“It’s not about intelligence. Think about it. How many intelligent people have chosen drugs or alcohol? Or had an affair? Or ran their careers into the ground? Or became fat? Or smoke? Make a list of all the pitfalls you’ve done or watched other people do. Intelligence helps us in unimaginable ways. But it also arms us with rationalizations and ways to convince ourselves that everything is fine, we’re not wrong, or that we’re somehow strong enough to handle it or react differently. Look at lawyers who embezzle, bribe, or commit fraud. Doctors? They succumb to the same drugs they are prescribing – and hurt or kill people in the process. Teachers sleep with their students or teach intolerance. Therapists who commit suicide or become addicts? Spouses, who forego a relationship for excitement? Or, conversely, those who stay when they shouldn’t. If you think they’re stupid, you’re wrong. If you can ever figure out the alchemy of the human mind, you’re going to be the salvation of humanity. We all do it – questioning someone’s intelligence for stupidity or misbehavior. In almost every case, the person doing the stupidity has an entirely different narrative running in his or her head. Knowing this, we attribute weakness or folly to others while telling ourselves that it is for a good reason when we do it. Human minds are incredibly complex and simultaneously very basic. A parting note is to remember that no matter what people tell you was going on their heads and hearts when they were doing whatever it is that looks questionable, they mostly either don’t know or aren’t going to tell you the right answer. We all want meaningful lives, great relationships, and health. And we commit the same mistakes over and over, all around the world. We are hard-wired to be both intelligent and stupid. If you can understand your mind, you’re way ahead of the rest of the crowd. And if you can translate that understanding into better and more satisfying and honest behaviors, I will ask you to do my job for me. Instead of labeling misbehavior from others, give them a pass so that you can ask for one for yourself when you do something equally stupid. Let time be a big part of your solution. If you can hesitate before speaking, before acting, before reacting, you have a better chance at being happy or at least comfortable.”
People still look at me stupidly. I don’t blame them.
I’ve had several months to experiment with how I present my weight loss ‘secret.’ (Hint: it’s not a secret.)
I’m careful to avoid being evangelical. If people ask me, I tell them my opinion. It’s an easy pitfall to reach out. People aren’t ready until they’re ready. That’s true of almost everything. Being in counseling and looking at things from an outsider’s perspective has brought some insights. For those who inquire, it is possible for me to attempt to give them a slice of confidence.
At work, it’s been informative to interact with people who’ve known me for years, because they’ve known me as fat for most of that time. Some of them are holding their breath, waiting for me to put the weight back on. I don’t take it personally. Others are watching me, wondering how they might capture a bit of my genie in the bottle. It is the latter group who have the best chance, in part because they are not only interested, but optimistic about their changes. Optimism makes so many things more fulfilling and likely. If they see me doing it, it’s a powerful argument that they can do it, too. (If they want to.)
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve replied, “The secret is already inside you. It might be dormant or untapped – but it’s there.”
Obviously, people scoff. “If that were true, I’d already be doing it!” Most of them make ‘the’ face when they fire back at me.
“Yeah, well, until late last year, I scoffed too. And then a switch went off in my head. Look, everything I used to break the decades of yo-yo cycles was in my head. I didn’t add anything. No pills, no exercise, nothing. Something inside me flipped. For me, it wasn’t willpower. It was just a certainty. It’s that way with everyone who makes fundamental changes. Whether they are going to lose weight, run a marathon, break a habit, or learn a foreign language. So what if you fail nineteen times? The only effort that matters is the twentieth, isn’t it? You can’t run a marathon until you do it. You can shout in another language until you can. And you’re going to be overweight until you’re not.”
“Do I have superpowers? Do you think that someone like me has an insight other than what I’m telling you? Think of me as a placebo. If knowing I can do it convinces you that you can too, grab it and run. Stop questioning. Until you accept the fact that you are the probably the only reason you’re still overweight, you can’t see around the corner. And if you do manage to see the possibility that you can do it, pretty much nothing will stop you. Some people do have medical reasons that make it very hard, that much is true. But losing weight is totally a matter of eating less than you burn. If you can choose great tasting and healthier instead of some of the stuff you’re eating now, you’re going to lose weight. And if you commit to learning and experimenting, you won’t be stopped. I’m still experimenting now, over six months later.”
In general, people still look at me like I’m an idiot.
“You have to use small choices to your advantage. The point of doing anything like weight loss is to change your habits that will arc across your entire life. And hopefully get a bit of self-confidence when you do it. If you make incremental changes, you are going to get results. Do what you can but do it consistently. And if you fail, reset. Again, and again. If you find that people aren’t supportive, they are at least communicating your lack of value in their lives. The guy who takes off sprinting is going to get way ahead of you in a race, especially if you’re walking. But I guarantee that you can walk a lot longer than he can sprint. Weight loss is the same way.”
And that’s the gist of my most recent TED talks regarding weight.
One of the benefits of having hundreds of extra full-size candy bars is that it is easy to reward the growing list of delivery people showing up at the house. It’s rare for a driver to respond without appreciation as I hand them a couple of candy bars. It’s like a tip, except it’s for people we wouldn’t normally tip. If I were left to my own devices, I think I would have a basket of chips, cookies, and candy bars – and let the driver choose. If you’re interested in experimenting with it, I recommend you give it a try. It’s a benefit to the driver and it will lift your spirits a little. It might make the driver make a little more effort for your deliveries in the future.
Note: I have hundreds of full-size candy bars. But I haven’t eaten a candy bar in at least seven months.
Potato chips are a bigger risk than candy bars ever will be. The easier method to deal with temptation is to simply not have unhealthy snack choices in the house. I can’t make that decision for everyone, even if the presence of ‘real’ chips is akin to a bag of cocaine lying on the counter. The same is true for real cheese of any kind.
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I visited a Dollar General store the other day. As I often do, I grabbed a helium balloon from the party aisle, took it to a huge cemetery near my house, and let it go. This time, I wrote words on a scroll of paper, rolled it up, and tied it to the truncated balloon string. (Sort of like the “write-the-letter-you’ll-never send.”) I didn’t plan on getting a balloon that day. But the balloon corral on the ceiling was stuffed with innumerable balloons. I’ve done the balloon thing on and off my entire life. It’s a stupid bit of fun trying to see how long you can spot the balloon against the immense backdrop of the sky.
It was damn near impossible to take good pictures that day, being close to noon. The sun was relentlessly beating down, washing everything out in a bright pattern. I planned to park on the newer section but the caretaker was struggling to mow the 4,500-gravestone cemetery on that end. I walked out to a random section and took a couple of selfies. I noticed by coincidence that I was standing in front of one of tombstones of one of a friend’s grandparents. It gave me a laugh, the coincidence.
Recently, I told a therapist that I loathe the entire concept of burial, but that I love cemeteries. She laughed. We could have talked for four hours about the absurdity of our rituals. Cemeteries fascinate me. Not just the range of names and types of stones, but the idea that there are thousands of stories buried where I’m standing, lives as complicated as mine, and all of them extinguished.
Like the life on this eye-catching stone. Leonard “Cowboy” Kilpatrick. I could discover so much about his 37-year life. Were I to kick over a few clues, I have no doubt that I might find myself with a longer list of questions. He had a lot of siblings. Whenever I go deeply into someone’s story, one like Cowboy’s, it never fails that a strange series of revelations and coincidences would align. I’m still in awe of how many ways all of us are both separated and overlapping. I don’t find it macabre that we’re all marching toward oblivion, although the loss of so many stories continues to bother me.
I forgot how much I love the terse prose style of Robert Parker, and of his Jesse Stone character. Most people seem to know him from the CBS movies starring Tom Selleck. While Pat Conroy’s purple prose resonates in my heart, the stripped-down way Parker wrote fascinates me.
My cat Güino stares at me from his perch in the bedroom window. The sun is making sporadic appearances this afternoon. If the rays are bright enough, the prisms cast their rainbows around me. The absurd thickness of the pillow is amusing.
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Take a hard look at the circumstances and context of the words, “You’ve changed,” or “You’re not the person you used to be.” Clinically speaking, it is possible that the person saying this is saying it because you’ve stopped behaving in a way they want you to.
This isn’t necessarily an indictment of you – or the other person.
Sometimes, though, it is.
There’s no two ways about it. We all need to grow, change, adapt. Especially if any part of our behavior isn’t reflective of who we are or who we want to be.
I was asked to examine the phrase intensely: “You’re not the person you used to be.” It’s a therapy response. One of the things I came away with is this: IF someone says it to you in an emotional or angry way, it can’t be taken at face value. There’s no proper defense against it, and not just because all good adults change significantly.
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I almost forgot to start taking allergy medication again this season. Allergy medications confound my hunger response. And no matter what the packaging says, it causes both sluggishness and excitedness, no matter what it is supposed to do.
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Someone related to my deceased wife went back to prison for something related to her parole. I don’t have any details but it’s distracting and needless. A few years ago, I spent a lot of time trying to keep her connected to her old life and to imagine there was a reason to hold out hope. I can’t imagine going from living a normal life to being put back inside. She’s 26 with a young daughter.
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One of the objectives of me going to therapy is to figure out cognitively what shifted in me that makes it harder for me to sleep. I’ve never been one to require eight hours. But having gone through a phase where sleep evaded me taught me that it is very dangerous for me to go very few nights with inadequate sleep, especially less than five hours. I learned that it is stupid of me to try to make decisions or to hold conversations while in such a state. Trying to keep a sleep record is harder than it sounds, too.
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Regarding men on social media: As the tendency to post a profile picture of himself wearing sunglasses increases, so too do the odds he is a narcissist.
Corollary: the greater your resistance to this idea, the more likely that you tend to think such men are more attractive.
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I letter bombed Ford Motors. They chose to not do the right thing in regard to a failed transmission with my Ford Focus, which had only 55K miles on it. I bombarded their social media people first. When that went nowhere, I shifted to a comprehensive letter containing the history of the failed transmission design and my involvement. I mailed that letter to several different people within the company. It was like the old days, when “Letters From A Nut” was something I aspired to. I finally got a tepid response back from Ford. Just like Andy Dufresne did in “Shawshank Redemption,” once he got his foot in the door with the bean counters, he started writing TWO letters a week. After all, what is it really going to cost me to try to get Ford to do the right thing? Shame on Ford. Callous behavior is expected of large impersonal corporations, of course. But that’s why I shouldn’t take it personally: they screw everyone equally. Or mostly equally. There’s comfort in that.
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I bet you will find something interesting in this article:
Serious question: which vehicle do you suppose is mine? 🙂
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One of the lesser-known laws from the Murphy collection…
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“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I called you stupid. I really thought you already knew.” – This one is for anyone needing a scathing insult. Someone used it on me and I laughed.
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The cold surprises me. What a great morning for an early morning walk, though. You’ll note my awesome command of both my phone’s camera and photography in general in this photo.
The anonymous internet sent me this message today:
“When you start advancing, moving toward goals, shit is going to get broken. Things will go wrong because your new behavior will disrupt the status quo and the routine you’ve previously lived. All of that is who you used to be and reality hasn’t caught up to the fact that you’re not going to be that same person. As you change, especially when the results kick in, the disruption will increase. Most of us judge that disruption to mean that we chose the wrong goals or we’ve chosen incorrectly. And then we often go backward. In the aftermath of anything positive, the result always looks like it was inevitable. But while we’re living it, it seems like the disruption (if not chaos) is a sign we’re doing it wrong or doing the wrong thing. All progress, personal or otherwise, makes a mess.”
He turned to look back at the table. He didn’t remember resolving to leave the note there; he supposed instinct had taken over. The note remained on the table, face up, its small blue script unreadable from several feet away. The tone was etched in his heart. The specific words written there could have been redacted to contain a single word: pitiless.
He resignedly shrugged, turned, pulled up his mask, and exited the restaurant. He’d been callously reminded that life seldom follows one’s expectations and that the cliché regarding risk sometimes had real fangs with which to pierce us. Even when guided by our best and most noble intentions, life sometimes holds no discernible reward. “Intentions don’t change consequences,” he whispered to himself. It had become a mantra for him, as his resolve and confidence dissolved into confusion and hurt.
As he departed, a weight lifted from his body, one he hadn’t realized he still carried. Words hold no power without our minds to empower them. Some words are talismans and should be kept carefully. Or released, along with the power they may hold. The letter was the latter. It might as well have been blood-stained.
He looked up into the light rain as it fell past the awning overhanging the facade of the eatery. The skies were grey, but he didn’t notice. His pace quickened as he crossed the brilliant white crosswalk.
He hadn’t learned any lessons, other than that of his own naiveté. There would be no moral of the story, no exhumed realizations, no voiceover takeaway in his head. Just a series of lurches as things unraveled and as entropy exerted its morbid control over things. Even when a person realizes he’s on the wrong path, he can’t always turn and walk the path back to safety. The road is often invisible, unpassable, or closed. And sometimes lined by savages with rocks aimed at your head, seeking revenge for a crime you’ve already paid for. Sometimes, we throw rocks at ourselves.
“Me,” the note was signed.
Indeed.
It was a fitting last word of communication between them.
For all the reasons.
Somewhere, perhaps in a day, week, or month, he knew he’d look up and find himself again. The autopsy of moments would conclude. From time to time he might wonder what it all had meant. As time’s fog rolled in, the question would lose focus and recede into history.
Time is the kindest revisionist, giving us space to maneuver our heads around our stumbles, fumbles, and falls.
We learn our lessons in reverse. And sometimes, there is no new lesson, other than accepting that life is going to throw inside curveballs with surprising frequency, no matter who you are or the choices you’ve made.
He laughed as he neared his car. It wasn’t exactly true, that part of learning no lesson. He pulled out the notes shoved in his jacket pocket. There they were: “Don’t be a dumbass,” and “Choose your hard.” He hadn’t worked out the formula for which might take predominance in his life but he knew that both would mold his choices as he moved forward.
It occurred to him that he should tattoo the ‘dumbass’ one on his arm as a constant reminder – and then he wondered if the temptation to do just that was an affirmation that it wouldn’t stop him from continuing to be one.
He would do nothing, and that would be perfect.
Time would have to wash over him and hopefully remove the detritus of dumbassery from his shoulders.
And if not, life always moves forward, carrying us into unseen corridors.
The cliché should be, “Once bitten, twice died,” instead of the old, “Once bitten, twice shy.”
Because not only do you die from the original bite, but you will most likely die of embarrassment, shame, or guilt from reliving the stupidity that got you the bite in the first place.
This is officially a variation of the tried-and-true, “Don’t be a dumbass” rule, for those keeping score.
The hubris of life, of majestic leaps atop a mountain, of impractical love. That’s why I made the picture of the woman leaping with apparent joy. I hope she is happy and that the moment was magical for her.
Once you’ve peeked behind the curtains of someone’s life, both warts and happiness, seeing the frailty you share in common minimizes the feelings of your inadequacy. There’s something to be said about knowing that the person who seems impenetrable is as uncertain or more so than you are.
For every boring life or person walking the sidewalks with a wide smile, there is another person who wears the smile and frenetic cloak of being busy as a shield. It’s often unknowable whether each person is truly happy. People are adept at concealment.
If we could hear the tone of people’s thoughts, especially those who seem to have it all together, I think most of our feelings of inadequacy would disappear.
We window shop when we are in the world or when we use these electronic portals to peek into other’s lives.
There is joy, laughter, and fulfillment.
There’s also pain, remorse, regret, and loss.
For every bite of anguish I experience, I know that the toll for others, though often invisible, burns them privately. I regret that our lives don’t allow us to drop the pretense.
We don’t know what rivers flow behind someone else’s eyes, nor do we really understand what ignites them. Some people craft an ornate and expansive wall around them, on to which they project the facade they want us to see. This is truer when the disparity of their daylight life grows distant from who they are at their center, in the shadows, in private, or in whispers.
It’s exciting to peek behind the facade and share that protected self. It’s sublime and affirming.
But the shriek and tenor that results when some do not want to acknowledge that you’ve seen their secret self? Though you’ve not wronged them, they flail and pivot with the agony of your having shared their inner monologue.
It often gets masked as anger.
It’s not.
Anger is the symptom. It’s really sublimated fear.
It doesn’t have to be.
It’s okay.
Some of us can be glad we experienced another facet of life, even if the ending was a surprise plot twist.
It is a gift to hold the truth of someone else in your own heart. Even if it lodges there like a dart.
Of that, I’m certain, even as certainty eclipses my grasp.
The foolishness of my own certainty came back to punch me in the gut. In time, I will forget the lesson, just as I did with the lesson of life’s urgency; it’s a lesson that can’t be explained. It must be experienced.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 