BLOG 182 - Cheating by popular demand!

By popular demand... a re run of Blog 127:
http://jaxobservesandrants.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-127-very-british-festival.html

BLOG 181: CRY

“All these feelings need to be felt. We need to stomp and storm; to sob and cry; to perspire and tremble.” John Bradshaw

How many times did you cry this week? Yes...it’s an odd question but think about it. Did you cry this week? If you didn’t well done, you got through seven days without someone or something making you feel rubbish.

With the exception of those suffering from some kind of hormone imbalance (when I was pregnant I cried when the loo-roll needed changing, when the only comfy shoes didn’t match my outfit and when a kitten went meow) most of us can document with stunning accuracy the times we have been reduced to tears. It’s not something we do easily or with any kind of abandon... it is for most of us an outpouring of extreme emotion. Crying is nature’s valve which is only normally activated when emotional pressure, frustration and grief arrive simultaneously and instant relief is called for.

On Tuesday this week I had a good old fashioned cry. I have to admit it did me a world of good. Once the tears had dried, I felt a surge of restorative power creep through me. “Enough”, I said out loud “Enough now”. I stood up, smoothed down my coat, squared my shoulders and walked calmly back into the fray and dealt with the issues.

It was an odd thing. I walked out of a situation where someone was passive aggressively having a go at me (loudly having a phone conversation with a commissioning editor, not mentioning my name specifically but making it clear to this person that it was me who was letting the side down). I barely hit the street when the tears came.

Crying in the street is the most bizarre experience in England. The English are a kind nation at heart unable to steel their hearts against the suffering of animals, children or anything nominally vulnerable. They give more to charity than any other nation of comparable size... they are uncomfortable with the idea that some must suffer. However running in tandem with this is the fact that the national default setting is ‘Avoid Embarrassment’. So to have a grown woman leaning against a wall with tears pumping down her face is a difficult thing to see for your average English person, who will lower their eyes to the ground and pass by quickly. Eventually though, a gentleman who was happily consuming a coffee in a local cafe could not bear it much longer and left his table and crossed the street to enquire if I had just had a nasty shock and was I going to be ok. English born that I am, I put him at ease (Rule no.1 in England is: Don’t make someone feel uncomfortable), I assured him I was fine and hurried away to a local churchyard where tears were more fitting and continued my emotional breakdown there.

As I said, I caught on to myself, after the release had worked and went back and dealt with the issue. Of course, the perpetrator of situation had calmed by then and all in the garden was rosy from that point on. But it has left me wondering about the restorative power of crying, because although my tears were private (from the person who triggered them), the fact I used this method to free myself for the despair of the passive aggressive attack really and truly helped me. Which is odd as turning on the waterworks has always been viewed by me as a weakness.

It turns out that crying is really good for you.

New York Times reporter Benedict Carey once referred to crying as emotional perspiration. Given that regular sweat has three important jobs to do, lubrication, regulating temperature and removing waste matter, Benedict Carey reckoned that crying works similarly in three ways; it blurs the vision, cools the hurt, and exorcises pain. He claims that with tear filled eyes you have to stop, with outpouring of emotion you have to revaluate and with having done so you get release.

I think he may be right, as I have to admit that having given in to an outpouring of frustration and hurt, I did reset my emotional temperature and negated the refuse dumped on me by the cause. It was not for nothing that the first words I said as emotional peace crept over me sating my tears were “Enough. Enough Now”.

Scientifically, crying has been proven to be fantastic for you. When people are mean to you your manganese level rises. (Bet you never knew you had a manganese level... but pay attention YOU do!). Manganese is a toxin that when an emotional disturbance takes place releases molecules that cause massive feelings of anxiety, nervousness, irritability, fatigue, and aggression which push every other emotion into back pockets of your brain. High manganese levels make you irrational.

Biochemist William Frey found that emotional tears have 24 percent higher albumin protein concentration, than regular tears. Albumin protein concentration is a little tonic the body produces during emotional crying and it transports the toxic molecules that amp up the Manganese level right out of your body. It is this process that powers the surge of peace and feeling of relief after a good old fashioned bawl.

What is really quite scary is that crying is often viewed as a weakness. In actual fact, the reverse is true. Suppressing the urge to weep will increase stress levels, and is well documented as a major contributor to stress aggravated diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart problems, and peptic ulcers – to name but a few.

I’m not a regular reader of Science Digest but I was struck by an article by Ashley Montagu in which she argued that crying fosters community. I think she may have a point. Even here in stiff upper lip England, a gentleman reading his paper and enjoying a cup of coffee saw a woman crying on the opposite side of the street and left his paper and coffee behind to see if he could be of assistance. This was no pick-up; this was the vulnerability of one human touching the humanity of another. There is little like crying to display obvious emotional distress, and in that moment where the man left his pleasure behind to offer help to a stranger... it was because he could empathise. In his words, he thought I had “recently had received distressing news” and wished to help. If that isn’t tears fostering community then I don’t know what is.

I can strongly recommend a big old fashioned bawl. On Tuesday, I was that lady in street with mascara down her cheeks, snot bubbles in her nose, shaking so badly I had to lean against a wall to steady myself. It wasn’t pretty – but it helped.

A stranger showed me kindness and I became strong enough to put one foot before another and walk to the church yard. In the church yard I sat and wailed and let it all out, the distorted feelings of injustice, attack and any other melodrama my amped up Manganese level had created. Then the peace came. The sense of proportion, the realisation that sometimes some people are just mean and they WANT you to feel rubbish and it is NOT all about you... it’s about them and who they are. Then I could calmly look at the issues and decide my culpability and how to fix what was within my power to fix. And once I did that... I could deal.

And I did deal. The article is going to run in her magazine – and it is running the way I wrote it after all.

What happened on Tuesday was not something traumatic at all. But it could have been if I let the conflicts and resentment build up inside the corners of the limbic systems of my brain and certain corners of my heart.

I found crying cathartic.

I let all those little devils out before they wreaked havoc with my nervous and cardiovascular systems. Best of all, having that rather public cry brought me to a place of clarity, strength and peace... it may be ugly (at least when I was doing it), but the experience was proof that what don’t kill you makes you stronger.

So to that editor... THANK YOU. But if the news that you have helped me by being so awful to me upsets you... may I recommend to you a good old fashioned cry?

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BLOG 180: Default Setting

“The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges. “
- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you saw me earlier this week you would have seen a headless chicken squawking that failure is imminent! You see the default setting for my memory is blank, so this being the technological age I have overcome this little challenge by using a variety of machines to tell me what on earth it is I have forgotten. However, as I discovered this week when wireless, servers and mobile networks all crashed I am so reliant on external machines and systems that the removal of them for a few days threw me.

How funny! Especially if you consider that if we go back just 15 years...when I did not own even a mobile phone, let alone a home computer... and I operated my life just fine.

I’m not belittling the technological age. It is useful to have all these machines. Back in the day, I’d hoof all the way from Richmond Surrey to Solihull in the West Midlands for a meeting. I’d be in the region of Bicester (some 40 miles plus from Richmond) when my opposite number in Solihull would be reported to my Richmond office as suffering from flu and the meeting would be called off. Unfortunately there would be no way of letting me know so I’d continue a further 40 miles to Solihull before I knew this nugget of information. With today’s technology I could have just turned around using those 40 miles in the more profitable direction of back to base. Technology is our friend and no mistake... but I was amazed at how bewildered I was this week when my access to it was somewhat restricted.

Wasted trips to Solihull aside, during the unlighted age before the technological advances, I remembered birthdays, I got to meetings both social and work, I learnt about change of plans somehow and I still could display and substantiate an encyclopaedic knowledge of vital bits of primarily useless( but entertaining) information. I could do all that on a default setting of blank. And yet 15 years later it came to pass that I had to use my own memory and not that of all my machines... my first thought was failure imminent!!! Absolutely stupid of course because guess what... I SURVIVED!

You find a way around your nature. You always do. You have to just to survive. Actually one or two blips aside, I did more than that, I excelled, but it wasn’t easy... it took me quite some time to remember about the best machine and system that is entirely flexible and has a stunning ability to learn and learn fast.

What is THAT? I hear you ask! Is it an app on the iphone4?

No it bloody isn’t it’s me, it’s you, it’s us.

Our default setting is not ‘Failure imminent’ (though I do know a very funny person who, as far as I am concerned, is convinced that will always be the outcome no matter how many times I prove her wrong... but I digress). Failure imminent is not what we humans are about.

Yeah, we stuff things up. But unlike a machine which once it has a corrupt programme will continue to do it even to its own demise unless there is intervention... we learn, we adapt, we use tools. We fix it.

It is what we do.

To even entertain the idea that any of us are not capable of overcoming hurdles is so unbelievably stupid; I won’t even debate the point. It is self evident that OUR default setting is to overcome challenges.

Albert Einstein: had autism. He used this to think outside the box and become the by-word for being a genius.

Ludwig Van Beethoven: went deaf aged 20. He used this to make music so beautiful that he remains one of the worlds most accomplished and famous composers.

Pablo Picasso/ Tom Cruise/ Richard Branson: all dyslexic. All three went on to huge success in areas that involved the same skills that supposedly the dyslexia held them back from.

JK Rowling: suicidal depression. Unable to concentrate and tormented by dark thoughts... but wrote the most successful series of books known to publishing.

George Carver: ignorant slave. Educated himself and went on to become one of the finest scientists (bio-chemistry) the world has ever known.

Monty Stratton: amputee. This guy accidentally shot himself in the leg, and then had to have it chopped off. Problem... he was a sportsman who need 2 legs to run. No problem as he made a comeback and won 18 games – on one leg.

I could go on. But the point is clear. If any and I mean ANY of the 8 people named above were machines... their default setting would be failure imminent.

If they were machines it would be clear they have faults and are not as good as the shiny perfect proven method. They would have been scrapped.

But they were not.

They were people.

And people have the ability to overcome.

This is how we made a wheel. This is how we beat disease. This is how we survive. This is how we rose to the top of the food chain. We adapt the world to suit our needs, which is truly more significant than anything any damn machine can do. We may be slow to get there but we overcome.

Failure is not imminent when you are dealing with people.

Remember that the next time the bb network crashes, the BT cable fuses at the exchange, the server goes down with your (unsaved) updated spreadsheets, the wireless broadband fades into the ether. Remember your default setting is overcome.

Because you will.

Because you can.

Because you are people.

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BLOG 179 Avoiding the Flatline

“ George: [on phone] Michael's chasing Kimmy? Julianne: [on phone] Yes!

George: [on phone] You're chasing Michael? Julianne: [on phone] Yes!

George: [on phone] Who's chasing you? Nobody. Get it! There's your answer.”

Written by Ronald Bass (Scriptwriter: My Best Friends Wedding)

John Cusack ruined my expectations, but to be fair so did Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise is as much to blame as anybody. You see these three and many more like them live in my brain as epic images of how when it comes to fight or flight syndrome... flight pays every time, at least in Love.

Tom runs in practically every movie... at the moment of enlightenment, Tom Cruise is never with the love interest... he always had to run through a couple of streets to make his declaration. Julia stole a bread van and drove through a busy Chicago to pursue Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friends Wedding and after she ran away from Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, he was happy not only to track her down in seedy LA but to climb the exterior of a building to declare his love. But it John that did the most damage... when Ione Skye didn’t choose him in Say Anything... he stood on her lawn with playing ‘their tune’ out of a ghetto blasta.

To me... love is physically chasing after someone, facing the possibility of humiliation but risking that anyway and doing so when it really looks like to all intent and purpose they cannot love you, will not love you. You will run through streets, you would steal a bread van, you overcome vertigo to climb a building, you’ll play Peter Gabriel at full blast under a bedroom window.

Thanks to these and many more images from movies and literature... I have never accepted any romantic attention without high drama I’m afraid.

My friends find this highly amusing and say I’m suffering from and acute case of ‘chase me-chase me’ syndrome and crack jokes regularly about bewildered men wondering ‘where the heck has she gone now?’ whilst I trot off somewhere expecting to be pursued. They reckon my single status is due to the fact that I keep leaving. They reckon if only I stuck around for a while good stuff would follow.

You know what.... that may well have some truth in it... stick around anything for long enough and it’ll appreciate you. May even request formally that your presence is required on a permanent basis, as it is hard to imagine you not being there. But really? Is that it?

Is that the secret to a love that lasts forever? Don’t leave?

Where is the adrenaline in just staying put?

Love IS drama. It should be an all consuming emotion causing adrenaline to pump through the heart. Why else is the heart the symbol of love?

I just don’t get the whole stay still and it will happen thing. It’s all a little... well ... comatose?

I like to keep the male of the species on his toes. I think they are built to chase like greyhounds after rabbits. My friends will tell you that I always expound the theory that being highly unavailable will result in my stock rising. They will tell you that Jax lives her theory. Then they will do that annoying smile thing that even I know means that they think I am absolutely crazy!

My friend s quite literally dine out on the stories of when my ‘chase-me chase-me’ action goes horribly wrong. There was the guy, who figured as I always seem to have somewhere else to be directly after our dates, that he’d schedule me back to back with another girl. My friends will regale in glee how when Jax is already for him to insist that she stays just a little bit longer, he got her coat and ushered the next one into her seat! And of course, they’ll bring up The Camber Sands incident which had Jax running in slow motion through the sand dunes whilst a male who will remain nameless looked around a couple of times whilst still seated... then shrugged and read the paper.

Amusing as these and other tales are to my friends... I still believe that the upside of flight over fight, is the fact that pursuit is a clear indication of passion. If a man can be asked to get off his backside and chase after you... then that has to be a little bit more of an investment in you that just reaching over and grabbing what happens to be there?

However, if you do the chase-me chase me thing, be prepared for blushes. I have learnt to accept that once motivated to do the greyhound thing, most men do not live in a highly scripted movie. And neither do I.

Like when the doorbell goes and you are in the middle of dinner, but on the other side of the door is someone who did a 16hr flight just on the off chance you’d say yes. .. or even maybe? Explain that to your elderly aunt when she says “Who is it dear?”

Or when someone turns up on a girls night and pays the DJ off for just one track knowing you’ll be a sucker for that tune and will approach the DJ box... just so he can ask you why you disappeared the last time it was played? Try styling that out when the whole dance floor can hear you through the microphones.

Then there is when he goes for an interview at your company even when he doesn’t even want the job, just so he can leave a note on your desk enroute to the interview room as you won’t return calls and security on your building is tight. I am still explaining that one to the HR gal!

Yeah .... it is all a little high drama.

I know... its high maintenance also.

It’s true, my friends always point out these grand dramatic gestures cause such peaks, the troughs must feel unbearably dull. No one could maintain such heights... Life, and that does mean Love too, is lived at a calmer pace. Life and Love and all the rest of it happens on a regular beat.

So they tell me.

I wouldn’t know. It all sounds a little too low maintenance. That regular beat sounds an awful lot like a flat-line.

The symbol of love is the heart... pumped with adrenaline. Yeah it’s a risk, sometimes I may have run out on something that (if only I stayed put) may have lead to a preacher saying words and 200 guests bearing toasters wrapped in silver paper and ribbon.

But hey ho... I have my own toaster (De_Longhi... top of the range Italian don’t you know!). It is 2011 after all; I have practically all the “I bought it!” lines in Destiny Childs “Independent Woman”.

The best thing a man can provide for me is a little adrenaline pumping chase... I’m prepared for the preacher to have Saturday off!

So yeah... another weekend of high drama, hot pursuit and grandiose declarations.

No chance of a flatline yet!

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BLOG 178: GET OUT!!!

“I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.” John F. Kennedy

We live in an age of technological advances... I get that. But like with all things advancements in technology must be monitored and even in some cases censored. Restricted use of technology is a good thing. It’s what all right minded people believe. I have been resolute on this point for ... well let me see... about sixteen years. Yeah... do the maths... I have been resolute on restricting technology since I’ve been a parent.

Dontchya just love it when you are wrong and you have to do the great big climb down? I cannot imagine of anything more humiliating that having to do so to your own kid. But do so I must (unless I wish to set him an example for life that admitting your errors is something best ignored). DAMN!!! Dontchya just hate it when you absolutely with every fibre of your being believe that what you are doing is totally and utterly right, especially when you are backed up by everyone you believe to be right thinking?

Well... guess what we were ALL wrong.

And I have to let a smug sixteen know this... AND try to keep some dignity. Tough Gig. But that’s parenting!

Part of this parenting gig (I thought) was to grab your offspring affectionately by the scruff of their neck and boot them out into the glorious sunshine so that they go be kids... the old fashioned way.

There is in every parent the entire unread book of Swallows and Amazons trapped in our psyche... I say unread because come on ... have you ever met anyone who has actually read it? But never the less, we have this image of children having adventures in the great outdoors, climbing trees, building camps and fording streams ...all while being fuelled with nothing more than cheese and pickle sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.

As soon as the sun makes an appearance on this Sceptred Isle, parents from John o Groats to Lands End are cutting power supplies to Xboxes and Computers and pushing kids out the door telling them ‘to go play’.

A great idea... no where on earth is quite as beautiful as the British Isles when it has the sun on it’s back, and despite having nearly 60 million of us crammed onto this floating land-chunk... there is a mind boggling amount of open space...even in the cities. “GET OUT! And DON’T come back till dusk!” we parents holler at our kids as hey peddle away reluctantly on their (dusty) bikes.

Aren’t we fabulous parents eh? Not for us, the pallid complexioned youths, alienated from real experiences as they spend hour after hour travelling the dank and dark depths of cyberspace! No... our kids will have cheeks like rosy apples, borne of fresh air and interaction with nature and more importantly ...other kids. Our children will benefit brilliantly from the fact we have removed the fuse to their bedrooms so their access to the interweb is no more... “GET OUT! And DON’T come back till dusk” we cry smugly.

My child is mega bright but totally infatuated with the interweb, Xbox and all that goes with it. You need to have to leave a trail of video games from the study to the front door to get him out! (OCD... he has to have them in order, so leaving a trail has him acting like a chicken pecking breadcrumbs!). I thought I’d be up for parent of the year. I rang round other parents and we all agreed to take our kids bikes out of the garage and reintroduce them to getting out and about in the fresh air.

“GET OUT! Go knock for your friends and go to the PARK!” I cried. He stood staring at me with a droopy dazed expression that was interspersed with longing looks over my shoulder back at the study where all manor of technology was causing him separation anxiety. But recognising that I’d flipped the fusebox switch to the room and that none of his equipment would be fired up... he wobbled off in the direction of Josh’s house. (Where I was reliably informed a similar scenario had taken place). Eventually they’d all knocked for each other and had cycled off into the sunshine bathed park.

Eureka ... what a great parent am I!!!

Well I was.... until AOL and Roper Starch published their survey of millions of children born from 1995 onwards.

Kids born from his point on are the so called internet generation, for whom on line activity is as much second nature as the wireless (radio) was to those born in the 1930s and television was to those born in the 1950’s/60's. And without a shadow of a doubt this huge survey has proven that all this fretting about getting our kids outdoors and worrying about technology making the next generation dysfunctional is hugely inaccurate. Not only is it based on no solid evidence, it’s actually not even something new! In fact... parents have been fretting about technology since the wheel caught on as a jolly good idea.

Edwardian parents (born 1910 and earlier) really got their pantaloons in a twist when the pre world war 2 generation refused to go rambling in the woods and preferred to sit in a quiet room and listen to the broadcasts from London’s Alexandra Palace. “What will become of them!” they worried. Well that generation are now in their 70’s and as yet no has actually identified that embracing the technology of the day did them any noticeable harm. In fact Julie Andrews was born in 1935 and has to date shown no tendency to be socially dysfunctional just because she liked listening to the sound of music on her wireless as a youngster (and Dame Julie has more than proven she can run around a hill or two IF she has to!)

Parents born a few decade or so after the Edwardian worry warts had an even more insidious hurdle barring the way to get those kids out the house. They had to deal with the phenomenon that is Television. “You’ll go blind sitting there in front of the goggle-box for hours on end” they cried! Believe it or not it was a popularly held belief that watching an excess of television would burn out the retina and render the viewer not only blind but probably stupid for the rest of their days.

Parents the length and breadth of the UK purchased television cabinets with great big locks and attempted to ration exposure to this monolith of technology... but kids being kids they found a way and refused to ‘go outside to play’ in favour of staying indoors watching programmes with names as ironic as “Why don’t you just switch of your television set and go out and do something less boring instead” (Yes that was a real programme! ...various groups of kids eg. The Belfast Gang, The Birmingham Gang etc would arrive every school holidays to suggest things which might be less boring than watching TV. If the programme had actually succeeded of course then it wouldn't have had an audience). In fact Peter Beardsley the famed English Football player was born in 1961 and despite having grown up with the dazzle and allure that was the hey day of British Television, still managed to get outside enough to kick a ball.

So what of today’s, kids? It’s hardly radio and TV (which were highly censored and monitored) that they are exposed to... they have the largely unmonitored internet and those dreadfully violent games! They can’t possibly be thriving setting in their bedrooms alone pressing buttons on a keyboard or handset, blowing up aliens or looking at porn! GOOD parents of course will have to be the censor... take out the fuse and reintroduce those kids to the great outdoors!!!... NOW!

Really?

Actually no.

AOL and Roper Starch found that kids aged 9-17 who spend in excess of 20 hours per week on the internet have an increased interest in current event (44%). It also found that X-box and its equivalents (where kids play video games online together but from different locations) improved the quality of friendships (39%) and the ability to give clear concise instructions (37%).

Ah... but 20 hrs on the interweb has got to make them fall behind in their homework...surely!

Errrr... again not really...

In fact the research showed that 20hrs social interweb use resulted in improvements in written and language skills (36%) and a whopping 43% of kids showed better school performance overall as a result.

DAMN!

Perfectly functional kids... and not a bicycle, a cheese and pickle sandwich, a bottle of ginger beer or a woodland adventure in sight!

Dontchya just hate it when you are wrong?! But hey ho... the true point of being a parent is to be a good role model and a good role model MUST be able to acknowledge when they got it wrong. (DAMN!!!)

I have no choice. The cyber geek wins!

The climb down cometh!

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