I'm still reading it.
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/01/10/childhood-resiliency-health-000610
Monday, January 29, 2018
Friday, September 22, 2017
Monday, September 11, 2017
Friday, June 16, 2017
Friday, April 14, 2017
An interesting article on sleep
It doesn't mention emotional health as a cause, which is too bad. The article describes how access to artificial light causes teens to stay up late, which causes them to get inadequate sleep. As a result, many schools are moving back their start times in an attempt to help their students with their sleep. The article states that this approach doesn't really work however, because the students just stay up later and mess with their biological clocks even more. Instead,
The reason is that it doesn't address emotional health. I believe teens stay up late because they are experiencing the full range of human emotions for the first time and have no skills to cope with them. This causes the teen to feel that issues in their life are unresolved. They stay up late in an attempt to resolve them. No amount of starting their day later or limiting their intake of artificial light will fix the issue if the real problem is emotional.
What teens need is an understanding of how to process their emotions more effectively. This, of course, is very difficult. If we wait until they are teens to start teaching them, it's a losing battle. That's why I believe that we should be teaching emotional health skills starting in Kindergarten. Kids that grow up knowing how to handle their emotions are kids that will have fewer problems in all areas as they get older.
“In all cases, cutting back on evening light will greatly amplify the benefits of a delay in school start times,” Philips said. “Any district considering a delay in school start times should therefore also be educating their students on the impacts of using artificial light at night.”I'd be so interested to see what would happen if a school district really went after this idea. Move the start time back a bit and then really work to educate the students and their families about decreasing their intake of artificial light in the evenings. My guess is that they would see some mild improvement, at least for a while. But over time, I feel confident that this approach would yield little in the way of results.
The reason is that it doesn't address emotional health. I believe teens stay up late because they are experiencing the full range of human emotions for the first time and have no skills to cope with them. This causes the teen to feel that issues in their life are unresolved. They stay up late in an attempt to resolve them. No amount of starting their day later or limiting their intake of artificial light will fix the issue if the real problem is emotional.
What teens need is an understanding of how to process their emotions more effectively. This, of course, is very difficult. If we wait until they are teens to start teaching them, it's a losing battle. That's why I believe that we should be teaching emotional health skills starting in Kindergarten. Kids that grow up knowing how to handle their emotions are kids that will have fewer problems in all areas as they get older.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
The death of emotions?
From an article about the death of the smart phone: "The idea of man/machine fusion is a terrifying one, with science fiction writers, technologists, and philosophers alike having very good cause to ask what even makes us human in the first place." How long until humanity decides that emotions aren't really an essential part of being human? There seems to be a lot of people living without them already. What if technology makes it possible to bypass our emotions and live entirely through our thoughts? That's a horrifying idea, especially because so many people would want to do it.
More than emotion is required when defining us as humans, but without emotion it would be hard to still call us human.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
Quote: Rumi
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
Friday, February 17, 2017
Peace in oneself, peace in the world
This article and video explain Thich Nhat Hanh's beliefs about how to best make change in the world. At this time, it is particularly important to understand these concepts.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Insufferableness
Something that sickens me is the callous disregard that many people in our culture have for each other. A good example of this is when white people think they know enough about race relations in our country to make a statement, but then immediately show that they really haven't thought much about it. This action tells the victims of racism that their suffering isn't really worth thinking much about.
Those of us who have thought a lot about it and have experienced it can see right through that weak stuff because we made the same mistakes, many years ago. Think about if you watch a kid do something. They make mistakes that you know they'll make ahead of time, because you made the same mistakes when you were a kid. It's all entirely predictable. It's the same way when people who haven't experienced race issues in a deep way try to make a statement about race. They make predictable mistakes that show they don't have much experience, but they're still willing to paint themselves as the experts, by making the statement in the first place. Imagine if while watching that kid, you realize that the kid is in a position of power over you and that the kid thinks he's smarter than you. It's insufferable.
That insufferableness (I'm sure that's a word) bothers me and I know it bothers many others as well. Unfortunately, it's everywhere, which is another reason why emotional health is so important: To help us survive the insufferableness.
Those of us who have thought a lot about it and have experienced it can see right through that weak stuff because we made the same mistakes, many years ago. Think about if you watch a kid do something. They make mistakes that you know they'll make ahead of time, because you made the same mistakes when you were a kid. It's all entirely predictable. It's the same way when people who haven't experienced race issues in a deep way try to make a statement about race. They make predictable mistakes that show they don't have much experience, but they're still willing to paint themselves as the experts, by making the statement in the first place. Imagine if while watching that kid, you realize that the kid is in a position of power over you and that the kid thinks he's smarter than you. It's insufferable.
That insufferableness (I'm sure that's a word) bothers me and I know it bothers many others as well. Unfortunately, it's everywhere, which is another reason why emotional health is so important: To help us survive the insufferableness.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Alienation
Do you ever go somewhere and suddenly realize that you aren't like the other people around you? That, on a fundamental level, you are different? I bet some of you do. I've seen enough of this life to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. But I wonder how many of you feel that way because of emotions.
I went somewhere last night where there were a bunch of people interacting. One of those people was what I call "pushed". Not physically shoved, but propelled forward by the intensity of their own repressed emotions. Have you noticed this phenomenon? It happens to everyone, but sometimes it's a bit more. And that was the case last night. It was clear that the "push" wasn't limited to that evening. This is an on-going problem for that person. And clearly, it's not my responsibility, so that's not my concern.
What did concern me, however, was the impact it had on me. It was clear that the other people were not aware of the push. My awareness made me an outsider. It was alienating. I definitely felt alone. I took steps to address the alienation, but they failed. The others weren't interested in connection. So, I'm left feeling isolated, still today.
I recently heard a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh where he says something to the effect of, "people are too concerned with connection". At first, this shocked me. I value connection highly. As he himself says, "we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." So, connection is important. He went on to talk about what I would call "hyper-connectedness", such as constant emailing, texting, getting Facebook updates, etc. That's different and doesn't really describe me, so I thought I just misunderstood. Now I'm not so sure.
What if my problem last night wasn't with the person's "push"? What if the problem was located in me? Maybe instead of wanting connection I should be connecting to myself. Maybe that bad feeling inside is caused by my actions, not others'. I have to admit that the idea makes me a little angry. I've felt pretty alone for most of my life. The idea that I might have caused that is upsetting. I guess there's only one way to find out. Meditation is a good way to connect to yourself. It's time for me to return to meditation as a regular aspect of my life to see if developing a stronger connection within will help mitigate these feelings of alienation.
I went somewhere last night where there were a bunch of people interacting. One of those people was what I call "pushed". Not physically shoved, but propelled forward by the intensity of their own repressed emotions. Have you noticed this phenomenon? It happens to everyone, but sometimes it's a bit more. And that was the case last night. It was clear that the "push" wasn't limited to that evening. This is an on-going problem for that person. And clearly, it's not my responsibility, so that's not my concern.
What did concern me, however, was the impact it had on me. It was clear that the other people were not aware of the push. My awareness made me an outsider. It was alienating. I definitely felt alone. I took steps to address the alienation, but they failed. The others weren't interested in connection. So, I'm left feeling isolated, still today.
I recently heard a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh where he says something to the effect of, "people are too concerned with connection". At first, this shocked me. I value connection highly. As he himself says, "we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." So, connection is important. He went on to talk about what I would call "hyper-connectedness", such as constant emailing, texting, getting Facebook updates, etc. That's different and doesn't really describe me, so I thought I just misunderstood. Now I'm not so sure.
What if my problem last night wasn't with the person's "push"? What if the problem was located in me? Maybe instead of wanting connection I should be connecting to myself. Maybe that bad feeling inside is caused by my actions, not others'. I have to admit that the idea makes me a little angry. I've felt pretty alone for most of my life. The idea that I might have caused that is upsetting. I guess there's only one way to find out. Meditation is a good way to connect to yourself. It's time for me to return to meditation as a regular aspect of my life to see if developing a stronger connection within will help mitigate these feelings of alienation.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Time to get yourself together
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.
This is truly upsetting. Where is the rest of the media right now? Every legitimate media source on the planet should be calling this out today. "Any negative polls are fake news"? Are you kidding me?
I hope your emotions are in a good place, because they're going to need to be pretty soon. Any person who would say the above quote is really confused. A President who would say that is dangerous. It won't be long now.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Probably the most important 12 minutes of your day today
This is a Ted talk on happiness and it's really excellent. I literally laughed and cried while watching it. Please, for your sake, watch it.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Where politics and emotions collide
Some of the best recent protest signs from the internet:
I also saw these on-line: "Twitler" and "Make racists afraid again", both of which I thought were fantastic.
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