The inquisitive one traveled to London. It was going to be an exciting adventure!

While in a crowded street market, the inquisitive one saw some postcards. “I could send these to my nephew and niece!” thought the inquisitive one, as a bunch of people jostled into the back, shoulders, and butt. When the inquisitive one went to pay for the postcards, there was a terrible realization: the credit cards, cash, phone, and passport were all missing!

Instinctively, and in a panic, the inquisitive one ran to that timelessly universal haven for inquisitive types, the public library. Frantically, the inquisitive one Googled what to do when lose passport England USA help! and scanned through some websites. Next, the inquisitive one logged into the email account and composed a message.

Here it must be noted that, due to shock and anxiety, the inquisitive one had been stricken with a psychological disorder! The inquisitive one could no longer distinguish fact from fiction, information from misinformation! Furthermore, the inquisitive one could no longer recall a single rule of spelling, grammar, or word usage! Consequently, the email read as follows:

Not knowing whom to put on the To: line, the inquisitive one sent it to every contact in the address book. Then the inquisitive one waited for a reply.

But no one replied! The inquisitive one kept checking the email for hours, but then, night fell. The library closed. The inquisitive one was forced to scrounge through trash bags for food and sleep in an alley.

The next day, the inquisitive one fell in with a band of drug dealers. But the inquisitive one, having no talent for sales, was not able to make any money. As the days passed, the inquisitive one started to despair of ever again eating something that didn’t come from a garbage bag. But then a fellow drug dealer invited the inquisitive one to, along with him, ditch the drug dealers and join a band of political agitators: which the inquisitive one gladly did.

This was a better situation because the political agitators took tea and crumpet breaks 15 or 20 times daily, which filled the belly nicely. These political agitators were pro-Brexit, or anti-Brexit, or anyway they had a very specific stance regarding Brexit. However, due to their use of incomprehensible words such as queue, quid, lift, and mummy dear, the inquisitive one was not able to determine what precisely that stance was.

Anyway, a few days after that, Fortune smiled even more happily on the inquisitive one: someone replied to the email! The inquisitive one collected $10,000 using the bank information sent by a (wonderfully kindhearted!) acquaintance, whom the inquisitive one vaguely remembered having met a couple of decades previously. Oddly, though, at the U.S. Embassy, the inquisitive one learned that, contrary to what the Internet very clearly stated, such a large sum of money was not required.

While the U.S. Embassy was working on issuing a new passport, the inquisitive one (with wonderfully kindhearted generosity!) gave the remainder of the cash, as well as the bank information, to the good drug-dealer-turned-political-agitator friend.

This friend, the inquisitive one had been astonished to learn, was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark! Well, or maybe he was Charles, Prince of Wales. In all honesty, the accents in this city were so thick that the inquisitive one could hardly understand a word anyone said. Or was he a Nigerian prince? In any case, he was a prince, but he had fallen on hard times and lost his throne. He promised to return all the money, and significantly more, to the (wonderfully kindhearted!) decades-old acquaintance of the inquisitive one, and to give the (wonderfully kindhearted!) inquisitive one a sizable pile of precious stones and jewels, once his throne was properly restored. And it surely would be restored within the next few days, due to the temporary loan of the money in the account!

The inquisitive one, strangely and sadly, lost contact with the prince at that point. But the very next day, the U.S. Embassy issued the inquisitive one a new passport! While the inquisitive one was not able to recover the lost credit cards, cash, or phone, the issuance of the new passport was a truly wondrous occurrence: and the inquisitive one’s anxiety faded away. Knowledge of spelling, grammar, and word usage returned. Also recovered was psychological sanity, including the ability to understand what was real; what was possible but unlikely; and what was rabid delusion.

MORAL: Health is better than wealth; and it’s easier, as they say in the wisest countries, to pass a needle through a camel’s eye, Amen.

Hey, all! Yesterday I walked through the Shoreditch area of London and took in some street art. (Many thanks to K., who recommended it to me.) The best graffiti is beautiful and powerful, evocative and provocative. It’s, you know, art.

Graffiti can dispense insight. It can offer alternate ways of looking at reality. Often found in gritty urban settings, it proclaims to the world that feeling and thought and ingenuity exist everywhere humans exist (which is sometimes, sadly, contrary to popular belief!).

Here’s a sampling of what I saw yesterday in Shoreditch. Yes, I was that tourist taking photos of the street art. Well, so be it: a tourist is what I am, ain’t it?
 

TO / SPEAK SPEAK SPEAK / the truth / FEARLESSLY—

Great message. Perhaps this has meaning not just in isolation, which is cool enough, but also in combination with the message above it. Perhaps it means that we should not shy away from openly telling people when we adore them; and also we should not shy away from expressing ourselves when people encroach upon our (physical or metaphorical) space. Also, the words “adore” and “endure” both seem to imply that when we speak the truth fearlessly, we should do it with respect. I can be on board with that message!

But zoom out on these lovely messages, and we have a new message that blatantly urges us to spend money. This crude message is all the more crude in juxtaposition with the beautiful sentiments nearby. It’s a reminder of all the forces in our world that try to push us away from what’s really important (i.e., adoring and enduring each other by speaking truth fearlessly).

 

Honoré de Balzac’s novel Eugénie Grandet seems to imply that, contrary to popular belief, money can buy happiness!

One of the main characters in the novel, Monsieur Grandet, glows with happiness upon learning of the multiplication of his funds, and when beholding his piles of gold. He even, upon receiving especially good news concerning his accounts, literally sings and dances.

But the novel also implies that an increase in money does not cause an increase in happiness for everyone, just for those rare people who are true misers. Monsieur Grandet’s wife and daughter do not experience greater happiness from the acquisition of money. In fact, as the reader is surprised to learn, they don’t even know how much they are financially worth, or that their fortune dwarfs the net worth of many of their neighbors combined!

The tragedy of this scenario is that Eugénie and her mother, not comprehending that they are multimillionaires, also do not comprehend the true nature of their “friendships.” Money-hungry men and their money-hungry relatives come regularly to the Grandet house to court Eugénie. Poor Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet think that these people like them for themselves, not for their money.

At the point that the reader learns of this wretched situation, Balzac tosses in the following aphorism:

“How horrible is man’s condition! He does not own one happiness whose source does not lie in ignorance of some kind.”

It’s a Balzacian aphorism; but is it true? I would like to debate this question with you. I would argue that Monsieur Grandet’s joy in acquiring money would be significantly lower if he were not so ignorant about its detrimental effects on his family, as well as on himself. Further, his wife and daughter would surely have been horrified to learn that the people praising them did not genuinely like them.

On the other hand, ignorance can lead to misery over the long term, as is evident by witnessing these characters’ deteriorating lives as the years pass. Thus, learning key facts about the world, and acting accordingly, can save one from sorrow. It can also bring one a quiet contentment that, while perhaps of a different nature than the bliss of ignorance, is still a form of happiness.

What do you think: is ignorance necessary for happiness?

Rumor has it that Honoré de Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee every day.

Only recently did I learn about this prodigious feat of metabolic activity. I had noted on an online dating profile that I was a writer of novels who was reading Balzac. A number of men contacted me with the inquiry as to whether my coffee habits were as epicurean as the famous nineteenth-century French novelist’s.

Replying that they were not (surely they could not be, since I prefer tea), I searched the Internet and found many websites that repeated the rumor. (I especially enjoyed this hilarious take!)

Oddly enough, though, the Balzac novel I was reading focused not on gross overindulgence, but the opposite—call it gross underindulgence.

Monsieur Grandet, one of the main characters of the novel Eugénie Grandet, is the richest person for miles around—a multimillionaire!—and yet he and his family live in near poverty. Their house is falling apart; they light fires only on the very coldest days; they use the fewest and most inexpensive candles to light a room; and they eat and drink only a scant daily allotment.

Monsieur Grandet is plainly a miser. Here’s a little view into his philosophy of life:

“‘You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty!’ he said. ‘Such is life. You cannot eat your cake and have it too. You can’t use your money and keep it in your purse. Life would be too good if you could.'”

So he chooses to keep his money in his purse. To be a multimillionaire who is depriving oneself and one’s family from all comfort seems like madness. It seems nearly as crazy as drinking 50 cups of coffee every day! But there’s a certain wisdom in Grandet’s philosophy.

The next time you see someone who owns a car like the one pictured above, keep in mind that that person is poor!—if not actually, then at least comparatively. And if that person lives in a mansion and has lots of servants and wears only custom-made clothing and drinks only the finest wine every evening? Poorer still.

Where do you put your money?

Today I’d like to share with you an example of the importance of getting the words right. The language we use is immensely consequential in not just how we think about real-world issues, but also how we handle those issues as a society: how much money is allocated, what kind of care people receive, and other important effects.

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., exposes the faulty language we use surrounding trauma, and then he makes a fascinating argument for a change in the language—with a corresponding change in people’s decisions and actions.

(Note that this blog post is a brief synopsis of and commentary on a long and complicated expostulation. I encourage you to read The Body Keeps the Score to understand and appreciate Dr. van der Kolk’s full evidence and argument.)

Dr. van der Kolk argues that, over the past century or so, there has been a cover-up surrounding the scientifically demonstrated fact that abused children experience detrimental psychological effects. Moreover, he explains, these detrimental psychological effects are not random; there is what he calls a “consistent profile,” which he describes in detail. Not all abused children exhibit the same symptoms (just as, for example, people can experience different symptoms despite being infected by the same virus). However, such children have commonalities such as trouble regulating emotions, trouble concentrating, trouble getting along with others, sleep disturbances, unexplained pain, and doing things like rocking and cutting to relieve tension.

But, Dr. van der Kolk laments, there is no established diagnosis for this consistent profile. Instead, children are being given multiple diagnoses that describe symptoms, not the underlying cause. For instance, many children are being labeled as having “oppositional defiant disorder” or “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.” As a result, children who desperately need care that addresses trauma are instead receiving care that addresses bad behavior. Such care, since it does not focus on the core problem, does not come close to resolving the core problem.

How did we get ourselves into this predicament of language? Why has there been a cover-up surrounding childhood trauma? Dr. van der Kolk takes us back to the time of Sigmund Freud:

“In 1896 Freud boldly claimed that ‘the ultimate cause of hysteria is always the seduction of the child by an adult.’ Then, faced with his own evidence of an epidemic of abuse in the best families of Vienna—one, he noted, that would implicate his own father—he quickly began to retreat. Psychoanalysis shifted to an emphasis on unconscious wishes and fantasies, though Freud occasionally kept acknowledging the reality of sexual abuse.”

It’s a hard topic. It’s not a great issue to talk about, politically speaking. What would you rather give a public speech on, child abuse or unconscious wishes?

But Dr. van der Kolk gives the reader hope with his historical analysis of another kind of trauma, today known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. When governments came to realize that fighting in WWI caused “shell shock,” they worked to hide this fact. Publicizing shell shock would cost money (soldiers experiencing it would need treatment and disability pay) and destabilize the war effort (governments wanted to encourage men to enlist, not emphasize war’s dangers). So WWI veterans were not treated for shell shock. Neither were WWII veterans. The politics during the Vietnam War era, however, were different; and a new diagnosis, PTSD, entered the books and the lexicon. Along with this new language to describe a medical condition came new awareness, treatments, and funding.

There was another huge benefit of the language change. As it turned out, veterans were not the only ones who had this medical condition:

“The adoption of the PTSD diagnosis by the DSM III in 1980 led to extensive scientific studies and to the development of effective treatments, which turned out to be relevant not only to combat veterans but also to victims of a range of traumatic events, including rape, assault, and motor vehicle accidents.”

Dr. van der Kolk argues that we are overdue for a language change in the realm of child abuse. He proposes the term Developmental Trauma Disorder. I am not a doctor and cannot comment on his suggestion with authority. However, I can comment with authority that I have read over and over about falsehoods told for political purposes. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the fake news. If there is a problem and a solution, let’s name the problem in plain language and implement the solution. Covering up the problem and addressing symptoms never works over the long term. The doctor says it best:

“You would not want to have your appendix removed when you are suffering from a kidney stone, and you would not want to have somebody labeled as ‘oppositional’ when, in fact, his behavior is rooted in an attempt to protect himself against real danger.”

Do you fight for truth in language . . . despite the risk that someone will label you as “oppositional”?