Dr. Bob's Blog

Just past the Solstice, we approach the season of resolve. Self-help programs proliferate and the parking lot at the gym will overflow. For some, holiday excess propels resolutions in thirty-one flavors of fancy, but like the ice cream they will just seem to melt away.

Digging deeper, we might un-package the concept of “resolution” with the intention of developing intention. That is to consciously and specifically choose a path, practice or behavior. Intentional living invites a ducks-in-a-row congruence between mind and emotion across decisions large and small. Clarifying values is no small part of the process, discovering to what degree our value system is not merely held but expressed everyday.

Values comprise our essential beliefs. They underscore commitment in “acceptance and commitment” therapies. Adhering to our personal values leads to committed action and the concrete steps necessary for resolve.

Religious traditions insert the sacred into resolve. Vows of marriage or upon entrance to a religious order are examples. Adherents to various religious traditions undertake vows too. Interestingly, the construct of these vows may wisely anticipate failure and, in some ways, the impossibility of attainment. After all, one might expect at least some blundering a long the way to transformation.

A word of caution: Resolve with the expectation of perfection without failure promotes discouragement, self-recrimination and a year of too many jelly doughnuts. Or whatever!

So what is the alternative? Aspirations small or grand are wonderful but insufficient. Our wisdom starts with understanding the impossibility of perfect achievement. It starts with the humility of accepting our human frailties and follies. But it must not end there, lest we lapse into self-pity and an endless succession of half-hearted and failed attempts.

Instead, with humility, we could vow toward dedication to a worthwhile goal like kindness with a loved one (or even a “difficult person”). Of course we will mess up and our shortcomings will throw us off track. But we must return again and again to the vow. It is because our imperfection is accepted that failure is understood as part of the way forward-and that only strengthens our resolution to stay the course.

To paraphrase one of Buddhism’s four vows, our path of resolve is unattainable. And we vow to attain it.

A proper history of the the field of psychology would take several volumes. Presented here are some interesting antecedents to current studies that define psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Mental processes are basically internal and covert. Examples of mental processes include both thoughts and emotions.

In considering the antecedents to psychology, some scholars go back to the time of the Buddha, near Nepal from about 450 BC to 370 BC. In one famous passage from the Heart Sutra the Buddha identified the importance of the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. While translations/definitions are not exacting to modern psychology, Buddhist philosophy was concerned with these topics which are fundamental to any contemporary course in general psychology.

Meditation is a practice that bridges the teachings of the historical Buddha to contemporary research in psychology. In fact, meditation has been found to change and influence both mental and physical processes. There have been many research projects investigating the benefits of meditation including studies of stress and anxiety, smoking cessation, pain reduction and improving overall physical health.

Today there are many types of meditation and approaches to meditation practice. Mindfulness meditation is quite popular and generally involves the cultivation of simple attention a long with an accepting attitude: observe and let go.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.’’ E.S. in A Christmas Carol

For many years, I have been using Dickens’ classic tale and the character of Scrooge as a means of illustrating concepts of later-life integrity and despair in a course on human development. Erik Erikson termed the last of his eight life crises, ego integrity versus despair. He thought that the task of achieving ego integrity, the sense that one has lived a successful life that mattered, began in middle adulthood but was most central in late adulthood. Despair occupied the ruminative opposite of integrity, and was characterized by regret, guilt and the hopelessness. There is no hope, after all, to reverse time and give it all another and wiser try.

But maybe for a lucky few deep, deep reflection (and a visitation from three spirits) could illuminate toward acceptance and a second chance.

The despairing Ebenezer Scrooge’s existential confrontation with a troubled past, present and potential future illuminates our Holiday season and depicts a question central to aging and death: “was mine a meaningful life?” Scrooge’s reconciliation with the past allows for an affirmation of Christmas and the values of charity and kindness.

But perhaps none of us ought to count on the chance visit of three spirits in our later years to make things good. Instead, as we hear Dickens’ story at holidays to come, may we all be reminded of Erikson’s profound theory of integrity vs. despair, and come again and again to our own sense of the meaningful life.

A long and extreme hiatus from my last entry here. Time passes. My first inspiration for these writings was sharing my experiences as a therapist and teacher and spiritual aspirant and dad.  Passing on the wisdom of the many teachers who stood with and by me patiently, as I learned a bit, here and there.  That inspiration is a little fainter now. To back fill:

I first read psychologist and hero Burton Blatt’s Souls in Extremis 30 years ago-on the radical data and poetry driven tragedy of institutionalized people with intellectual impairment: “once the good man has seen the institution, he can never pity himself”

Well I saw it over decades of working at a California State Hospital. There was caregiving, but to often abuse and neglect ruled. The Rulers made proclamations of reform, took many bows to unknowing applause-but nothing seemed to change.  There were we few who made our best effort for those souls in extremis, we were a small tribe. Some including myself were human rights advocates and part of the deinstitutionalization movement. We bothered the Rulers.

Time passes. I have two sons, Aaron and David, who on this Fathers Day remain my greatest teachers. David, my son with Down Syndrome has taught me as Blatt’s writings once did about victims and victimizers (the sub title of that book). First hand. For David became a kind of victim and taught me the deepest meaning of the Institution and its Rulers.

He has lived for seven long years in programs and placements. I have written about it elsewhere, The New Institutions. And I finally understand that the State ownership of our most vulnerable is and always has been about power, career and greed. Once Wardens lived in grand homes as their sometimes ruthless employees made careers off the owned and objectified. And the public closed collective eyes.

Time passes.

I have long worked for David’s (and others) rights and freedoms. I have met the Rulers. I have tried to challenge them.  They are well paid bureaucrats, faux advocates and guardians, hypocritical politicians. And, unsurprisingly, their lawyers. Like long ago, their power and greed make them invulnerable as they continue to use the vulnerable for their own profit.

And now in the spirit of the times, they are masters of propaganda; of crafty speeches and photo ops.  Victimizers posing as helpers. It is not as hard as you may think.

For many of these vulnerable do not speak. And we who give them Voice are hit. And hard.

At first I thought David’s circumstances were unique. And my own too. But the tragedy is that they are not.

Finding myself powerless,  I am stunned and hurt. Yet there is an abiding Gift I celebrate this Fathers Day.  For now that I have been pushed down by the Rulers that rule David and many other vulnerables, I join them. Not literally, for I will never experience David’s fate or that of his peers. But I approach it; I am at its edge and feel an ache and vulnerability that I have never known before.

On the margins now.  Marginalized. And shaken.

But I love the company.

Summer boredom, dreaded by parents, kids, blocked-writers, and many folks not currently starving or stalked…is an unexpected pleasure.

Boredom comes when it does.  Often slowly and from deep inside, as the outside pulsates less with distraction, difficulty or delight.  And the conscious stream seems painfully empty.

Oh, to run, to scream, to whimper in objection.

Then to flee, to immerse or inject delight, distraction, or even difficulty into the body, the blood, the mind-stream that was painfully void. To know that precious relief, and rush back to the chaos of our busy, busy minds. Too busy.  Too mindless.

But instead, to linger-dare, in the gaps called boredom, yielding slowly into a kingdom quiet and of the deepest imagination, reflection and gentle noticing of this precious life.

From my porch in Cambrian Park.

Dr. Bob