Emotional Multitasking

April 30, 2018

Greetings from the valence,

Scientists have shown that our brain can really concentrate fully on only one thing at a time.  When we do many things at one time, something suffers.  We often have to access different places of the brain for different activities.  Combine that with the eyes and hands and whatever else the body must coordinate and the best we can accomplish is doing one thing poorly while being distracted by the other.

We can fool ourselves into thinking we are good at multitasking by doing simple things we already have built in on autopilot.  Making toast while talking on the phone.  As soon as things get more demanding the success rate goes down.

I have finally given in to the notion that I am not the exception to this rule.  My effectiveness, and my satisfaction about the effort, goes up when I can fully focus on a task at hand.  I will admit that even knowing this I am constantly challenging the truth of it by doing at least one too many things at once.

And so I will share here that I take some strange satisfaction that I am a master of emotional multitasking.  An easy example is being embarrassed that I that I burned the toast while I was talking on the phone but in the same moment so happy that no one was in the kitchen to see it.

Emotions come as they are needed, and almost always come in clusters.  Sometimes conflicting clusters, some more amenable.  We are designed to function pretty well even when we are emotionally multitasking.

When he was about ten years old, I lost my son Harrison in Tijuana.  Just writing that sentence gave me a brief shudder of terror.  One minute he was standing right next to me, and then he was gone.

When I found him five minutes later I multitasked emotions at the Black Belt level.  I was elated to see him, angry that he had wandered off, and somewhere in that hysteria, afraid of having to explain the whole thing to his mother.

Or this smorgasbord; winning a raffle. You won: happiness.  Your friend lost: sadness.  You won: pride in the victory.  You won a random drawing that required no skill or effort other than entering, which is what everyone did: humility.

There is some happy moments that will move you to tears.  Seeing your daughter take her first step and in that moment knowing she is on her way to being independent from you.  This kind of ‘bitter sweet’ moment is what seasons the best parts of our lives.  If I knew how to practice for it I would do it.

“I don’t know how to feel.”  I heard this after my Dad passed away.  Grief raged of course, and in the same experience there was a relief, almost a gladness, that his suffering was over.  In truth we do know how to feel, we are simply using a capacity we are not always comfortable with.

There is a more common example of multitasking your emotions which I stumbled on this week while reading about procrastination.  Sometimes when we are faced with a task, say writing an essay at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, we become paralyzed by dueling emotions.  On the one hand we are eager to do the task, but in the same moment we are afraid of failing or doing less than our best.  The result can be procrastination, sometimes until almost 7:00 a.m.

I am playing a little fast and loose with the definitions of emotion.  Depending on who you ask there are between four and seven core emotions and the everything else is a derivation of those.  Regardless, we experience them singly and in groups on a regular basis, and quite often even the conflicting pairings offer a rich experience. 

One of the most common exercises in this mode is nostalgia; feeling slightly sad about being happy in the past.  As enjoyable as it is sometimes, I have to resist it.  It is too easy to forget how much there is to enjoy in the present when dwelling on the good times that are now only clicks of the synapse.

One way to stay present is to practice being happy or grateful about more than one thing at a time.  It is part list making and part being completely aware of the fullness of life.  What comes of a few minutes of this is a wide range of emotions, including joy, but also all of those that contrast happiness, that make happiness what it is. 

I will tell you here, that if you are going to procrastinate, it’s not a bad way to pass an hour.

Hope this finds you a master,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith

Boston Style

April 23, 2018

Greetings from The Big Swim,

                                

Doubt.

At the six-mile mark I was wondering how I was going to get to mile seven.  My legs felt like cement.  I began to imagine there was more wrong with me than fatigue. This is not the level of confidence I was hoping for, twenty miles from the finish of the Boston Marathon.

We expected the weather would be challenging.  And then it was colder, the rain was harder, and we were leaning into a headwind that gusted 20-30 mph for every step between Hopkinton and Boston. 

Boston Style.

In true Boston manner, the runners adapted.  They pulled on second hand clothes, layered on whatever they could scavenge to stay warm.  Runners wore shower caps.  They wrapped their feet in plastic shopping bags, duct taped sheets of plastic around their shoulders, swaddled up in ponchos and raincoats and tailored garbage bags.  They wore bright yellow rubber kitchen gloves to keep their hands warm.  The species that survives is not the strongest or the fastest but the one that can adapt.    

Before the race began, we gathered at Athlete’s Village, a field behind a school in the tiny town of Hopkinton.  It was a mud bog that seemed to be set up as a refugee camp.  Runners stood in the rain for hours, huddled under tarps or umbrellas, or crowded in the food tent.  When it was time for my wave to head to the start, chaos had settled in.  The officials, seeing that the crowds were growing impatient, finally just gave in and everyone surged for the start. 

Saturation.

The water streamed across the roads, pooling in low places, splashing over the curb.  And the rain pummeled us all.  Shoes filled, shirts stretched into skirts, socks squished, as we tried to absorb the weather.  Once you are saturated, you can’t get any wetter.  But you can get colder.

The temperatures stayed above freezing, a mixed blessing.  Snow might have been easier to take. 

I knew I was under-dressed for the conditions, which is why my legs were numb at six miles.  This was the outcome of four days of changing my mind about what to wear.  This heading should have been “Follow your instincts.”

We’re all in the same river.

Everyone around me was wet and cold, and they were not yielding.  They pushed each other, helped each other, made the best of each mile in front of them.  Our cheerleaders lined both sides of the streets in the freezing rain and told us how amazing we were.  They handed us water and hot chocolate, gave away their gloves, donated raincoats, so we could finish what we started.

It is an irresistible example to follow.

The Wellesly girls were out in full scream, soaked sirens, urging us into the second half.  They held wilted signs like, ‘Kiss me I’m Unemployed’.

Somewhere in the teens I stood under someone’s umbrella for a moment while my numb, slippery fingers fumbled to open a Gu packet.  I was shaking from the cold, and I watched the steam come off my arm.  My body heat escaping, leaving me.  The man holding the umbrella said: “You guys are nuts.”

It can’t get any worse. 

It turns out it can.  We came to Heartbreak Hill, many of us reduced to trudging at this point, grinding up the inclines. The rain had never relented, driven by the wind, and now, as if it had been waiting for the most challenging part of the course, it surged.  The rain punished us in torrents, huge chilling drops turning the rivers on the road into stippled liquid.  We could not see the pavement in front of us.  A runner near me held her arms out and looked up and said to God: “Are you KIDDING me?”

Trust your training. 

Somewhere after 21 a switch flipped.  Something I had put in back in February, pushing through blizzards, some toughness I had set aside during hill repeats in gale force winds, resurfaced.  I tucked in behind two other runners and we began passing people, weaving through the bedraggled competitors splashing ahead of us.  I know that this strength had been there for 20 miles.  Note to self: better to remember that at mile one.

Right on Hereford, left on Boyleston.

This is the last two turns before the Boston Marathon ends.  It is one block, a few hundred feet between what might have stopped you and what you get because you didn’t let it.

Here the runners redeemed their own Boston Style.  They shed the layers of plastic and hand-me- downs and sodden cotton sweatshirts and Target bags.  It looked like a Goodwill donation box had exploded during a monsoon.  Maybe they wanted to look good for the finish line picture.  Maybe it was just another part of the transformation into Boston Finisher.

The finish line will make you cry.

The broad street stretches out for three tenths of a mile.  It is lined with people on both sides, and the sound is so loud you cannot believe it comes from them.  Through the rain I could see the finish line, blurred in the bathroom glass effect the rain provided.  Emotion welled in me, closing my throat, and I gasped to hold that back, desperate to run just a few blocks more.

Kindness.

I crossed the blue and gold line and walked a few steps and turned around and welcomed the runners behind me.  We raised our hands, and congratulated each other, and then turned in the downpour and went to find our medal.

I asked a volunteer: “Are you handing out the heat blankets?”  She looked me in the eye and said: “I have the honor of putting them on the runners.”  She helped me put my arms inside the blanket, put the hood over my head, and folded me up inside it, sealing it over my chest.

Saturated and overflowing. 

The rain spilled out of my eyes in warm streams down my cheeks.  I took a few shaking steps and lowered my head and added my few drops to the puddles on Boyleston Street.

Hope this finds you dry and warm,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith

Boston Symphony

April 16, 2018

Greetings from the conductor,

It begins quietly, with the sound of these laces being tied.

For many months now, the sound has been subtle, an introduction to the main piece.  Just my feet, some days lightly tapping the pavement, other days chuffing and scraping.  My breath has evolved to keep up, adding gasps and wheezes and puffs that sound like someone moaning. 

There are other sounds that I don’t make but I am a part of.  The rustle of my knit hat over my ears.  The wind raking over the snow covered fields, the hissing sound of freezing rain, the clack of branches.  I let that accumulate in my subconscious for the last few months.  Sounds that slowly formed into a composition of sorts. 

Some days I have felt like the instrument.  There is a string that has been tuned in me, tightened to just the right tension, and now strummed gives off a vibration that sounds almost right.  The music may not be perfect or entirely beautiful, but it feels like it’s becoming my expression.

And some days I am just part of the music, mixed in with the melodies created around me to make something bigger, more meaningful.  A performance not just for my own enjoyment but to make a sound to change the space around me. 

This weekend the sounds changed, and the volume is tweaked.  Boston is friendly, but it is still a big city and it has a sound, and the people here are proud of that.  But this weekend the sound is us.  Us is the marathoners.  It is the languages from all over the world and accents from every corner of every corner, telling each other we will triumph.

We make the T louder.  We make the coffee shops hum and bang and add the melody of laughter and excitement.  We push echoes between the buildings, into the faces of churches and brownstones and statutes. 

We are in the shops eating and talking and laughing, crowding into elevators, clustered at corners, and all this is just noise until we are out in the street.  And then we change the sound of the street.

In the Sunday morning shakeout runs down Boyleston to that place we have dreaded and dreamed of, we become part of the choir of voices that have rushed toward this place for 122 years.  The sound of us running as we get ready to run.  The energy that comes with it has its own harmony. 

We make the rain change its trajectory toward the pavement.  We bang the puddles and breathe into the place between the wet.  We split the wind like reeds, making it whistle our song.

The rain is our applause.  It is popping on the pavement and on our backs and in the hands of the people applauding and that is the percussion of this morning’s run from Hopkinton to Boston.

It is today’s score and we are literally soaking it in.

Every race, really every day, holds this music.  We decide if or how much we add to it, or if we hear it.  This morning a crowd of performers will line up next to me and look down the long line between the first notes and the last and will bravely compose our finest work.  The instruments we bring are the bodies we have tuned, the spirit we have nurtured, the steel we have forged.

This is the Boston Symphony.  The songs of tens of thousands of runners and the people who came here to witness their song.  It is a performance born out of passion and pain and courage and just putting one more mark on the score to make it what we can.   

I am filling my lungs to sing in it.  I am summoning the strength I put in these muscles to make each step mark the time, set the cadence, to be among the cascade of sound that rings out from start to finish and into the days to come.  I am part of the music and it is part of me.  We are all Boston Strong because of the sound that resonates among us.

First, we lace up and go. 

Hope this finds you singing along,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith

Encouragement

April 9, 2018

Greetings from le coeur,

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”  Emerson

There have been times when I have been faced with a challenge that seemed bigger than what I was capable of overcoming.  Thankfully there have been people seeded in my life that were paying attention, and in those moments of my doubt have stepped up to remind me of what gifts I have been given.

My self-confidence, my belief in what I can do, is built from my experiences, both success and failure, and my own choice between optimism and the alternative.  But what has bound that together is the encouragement that I have been given.

This has been on my mind as I check off the final days before I run the Boston Marathon.  I won’t tell you about the usual nervousness and second guessing that goes on this week.  And honestly there are new challenges I have never dealt with.  This is all bundled together; the culmination of months of work, the difficulties both imagined and real, my own doubts laced up with my beliefs.  It is a colorful, chaotic whorl of emotion.

I am in a community of runners who are encouraging one another, and just witnessing that has given me strength.  Not simply because of what we have in common, what we share as we get ready for our next big challenge.  But observing the simple act of selflessly lifting another person up is inspiration that gives me hope for all of us.

Encouragement is easy to find in the dictionary but not easily defined.  See that it comes from the old French ‘encoragier’, to make courage.  The word paints a picture of a person reaching into the heart of another and convicting them, showing them where their strength is and exhorting them to use it.  It is a kindness wrapped in passion. 

There is more to giving encouragement than just spouting cliché’s or being positive.  Sometimes that is helpful but does not get to what we all value.  The moments when I felt encouragement in its purest was not just in difficult times but in moments of triumph as well.  It was a connection that was both comfort and a call for me to reach deep to find what I was capable of.

These moments came from people who I trusted, from friends or family that cared enough to know me, and that bond produced what I felt as authentic encouragement.  I think it is part of our purpose as humans. It is an extension of love, of empathy.  The reason I know this is that I feel more alive both when I give encouragement and when I receive it.

I am determined to be better at it.  Like any other gift if it is taken for granted it becomes a faded version of the original.  I have had plenty of opportunities that passed because of my own selfishness or preoccupation with nonsense that should never have been even in my periphery.

This gift of encouragement is meant to be given away, but in a lucky quirk it of human experience it is one we can give ourselves.  We are qualified to look ourselves in the mirror and slice out what is needed, whether it is permission to put down a burden and move on, or to demand we dig deeper. 

And there are times when we can’t do it alone. 

In all of our lives there will be watershed moments when someone who matters to will listen to our doubts and fears, ask what we really want and then remind us that we have what it takes to achieve it.  To experience a full life it is incumbent on us to put ourselves in that exchange, as giver or recipient, and make the most of the gift.

I’m in.

Hope this finds you taking heart,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith

April Fool

April 2, 2018

Greetings from the foolish,

My friends will already know I generally don’t engage in April Fool’s day in any way.  I don’t do pranks on others, in part because I don’t want any part of meanness; life provides enough ways to look foolish without adding my inspiration.  And more important I don’t want to invite anyone to trick me into revealing how easily I can be fooled.

If that sounds like I am a stick in the mud then I wrote it correctly.  I’ll come back to that.

Before I move on, I see the irreverence in connecting April Fool’s Day with the Resurrection and will not mention it.  And yes, it was the best ever prank on the Romans.

The digital age has changed April Fool’s day a bit, although I understand people are still shrink wrapping desks and buying rubber dog poo.  The internet is rife with examples of digital pranking, and that’s not even addressing fake news.  Which if it is not fake, is like a double-prank.

Among the casualties of age, we find we lose what we need the most; flexibility, strength, and perhaps most ironic, perspective.  There’s more but put this near the top: the ability to laugh at ourselves.  See aforementioned ‘stick in the mud’.

                                                                                               

The origin of the court jester, the fool, was to entertain.  In some cultures, the fool was given license to mock authority, and was safe to hold a comedic mirror up to the stoic-in-charge/stick-in-the-mud.  There is something in all human experience that asks us to find some humor in our life or suffer the perils. 

The need to laugh, to act a fool, is obvious to most sensible people.  The least sensible of us all don’t even consider it, they simply live it.  I point to any children you meet, who are at any moment closest to foolish laughter, and closest to joy. 

Yesterday I tripped over a message from Ann Lamott.  I was not looking where I was going and stumbled into it.  Among her “12 Truths”, she said this while addressing the truth about grace;

“But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you'll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other.”

How fascinating to think that at the heart of laughter, of foolishness, might be the key to such deep peace.  Or at the minimum, a relief from the tension we carry from holding our position so firmly in the mud.

Here’s what seeped in through my mature adult veneer.  Life will wear away our natural ability to find the humor in our days, even when it is as close as ourselves.  It is up to us to find the antidote. 

I am not certain I will find it by putting salt in your sugar bowl or leaving a fish carcass in your desk; the antidote is not at someone else’s expense.  But if the purpose is to find fun, find laughter, then it is worth searching for a better choice.  Guess I’m still working on that.

Any of us might find our day lacking in something, and maybe laughing is not at the top of your list.  Fact is it might be at the top of someone else’s list, and they are just waiting for you to come along.  Nothing better than laughing with someone else.

Be a fool for a friend.  A fool for love.  A fool for the dog.  A fool for chocolate.  A fool for yourself.  Be an April Fool.

Hope this finds you foolin around,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith