Wyzga On Words

Laughter Is As Necessary As Food, Air & Water.

 

No matter  who we are or where we are; no matter our race or creed or gender; no matter our skin color or language - we all laugh the same.

We just don't do it often enough.  Maybe we forget.

The older I get I find there is plenty to laugh about.  As a former nurse I can tell you with certainty that laughter is the best medicine.

Art Linkletter thought so, too.  Time out of mind Linkletter worked in a TV station playroom asking children questions and listening for their responses.  As you'll see, what made it all work so  well was how Linkletter made the kids feel: as if someone was really listening to them.

Here are a few that might bring a smile to your face:

Kids Sat The Darnedest Things1

Kids Say The Darnedest Things2

Kids Say The Darnedest Things3

If kids are not your thing, perhaps The Laughing Buddha might be.

Or, if you prefer puppies, have I got the farm for you.  Juniper Moon Farm and Day #1 of their three-week old Maremma puppies on Day #1 eating solid food.  Kinda reminds me of growing up with 6 siblings.

TIP:     Laugh well and often.  It certainly makes folks wonder what you're up to.

Dance And Be Smart.

Time out of mind I took every class offered by The Arthur Murray Dance Studios.  I competed in ballroom dance.  My favorites were the cha-cha, Samba and the waltz.  I had a pair of silvery regulation dance shoes with the kidskin soles that were carried in a bag and used only on the dance floor. 

As the story goes, my mother named me after her college roommate, Diane Blue, a woman who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer.  Instead, like many women of her time, she married; and gave up dancing.  I should have paid attention.  I married a fellow with no sense of rhythm and two left feet - and then my used-to-be-husband danced away. 

Still, I'm a dancer at heart.  I shake what my mama gave me at Zumba classes.  I love watching dance movies.  And Fred Astaire.

Imagine my delight to learn that 9 years ago The New England Journal of Medicine proclaimed dancing as the exercise associated with reducing your risk of dementia and making you smarter.

In a nutshell, here's how Dancing Makes You Smarter:

"We immediately ask two questions:

Why is dancing better than other activities for improving mental capabilities?

Does this mean all kinds of dancing, or is one kind of dancing better than another?

That's where this particular study falls short.  It doesn't answer these questions as a stand-alone study.  Fortunately, it isn't a stand-alone study.  It's one of many studies, over decades, which have shown that we increase our mental capacity by exercising our cognitive processes.  Intelligence: Use it or lose it.  And it's the other studies which fill in the gaps in this one.  Looking at all of these studies together lets us understand the bigger picture.

Some of this is discussed here (the page you may have just came from) which looks at intelligence in dancing.  The essence of intelligence is making decisions.  And the concluding advice, when it comes to improving your mental acuity, is to involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as opposed to rote memory (retracing the same well-worn paths), or just working on your physical style.

One way to do that is to learn something new.  Not just dancing, but anything new.  Don't worry about the probability that you'll never use it in the future.  Take a class to challenge your mind.  It will stimulate the connectivity of your brain by generating the need for new pathways.  Difficult and even frustrating classes are better for you, as they will create a greater need for new neural pathways.

Then take a dance class, which can be even better.  Dancing integrates several brain functions at once, increasing your connectivity.  Dancing simultaneously involves kinesthetic, rational, musical and emotional processes."

 

TIP:     No matter how or when or with whom, your style or your size,  dance!

                        
                                                
                                                        

                                                                    

Why Do We Walk? Who Knows What The Walk Will Bring?

Winston Churchill is credited with saying, 'If you're going through hell, keep going."

My friend, Ed, says, "When you ask for courage you are given opportunities to be brave."  Frankly, I would prefer just getting an infusion of courage, like the Cowardly Lion requested from the Wizard of Oz.

When we least expect it we come across stories of those who are given opportunities to be brave and help us find our own way out of hell.

Aspen Matis writing for the NYTimes, "A Hiker's Guide to Healing," recounts the story of her 2,650 mile Mexico to Canada trek to heal herself of a college rape - which is pretty much hell.

God forbid you have to go through any trauma in this lifetime; but when you do perhaps Matis' story of personal resilience, determination and courage will give you a True North direction out of hell.

Nurses Hold the Space for Patients, Families to Tell Their Stories.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Here's the second post

Metaphors Rouse The Sensory Cortex.

By now you might have come across Annie Murphy Paul's NYTimes Opinion piece, "Your Brain on Fiction."  Why bring it up again?  I am curious to know whether hearing the spoken word works the same way as reading fiction.  My sense is that there are parallels.

The upshot of the article is that brain science has revealed what we intuitively know: "Stories stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life."  How does it happen?  Metaphors - and the more sensory the better.  Words describing how something looks, tastes, smells, feels and sounds stimulate brain areas which respond to the images as if they were real.  The brain is an equal opportunity organ.  Excerpt.

"The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings."

What got me thinking about listening to sensory rich metaphors versus reading them in fiction is something I wrote in 2003 that I had inscribed on bookmarks I gave away to clients.

"Storytelling thrives on imagination.  Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning annd meaning leads to listener action."

With this discovery in mind I subsequently wrote and taught law students and lawyers (among others) about the primal importance of incorporating the five senses in oral presentations to inform and persuade.  The guidance changed the speaker and the listener both.  You could feel trial stories vividly come to life.

I am convinced that we "homo narrans" use stories to navigate the social realm, to understand feelings, desires and motivations of our fellow global inhabitants, comprehend lessons, make sense of mistakes, and the like.  Metaphors smooth our efforts to translate by showing us show how "this is like that."  Apparently, the more sensory our metaphors the more easily we connect and relate with one another.  And that's not fiction.

A Beautiful Example Of A Story With A Surprising And Strangely Comforting Ending.

I read Louis Begley's NYTimes' article, "Age and Its Discontents" with an increasing sense of dread.  The question Begley poses is whether there is anything good about getting old.  He answers the question, "No.  It's gifts are bitter."

Begley recounts a difficult life including the German occupation of Poland, the loss of his father, and all family he could number meeting with "violent deaths in World War II."  This history left its mark on Begley and his work.  Excerpt.

"Unsurprisingly, dread of the games time plays with us has been a drumbeat in my novels. Thus, arms akimbo, majestic and naked, standing before a glass, Charlie Swan, the gay demiurge of “As Max Saw It,” illustrates for the younger narrator on his body the physiology of aging: misrule of hair, puckered brown bags under the eyes, warts like weeds on his chest, belly, back and legs, dry skin that peels leaving a fine white snow of dandruff. Listening to him, the younger man is reminded of his own father in a hospital, permanently catheterized, other tubes conducting liquids to his body hooked up to machines that surround his bed like unknown relatives. He prefers his mother’s “triumphant” exit. A headlong fall down the cellar stairs kills her instantly.

I have followed the progress into old age of Albert Schmidt, like me a retired lawyer, in three novels. Schmidt is 60 when we meet him in 1991; when we part on New Year’s Day 2009, he is 78, therefore a couple of years older than I was then. Life has not been kind to him, but so far, Schmidt enjoys excellent health, marching up and down the Atlantic beach in Bridgehampton and New York City’s avenues, and doing laps in his pool. Although he worries about performance, his libido is intact. Nevertheless, the reflection of his face in the window of a shop is frightening: he sees a red nose and bloodshot eyes, lips pursed up tight over stained and uneven teeth, an expression so lugubrious and so pained it resists his efforts to smile. My appreciation of my own charms is not very different. Like Schmidt, I see that nothing good awaits me at the end of the road, and that passing years will turn my life into a Via Crucis."

Why read further?  To hear how the story ends.  And learn any lessons of hope.  There is a singular one I was unprepared for: the importance of companions.  Excerpt.

"Having rehearsed the bitter gifts reserved for age, T. S. Eliot wrote in “Little Gidding” that “the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.” The closer that place — the human condition — is to home, the harder it is to take in. I could speak movingly of Schmidt’s loneliness after the loss of his daughter, calling his existence an arid plane of granite on which she alone had flowered. But it has taken me until now, at age 78, to feel in full measure the bitterness and anguish of my mother’s solitude — and that of other old people who end their lives without a companion."

From down here on the knees of a grateful heart, say "thank you" to your friends, keep them close, and find ways to stay in touch because it's true what The Divine Miss M sang, "Oh, you got to have friends..."  Your health depends on it.

It's Never Too Late To Start Heading In The Right Direction.

What does Beethoven have to do with friendship and compass headings? 

My friend, Stephanie West Allen, sent me a post she wrote in 2002.  It's a wonderful story about the importance of friends who turn us in the right direction.  I call this direction "True North" on my personal compass heading.  I am gravitating toward it with the help of faith, family and friends.

For me, the heart of Allen's blog post is the series of questions she posed which may also be a help to you.  Excerpt.

"Some Questions for You

What gift inside of you is so strong that it must triumph over any adversity (or shyness or inactivity or busy-ness) and  come out for others to enjoy? Are you still holding it in, sapping creative energy by squelching it? What will it take for this ability, this genius, to flow out of you on a stream of inspiration?

We all have our genius with which we can make our world and that of others a more beautiful place. Part of being a member of the brotherhood of man is sharing our gifts with each other. What will bring your tear of joy?

And one more question, who in your life gently turns you around when you are facing in the wrong direction so you can see your standing ovation?"

What are your answers? 

And what other questions does this writing prompt as you turn and head in the direction of your True North?

Suiting Up For The Next Generation.

Saturday last saw me all suited up and talking to upwards of 50 folks who came to The Ecology Center to learn about honey bees (Apis mellifera), pure local honey, and becoming a backyard beekeeper or "beek."

Click here to access the link to the Q&A blog with an observation hive video.

The adults posed many questions showing lots of interest and concern about the plight of honeybees (the canary in the mine of our world), Colony Collapse Disorder, how to distinguish real honey from the store bought fake stuff, and so on.  I felt like I was on "Stump the Beekeeper."

But the real excitement, equally insightful questions and "ah ha!" moments were shared by the young people.  There were eight year old farmer wannabes, ten year old girls taking pages of notes with pencil in spiral bound notebooks so they could prepare for a class report, six year old hands held in the air so long to ask a question that first one arm and then the next and then back to the other were raised.   The teenagers were so engaged they did not text during the hour - well, as far as I could see.

I passed around honeycomb taken from the wild when I rescued swarmed colonies, frames of built-out comb used to raise brood and store honey, frames of old comb where bees had died emerging from their cells, and showed off the beek basics I carry around in my beek box.  The young people were ecstatic when I displayed a photo of lavishly drawn designs painted with wild colors on stacks of hive boxes - no bland white boxes for these kids.  Everybody wanted to get into the act setting up a backyard hive.

Some days despite my Aquarian tendencies I can present a pretty cynical face about the future of the planet.  As I posed for the last cell phone picture and packed up my beek gear I knew that just as we "let bees be bees" the same applies to kids: give them some ideas, support and direction; then let them be as they find their way.  

I believe we are going to be just fine. 

Q&A Tuesday: What Makes My Character Or Client Believable?

Q:    What makes my character (or client) believable?

A:    For starters, no one is either all good or all evil. You need a bit of both.

The mistake many folks make when they create a character (or prepare a client for deposition or trial) is they want to err on the side of "my guy is all good and the other guy is all bad."  This sounds like something one would hear in divorce counseling. The truth is, even Darth Vadar and Lucifer started out on the bright side.

Generally speaking we like people like us.  Whether we are conscious of it or not, we relate to characteristics in others which are like those in  people familiar to us. These sense impressions inform the attitudes we have about people - before we even know them. 

In a real world setting like a trial, we want to know if the client comes across in a positive way - or do they turn off the members of the focus group.  What about the client is not believable?  And can this thing be truthfully and accurately corrected so the client is compelling and convincing? 

That does not mean we erase the flaws.  Not at all.  In fact, the case may require the lawyer to embrace the flaws while showing that the event had nothing to do with the flaws.  In the alternative, the flaws may be presented as having some part to play in the event but to a much lesser degree than that of the opposition. 

The key is to steer clear of generalities and stereotypes when preparing your client.  And remember you can't put lipstick on a pig.  Well, you can - but what are you left with? 

 

In the fictional world the same notion applies.  What makes characters endearing is that they have recognizable flaws and virtues.  We may recognize the flaws as belonging to someone else we know - not us.  But we recognize them just the same.  Give us a bit of both angelic and misbehavin'.

I was thinking of this concept while watching re-runs of The Big C, a TV series starring Laura Linney and Oliver Platt.   Linney's character has been diagnosed with cancer and she's trying to have the time of her life while there is life. Platt's character is her self-absorbed husband. But as you allow the characters to develop you come to realize that Linney's character is not all grace and sunshine.  She has a pretty selfish streak.  And Platt's character has a deeply feeling side you would not easily suspect in the beginning.

TIP: Create your characters or develop your client like the well-rounded human beings they are taking advantage of flaws and virtues as befits the situation.

 

 

 

Tell Me About Unity & Strength.

THE BUNDLE OF STICKS

A CERTAIN Father had a family of Sons, who were forever quarreling among themselves. No words he could say did the least good, so he cast about in his mind for some very striking example that should make them see that discord would lead them to misfortune.

One day when the quarreling had been much more violent than usual and each of the Sons was moping in a surly manner, he asked one of them to bring him a bundle of sticks. Then handing the bundle to each of his Sons in turn he told them to try to break it. But although each one tried his best, none was able to do so.

The Father then untied the bundle and gave the sticks to his Sons to break one by one. This they did very easily.

"My Sons," said the Father, "do you not see how certain it is that if you agree with each other and help each other, it will be impossible for your enemies to injure you? But if you are divided among yourselves, you will be no stronger than a single stick in that bundle."

In unity is strength.

TIP:    

1. Some days you have to go back to the basics to "get it."
2. Nothing is more basic than a story.
3. For each problem there is always one elegant solution; often you will find it in a story.