2-21-15 Hodgepodge

No-Go With the Flow?

For an interesting take on feeling like one has lots of momentum on a project, read this post by Sacha Chua:

You know how when you get going on something, you want to keep going? It's a great feeling. You're in the flow, you're in the zone. Time passes unnoticed. You're getting stuff done.

I don't trust that feeling. At least not all the way.

Having two very young children, I almost always (a) face the prospect of being interrupted or (b) have too many things on my plate to work on anything for hours at a time. As a former academic, I miss that, but I have also learned that there can be advantages to breaking in mid-stream.

And I, too, will greet that feeling with some suspicion when I am again in the position to work for long stretches.

Weekend Reading

"Unless a person's condition is so unbearable that they can't get out of bed or leave the house, I suggest therapy and behavioral change first." -- Michael Hurd, in "Can Emotions Be 'Diseases'?" at The Delaware Wave

"A resilient attitude can be learned." -- Michael Hurd, in "Feeling Sorry for Yourself: Pros and Cons" at The Delaware Coast Press

"If you're a patient considering major surgery, don't let a false memory cost you your life." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Why You Should Record Your Doctor Visits" at Forbes

Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom

In this age of widespread "learned helplessness", it is refreshing to read a piece like the first of Michael Hurd's, above. The idea that depression necessarily requires medication merely reinforces the idea that one has no control over his life. I can't imagine a worse starting point for treatment or recovery!

Equanimity

Oliver Sacks, one of my favorite authors, considers his own mortality, upon learning that he is terminally ill:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

I am grateful to Dr. Sacks for sharing his sense of adventure through his writings, and am sorry to hear he will soon be gone.

-- CAV