American Imbroglio and the Search for Tranquility

A leisurely stroll through Houston's Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary provides a kind of serenity and peace that immersing oneself in nature often does. The turtle pond may be my favorite stop, a small body of water surrounded by bushy lizard's tongues and  wooden decks that jut out over the water. It is an escape from the madness of the world.

The word imbroglio certainly could describe that madness--especially the political scene, in light of America's sharply divided nation, a situation fueled by leaders of both political parties. While caustic distortion is the name of the game, it has been reported recently that fifty percent of the news about the virus has been traced to bots, automated programs designed to form a specific task and look deceptively human. And our presence on social media has been nothing short of disgraceful in the too frequent attempts to shame and humiliate each other.

But let's put that aside as a temporary blip in the history books and focus on the imbroglios--the intensely complicated disagreements between individuals and even nations, of our daily ordinary lives. Although this word, an Italian derivative of imbrogliare, didn't come into use until approximately 1740-1750, those difficult and acutely painful situations between people are as old as humanity itself.

It has been argued that relationships erode because of rage, mismanaged aggression, and anger.  According to psychologist Stephen Diamond, "We tend to see and interpret reality through our own lens." If this is true, then our lens is full of rage. But why?  And are we even conscious of it?

Some people attribute our disagreements to trust issues, while others believe when expectations are not met or boundaries are violated, relationships inevitably crumble.  Psychologists, however, concur that the problem goes even deeper with mother-father complexes at the heart of it, those positive and negative bits of information and influence we gain from our parents. Since this writer is not a therapist and most of my readers will probably not participate in long term therapy, let's focus on what we do know about the imbroglios we each suffer through and what we can do about them.

When relationships go awry, we often feel like we've been sucked into a vortex of confusion--two parties looking at a reality through very different lenses. How does that happen? We think our own truths are a set of undisputed facts. Red is red, blue is blue, water is wet, and ice is cold, right? No, truths are obviously not that simple. A perception of truth for each of us is based on individual emotions, feelings, and experiences gained throughout our lives. We interpret what we see using the information stored in our brains, everything that has made us who we are.  For example, the customs and traditions we grew up with develop our values that we, in our misguided assumptions, often project onto others.  The problem is, we aren't privy to the same experiences nor do we respond to them in the same way. Hence, we end up seeing life through individual lenses. Furthermore, influences outside the home as well as personality differences also mold us in different ways even from our siblings and those closest to us.

In 1939 Carl Jung wrote, "We want to have certainties and no doubts--results and no experiments--without ever seeing certainties can arise only through doubts and results only through experiments. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction."  Imbroglios can be painful and even embarrassing, but the perplexity that results can provide valuable lessons. An understanding of why we fight back so fiercely to be right, to protect what we believe to be true, may actually offer a new and sharper awareness of the mistakes we make regarding how we define our dignity, our rights and our feelings of self-importance. Admitting we are wrong is a humbling experience but one that can result in personal growth, the seeking of new truths.

Clear communication is certainly one more solution. How difficult it is to tell people how we feel and what we want or need! No doubt it would be easier to have people simply read our minds and assume they have all the same information we do, especially similar beliefs and values. Although sharing vital information with others, that is, the facts as we know them, may not solve the problem entirely, it's a good beginning toward developing a life of integrity, kindness, and clarity.

We can look to Abraham Lincoln as our role model of integrity when these unhappy disagreements arise. Two stories in particular from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times come to mind. The first, which may have been the start of a life of moral posture for Lincoln, happened in his youth. "Abe's friends liked to play a game of catching turtles and putting hot coals on their backs to see them wriggle. Abe not only told them it was wrong; he wrote a short essay in school against cruelty to animals." Lincoln put this moral courage to use again in a political imbroglio early in his career. When his humor ran amok, caricaturing Democrat Jesse Thomas, his opponent broke down in tears and the incident became known as the "skinning of Thomas." Deeply disturbed by his own shameful cruelty toward his colleague, Lincoln quickly apologized and vowed never to humiliate another person, especially for his own gain.

Americans in particular live fast-paced lives, and the American Dream of conquering new frontiers, as brilliant a concept as it is, frequently disregards setting aside time for mindfulness, reflection, and personal problem-solving that only quality thinking time allows. A final suggestion in the American imbroglio and the search for tranquility is to make nature an habitual part of your life. Decades of research have shown that people who spend  time in green spaces live mentally and physically healthier lives. My favorite naturalist-philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, sums it up beautifully in Walden, August 9, 1854:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Perhaps we can alleviate the imbroglios in our lives by setting aside time to figure out what is most important to us, to value our relationships with friends and family more than the superficial triumph of being right, and to understand the differences that make us interesting fellow travelers rather than pernicious enemies.

The Insouciant Mockingbird: Unfurled Wings

Most of my friends and family know how I feel about mockingbirds--from the birds in our garden to the beloved book itself, To Kill a Mockingbird. But another favorite writer, Annie Dillard, gives us another famous mockingbird in her acclaimed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a philosophical journey through nature. On one of her walks around Tinker Creek, Dillard watches a mockingbird dive to the ground, wings tight against his body and seemingly insouciant in his freefall. At the moment when he might be dashed to the ground, the bird simply unfurls his white banded wings and floats to the grass, not a care in the world.

That word insouciant carries denotative and connotative qualities that are worth sharing. Its origin is Latin and French--in, meaning not, plus the present participle of soucier, to worry. The resulting definition then is free from concern, worry, or anxiety. One source I consulted said, "acting as if one has not a care in the world," which I believe is more to the point. No one is ever totally free of worry or anxiety, and yet how often and in what particular circumstances do we pretend all's right with the world?

Insouciant is where we'd like to be, no doubt, but we aren't. Lately we've been engaging in activities to ease the worries of not only contracting Covid but also dealing with the new normal of wearing masks in public or even continued quarantine. Every institution that is a part of our lives has changed drastically, making us resort to digital, virtual communication and shopping, and up until now rarely leaving our houses or seeing friends and family. When we do venture out into what we hope is a sanitized environment, we do so with a mask to avoid spreading the disease. Covid has not departed, nor is it leaving any time soon.

We may indeed become that insouciant mockingbird eventually, but right now our need for a return to the old normalcy has many of us wanting to stop the world and get off. In 1962 Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley brought an award-winning musical to Broadway called Stop the World--I Want to Get Off. The main character Littlechap has a unique strategy for coping with his life. Every time something unpleasant happens to him, he calls out "Stop the world!" and addresses the audience. After a series of regrettable events, and he has become an old man, he realizes he's always had what he wanted. After so much loss, he is granted the ability to intervene in the surprising end of the play.

We can't stop the world, but we can intervene and make a difference. If like the mockingbird, we make the risky dive from our heights without caution, full of bravado and restless for the life we once knew, will we be able to unfurl our wings for an insouciant land in the soft grass? Will we even recognize that we do have wings?

Let's look at insouciant from another angle, the fake-it insouciant. A look at social media reveals most people want to communicate to others that their lives are just fine, which is understandable. No one wants a pity party (well, maybe now and then), and everyone wants to portray lives of success and happiness.  An examination of the national statistics, however, tells a different story.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 million Americans suffer from depression each year, affecting nearly 5-8% of Americans ages 18 and over. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that over 50% of all people who die by suicide suffer from depression. Currently suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S. More Americans suffer from depression than coronary heart disease and cancer. Although it is the most treatable of psychiatric illnesses, it first has to be recognized. In light of gun violence, the United States has been too slow to recognize mental illnesses of any kind. Job and income loss and the quarantine in which people live in close quarters, often without necessary supplies, funds, or an emotional vent, have resulted in record numbers of domestic abuse and depression.

I queried a number of people to gain insight into the solution to depression, even mild transitory forms of it, and they all had similar answers: physical and emotional self-care, a purpose in life, a healthy perspective, accomplishment, gratitude and faith. Easier said, right?

My daughter Rachel shared with me one of the most accessible organizational strategies to self-improvement that I have yet to see, and I'd like to pass it on to you. These ideas are based on the Hal Elrod Miracle Morning series, and they come in the form of the acronym SAVERS: silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribe. Each of these activities can be part of a daily ritual that fits into any schedule without time constraints. Each day you spend as little or as much time on them as you like. Silence can afford quiet meditation or prayer. Affirmation involves positive statements that assert truths that can apply to your life. Visualization is a way of seeing the goals you desire, perhaps through a vision board. Exercise is essential self-care for healthy living, even if it's only seven minutes a day. Reading improves your thinking and broadens your experiences vicariously. And Scribe is just another way of saying write--journaling being the most useful and fruitful way to practice writing and to keep a record of your life.

Finally, there really is no silver bullet, but the symbolism of the mockingbird offers hope to our potential state of depression. We know how to look for the good in life if only we will start with baby steps to do so. We can be that insouciant mockingbird that behaves confidently, maybe without a care in the world momentarily--say, a trip to the beach or a walk in the woods with the people we love, because we will have found our wings, unfurled them, and landed safely.

A Quixotic Quandary: Dreams Deferred

Quixotic. Now there’s a word for a word blog, an especially appropriate one as we watch our family's and friends' achievement of dreams being celebrated virtually, without the usual pomp and circumstance of a traditional graduation ceremony.   These 2020 graduates on every level from fifth grade to college will look back on the absence of this occasion with regret and sadness, but the memory will be tempered with the knowledge that an historic pandemic required sacrifice to protect everyone from a life and death scenario. So why might this year’s graduates find themselves in a quixotic quandary?


Let’s start over. 


The word quixotic means idealistic, sometimes even impractical. It is an adjective that often describes a person who is trying to reach dreams that seem too ambitious or difficult. 







As you look at the spelling of quixotic, a famous literary figure may come to mind—Quixote, that is, Don Quixote de La Mancha, the well-known Spanish knight elevated to fame by Miguel de Cervantes. This seventeenth century writer wrote the most influential work of literature in the Spanish Golden Age, Don Quixote of La Mancha, Part I (1601) and Part II (1615). When the story opens, the flamboyant character Don Quixano reads so many chivalric romances that he imagines himself to be a knight-errant whose mission is to revive chivalry and serve his country. Changing his name to Don Quixote, he enlists a simple farmer to be his squire, Sancho Panza, and names his exhausted horse Rocinante. He designates Aldonza Lorenzo, a neighboring farm girl, to be his lady love Dulcinea. In every adventure in Part I, Quixote encounters and attacks wind mills and men, believing them to be dangerous and harmful to women, making him a comic figure in his search for chivalry. Fourteen years later Cervantes writes Part II and Quixote sloughs off his insanity, denounces chivalry and returns home to die.


In 1965 Dale Wasserman’s book and Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh’s lyrics and music turned Cervantes’ story into a musical called Man of La Mancha, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The principal song was, you guessed it, “The Impossible Dream.” We have a love-hate relationship with impossible dreams.


Today even the phrase “tilting at windmills” implies someone is attacking imaginary enemies as did Quixote, but a closer look at our attempts to reach difficult life goals may give us more insight into the deeper recesses where those secret desires lie in each of us.


All of us were born with imagination, clearly some more than others, but to imagine and dream is part of our human nature. Yet why is it that we are hesitant, even embarrassed at times, to acknowledge and share those dreams with others? Is it because we may be seen as comic Quixote-like impossible dreamers? Criticism can be a deadly weapon that prevents us from going out on a limb against the odds, but we frequently succumb to it, putting our dreams on hold or permanently storing them away in the chest of once-upon-a-time good but unreachable dream-ideas.


A few weeks ago I finished writing a 90,000 plus word novel and have now begun the long, brutal search for an agent who will agree to represent my work to a publishing company. Every week I receive rejections from agents, and I think how easy it would be to simply leave the file on my computer and quit.  But I do not plan to give up. Is the idea of getting my book published far-fetched, acknowledging that the odds for publication are quite low? It does cross my mind every day, but then I think of all the success stories of people who dreamed big, against the odds, and made it. Should we call our dreams impossible?


Here’s a thought. Every idea that is shared with us is seen through a mirror-like lens, and we immediately, sometimes unconsciously, see ourselves projected in the situation created by this new idea. Because of our need to belong, to be like others, to feel included, we project ourselves into the picture and begin to evaluate it based on self-reflection, our own reactions to it. So when a friend tells me she’s thinking of going back to school to change careers, I think never in a million years at her age would I do that! So is it fear of taking a chance and failing? And do we project that fear on to others?


Psychologists tell us we have a strong need for acceptance, so we stay in step with the expectations of those around us. But what good does it really do to suppress our own dreams without giving them a chance? Frankly I don’t want to wonder, when it’s my time to go, why I didn’t do my best to publish my book.  What dreams deferred do you have just waiting for a chance to come to fruition? 

George W. Cecil once wrote, “On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died."


This quixotic quandary is not just for graduates, you know, but all of us. So go ahead. Change your mind. Follow your heart. Take that new job. Change your major. Sign up for that class. Get on that dating website. Make that investment. Start a new business. Change the color of your hair. Get out of that harmful relationship.


Follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say. Dream the impossible dream and don't give up!

American Bete Noir: It's Time to Grow Up

In this 2020 year of the novel coronavirus Covid-19, what is it that we Americans consider to be our greatest bete noir, that is, the nineteenth century metaphor from the French meaning "black beast." What is the dreaded anathema that sometimes looks like a pet peeve but often feels like a paralyzing fear? Ah, that is the question, isn't it.

Various media sources constantly remind us of the real fears that exist out there and especially at home--Depression-era loss of jobs, income, and basic essentials, a quarantined society that deems itself highly gregarious and cannot abide cabin fever, the rising numbers of illness and death, and the concomitant emotional strains of each outcome. After the shock of living a new normal, shame, depression, anger, and rage have set in.

But what is it that we hate most about our current situation? What is our universal bete noir?

If years of experience in the world of education, in family life, in friendships, and a keen interest in  national and global affairs can give me a slight edge, I'll go out on a limb and offer an educated guess.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, partners for a brief time in the early development of psychology, both agreed that the human psyche consists of three phases operating almost simultaneously in each of us: the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego. The Id functions to gratify instincts for pleasure without regard to right and wrong. The Ego is a regulating agent that protects an individual by attempting to maintain a balance between Id and Super-Ego. The Super-Ego is a moral censoring agent that protects society and tries to repress the behavior of the Id. In a word or two, the Id is the child in us, the Super-Ego wants us to be angels, and the Ego is struggling for balance. So in which phase do we seem to be functioning in this pandemic?

If you've ever been around three-year-olds, bless them, you understand the frustration of "I want what I want and I want it now." We not only accept this in young children, we expect it, but unfortunately that also defines adult Id behavior. Most of the time we can tolerate what is necessary to live in an adult world, at least until our Ego is overstimulated and challenged, but when we've had enough and we can't get our wants and needs met urgently enough, Katie bar the door and hello Id! We often act like little children.

And sometimes this Id behavior of ours gets us into trouble, like potentially right now. According to the latest figures for Covid-19, the numbers for infection and death have plateaued but in a number of states aren't coming down as expected. Why? Because we're leaving our houses and we aren't social- distancing and wearing masks to prevent further spread of the virus. Our serious desire for instant gratification has kicked in, and we are fooling ourselves about the consequences.

So, is it really that simple? Well, ….

Americans, without a doubt, are wired to be in connection with other people, as Chris Hogan with the Dave Ramsey organization has pointed out. Although decades of research shows that loneliness is a killer, we don't need research to prove it. And all the social media and video chats in the world will not take the place of human touch. Yet we're dealing with life and death, folks, until enough testing and a vaccine can be available to all people. Are we talking about years? Maybe, according to some scientists, but not necessarily if we can alter our behavior enough to protect ourselves and others from this dreaded virus. The truth is, Covid-19 is not going away any time soon, maybe for several years.

Do you remember when you couldn't wait to grow up and experience all the privileges of being "old enough"? Now that we're all grown up, we also have responsibilities that come with the privileges, that is, unless you plan to spend your adult life living out of your Id.

Notice that the word life comes first in the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The world, not just Americans, is living through an historic pandemic, and if we do not adhere to the rules for staying alive and well and take the opportunity to learn something from this novel virus and its necessary quarantine--bete noir that it might be, we will be destined to repeat our mistakes and once again suffer even greater losses in terms of both human life and the economy.