News reports circulated yesterday regarding the latest research on the topic of “happiness.” As it turns out, empirical data now exist to support the notion that your emotional state is influenced, to a measureable degree, by those around you. Given that I’ve long hypothesized that anxiety is a contagious condition,it’s no stretch at all for me to imagine that happiness is as well. It seems that the closer you are geographically to a happy person the more likely you are to be happy. However, for the happiness to be “spread,” the connection you have with the other person needs to be mediated by face-to-face contact. Not technology.
Interesting.
I recently wrote on the topic of “Digital Intimacy” where I suggested that a social networking site (andthe “ambient awareness” of others) is a way for a person to feel less alone. The implication of feeling “less alone” is, naturally, to be “more happy.” (At least I think that’s the way it should work.)
Although I was long-involved in “social networking” before I even knew what the term meant, I had resisted signing up for Facebook (or anything similar) for quite a long time. However, my experience is that being first on Facebook, and now on Twitter, has led to me feeling more connected. And happier.
I have to admit, though, it’s face-to-face encounters that really do the most for me. And while “digital intimacy” is something we can all now settle for, it really is a shallow imitation of “real” intimacy.
And what is “real”? For me, intimacy it is a sense of closeness and connectedness involving trust and vulnerability – in essence, the ability of two people to share themselves completely (or nearly so) with each other. While many individuals tend to think of intimacy in terms of the physical dimension, I tend to view intimacy more in emotional terms. And for two people to be truly emotionally connected, I suggest is has to be in person.
Emailing and/or tweeting is all well and good. But in those mediums, I can’t listen to your tone of voice, look you in the eye, gently touch your knee while making a point, or hug you when we part. These are the elements of human interaction that lead me to feeling truly, intimately connected. And happy.
I’m not really sure if you know what “Jazzercise” is. So, for the uninitiated: it’s a physical-fitness program started, back in 1969, by a woman named Judi Sheppard Missett. Who woulda thunk? … back in the Sixties while many of us were trying to find a way to extract this country from an illegal, immoral war, Judi was jazz-dancin’ away and founding a fitness movement. At the time, of course, I had no idea that that was going on. I was trying to stay in college, avoid the draft, protest the war, and basically stay alive.
My personal introduction to Jazzercise was in 1983 when my roommate at the time, Tom, was lured into class by his girlfriend. Then, one day in August, during a period when my life was not working on several levels, I decided to accept his invitation to join him in a class. (I had resisted the invitation for months.) And, once there, I was hooked.
These classes are what most folks know generically as “aerobics,” but Jazzercise is a unique, franchised and controlled entity. You can go almost anywhere, find a Jazzericse class, and know what you’re going to get. In a “regular” Jazzercise class, the entire hour set to music (from today’s pop to classic rock), you’ll experience a warmup portion, a heavier cardio segment, and then a cool-down period (which ends with the use of hand and/or leg weights and at least one or two routines done on a floor mat). The Jazzercise website describes itself as a “workout program, which offers a fusion of jazz dance, resistance training, Pilates, yoga, and kickboxing movements…[with such benefits as] increased cardiovascular endurance, strength, and flexibility, as well as an overall “feel good” factor. The international franchise business hosts a network of 7,300 instructors teaching more than 32,000 classes weekly in 32 countries.”
I was living in Corvallis, Oregon, at the time of my first class. Tom quickly drifted away about the time his relationship ended, but I continued on. Subsequently, I regularly attended classes in Bloomington, Indiana; Eugene, Oregon; and Portland, Oregon. (For most of the classes, most of the time, during all those years, I was typically the only male in the room.) Then finally, after almost 22 years of Jazzercising, in 2005, while living in Portland, I stopped attending class, mostly because of my increasing levels of chronic pain.
Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d ever be healthy enough again to pursue Jazzercise, or any fitness routine other than my daily walk.
Well, things have changed. During the last few months, I have gradually gotten healthier and stronger. I attribute much of this improvement to the work I’ve done with my Feldenkrais practitioner. In fact, at my last visit, given the progress I’ve made, she asked if I’d thought about joining a gym. I said, “no, but I have been seriously thinking about returning to Jazzercise classes again.”
I’m in a period right now of being pretty amazed with myself: I’ve attended Jazzercise class two Saturday mornings in a row. While I’ve been taking it very easy, wisely pacing myself, and enduring a recovery period each time: I seem to be making it OK. I can hardly believe the progress I’ve made.
It hasn’t exactly been the blink-of-an-eye, but, as of today, August 13, it has been a quarter of a century of sobriety for me. Read the full story here.
I’ve had a couple of interesting interactions recently…
First: on my daily bike-path walk the other day, I ran into one of my new California friends. She wrote me soon afterward to report that I had looked “positively vibrant” during our little chat.
Second: a more casual acquaintance, and an infrequent reader of these pages, asked me in an email, with a somewhat judgmental tone (in my opinion), “aren’t you rather obsessed with your health?”
To the first person, I replied, “ahhhh…summer” … and though I believed her observation was a bit of an overstatement, I was secretly thankful that someone had really noticed me.
To the second, I reacted rather defensively…saying, no, I considered myself to be just about perfectly attentive to matters of my health. Given that I’ve spent years dealing with chronic pain, beginning in my twenties and continuing on to the present day, the old saying “if you have your health, you have everything” has profound meaning in my life.
For when a body is dealing with such issues, one can hardly say that “health” is present. Admittedly, I do spend a lot of time and energy focused on my health. It seems that it’s a condition of my existence.
Despite any projected “vibrancy” of late, however, I continue to struggle with body-wide muscular pain. And although I’ve made significant positive progress in recent months (mostly I credit the Feldenkrais Method and Anne, my local Feldenkrais practitioner), in the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with a minor setback, and the old questions such as “how did this happen?” and “why me?” come up in my mind again and again.
Regarding the matter of how did this happen?, I think I have more clarity than ever. So that’s today’s topic.
I consider my present health woes to have begun on November 13, 2003, when the Governor of the State of Oregon took the unprecedented action of firing the Board of Higher Education. I have reported on this situation before, and I knew immediately that my life was about to change, likely dramatically. The Board, after all, was my employer, and if the composition of that body was going turnover in such a wholesale manner… well, what (and who) was now in place to insulate me?
What resulted was that my entire world did shift. Within a very short time it was clear that I would be losing a job I’d held for nine years, and that I had nowhere, really, to go. I became extremely anxious. I asked myself: was I to be one of those older, displaced professionals no longer able to find gainful, skill-and-experience-appropriate employment?
Was I destined to soon become intimately familiar with that common question, “would you like fries with that?”
Of course, I’ve chronicled a lot of what subsequently happened to me here. I did lose my longtime position with the Oregon University System, but I was, fortunately, picked up for one, then another, “interim” arrangement at two Oregon community colleges. Though for three and a half years, my life was entirely focused on searching for “permanent” employment, while going to work everyday in highly-unstable, non-supportive, temporary environments.
During that time, I faced rejection over and over again in my job search. Although I seemed to have little trouble securing interviews…I had significant difficulty obtaining an offer for a permanent job. I came in second an amazing number of times. And then I ended up, in my interim appointments, working for not only unsupportive people, but for individuals who were overtly hostile and abusive. A short time into my first interim position, for example, I was lambasted and humiliated in a public meeting by the big boss. It set up a situation that entirely disallowed any possibility of comfort, security, support, or long-term prospects at the institution.
And then, if my professional life weren’t unstable enough, I continued to subject myself, in my personal life, to a relationship that involved several (and, sadly, predictable) episodes of painful rejection.
In sum, I spent a considerable portion of nearly four years dealing with repeated rejection and utter lack of support in both my personal and professional lives. (And, in fact, the personal-rejection scenario stretched back over more than twice as many years.)
During this entire time, my body was paying attention. I believe, now, that the resulting non-stop anxiety due to lack of support is the source of my current physical woes.
Moshe Feldenkrais, in a chapter entitled “The Body Pattern of Anxiety” (in The Elusive Obvious) discusses the human condition in terms of our instinctual reaction to threats. For example, he discusses what we know today as “fight or flight.” Feldendkrais (1981, p. 56) states that “an animal, when frightened, either freezes or runs away. In either case there is a momentary halt….with a violent contraction of all the flexor muscles…”. Further, he considers the case of a newborn infant, a being who is “practically insensitive to slow and small external stimuli” … but who “if suddenly lowered, or if support is sharply withdrawn, a violent contraction of all flexors with halt of breath is observed.” Feldenkrais notes further that “the similarity of the reactions of a newborn infant to withdrawal of support, and those of fright or fear in the adult is remarkable” (p. 57, emphasis added).
This makes so much sense to me! I believe these observations provide a logical explanation for the chronic-muscle-pain issues I deal with on a daily basis.
I had lived a professional existence where my experience was one of rejection and almost complete lack of support. And in the case of my personal relationship, the support I enjoyed at any particular moment was at risk of being withdrawn at any time.
My body tensed, ever ready for the next piece of bad news. And it stayed that way. I apparently lost the ability to ever relax my muscles at all…from head to toe, I became totally knotted up. I was a wet dishrag: stretched, squeezed, twisted, and left-to-dry on the rack. Over and over and over again.
I suspect any body that is stretched, squeezed and twisted, in a time frame with no predicable end, is one that is going to end up in pain.
Amazingly, I have finally found an environment that is much more personally supportive. And thanks to the supplement Fibroplex, the personal health benefits of which I have previously documented (here and here), along with the “neuromuscular re-education” that I’m engaging in with the Feldenkrais Method, I believe I’m gradually unknotting these old, fatigued, anxiety-ridden, twisted-up muscles.
It is a slow, tedious, and necessary process…if I ever expect to live mostly-pain-free ever again, that is.
As I reported earlier, last Saturday was a hot day. And after spending the afternoon in the city, I was tired out from all my adventures. I went to bed even earlier than usual, keeping all the windows open on both sides of my apartment because of the heat.
At 3:30 a.m. I woke up, but not because of the temperature inside…I was startled by the smell of smoke. What the heck is going on? I was wide awake instantly. I am pretty sensitive to smoke, whether it’s a neighbor firing up a barbeque grill, or someone in the vicinity having a cigarette. As I evaluated the quality of this middle-of-the-night smoke, however, it was neither of those. Something else was burning, and I was hoping it wasn’t my building.
I looked out from my balcony…nothing visible down below in terms of fire. And I heard no fire engines. I put on pants and shoes, and carrying my keys, did a quick walk-around of the complex. Nothing. Still, the air was sickening with the heaviness of the smoke. I asked myself again: what is going on?
I went back inside, shut my windows, and fitfully, worriedly, tried to get back to sleep.
One of the first things I heard on KQED the next morning was about the huge number of fires burning in California. Somehow, up to that point, I’d missed all the news. However, having dealt with the smoke in the middle of the night (and still smelling it that morning), it all started to make sense. The smoke had finally made its way to the Bay Area.
Well, you’ve probably all heard about this by now…it’s been over a week of more and more fires (primarily started by lightning strikes) and hazy, smoky air for us to breathe.
There are literally hundreds of fires going on. Yesterday, at one point, I heard the number was 1,100. Yes, that’s one thousand one hundred. But I’ve also heard a variety of estimates from 800 on up. This morning’s San Francisco Chronicle reported that the wildfires have so far consumed more than 300 square miles of California. (If you want to see a map of the significant ones, click here.) The other night the weatherman on the local NBC station estimated that the smoke could last for weeks or even months…given that the fires are both north and south of here and that the winds during the summertime generally alternate between northerly and southerly.
Given these conditions, before long I’ll be carrying my own personal tank of oxygen along with me just to breathe…and the tank will probably be strapped to my walker!
Soundtrack Suggestion
I’ve got a red hot heart And your heart’s as blue as the blood in your veins I say there’s fire down below You say it’s only smoke and ashes baby Only smoke and ashes baby, baby…
