Crunch Time

The Need for Stillness

I believe one of the major needs of our day is contemplation. The ability to be still in the world, seeking solace in the midst of an overly noisy world.  The latin word for "leisure" is "schola".  It is the root word for "school" and "scholarship".  It is leisure not in the sense of loafing around on a hammock with an umbrella drink. It is leisure in the sense of having unencumbered time to explore a topic deeply.  When I ask teachers if they feel their classroom is a place of leisure, an environment of schola, they immediately state in no uncertain terms; ABSOLUTELY NOT! 

We must take time to be still.

The following video by Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and director of the M.I.T. initiative on Technology and Self, argues that quiet time is key to adolescent development.

The lens of youth culture

For years I have subscribed to the Hedgehog Review: critical reflections on contemporary culture.  Published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, each volume is always intriguing and worth reading cover to cover.  The following is taken from the introduction for the Spring 2009 issue focused on "Youth Culture". The quandaries it explores and the questions it raise need to be explored by all of us.

The radical and rapid transformation taking place in America and global culture are keenly seen when viewed through the lens of youth culture.

Take technological changes, for example. Young people are at the forefront of the use and adaptation of these developments, and their day-to-day experiences--their modes of being, if you will--have been markedly transformed. The way they interact with their peers, and present themselves to others is unlike that of any generation that came before them... How have these technological changes affected what it means to be human?

The cultural changes of late modernity have produced pressures to adapt to, and succeed in, an increasingly complex social sphere. This is felt acutely by the young, particularly in relation to their academic achievements...  In an effort to cope with the world around them, young people are taking more and more medications. The increase in the use of medications to negotiate these demands affects the way young people see themselves and the world around them. How does a young person understand what it means to be human or to be good when she views her struggles through a medical model?

Changes in the meaning of adulthood in contemporary life is in a state of confusion... Once a stage of life towards which to aspire, adulthood has come to be seen by many as neither inevitable nor necessarily desirable...What happens to a culture when people don't want to grow up?  What does this say about our ideals for what it means to be human and for what it means to be good?

Young people are often the first to adopt to new cultural forms, and we often express our anxieties about those new cultural forms as concerns about the young... They are the ones ultimately who will reap the benefits or the deficits of how we negotiate the cultural changes of contemporary life.

Listen to your life

During these chaotic times of change and uncertainty in our lives, I'm reminded again of some wonderful words:

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

-from Frederick Buechner's Now and Then

Rules for new tools

The problems we face as humans are as common and enduring as our race itself.  Take the problem of communication.  Though we have developed various tools over the millenia (cave drawings, smoke signals, pony express, telegraph, etc.) to aid us in our quest to communicate one with another, ultimately the problem persists. 

That is to say, though the problems remain the same, it's the TOOLs that have changed.  Today we live in a world of overwhelming technological tools. I'm intrigued by the criteria Wendall Berry has put forth for aquiring new tools (including technological). This is taken from his article, Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer, which is a great article in itself, and caused quite a stir when he published it.

Hope it provokes your thinking as you migrate across the quandaries of contemporary life.

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

Magic happens

Today I had the honor of witnessing the Teacher of the Year ceremony at Denver Academy. It was particularly poignant since the award is now named in honor of a long time Denver Academy teacher and one of my all-time best friends, Kevin Gregier. He passed away last November (2008) from cancer at the age of 64.  I miss him every day.

The afternoon summed up so well the wonder of Kevin Gregier as a teacher and the magic of Denver Academy as a place for learning.  Wonder and magic together provide enchanting elixirs to enliven our educational quandaries:

•Learning that is centered more on the varied needs of the student than in the confines of a curriculum.

•Teaching that is liberated so educators can bring their own whimsy to their subject matter.

•A commaraderie that goes beyond selfishness, looks to the betterment of everyone, and exhibits a genuine joy to be in the company of each other.

•An awareness of a spiritual transcendence that resides not only in the hearts and minds of students but is embedded in the very nature of education itself.

•Leadership that realizes life is messy and in a constant state of flux. They are not afraid to take a risk for the sake of the contemporary student or for the enhancement of a teacher's well-being.

•An extended community of parents who take an active role in sparking the perpetual potential of every child they come in contact with.

Thank you Denver Academy and all the places like you who provide an educational environment where wonder is taught and magic happens everyday.

Cognitive Distortions

I focus on four competencies to help people effectively navigate life's accelerating changes:

• Vibrant Imagination
• Robust Collaboration
• Potent Communication
• Persistent Adaptation

In this post I want to focus on Persistent Adaptation and the awareness of cognitive distortions. These are inaccurate thoughts or ideas which maintain negative thinking and help to maintain negative emotions. I'll admit that I default into one or more of these distortions more often than I'd like.

Eliminating these distortions and negative thought can improve mood and discourage maladies such as depression and chronic anxiety. Being aware of these distortions is a powerful first step to persistently adapt to discontinuous change and its discontents. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

• Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out.

• The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.