Posted on | January 24, 2015 | No Comments
What am I feeling when cancer and death are all around me?
Within the last SEVEN MONTHS four family members and one long time friend have died, another is given just a few more months to live, and yet another is recovering from lung cancer surgery. Yes, all in the last SEVEN MONTHS.
All of them are women; all suffering from cancer – some bone, lung, and breast cancer though not one of them smoked or worked in a hazardous environment. One killed herself because she did not have the emotional or financial resources when cancer returned the third time. The other women lived or are living out their life’s balance in pain, exhaustion, and determination.
Friends and colleagues ask how we are doing. Are we managing? Has this touched us? One colleague said, “at least it’s not you”. Not comforting at all those rationalists.
It’s hard to say how this touches my immediate family. My recently deceased aunts took my brother and I in when my teenaged parent’s marriage failed. One cousin died in June and we didn’t hear about it for months, and another person visited her friends (including us) without telling us it was her final tour.
Google Images, 2015
Shocked and numb is how we feel. Yet we are not the ones dying after all and so we reserve sympathy for the real sufferers. It’s hard to say I’ve had a bad day when someone you love is making her goodbye calls or your last cheer-up card is returned with Mail Box Terminated stamped on the front.
I’m not asking for sympathy and certainly not asking for advice but what can I say when people ask how we are doing? What’s the truth? What words put it in perspective. The answer “fine’ is simply not appropriate.
I check in with the survivors. The children, some grown, or the usually stoic people who are so angry and hurt need someone to talk to if they want to talk at all. Meanwhile, we try to go on with our lives with invisible wounds on the inside.
Posted on | August 26, 2014 | No Comments
Assessing Your World View- The Sand Castle
This is a test.
Two small children sit back-to-back, building sandcastles on the beach. One builds a small sweet crumbly castle; the other builds a large well-supported castle. They do not look at each other’s work until they have both finished.
In your opinion, what does the child with the small crumbly castle think or feel first upon seeing the larger better-built castle?
Answers later.
Google Images, 2014
Posted on | August 21, 2014 | No Comments
Enlightenment and Addiction on the Internet: Neural Receptors Ramp Up
Google Images, 2014
We have fallen into a fast, raging stream of objects and events that might not otherwise touch our pre-connection besotted social-media lives. We never ask if these material objects or events should after all touch upon our existence but once acquainted, we become deeply and emotionally involved with them. More so, we demand to be in touch with every event. To be kept in ignorance means we are missing something valuable and compelling. This new object will turn out to be enormously significant, we are certain, so we drive ourselves to it rather than being drawn in.
The cerebral excitation is sustaining while the particular search lasts. This evocation creates an addiction to stimuli that our dopamine receptors conjure and trill. Once we are in full pursuit of the next app, the newest online sensation, or the greatest new gadget that performs amazing feats we never realized we were disadvantaged to live without, the neural receptors achieve a sense of bliss. We are being sated and soothed.
Technology has brought us so much information and a speedy access to a universe of subjects that is unparalleled. We feel enlightened and educated, proud of our achievements at absorbing factoids. Our questions are answered immediately and no one can seriously complain about the fast flow of knowledge to so many people. As with any other addiction however, have we raised the levels of neural activity so high that we are unable to achieve the same level of satiation without constantly manipulating the pods in our hands?
I watched a young man, hunched over and barely awake on the sofa, reach for his phone like someone much older grasping for his cigarettes while still prone in the rumpled morning bed. The patterns are distinctly familiar but the new rationalization is interesting. Addiction to handheld technology is illuminating and socially connective so it can’t be regarded as truly negative. I wonder about people spending hours on social connection websites. Have they lost the ability to self soothe in moments of boredom or anxiety?
How do we become mindful when the only control we can exercise over events and objects is to tune them out completely? How do we handle messages that are often created to be purposefully emotionally manipulative?
Shawn M. Nichols
Posted on | July 29, 2014 | No Comments
The Perversity of Education
Google Images, 2014
We extend our arms and minds out for greater understanding perhaps to quell our fears and anxiety. As we embrace first tribal belief, then science, we must come to the understanding that we can only know in a naïve limited human context. Some things will always be beyond our understanding. Standing firm on empirical beliefs is only slightly less limiting than believing in a certain identifiable creator.
A young YouTube personality who makes his name by reporting on other’s work confidently proclaimed, “according to the recent research, small children are not affected by sugar”. The response was overwhelming from parents who begged to differ. Those who rely on science and not shared collective experience shouted down these parents. In this heated exchange we can see that we have progressed slightly from a blind belief to an imperfectly constructed question and answer system. And the adherents are equally dogmatic and zealous.
Humans can only ask questions and build research in a purely human construct – and how could we do otherwise –so the answers will come back stilted and limited to the extent of human limitations. So much may be off our “radar “ How would we know to ask? How would we know where to look?
The current state of scientific inquiry reminds me of a naively confident teenager who knows a few things and extrapolates an answer to a newly acquired phenomenon or experience. It is still refreshing, empowering, though based on failed past research should be accorded the healthy skepticism it deserves.
As educated people we become more aware of what we don’t know rather than the accumulated information. This is a beneficial state of being as it means we are probably more open to objects and situations that don’t fit the preordained models.
Shawn Nichols
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