Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sugar



When I have read too much about the current President and his reign of incompetence, malice, and terror, I comfort myself with animal pictures and videos.

My favorite video I have shared twice with my friends, and still find as soothing as a Xanax. It is a scene from a Japanese garden that has been created to match the scenes of water lilies painted by Monet. There is a real pond stocked with water lilies, framed by trees, and with green plants on the floor of the pond, all in the same colors used by Monet.

The pond is stocked with two large koi who swim majestically into and out of the picture. The first one is orange and white, with accents in black. It starts off alone, and is later joined by a smaller, midnight-blue fish. Finally, the blue fish swims serenely across the screen, as sure and self-contained as a cruise ship. Watching it lowers my blood pressure and gives me peace.

I also really enjoy pictures of baby animals. This morning I viewed one that included exotica such as an axolotl, a dumbo squid, baby fawns, white bats, and other small furry creatures whose names I can't recall. Some of the critters had a tiny horn sticking up above their mouths.

I'm a lifelong fan of miniature objects, like small houses and tiny carvings, but I'm even more drawn to small living beings. Since I'm not quite five feet tall, I'm immediately comfortable with short people. And baby animals just turn me into a warm, fuzzy puddle. I theorize that nature makes babies intensely cute to keep them from being eaten, until they grow into the defenses that teeth, claws, and hooves will provide when they grow up. Soft, small, cuddly or adorably weird, baby animals radiate beauty, harmlessness, and hope. And I love feasting my eyes and emotions on their loveliness, as an antidote to the ugly in the world.

A Review



Last Sunday in Kensington, Mother Nature produced a weather concert of great power and scope. The sunshine was pure, bright, and clean. The sprinkling rain was delicate and only slightly annoying. Fortunately, we were mostly indoors when the downpour began, darkening the skies and pounding all over the church building with a volume that was as impressive as it was well-timed. After gray skies replaced the downpour, I asked myself, "Sun, sprinkle, downpour, clouds. What's next, hail?"

Then I saw many of my fellow musicians looking out the windows, and I joined them. Imagine my surprise; the ground was covered in marble-sized hail! The "rain" had been so loud because it was mostly hail.

Brava, Mother Nature! This was a tour de force that nearly upstaged the recorder orchestra concert we had come to the church to present.

Teachable Moment



How would I go about learning a new skill? Using every possible modality, one after another. Except for hearing about it. That's my least effective input modality. Listening would be useful only if the audible version included something the others didn't, such as extra information, a different perspective, or humor.

I'd start with watching someone do the skill, to see what I would be aiming at. Then I'd want to try it myself, to see where I'm starting. Then I'd want to either read about it or get someone to show me the correct way to do whatever I'm doing wrong. But I could handle learning about only one or two mistakes at a time, because my feelings are easily hurt.

Then I'd want to start the cycle again -- observe, try, read, try, observe. And if there were a way to record my attempts to I could see and hear them myself, a little bit of that would also be helpful. But not too much.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes



I hate changes. Twice during my childhood, i was plucked from one family in one city with one group of friends and sent into a completely different situation. This left me with an aversion to imposed changes, and may help explain why I find it hard to change myself.

I was once asked, "What is your theory of personal change?" My answer, "I don't." I've made countless attempts to quit a bad habit or form a good one, without lasting success. I can cling to a change for a few days or weeks, but one slip and it's gone.

I have a committee inside my head that controls my decisions. Among its members are a diligent do-gooder and a sedentary sloth who tend to be deadlocked when I try to change myself.

That said, I have some techniques that help me make some changes for limited periods of time.

Making a commitment to do something at a set time and place with friends is the most effective one. We all see each other doing this thing--hopefully enjoying it, profiting from it, or both--and these experiences reinforce my commitment to keep on doing it.

Other techniques I've tried are less effective. For example, I am pretty good at writing things down. So I write down my weight once a week and every day I record the number of steps registered by my pedometer. But I don't make much effort to keep above a certain number of steps each day, or below any particular weight. That would be too much like work.

Anyway, if I had to make a significant change, I would probably try to do it all at once, because a great deal of back-sliding can be foreseen. If I had to, say, give up sugar, I would have a grand clear-out of my home and try to stock the yummiest types of everything I am allowed to eat. I would try to limit my lapses to meals I eat out with friends, hoping that they could help keep my in check. And I would make every effort to be kind to myself about those lapses, take them in stride, give myself partial credit where it is due, and carry on.