
The fallacy of both doctrines lay in the way in which they interfered with a decidedly anthropomorphic vision of Godmanhood (the God-man and human nature divinized).
. . . No one is condemned by God to Hell. Each dwells in the company and setting of his choice, according to his will’s intention. The damned, when surrounded by the saved, suffer revulsion and anguish.
Swedenborg posited the year 1757 as the year of the Last Judgment, assigning a strictly allegorical meaning to the Apocalypse. The Judgment took place in the other world; neither Earth nor mankind would come to an end, because the higher world could exist without mankind as little as mankind could exist without the higher world. The Second Advent had also come to pass, not literally but as the truth incarnated in Swedenborg’s writings.
Swedenborg thus transposed the biblical story of Creation and “the final things” to a purely spiritual plane. His theology admits neither to the resurrection of the bodies, with the exception of Christ, nor to the other extreme, that of [reincarnation].
Moreover , if the Last Judgment meant that in the “spirit world” there was to be a strict distinction — hitherto increasingly effaced — between salvation and damnation, then we should have no quarrel with the year 1757. For it coincides with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, along with its concomitant, that of spiritual disinheritance.
A God responsible for an evil world was either not good or not omnipotent. The Gnostics chose the good God, who was now transformed into the Other God, the Unknown God, while the Jehovah of the old Testament received the title of the lower demiurge. Swedenborg’s Christ is God the Father-Man incarnate.
A Swedenborgian concept that had great appeal to the Romantics was the arcanum of marriage, which referred as well to the marriage of spirits since, in Swedenborg’s heaven, angels were of both sexes. [If a couple truly loved each other, they would remain married in the spirit world; otherwise, each would be given a new suitable partner.]” ~ Milosz, The Land of Ulro
from Wikipedia:
~ “According to Swedenborg, angels in heaven do not have an ethereal or ephemeral existence but enjoy an active life of service to others. They sleep and wake, love, breathe, eat, talk, read, work, play, and worship. They live a genuine life in a real spiritual body and world.
An angel’s whole environment – clothes, houses, towns, plants, etc. – are what Swedenborg terms correspondences. In other words, their environment spiritually reflects, and thus "corresponds" to, the mental state of the angel and changes as the angel's state changes.
Swedenborg states that every angel or devil began life as an inhabitant of the human race.
Children who die go directly to heaven, where they are raised by angel mothers.
Angels are men and women in every detail just as they were here on earth, only they are spiritual and thus more perfect.
Swedenborg also says that Christian marriage love of one man and one woman is the highest of all loves, the source of the greatest bliss. “For in themselves Christian marriages are so holy that there is nothing more holy. They are the seminaries of the human race, and the human race is the seminary of the heavens.”
The ancients believed in a fountain of perpetual youth. In heaven their dream is realized, for those who leave this world old, decrepit, diseased in body or deformed, renew their youth, and maintain their lives in the full vigor of early manhood and womanhood.
So who sends people to Heaven or Hell? Nobody but themselves. There is no inquiry as to their faith or former church affiliations, or whether they were baptized, or even what kind of life they lived on Earth. They migrate toward a heavenly or hellish state because they are drawn to its way of life, and for no other reason.” ~
Oriana:
One of my favorite heretics, Swedenborg influenced Blake, the Romantics, and Dostoyevski ("Maybe hell is a grimy Russian country bathhouse, with dried-up spiders in the corners")
I found a Swedenborgian church in Cambridge, MA — maybe the more educated crowd is still drawn to his more man-friendly Christ-centered ideas. I came across Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, and I loved the theory of correspondence, e.g. beautiful minds get to live in beautiful "heavenly mansions" while minds filled with malice and other negativity live in hideous, filthy slums, where they always fight with their neighbors. This so amazingly renders wealth vs poverty at least in appearance -- greed doesn't seem to be a factor, only dying in a beautiful state of mind (if only he'd pushed on to the extra-moral causes of poverty, but it was much too early for that rather than "you get what you deserve.") Angels having sex isn't bad either. But I just browsed. He definitely wasn't a vivid writer, though he was attempting to create something similar to Dante's vision.
I also find the quotation by Oscar Milosz to be a keen observation — that the bible gets its passionate tone from the fact that god is a man. Yes, human, all too human. Not that Swedenborg cared for Yahweh's wrath and jealousy, so he made Christ the only god. But it's interesting that he assumed even Christ had to overcome human failings before becoming the "divine human." The idea that man should become divine is abundantly found in literature, starting with the Romantics.
All of this is made up, true — but so is great literature. And there is a certain compulsiveness once someone like Swedenborg or Yeats or Blake or Oscar Milosz starts creating a metaphysical system. The brain can really go on a trip until all the unreal details fall into place, e.g. here is how the angels have sex.
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THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF EARL GREY TEA
1. Good for Your Teeth
Tea contains very high levels of catechin, an antioxidant that fights oral infections. Fluoride is also a natural component of Earl Grey tea.
2. Digestion
Earl Grey tea has been known to improve digestion. It aids in the digestive process and helps relieve painful indigestion, colic and nausea. It is also used to treat intestinal problems such as worms. Because it helps the digestive process, it can also help to keep you regular.
3. Fights Anxiety and Depression
The bergamot in Earl Grey tea has been known to have a calming effect on people, as well as to boost a person’s mood. This is due to bergamot’s natural aromatherapy qualities. In this way Earl Grey is a good natural solution for people suffering from depression, stress and anxiety.
4. Energy
It may not have as much as a kick as coffee, but it does contain enough caffeine to give you a nice little afternoon boost without keeping you up all night.
5. Cancer Prevention
Earl Grey contains high quantities of antioxidants, which help our bodies to fight off free radicals that cause diseases such as cancer. Therefore, drinking the tasty beverage can give you a greater chance of not developing such diseases.
On a slightly less serious note, antioxidants also help your skin to stay healthy and looking young. Again, this is due to fighting free radicals that can damage your skin.
6. Weight Loss
Unsurprisingly, one of the most popular effects of Earl Grey tea is weight loss. This is primarily due to its citrus extract. It’s because of this that many people believe that citrus fruits in general can induce weight loss. It’s thought that calories are either broken down into food for your muscles or released through the natural metabolic process. So instead of cream or sugar, try putting lemon in your future cups of tea instead.
7. Prevention of Heart Disease
Good news everyone! Apparently, drinking three cups of Earl Grey tea daily may help lower your risk for heart disease. A study published in 2012 in Preventative Medicine found that people who drank three cups of black tea daily dramatically lowered their blood triglyceride levels and increased the ‘good cholesterol’ HDL after three months. The participants also had increased levels of antioxidants, which, as we now know, fight against free radicals that damage your cells.
Further research conducted by the University of Cantanzaro in Italy has also yielded positive results. A study of over two hundred patients with high levels of blood fats found that LDL (also know as ‘bad cholesterol) ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL) was reduced by 39 per cent after a month of taking Earl Grey extract. It also reduced blood sugars by 22 per cent and raised ‘good’ cholesterol by 41 per cent. The reduction in blood sugar also shows that Earl Grey may be highly beneficial for those suffering with diabetes.
9. Cold Relief
The bergamot found within Earl Grey is said to improve the immune system as well as cure fevers. As such, it’s considered to be a natural cold remedy.
10. It Keeps You Hydrated
And no, not just because you take it with water.
Unlike the dehydrating properties of coffee, tea helps you stay hydrated and maintains the body’s fluid balance because of its high potassium content.
8. Stress Relief
Unlike the effects of coffee, Earl Grey tea relaxes and soothes the body almost instantly. It also has a stress relief effect whilst simultaneously providing the same clarity and focus as coffee. This makes it the perfect alternative for those who don’t want to get overly wired from coffee.
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-surprising-benefits-earl-grey-tea-you-never-knew.html
WHAT IS BERGAMOT?
Anyone who is familiar with Earl Grey tea knows the fragrant, citrusy scent and distinct flavor of bergamot. But what the heck is it? Where does it come from?
Bergamot is a fragrant citrus fruit from the tropical, Citrus bergamia plant. Common throughout the Mediterranean, the fruit is the size of an orange, yet similar in color to a lime, or even yellowish, depending on the ripeness.
Unlike other citrus fruits, bergamot has a distinctive, heady fragrance and flavor. It is highly aromatic, and the essential oils are extracted from the rind. The fragrant oil is used to make perfumes, colognes, scented soaps, and of course, it gives Earl Grey tea its signature flavor and aroma.
Citrus bergamot lowers blood sugar levels, promotes good cholesterol, and reduces fatty deposits in the liver.
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/what-is-bergamot-30519
Funny, for many years I thought that bergamot was a kind of pear. It’s an orange! And Earl Gray happens to be my favorite tea.
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ending on beauty:
“When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.”
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book III, Chapter 3
and vice versa, I want to add: we may begin a hymn, and suddenly slip into an abyss.
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