Aging

My father's birthday was last week. My own birthday is exactly a month before his. This week also marked 10 years since I returned from Russia as a religious service missionary. 10 years is a long time - a decade - and it is a length of time that we only have so many of. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2006 the average life expectancy of someone with at least a BS/BA by age 25 was 81 (citation figure 32 pg. 37). According to Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge) Utah has a life expectancy of 80.2 years. So 8 decades to live you life, make your mark, and change the world.

Our first decade is a little tricky. Physically we grow faster and more than any other period in our life. If we were to continue growing at that rate things would get tricky. We also learn most of the basics skills necessary to care for ourselves and are physically capable of performing critical functions. We also develop mentally, socially, emotionally, and morally to a point where we have set a foundation for our future self. However, most people can't remember the first half of their first decade and other may not have too many memories of the second half. In terms of wide impact on the world there are limits to what the typical ten year old can do.

Our second decade tends to be a bit clearer in our minds. High school, puberty, and preparing to enter "adulthood" will do that. Not to mention our physical, mental, and social development over those years. As our bodies and minds change so do our abilities and capabilities. Some would wish to banish memories of this time while others feel that events such as junior high are creations of sadistic administrators. For my own part, high school was an okay experience, but starting college was better. You see more instances of teenagers impacting the world and society beyond their immediate area, but it is still early yet. Working with a lot of college freshmen who are at the end of this particular decade has shown me that most of them have no clue what their path in life is like. Some do and go on to achieve it, but the majority have no clue. This is because interests change, views expand, and experiences shape us, particularly as we enter our twenties.

The 1920's was known as the "Roaring Twenties" and, perhaps, we should consider this third decade of life as similar. They bare some direct similarities as 21 is the minimal age to buy alcohol in all states, many people in their twenties leave the nest, and starting careers often means they are funding their own entertainment. I can't speak about the vocational side as my experience personally and professionally involves college students. I've seen many students come out of high school, enter college away from home and revel in the resulting freedom. However, I've seen those revels result in everything from bad grades to armed robbery. One of the two "men" in the armed robbery story was a student in my College Success Skills class.

There is a lot of research on what has been termed Student Development Theory. As someone who has been exposed to many different theories of cognitive, ethical, racial identity, social, intellectual, and  various other kinds of development I find it an interesting lens through which to look in order to try to address students' needs. With that said, each individual student has their own experience and their own development path. I don't know if it is possible to give a brief outline of what people "typically" go through in this decade, so I'm not going to worry about it. Most enter their career field, some doing so after college, others doing it without college. Social relationships outside of family become more important with people considering marriage or other long term relationships. In short, this is the decade that is often seen as, "the beginning of the rest of your life." And it is the one that I have officially past out of.

In the moment, it's hard to imagine that I still have five decades of life ahead of me. I remember my father telling me that there will come a time when I'll be able to look back on a ten year period, see the accomplishments I have made and then project that into the future and the possible accomplishments I'll be able to make. I've had that in mind as I've gotten older. I remember my father being a little down as he contemplated his own statement. I think it must have been around his 40th birthday. He doesn't handle the decade years well. I would tease him about it but when he turned 50 he threatened to bodily throw me off Angle's Landing. I want to make it to 50 so I don't bring it up.

Fanboys and the arguments they make

I was thinking about doing a Star Wars vs. Star Trek post, but then I realized just how crazy that would be.

The battle between the two has been the basis for nerd fan-boys to fight for years. Being part of the silent majority who enjoys both I find such debates to be entertaining until they get to the awkward phase when you realize just home much the other person has invested in their franchise being "the best." When you think about the energy that they could have put into other things that they instead poured into proving that the USS Enterprise could take out the SSD Executor, it gets kind of scary. It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. I had just finished the campaign mode of a video game and mentioned it to him. He proceeded to tell me that he had all of the in game extras. "I have the characters, the music, the artwork..." My first thought was, "I have a house. I have a wife. I have a kid. I have a career. I have a life." There are some truly passionate people out there. I reminds me of my own obsession (albeit a known obsession that I am striving to moderate - see last week's post). When somebody disagrees with us on something that we feel passionate about it feels "like someone ripped out your heart and put it in a blender." When it comes to popular media I try to keep an open mind. I know what I like and what I don't, and I'm generally open to criticisms against it. I'm sure Angel will let me know how wrong my assessment of myself is.

Many have heard the term "fanboy" in relation to someone who feels very strongly about something and doesn't appear to be capable of considering ideas, opinions, jokes, or anything else contrary to their passion. A perfect example of this from the news - "Angry Justin Bieber fans vandalize Esperanza Spalding's Wikipedia page." Not to mention any number of links from the Google search page linked to in the first sentence. It isn't enough for a fanboy's obsession to be good, it must be the Best Thing Ever(!!) and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know anything, isn't a true beliber (sorry) believer), or isn't cool. While I wouldn't say that hipsters are inherently fanboys (of non-mainstream products) they can look like them sometimes. While technology (Apple, iPhone vs. Android, Play Station vs. Xbox vs. Nintendo), popular media (aforementioned Beliebers and Star Wars vs. Star Trek), and even original source (ex books) vs. new version (ex movies) tend to be the big players, there is another area that breeds fanboys. (wait for it......)

Politics. (Boom! did he just go there?! Yes he did!)

I am not going anywhere into politics. I will not discuss my political views in this post - just that people tend to have strong opinions about politics that can turn them into fanboys. In any event, I've found an interesting checklist that can help you understand the way that most fanboys tend to argue and debate. The originator is Larry Correia, a particular favorite author of mine, who has very (very, very, very) strong political views. And has gotten tired of the way that many debate against him - or rather the way they don't debate but just talk smack. I am not claiming that Larry is a fanboy for two reasons: I've found there to be logic behind his statements and second he points out, "If your tactics are to shut down debate, you are an idiot. It should never be to shut down or scare off, but to WIN." Notice, that I did not say that all fanboys argue this way, or that fanboys argue this way all the time. I also did not say that not being a fanboy makes you nice. Larry is very blunt, not soft spoken, and can be very insulting when he puts his mind to it. His language can be extreme - you've been warned. I will say that his checklist has proven quite accurate for fanatics of all kinds. Check it out and the next time you find yourself talking to someone and you notice the person has just checked off one of Larry's boxes - know that you're dealing with a fanboy.

And make sure you don't check off any boxes yourself.

Misconceptions: Doing verses Knowing

I had an interesting conversation with Angel last night that really got me thinking. We often think about the different families we come from. Her parents and grandparents had minimal formal educational opportunities while mine had undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her family worked farms, machine shops, and supply chain while mine taught, did engineering, and worked in finance. Her family built their house, fixes their cars, and raised cows. Mine - didn't, doesn't, and can't. These differences are just a small part of who they individually and don't get in the way of them enjoying each other's company. I love my in-laws and Angel has told me that my parents are some of her favorite people.

The conversation got me thinking about why I am driven to know things, and to be known as a person who knows things. I always hate to acknowledge how egotistical I can be. It literally makes me wince when I think about it. Unfortunately it's true though. Just ask my wife. One of her better qualities is the ability to deflate my ego when it needs it. Regardless of periodic egocentric tendencies I have placed some measure of my self worth in being known as a person who knows stuff. I'm sure there are some positives to that, but I can't think of any right now. One giant negative is that when I remember something wrong, or am just flat out wrong about something I tend to take it rather personally. Or as one person put it I "act like someone has torn my heart out and put it in a blender." I really try not to be such a martyr, but few people understand what they look like through the eyes of others. Maybe we just need to get shot with a point of view gun (or at least those of us that are male).

I think that this emphasis that I've placed on knowing things comes from a misconception of knowing verses doing. My father went to work in a cubical, crunching numbers, building spreadsheets, and manipulating percentages (in a good way). There was very little visual representation of his efforts. To me, it must have appeared that he worked by knowing things, insubstantial things. He went to school so he could know things so he could work at knowing things. To my muddled brain "doing" something meant you had a finished product that could be used, something that you could see and manipulate to accomplish something else. "Knowing" and "doing" were two sides of a scale in my mind. Remember, that young minds tend to revolve around dualism, the idea that there is a right a wrong approach to everything - and nothing in between. One of my least favorite expressions "those that can, do; those that can't, teach." is a prime example of this dualistic thinking. As if knowing and doing are two very different things when really they are simply different manifestations of the same catalyst - productivity.

My obsession with knowing things, I believe, stems from this misconception of knowing and doing being exclusive of each other. I did not know how to "do" much. My father knows his way around a shop, can identify basic problems with a car, and has built some impressive items for our home - mostly utilitarian in design. However, because he made his living "knowing" things and because I couldn't "do" anything (ask my dad about digging window wells for him one summer) I put more emphasis on "knowing." My degree is in history, an area that is infamous for it's focus on "knowing" and not "doing." I tend to remember rather random and often useless facts and trivia. And, as pointed out, I tend to take it personally when people say I'm wrong about something that I feel that I "know" well. Not exactly a well balanced psyche if you think about it.

There is lots that I'm not talking about. In depth discussion on the similarities of knowing and doing. How I've learned to "do" many different things. The respect that I have for those that "do" (enormous!). What people in "knowing" jobs actually do. But I'm still coming to grips with reality of my skewed, subconscious preconceptions. However my brain decided that there was a bigger difference between knowing an doing I've now have to adjust my thinking accordingly. I will probably return to this topic again.

Dreams

I had a dream this week where I underwent a number of adventures in a spooky and sinister town. It seemed quite real with time progressing. Like the movie Stalker I remember the dream being tense, but nothing actually happened. The weirdest part of the dream was the end. The dream ended with me getting into bed at the end of my dream day and ended as my alarm went off, waking me up to reality. My first thought on waking was, "My heavens! I just lay down. Did I get any sleep?" It was then that I remembered / realized that I had experienced a rather life-like dream. That got me thinking about dreams, what causes them and how they effect us.

Most people know that we sleep in cycles, moving through different kinds of sleep and that dreams occur in the final stage, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. While REM sleep doesn't last very long (18 to 23 minutes on average of a 90 min sleep cycle) the images and sounds we experience seem very real. Our bodies are actually paralyzed (by our mind) to prevent us from acting out our dreams. As we shift between sleep cycles, just like shifting gears in a car, we occasionally slip and not make the full transition. This can cause us to act out our dreams, to wake partially but still be paralyzed, to have our dreams superimposed on our awake vision, and various other things. While there is a whole host of sleeping disorders, dissociations in sleep, and parasomnia, but that's not what I am looking at here. I just want to look at dreams.

As an article I found in Psychology Today starts, Freud was well known for his thoughts on dreams - presenting them as "poems we tell ourselves at night in order to experience our unconscious wishes as real." The article goes on to say that Freud was only partially right and then presents five theories currently held today. A search on Google of "Why we dream" will pull up a variety of different theories. As the article I start this paragraph with includes theories put forth by many other sites and sources, I'll stick with it. The long and the short of it is that we still don't know everything about dreams. the theories (and that is exactly what they are) propose in a nut shell that dreams are the brain processing information from the day. Whether it's to sort it, locate the important stuff, or "defrag our hard drive" dreams are often heavily influenced by the activities, thoughts, and emotions from the day. But just because you have a particular dream doesn't mean that you experienced a specific sequence of stimuli that codified your dream. Dream interpretation is, at best, "metaphor mongering," posing the most plausible symbolic and / or rational reason for the cause of the dream. There are plenty of people that think that dreams have no specific purpose but are simply a natural part of our brain.

Interestingly, we often talk about our deepest desires, fantastic ideals, or things aspire towards as our "dreams." This may be because we often live out our fantasies in our dreams, particularly when we have what are referred to as lucid dreams. A lucid dream is one that we know that it is a dream and knowing that we are dreaming often allows us to take control of the dream and use the broken physics and logic of our imagination to do what we want. My father has told me that his favorite dreams are when he is falling - because he quickly realizes that it's a dream and that lets him fly.

One of my favorite lines in Voyages of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis is when they rescue a man from a sinister isle. He tells them to get away as fast as they can. When questioned why he responds, "It's where dreams come true." When the crew starts exclaiming what a great place it must be, he clarifies, "not those dreams." Nightmares are a classic icon of terror, suspense, and anxiety. But people have given them a more realized image as well. In Piers Anthony's Xanth books (where all things are literal - literally) nightmares are black female horses which bring bad dreams to people. I found it fun that a similar image was used used in the recent Rise of the Guardians movie from Dreamworks. However, upon waking up from a nightmare there is little that is entertaining. Because dreams are often emotionally driven our nightmares don't feel fake.

Dreams may never be understood. There are certainly parts of them that are, but enough that is not to make it still puzzling. Here's hoping for sweet dreams for all who read this.

Suspense

My wife will tell you that I am not a fan of scary movies. She enjoys a good scary movie every once in a while, but she can't watch them with me. I attribute it to my active imagination. We watched The Others our first Halloween at 10:00 am with the sun shining nice and bright through the window. That's how much I'm not a fan of scary movies. Perhaps it was from seeing a big chunk of the movie It when I was about eight. Not a happy memory. No, I'm not afraid of clowns.

The funny thing is, my fear is primarily in events that have a super-natural element. I enjoy watching many of Hitchcock's films including To Catch a Thief, The Man who Knew to Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Rear Window, and (my personal favorite) Rebecca. I also like Charade by Stanley Donen, and Wait until Dark by Terence Young. Despite my enjoyment of many of Hitchcock's films as well as others, I have no interest in seeing The Birds, or Psycho. Those movies frankly scare me. Perhaps it is the idea of the ordinary becoming malicious. A normal shower becomes a scene of a murder. Crows and ravens descend as killers. For whatever reason, there are plenty of films that I have no desire to see.

Interestingly enough, the same is true of books. In fifth grade I would asked to be excused when the teacher started reading "scary stories" as part of a Halloween ramp-up. However, one day she pulled out a collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories and I fell in love with his dark style. "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Cask of Amontillado" are two of my favorites along with "Hop-Frog" and "the Pit and the Pendulum." As I mentioned previously, Dracula by Bram Stoker is a personal favorite of mine after reading it in college. I will say, however, that when I first read it, I would not read it after 3:00 pm - just to be sure.

What many of these stories, whether printed or filmed, have in common is suspense. I attended a lecture one Halloween in college where a professor of English and film talked about what made Hitchcock so good at suspense. He explained that suspense is not the unknown, but rather when you know what is going to happen and you are watching someone who doesn't know what is happening. This image - of a person standing behind the shower curtain, out of sight and consequently unknown to the lady - is more suspenseful than this one of the woman seeing Mr. Norman Bates.

Hitchcock was also good at turning that model on it's head. Rear Window has you watching a man who is witnessing this catalyst for suspense himself. He can the danger that his friend is in even when she can't. And our suspense it watching him in suspense. Rear Window may very well be one of the most suspenseful films done simply because of this strange twist on the usual formula.

The Birds is not to be left out. Here Hitchcock plays our own knowledge against us. In the iconic schoolyard scene we see a flock of crows gathering. We know that the woman cannot see them and that the crows having nothing good planned. But lets see what Hitchcock does with our expectations. Watch the scene here.

I'd have posted the clip in text, but it gives away Hitchcock's device. We know what to expect and instead of meeting them, Hitchcock gives us an overdose - a shock that turns the suspense we feel for the women to share in her terror as she realizes what is in store for her. Rebecca does a similar thing where we expect to hear one thing and then find out another. We think we have him figured out, only to find out it's much worse.

This Halloween I won't be watching anything worse than The Mummy staring Brendan Fraser or even Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy. This is in part because we will have smallish children with us, and also because I don't really like scary movies. I hope you enjoy your Halloween.

Creatures of Habit

Stand with my back to the wall. Reach back and touch it with my left hand. Take a step forward with my left food and tap the ground with my racket. Say the score. Bounce the ball once and serve.

Position paper draft on right side of the screen. Open research notes, online sources, etc. on left side. Turn on music, low volume.

Wrap up daily activities by 10:00 pm. Dress for bed. Read or play computer until midnight.

I put on deodorant, comb my hair, then use three pieces of toilet paper placed on the bottom right corner of my sink counter to clean my razor every morning.

What I have described above are three things that I do under certain circumstances. The first is how I serve when playing racquetball. The next is how I write research papers and blog posts. Next is my general evening routine and has been for the last fifteen years. And lastly my morning routine of getting ready for the day.

As I was doing research on this, I was looking for information on "why" we form habits. It turns out that "why" and "habits" don't go together. I wasn't able to find anything addressing the "why" of habit forming, it's all of the fact that forming habits is something we just do.

Habits form when we repeatedly do something. That's it. If you do the same thing the same way, you will eventually form a habit. Now, MIT demonstrated that as we do the same thing over and over, we eventually fine-tune it so that it becomes more efficient. Ultimately thought, we find ourselves slipping into autopilot as we preform these tasks. This can happen for both good behaviors as we all know. But this address the reason that we do not discuss why we form habits. We form habits because we do things, and many of those things are the same thing, over, and over, and over, and over......

So, back to how habits form. Terry Gross from Fresh Air on NPR, did an interview with Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. There it mentions that habits consist of three parts: cue or trigger, behavior, and reward.

The cue or trigger is the switch that moves us to automatic mode, and can be hard to identify with all of the "noise" associated with our behavior. From the appendix of his book, Charles Duhigg points out that "experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, or immediately preceding action." This means that if you are trying to figure out what triggers your habit you can look to only those five areas. So, just keep track of where you are, what time it is, how you feel, who you are with, and what you were doing before you slipped into automatic. A pattern will eventually appear and you can narrow down the cue.

The behavior can also be called the routine. This is what becomes automatic. It may be my serving routine as described above, or my evening routine. It may be someone reaching for a handful of M&Ms at "that time" in the afternoon. This is usually the most identifiable aspect of the habit and usually what you want to stop.

The reward is what reinforces the habit. For instance, people usually don't develop a habit of putting their hands on a stove. This is simply because it hurts like the devil when you do. There is no reward to that, only pain. So every habit has a reward associated with it, something we feel that we are getting out of our routine. Perhaps it is the feeling that you aren't missing anything, like putting on deodorant or shaving. Or perhaps it feels easier on the eyes to look to the right side of the screen to type and the left to read. Whatever it is, it can be identified. Duhiggs points out that in trying to break a habit you should experiment with rewards so you can narrow down what it is you're craving when you enact the behavior. Once you know what you are craving from the behavior you can find more appropriate behaviors to achieve the same reward.

I should point out that I've presented Duhigg's ideas in almost reverse order. Check out the link to the appendix of his book above. There really is some fascinating stuff there. I was going to get into the neurological aspects of habit building, but I'll have to save that for another post.

I do want to make one thing clear. Many people associate an unusually pervasive habit, such as keeping their desk clean, or a particular action at a particular time EVERY DAY with having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). While I am no expert on OCD, but I have learned a thing or two from conference panels by mental health professionals and following Robison Wells, an author who has "a heavy dose of panic disorder, a moderate case of depression, and a growing, angry case of OCD." I love Rob's books and enjoy reading and listening to his blog and podcasts. In a blog last October, Rob made it clear:

"When my OCD literally makes me punch myself in the face, or smash my hand in hopes of breaking it, there's nothing I find more annoying than picky people who like to keep their desk tidy cheerfully declaring "I'm totally OCD!" Words have meaning."

Please be considerate of those that struggle with the most prevalent mental disorder out there, the disorder that I have heard referred to as "the King of Mental Illness." If you have a strong habit to do something, that is not an indication of OCD. When you habit impacts everything else you do so you cannot live a normal life - seek professional help. If it isn't OCD, it's probably an addiction. And those come with their own problems as well.

Holding hands

When it comes an image of "being in a relationship", holding hands is one of the most basic and often seen. When two people are seen holding hands it is culturally understood that they are involved in each others' lives on a higher level simple friends. I remember holding hands for the first time with my wife (she was my friend then, of course) and the comforting feelings of closeness it gave. It felt like we were coming together as something more than friends. Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, lists "Love & belonging" directly above those of basic safety. This implies that after our own physical needs and safeties are secure we begin to reach out to others and seek companionship.

I began thinking about this yesterday when I was in one of the student lounges and overheard a conversation between two young women discussing their current relationships. The first had just broken up with her boyfriend after receiving a call from "his baby's mother." The second was unsure of her relationship. She liked the guy but felt like it was hard to bring up bad news because he was "too sensitive." That part of the conversation was far more interesting as the two expressed their expectations for a partner and from themselves in a relationship.

I came across this article on Kansas State's homepage. It states that in many ways it is healthy for tweens and teens to have celebrity crushes. I particularly liked this quote from it:

"If you and your best friend swoon over a celebrity together, then it's helping you figure out where you fit with your friends and with your peers," Myers-Bowman said. "But, for example, if all your friends like Ryan Gosling and you like Sean Connery, you get to feel what it's like to be different from everyone else, and you get to process those feelings."

I'm not sure if any of the women I know didn't swoon over Sean Connery when they were teenagers. My sisters were rather partial to him in "Darby O'Gill and the Little People."

My wife and I are approaching our 7th wedding anniversary this year. If we were living in Germany and Gabriele Pauli had succeed in passing her legislature then we would be looking at "renewing our vows" in order to stay married. While we've been married we've often wondered where we would be if we hadn't made that decision. I for one feel that deciding to marry my wife was the single greatest decision I have ever made. I remember people telling us that it would be hard and I don't remember a many people telling us how good it could be. But I can say that for better or worse, poor or poorer (I work in education, there is no rich), sickness and health, and every other dichotomy imaginable I am a better and happier person because of my marriage.

My invitation: Muse on your relationships and see where your thoughts lead you.