Category Archives: mindfulness

Use Your Signals: It Matters

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A car stopped on the street in front of me yesterday. Then its hazard lights came on. I was so grateful, because then I knew what to expect and do! HALLELUJAH, THANK YOU!

Brake. Turn. Reverse. Hazard. High beam. Our cars are designed with signals to make our intentions and actions on the road efficiently and effectively communicable.

Car going straight goes before car turning at a stop sign. If both cars are going straight then the one on the right goes first. No changing lanes in an intersection. DO NOT ENTER AN INTERSECTION YOU CANNOT CLEAR. Our traffic laws are designed to make vehicular interactions uniform and safe.

And yet, much like passengers during air flight, drivers seem to disregard any and all conventions of safety and courtesy more and more every year. We disregard one another.

“Always make eye contact.”

The most important safety lesson I learned from the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer 3-day in 2002 was to always make eye contact with drivers at intersections, before crossing the street. I had never thought discreetly about it before, and suddenly it made total sense; I adopted the practice immediately and fully.

20+ years later now, I see this as yet another practice in relationship (of course!). It’s not just about safety, though that is the primary goal, for both pedestrian and driver. Nobody wants an accident. When we make eye contact, we see each other and negotiate our interaction–our relationship–if only nonverbally and in a second or two.

All of these practices–using car signals, following traffic law, and acknowledging one another while out and about–connect us as fellow humans. By offering other drivers and pedestrians the courtesy of a signal, a gesture of invitation to cross, or God forbid a wave and a smile of gratitude when someone lets us pass or merge, we make the world a little less cold, a little more personal, and a lot better, one small and significant interaction at a time.

Imagine if we all treated one another like someone we care about while out on the road? Imagine if we all actually cared for one another, just because we are all here, fellow humans, doing our best to get through this crazy, chaotic life with a little more dignity and a little less suffering?

Imagine if we all used our readily available, efficient, direct, and effective communication tools to signal our intentions, needs, and caring for one another off the road, too?

Wow, what an amazing world this might be.

New on HTC: The Bit Post; Choices

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Captured from Facebook

Friends, every once in a while I have moments of relative wisdom and avid connection. Often it comes while responding to patient questions, sometimes on the phone, sometimes on email or portal messaging, and very often over text. So many posts on this blog started as these little, ‘bit’ insights. I marinate them, stir them around, turn them like a Rubik’s cube, until they’re so convoluted that it takes another, longer period to unravel them again to be ‘worthy’ to post.

So tonight I’m trying something new: the Bit Post. When moved, after brief and thoughtful enough consideration, I give myself permission to post these small notes, as is and with just enough background, just to share, in case they resonate with anyone. I feel an urge to engage here on the blog more frequently and lightheartedly, with less perfectionism and self-doubt. So we will see how this goes!

I sent the message below after a dear patient apologized for some behaviors that appear to have led to suboptimal blood test results. They made a self-judgmental comment about their life. I could feel their guilt and maybe some shame. So I replied honestly, as I wrestle with many of the same challenges. The example I give happened just last night.

So we go together, my patients and I. We are all here doing our best!!

Onward, my friends—ODOMOBaaT!

“Your life is what it is. Your choices are what they are, influenced by many circumstantial factors that vary day to day, moment to moment. No need to apologize to me—I’m not you!
“I have a rapidly evolving perspective recently on how I counsel people on habit and behavior change anymore.
“I’m here to inform and advise, not to judge. All of our choices are trade offs made in real time. I overeat tonight because I’m with friends and enjoying the food and that is more important to me in this moment than losing weight. I may regret it later and I’m not consistent at slowing down and asking myself when the weight later becomes equally important to me as dessert now. You see?
“We just have to own both our choices and their consequences.
“My goal is to have the fewest possible regrets when I die. I wish that for you too, but only you can know what choices will get you there.
“Makes sense?”

Tribe and Fire

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Another day of threaded media to reinforce my personal biases. Thought I’d share since it feels so cosmic. 😉

Often I find myself with an acute urge to connect with one or a few of my friends. I have long since learned to act joyfully on these urges; in college I wrote letters on pretty stationery and mailed them with confetti (100 in my first year alone). As life got busier that evolved to cards and postcards. And now it’s often an email or text, these days with attached memes or songs, and most recently the 8 minute phone call… I still indulge in the luxury of snail mail often, though.

Today I looked for something touching to share. Scrolling through photos, cartoons, and memes on the phone and laptop, nothing felt quite right. Then this appeared on my Facebook feed:

So unassuming yet poignant, down to earth and still profound. Perfect. I sent via email and also saved the image for myself, before sharing on my own FB page. The more I read it the more it resonated. “Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other… We want…For the waitress to call us honey… We have so little of each other, now…” So I shared with a few more friends–ones who I know practice making the “fleeting temples” (whom I admire and wish to emulate) and ones for whom I wish to meet and feel deeply the “true dwelling of the holy.”

One of my friends then shared the image on her own page, and one of her friends commented on the significance of “So far from tribe and fire,” before referencing a recent gathering of exactly ‘tribe and fire.’ YES. Tribe members take turns tending the fire that keeps us warm, leads us home, holds us together, connects us. So I had this lovely and loving idea swirling around my consciousness all day.

Sarai left her eloquent comment on my last post, reinforcing that anchoring–tribe-and-firing–is a reciprocal activity, between ourselves and those we know, both intimately and apparently not at all, though in reality I am convinced that we all know one another on a cosmic level. “I like your hat.” I must call her soon and relight our shared fire. It’s been a long time, and I’m confident that the embers still glow.

Then I came across Daniel Pink’s post on the book The Good Life, which is now on my 2023 wish list. “Friends are medicine.”

Again, YES! I feel validated asking every patient, every year, about the strength and depth of their emotional support network. It’s not my job to help them cultivate it, the way I advise on ways to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. But I point it out so it’s on our radar, to reinforce the paramount importance of this aspect of whole person health.

A fellow physician mom posted on the FB book club group page about Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari. The Amazon page references his viral TED talk years ago on how wrong we are about addiction, which rang a bell, so I watched it again. It’s only 14:33, well worth your time and attention. We think substances themselves are the problem. Turns out, it’s context. Loneliness and disconnection are far stronger drivers of addiction–to substances and other things–than the things themselves. Hear about ‘rat park’ at 3:30 where rats with toys and friends do not prefer drug-laced water when given a choice, compared to their stimulus- and companion-deprived research counterparts. Continue watching to learn about the unintended human drug addiction study that was the Vietnam War, where only 5% of the soldiers who used heroine in company relapsed upon returning home. His lovely conclusion: “For 100 years now, we’ve been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them, because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.“

Recently I started asking patients to categorize their alcohol use patterns among three overlapping motivations: social, self-medication, and habit. That middle one is a flag, though it’s often camouflaged by the other two. Identifying, accepting, and addressing our demons may be one of the scariest things we do in life. No wonder we avoid it so desperately–even more so when we feel we must do it alone.

Our relationships kill us or save us, I often say. More and more I think it’s not actually the toxic relationships that kill us, not if we have other strong, loving, thick relationships, communities, connections, and meaning to hold us up. No, it’s the lack of relationships, that absence of connection, that kills us. It doesn’t have to be many friends or connections, it just has to be enough–close enough, deep enough, tight enough.

Who’s on your mind today? Why not reach out and let them know?