Ups and downs for Christmas

The "holiday season" has always been a time of ups and downs for a lot of people. On the up side there can be time off from work, warmth, togetherness, good food and nice gifts. On the down side, there can be guilt (for not getting it right with the presents, Christmas cards, or other displays of affection, or for being much more fortunate than others) and sorrow. But the down side that really catches our attention this time of year is loneliness.

And I think the "evolutionary" reason that loneliness is so important to us at this time of year may be because it is much more dangerous to be alone in wintertime (when it's cold and there is no food) than in other seasons. If so, this would be another example of our emotional toolkit's inability to adapt to the affluent times we live in, because it is probably much less likely that you will starve or freeze to death now and here than at any point in written history.

Of course, there is no guarantee things will stay that way, but just for the sake of argument, let's suppose we would want to get rid of this reaction, which is arguable a big part of the mid-winter blues that some people get. I'm hoping that it works like inoculation: you inflect yourself with a weak dose of some disease, so that your body can build anti-bodies. Of course you would have to do so repeatedly, through a process of desensitizing (a process used to help people with allergies).

The other day, I thought I would get my first shot, when I missed the last bus home, on a cold snowy night. There was no need to call anyone to tell them I was coming late, because my wife and kids were out of town. And I didn't feel like paying 40 Euros for a taxi, so I walked home. It took me an hour, and I got a bit cold, but not lonely. I guess it doesn't always work if you wish it upon yourself. I did pass someone  on the way who looked cold and miserable. He was just standing there, outside a building. And then I realized he was just having a cigarette.

Which gave me an idea: I could desensitize myself to loneliness by taking up smoking again, thereby ostracizing myself from the majority of current society. And the irony is that most people (including myself) started smoking because of peer pressure. Talk about a wishy-washy society!


[Please note that I am not seriously suggesting anyone start smoking, for any reason. I kicked a three-packs a day habit 18 years ago, and am still grateful I did.]

Alliterating antonyms

I like lists, I like opposites, I like pairs, and I like alliteration (and yes, I also like repetition, provided it serves a stylistic purpose). I searched the web for examples, but didn't find very much, so here is my own list of alliterating antonyms and the like, grouped grammatically, and ordered alphabetically within the groups. My favourites (the short, snappy ones, especially if they rhyme and/or have a nice rhythm to them) are indicated in bold.

Nouns 1: things
apathy or action
boon or bane
brain or brawn
city or country
competition or cooperation
curve or corner
fact or fiction/fantasy
fight or flight
form or function
free or fettered
heaven or hell
love or lust
method/meaning or madness
mind over matter
mountain or molehill
nature or nurture
pain and pleasure
rhyme and reason
right and wrong
style or substance
sunshine and shade
tit or teat
vice and virtue
whiskey or water

Nouns 2: people
beauty or beast
friend or foe
knight or knave
man or mouse
prince or pauper
sinner or saint
striker or scab

Verbs
do or die
detest or desire
fight or flee
help or hinder
help or hurt/harm
like or loathe
practice or preach
publish or perish
pull or push
sink or swim
stimulate or soothe
strive or shirk

Adjectives
brainy or bubbly
callous or caring
catchy or corny
classy or crass
conscious or comatose
factual or fake
fair or foul
greedy or grateful
nice or nasty
principled or pragmatic
simple or sophisticated
smart or stupid
sweet or sour
thick or thin

The reason I like them (I think) is because they are easy to remember, and because the juxtaposition makes it easier to understand what I mean by each term: when I say "right and wrong", for example, you can immediately exclude "right" as the opposite of left.

I have also started a list of other word pairs (not antonyms) beginning with the same letter called Tweedledum and Tweedledee: alliterating pairs.

Stressing in the snow

This morning I went to the park with the kids. They had been pestering me to take them sleighing for several days already, and last night, more snow fell, so conditions were perfect. Or at least, the natural world was being accommodating. The humans were not.

In the park, there are really only two slopes suitable for sleighing, one on each side of a high hill which also houses two slides and a climbing tower. The best one already bore the tracks of previous sleigh-rides, fanning out to either side of the central crest. It was popular because it is a long, gently undulating slope without obstacles. Except of course all the people (adults and children) who were climbing up the same hill as everyone wanted to go down, instead of using the stairs.

Being quite safety-conscious myself, I insisted my children use this route. Then, once we had reached the top, I would tell them to wait until everyone was either out of the way, or were at least aware that we were coming down (this was even more important in our case, because they were slightly bigger than most other children, and with a heavier sled). But no-one else followed my example, and while we were there, more and more people arrived, and not a single parent used the stairs. In the end, it became impossible to get down the hill without risking hitting someone else, and I gave up. Luckily, my children quickly found other fun (but safer) things to do.

I however am still stressed by the experience. I know I should learn to accept that things are not always as they should be, but I find this needless risk-taking too silly for words. While we were there, I saw three accidents (none very serious, luckily) and half a dozen really close calls, some of which could have easily end up much worse.

But, to be completely honest, I am almost as upset by the lack of consideration, and by the fact that I am basically being punished for behaving responsibly. I had absolutely no fun whatsoever, and I will definitely think twice before going back.

Making allowances for instant gratification

Why is it that some children hoard their weekly allowance, while others spend it as quickly as possible? I know that the general consensus at the moment is to applaud delayed gratification and discourage instant gratification, but before making a final judgment on this, I would like to understand where this behavior comes from.

On one end of the scale, you have children who prefer not to spend any of their money. Having been a bit like this myself, I can see several reasons for this.

1) you attach great importance to what you buy, and find it so difficult to choose that you end up not choosing anything;
2) you know that your parents prefer this behavior, and want to please them;
3) saving stuff has become a goal of its own.

This last idea is linked, I think, to the "collector instinct". As a child, I collected a lot of things - shells, insects, rocks, fossils, coins, stamps - but mostly only the things I could get without spending any money. And when I did spend my allowance, I would consider the purchase carefully in advance, and try to think ahead by imagining what it would be like to have the thing I wanted to buy.

The other end of the scale is much more difficult for me to understand, but I can imagine some reasons why money might burn a hole in someone's pocket:

1) you really want something, and have been waiting for it "for a really long time" (I put quotation marks because to a child, five minutes can be an eternity)
2) spending, for you, is linked with being "grown up", and you want to exercise this right
3) purchase pleasure (spending for the sake of spending)

I do not have "purchase pleasure" (defined by the urban dictionary as "The unexplained feeling of bliss, joy and satisfaction one gets following a purchase"), but I imagine it is linked to comfort buying which - like comfort eating - is something you do to chase away the blues. And if so, it seems to me that it is a bit like treating the symptoms of a disease (dissatisfaction, weltschmertz, call it what you like) instead of its cause. Sometimes this is necessary, but it should definitely not be a long-term policy. Apparently it is possible to fight fire with fire, but I am not sure you can get rid of materialist blues with even more consumerist behavior.

Saint Nicolas: from stern father figure to group therapist

As a child, I never really thought about it, but one fine day when I was all grown up it suddenly dawned on me that Saint Nicolas and Santa Claus are basically the same, namely a bishop that lived in Turkey in 3^rd century A.D.. In the Netherlands, Luxembourg and various other countries, he has his own day (the 6^th of December, or sometimes the 5^th). In many other countries, he has been lumped unceremoniously together with two very different celebrations, namely the winter solistice and the birth of Christ. My own personal theory is that someone, a long time ago, mixed Saint Nicolas up with the Three Kings, possibly because they all bring presents.

Which brings me to the past.

When I was young, we learned - by way of songs and stories – that Sinterklaas (like his copycat Santa Claus) kept track of how each child’s behaviour throughout the year, and would reward or punish the children on the night of December 5. Good children would get presents, roughly in proportion to how good they had been, and often accompanied by little poems in which Sinterklaas would comment on the recipient’s character or behaviour (both the good and the bad). Bad children would either not get any presents, or would be swatted by the wicker, or both. And really, really bad children would be stuck in a bag by one of Saint Nicolas’ assistants and dragged off to Spain. (What actually happened to these children was left to our own imagination, but if it were to happen today, I suppose we might think in terms of discpline training in a quasi-military survival camp.)

Over the course of the last forty years, the threat of punishment has almost completely disappeared from the celebration. The idea of dragging children off in bags has become so scary to parents that it is hardly ever mentioned, and corporal punishment is – ironically? – now punishable by law. Some parents apparently do still try to get their children to behave by threatening to tell Saint Nicolas not to bring any presents, but that only works in the short term. Shortly after receiving their presents and/or as soon as they lose interest in them, these same children revert to the horrible spoilt brats they are the rest of the year. Both most people just give the presents, without any real threat of punishment.

In the Netherlands, on the whole, the only vestige of punishment left is in the little poems accompanying the presents. Even adults exchanging presents on St. Nicolas day continue to respect this tradition. And to me, this still seems useful. In a sense (and this may be part of its appeal to Dutch people) these poems are like free therapy. You get to say out loud what bugs you about someone, and the other person is not allowed to get mad.

In fact, I think it is such a good idea I think we should introduce this tradition at the office. I already have some ideas of poems I could write about some of my colleagues …

An ABC of unwanted guests

I have just had a fantastic two months of rest and relaxation, sea and sun, food and fun. It was so fantastic that I did not feel like writing anything on this blog (I did write some other stuff, but it is not yet fit for public scrutiny). But the holiday itself contained more than enough material for some blog entries. Like one on an important recurrent theme: unwanted guests. (We also had a whole slew of wanted guests - family, friends, friends of family, family of friends ... but that is another story)

The unwanted guests were, in alphabetical order (but not in order of importance)
1. ants
2. a burglar and a billboard, and
3. a cat

In chronological order, the burglar was our first unwanted visitor, and the less said about him, the better. Except maybe that his is about 2 meters tall and probably drives an old, clunky metallic grey Peugeot or Renault, and if you catch him, please get our stuff back.

The billboard was erected in our absence by a major Spanish bank whose name rhymes with BancCaca, and if the wording were any indication, its intention was to sell our apartment. Obviously, we were not happy with this: it is true we have not finished paying the mortgage, but we are neither late nor bankrupt, and our mortgage is with a completely different bank. A few inquiries later we had our answer: the Spanish bank was trying to sell the land on which they had placed the sign, together with a great many other plots in the area. Somebody had obviously made a mistake on the wording.

But they had certainly not made a mistake regarding the illegal placement of the sign: they never applied for a permit, and when, after having moved both the prophet and the mountain (=making a few calls and visits to the right people), the city council finally agreed with us and told the bank to remove it, they moved it some 30 meters to the side instead.

On to our next unwanted visitor: a cat. I can't say for sure that it was really the third one, in chronological order, because I suspect that it may have been a regular visitor, but that we never noticed. But this time we did. The first time was when we (=I) didn't feel like putting the garbage in the garbage bin (100 meters uphill from us) at night, and left it on the kitchen floor instead.
Sometime around three o'clock we heard strange scratching sounds. When I got up to investigate, and found the garbage bag open. And I could smell fish. So I put the broken bag in another bag, and closed all the possible entries except the sliding glass door in our bedroom. And just as I was dropping off to sleep again, I heard a sound, opened my eyes to see two green orbs only a half meter from my face, and was suddenly wide awake again. But at least it confirmed what I had told my wife to calm her down: it really was just a cat, and not a rat or mice. But that was not the last time it came to call: a few days later, having forgot all about it, my wife left a fish casserole on the kitchen counter to cool. She did think to cover it with a heavy metal lid, but around 3 o'clock in the morning there was a CRASH from the kitchen. We heard it, but didn't think much of it, but in the morning, it was clear that our pesky (and probably infest-ridden) feline "friend" had come to visit again.

Which brings me to the ants. Not much to report there: ants are everywhere, and will probably take over from us humans some fine post-apocalyptic day, but in fact, they weren't all that much of a problem this year. I just mention them here because I need them for the snappy title of this entry.

A modern day fairy tale

There once was a man who found a magic lamp. He knew it was magic because of the letters “PMO” engraved on the side. Under the engravings were some instructions explaining its use, but the letters were so small he could hardly read them, and in any case, he was impatient to get started, so he rubbed it instead (as per standard operational Arabian Nights procedure), and presto!, out came a Project Manager, or PM. The PM (pronounced “Pmm”) told the man he could have one wish. The man, already quite deeply in fairy tale mode, thought he had a right to three wishes, and was disappointed, but the Pmm explained that times were tight and that this was real life, not a fairy tale.

The man thought for a bit, then started to answer, but the PM stopped him quickly, reminding him that he would only get one wish, and that it might be better to make it count. But the man insisted he was sure, and he made his wish.

“There is a little spot on the Spanish coast with a lovely view of the ocean.” He said. “That is where I want to spend the rest of my life.”
The Pmm sighed and said “It is a very nice wish, but I can see you are new to the wishing game. Luckily, I am in no hurry”. (The Pmm liked to feel some pride in his work, and he knew that merely obeying his owners usually ended in tears). “I could grant you your wish in many different ways. If I take the easy way out, I will simply make you a cave with an endless supply of food.” The man’s heart sank in despair, thinking that he had wasted his wish. But the Pmm signalled him not to worry.

“The trick,” said the Pmm, “is to take your time to think all your options through properly, then be as specific as you can. I can help. Start by closing your eyes try to imagine in your mind’s eye what your life on the coast might look like.”

The man closed his eyes and saw a nice big house, with lots of people, having a party. When he opening his eyes, he smiled at the Pmm and asked him if that was better.

“Better? How should I know? I’m a Pmm, not a mind reader!” the Pmm answered, frowning a bit. The man was confused. “But I assumed …”

“What is it with you owners and assumptions?” the Pmm muttered under his breath. But out loud he said “Never mind. How are you doing on your wish?”

“I am getting closer,” the man said, “but I need to check some things first.”

“Good for you,” the Pmm said, happy to see how quickly this new owner was catching on.

“I sort of know what I want,” the man explained “but I suddenly realised I am not alone. I also have a wife and family, and they might not like my wish.”

“Ahaa! Stakeholders! Maybe you should ask their opinion?”

The man agreed, and went to talk to his wife and daughter.

The wife liked the idea, but insisted they also have some rooms for her mother and aunt to come visit for several months a year. The man was not thrilled at this prospect, but he did not want to hold up things too much, so he agreed. Their teenage daughter (a spoiled brat who could have used some discipline) then tried to highjack the wish, and turn it into her wish, but for once, the parents held firm. Together, they made a rough sketch of the house of their dreams.

The man then went back to the Pmm and said he was getting closer. All he needed do is get some help from an architect. The Pmm told him not to worry, he could help out. But, said the Pmm, the man was still not finished.

“Have you thought through all the implications and consequences of your choice?”

“????”

“Isn’t this new house a bit too far away from your office? Or were you planning on giving up your job and living on air?”

The man hadn’t thought of that, but by now he was starting to get worried about all the time it was taking. The Pmm answered that the man was right to worry, but that time spent in the initial stages usually paid themselves back later on, and that he (the Pmm) would keep an eye on the time.

“Or maybe,” the man said, exuding smug satisfaction at his own intelligence, “you are like a fixed-wage supermarket cashier who works Saturdays: there is no need for you to hurry, because the list of potential masters is endless?”

A small black cloud started forming above the head of the Pmm. “You might be my owner, but there is no need to be insulting. Or perhaps you really want to spend the rest of your life in a cave?”.

The man apologised and meekly asked what the next step was.

The man did not realise this, but this was all part of the process of establishing roles and responsibities, and building rapport, and he had just taken a big step towards getting not only what he asked for, but what he needed (which, as we have seen, are not always the same thing).

And so after many false starts, the usual problems with contractors, the weather, and life in general, it came to be that the man got his wish, and went off to live on the Spanish coast. Of course, it took so long that the man no longer needed to direct his business from an office overlooking the ocean, as originally planned, because he was now retired, but this also meant that several other problems had magically vanished. His teenage daughter was no longer teen-aged, and his mother-in-law was too old to come much. Assorted other members of the family and friends did come by to stay on a regular basis, but with the Pmm’s help, the man had made sure that he also had his own private space, and was not bothered in the least, and he and his wife lived happily ever after. After official sign-off, the Pmm disappeared in a puff of smoke, filled in his post-implementation report, and went off and to try to make some other owner happy.

Deja Vu

One explanation I heard for the sensation of deja vu (and one that seems quite reasonable to me) is that it is the hindbrain's fault. The hindbrain is the part of your brain that stores stimuli that surpass a certain threshold (e.g. those associated with serious threats), in order to be able to quickly recognise similar situations, and react accordingly. Unfortunately, the information it stores is so "generic" that it is unable to distinguish a new situation with an old one, hence the feeling of deja vu. That said, it can still be quite useful, if for example the new situation poses a similar threat.

This morning, I had a deja vu of the more rational kind: in the back of the car, my kids were playing using a rubber band as an improvised guitar, in order to play along with the music from the car radio. They called out for me to have a look, and I almost did, even though I have a firm rule never to turn my head towards them while driving.

So where does the deja vu come in? I can hear you wondering. It is this: when I was three years old, I had a scooter that I would ride for hours (or at least that's how it seems now). But it did not have a bell with which I could warn people to get out of my way. So I improvised one by spanning a rubber band between two parts of the handlebar. It worked quite well ... up until the point when one end let go. I decided that there was no need to slow down; I could repair as I sailed along. Bad idea: while repairing my improvised bell, a picket fence suddenly decided to cross my path. (And I have still have the scar to prove it).

So in fact, my hindbrain should have warned me not to listen to rubber bands.
(Just in case you missed the reference, think of the crows in Dumbo singing "When I see an elephant fly").

The Wonderful Web

The Web is wonderful. It gives such quick and easy access to information that might have taken me weeks or months to find ... a time barrier which, for many things, would have prevented me from even trying. And now, with a few simple clicks, I can link Maslow's pyramid of needs to Herzberg's maintenance/motivation criteria, link that to Erikson's psychosocial development, Leary's Rose of interpersonal relationships, etc. etc.

And then, of course, somebody says something to ruin it all, namely the idea that we might have to start paying for some of the more interesting stuff. Which runs contrary to the idea that many of us have had, namely that information should be free. For some people, in fact (and certainly Tim Berners-Lee, the CERN employee who offered his transfer protocol to the world for free) that is the very essence of the web: sharing information. To me, this feels totally natural. And I also think it is a good idea, at least in the long run. In a sense, it is like a sibling to the "market will sort things out" dogma. With the difference, of course, that the market dogma is a short-sighted egoistic brat who can only win if someone else loses, and who hates his too-good-to-be-true sister, who works towards consensus and cooperation. The market-minded people will try to squeeze every last dime out of us, the information highway hippies want to share everything.

Or am I being too black and white here?

Western civilisation

Just a short, simple entry, as an antidote for the previous one: when asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, Gandhi replied: "I think that it would be a very good idea."

To react or not to react

The last couple of weeks, all my writing efforts have gone into some songs I am working on. But my blogbrain hasn't stopped working. One of the things I have been thinking about a bit is how to decide when to act and when to let things slide. And, as with most of the things I write about here, this is an issue at many different contexts and levels, from the home to work environment, through the level of the local community all the way up to the global level. And, again in common with a number of other blog entries, I distinguish three phases, namely input, response and outcome.

The input consists of whatever triggers a response. These triggers or stimuli can be external or internal, and can be the caused by a change in circumstances or by a change in attitude towards unchanging circumstances. And they can be physical needs, which range from basic, essential ones (food, health) to simple discomfort (I like my space and will move things that bother me or obstruct my range of movement aside) or emotional needs, such as the need for job security, friends, etc.

As for the response, everyone has their own "baseline" responsiveness, which can range from complete (comatose) inactivity to irritatingly hyper-(re)active. Inactivity may just be laziness, but may also be the result of reduced sensitivity (=a very high stimulus threshold). Hyper-activity can be a sign of insecurity and over-sensitivity. And responsiveness can either decrease with time (desensitizing), or increase, e.g. when a relatively minor irritation becomes a major issue).

The outcome or result of the response is important because it is (or should presumably be) the basis for future responses, the basic question being: was this really what I wanted, and if so, was worth the trouble? Asking ourselves this question, consciously or unconsciously, turns the process into a feedback loop. People learn from experience: the first set of results become input for a new round of the input-response-outcome game (or, put differently, we adapt our response to the expected outcome). [To preclude any suggestion of wishy-washyness on my part: as a general rule, I am against systematic suppression of certain behavior by others/society, but in favor of thinking things through and trying to learn from your mistakes on an individual basis.]

I suspect, however, that many people - and especially those would benefit most, namely those at the extreme ends of the responsiveness scale - are slow learners. And as a society, we are of course only as fast to learn as our slowest learners. Even so, I have the impression that, we are becoming more and more demanding, which brings us back to the core question: namely - assuming that suppressing our initial response for a moment and stopping to think first will help us improve - do we really want to do this, and is it worth the trouble? Is all this effort really improving our quality of life, or are we just a lot of energy into "fixing things that ain't broke"?

Let me know! :-)

Elephants on my mind

This morning I woke up and realized that a disproportionately large part of my brain is occupied by elephants. I say "disproportionately" because my knowledge of elephants is quite limited (average or less), I have no special interest in them, and they have played no role worth mentioning in my life. As far as I know, I was not attacked by a zoo elephant as a child, and I have never even seen them in the wild.

Why is it, then, that when looking for analogies, my first choice often includes elephants? Some examples. One of the management books I read recently speaks of the "dead boss syndrome" which is when staff continues to behave as if a long-gone boss were still in charge. When explaining this concept to a colleague, however, I immediately transposed this into the "chained elephant analogy" (grown elephants are perfectly capable of breaking the chains around their ankles, but they don't even try, because of all the years they tried but failed, when they were younger and weaker). Or when discussing the lack of global vision needed to achieve improvement, I recurred to the story of how ten blind men were asked to describe an elephant, and came up with the wildest ideas because all the information they had was what they could feel with their hands. I have also been known to refer to certain colleagues as elephants in a porcelain shop. And of course, being in the lower ranks of the organisation and lamenting my fate, I often mention how the grass (or the mice, depending on my mood) gets trampled when elephants dance.

What is perhaps even more surprising is the fact that I remember doing all of the above. I don't believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I might conclude I was an elephant in a previous life. And if this were to be the case, I would definitely file a complaint with the appropriate authorities, because my skin is far too thin.