Thank you for the flowers. I am feeling better than I was two days ago, so that’s progress. Today I’d like to share an article I enjoyed from a recent issue of The New Yorker.

The author of the article, Cyrus Grace Dunham, describes their ongoing transition from living as a woman (named Grace) to living as a man (named Cyrus). Dunham shares that the decision to transition was difficult for them. The process entailed self-doubt as well as deep conviction. In this passage, the author shares their experience of transitioning from going by Grace to going by Cyrus:

“When I introduced myself to people, I tried to swallow my words. If someone asked my name, I pretended that I couldn’t hear them. If they asked again, I said whatever came to mind first. I’d tell one person I was Cyrus, then turn to another and say I was Grace. I said ‘Grace’ in a higher pitch. I was considerate, charming—whatever would make the people around me comfortable. Cyrus was quiet. Sometimes he went hours without speaking at all.”

I enjoyed the entire article (and there’s more: they have a book coming out soon, with the same title as the article), but I especially enjoyed the ending. I thought it was a beautiful and insightful ending. But I will not give it away. Do check it out here, if you get a chance.

What life transitions have you undergone? Did you feel that you were mixing self-doubt with deep conviction?*

*Bonus points if you noticed the Shakespeare reference in this blog post!

Everyone knows that abuse is bad. The word itself has a terrible sound to it. Hearing it makes you want to run like hell. Why on earth would anyone put up with it?

The trouble is, abuse feels very different from the inside than from the outside. What from an outsider’s perspective looks like abuse often feels like confusion, fear, and shame from the inside. And, unfortunately, confusion, fear, and shame don’t prompt people to run like hell. They prompt people to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. But abusive storms don’t tend to pass. They tend to stick around because, from the abuser’s perspective, life is more bearable when beating someone else down.

So here is a woman who grew up in a family with certain expectations. All families, of course, have them. The specific expectations this woman was bound to were confusing to her. She was obligated to be a good, supportive family member. She was happy to try to be that! But being a good, supportive family member, according to her family, meant certain things. And, as she grew older, she started to realize more and more clearly what those things were. Here were a few of them:

1. The information in books is part of a huge conspiracy. Why are you reading? Get back to work!
2. Do not, ever, go to a hospital or take a family member to a hospital—even in a dire emergency.
3. You’re a woman, so you shouldn’t roll up your sleeves, even if it’s swelteringly hot—you whore.
4. If a male member of the household threatens you with a knife, it’s because you deserved it.
5. If a male member of the household gives you a sprained ankle, it’s because you deserved it.
6. If a male member of the household breaks one of your bones, it’s because you deserved it.

You love and adore that male family member who sprained your ankle, broke one of your bones, and hurt you in other physical and emotional ways. You trust him. He is, on the whole, a good man. And he probably knows more than you; so if he treats you poorly, you are probably not worthy of being treated well. You should work on yourself. You are far from perfect. You are the problem.

Fortunately, as Tara Westover recounts in her memoir Educated, she was able to educate herself through an astounding combination of advice and help from other family members, illuminating college courses, advice and help from kindhearted people she met at her university, and a whole lot of book reading. Through a slow and often painful process, she finally recognized the abuse for what it was. And she finally felt the need to avoid her family.

But she was torn. She did not want to give up on her family. She wanted to go home on a regular basis, participate in holiday gatherings, and be the good daughter and sister she always wanted to be.

Multiple friends of mine commented to me that reading Educated was a frustrating experience for them. They didn’t understand why Westover kept going home, over and over, even after she realized that her family’s treatment of her constituted abuse. But I felt that I understood her dilemma perfectly. It’s important to think about things from her perspective: the inside perspective. She clearly loves her family. She clearly wants to do everything in her power to contribute to positive family dynamics.

But she also clearly loves the sovereignty over her life that her education gave her: her newfound, spectacular ability to recognize the facts of the situation, without merely getting caught up in the emotional knots her family was tying.

Westover was so torn by her dilemma, in fact, that she wrote her PhD dissertation on it. She studied historical texts with the goal of answering this question:

“What is a person to do . . . when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves?”

And she comes to the conclusion that family obligations do not, cannot, automatically trump all other obligations. I am reminded here of the man suffering from schizophrenia who realized that he needed to estrange himself from his family in order to move toward better mental health. And so sometimes a person must sever ties so as to avoid severe damage to the self.

But there is an amazing silver lining here. Without giving away the end of Westover’s memoir—which is fabulous, by the way—I would like to note that people come out of the woodwork to support her. And back when she was attending the university, people similarly came out of the woodwork to help during times of desperation and need.

I don’t think this was just phenomenally good luck, though she did experience her share of that. I think that there are tons of good people in the world who are more than willing to help, if you are only able to recognize who they are, and that you might need it. People have come out of the woodwork in my life, and I’m sure they have in yours, as well. Sometimes it’s more about figuring out who in your life is being helpful and who is being harmful, and making decisions accordingly.

Surely we can no more condemn Westover for trying to keep up her family ties, than for ultimately letting them sever. Talk about a rock and a hard place. But this is the stuff real life is made of.

Who is in your woodwork, waiting to pop out and support you, even now?

The memoir Educated, by Tara Westover, has been getting a lot of buzz lately. I’m here to tell you that all of the hype is rightfully bestowed. Wow, do I have a book recommendation for you! Honestly, I read the last two-thirds of the book in one day. I had planned to do other things with the day. But I could not break away from this book.

Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho. Her parents, survivalists who were actively planning for the end of the world, did not send her to school. They did not believe in going to doctors or hospitals. Neither did they do much by the way of homeschooling. They educated their children in things like canning, horse training, building barns, managing a junkyard, and herbalism. But there was little book reading outside of Mormon texts, and little exposure to the broader society.

Westover’s memoir explains how, improbably, she moved from this insular childhood to being admitted to Brigham Young University and, eventually, being awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge in England. But her story is much more than a recitation of degrees attained. It’s not about the degrees at all; it’s about the education.

And the type of education she writes about is the type that cuts closest to who each of us is as a person, in the long flow of time and tradition: whether we believe it or think about it or not. While attending Brigham Young, Westover became aware for the first time that her family habitually practiced casual racism. For the first time, she learned about the history of racism and oppression in America. Here is what she writes about that time in her life:

“I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.”

Here Westover zeroes in on what the word education actually means. It does not mean memorizing facts. It does not mean amassing credentials. It means learning why things are the way they are. It means attaining knowledge that allows you to see that there are choices to be made in this world. Parents often have the best intentions; but that doesn’t mean they always make the best decisions. Growing up, it’s easy to assume that your family has it right, and everyone else is wrong. Getting an education means weighing your assumptions logically against the facts of history and science.

Getting an education also means attaining a measure of control over your own destiny. Knowing that there are choices in the first place gives you the ability to choose. Often, there is a better way.

What unstated traditions sculpted your upbringing? Do they hold up when examined from the perspectives of logic, history, science?

Meditation really does work. It really is a game changer. The things you see and read in the news about mindfulness are not all hype. I titled this post Meditation 101 because I’d like to share some insights that get to the foundation of the practice. These insights are important for beginners to understand, and nonbeginners can benefit from reminders that keep us inspired, motivated, and engaged.

There are many amazing resources out there for learning how to meditate. I learned through the Ten Percent Happier books and app, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I also did 15 or 20 neurofeedback sessions, which helped me understand what calm brainwaves feel like. I’m not sure I could have figured that out on my own. If you think neurofeedback might help you, look around—your local therapist or counseling center might offer it.

But this post is not about how to meditate. Today, I’d like to focus on the deeper question of why to meditate. After all, you’re not likely to make time to do something, if you don’t know why anyone would do such a thing in the first place.

Eastern Medicine vs Western Medicine

A few years ago, in a strange and quirky book, I encountered a succinct description of Eastern medicine vs Western medicine. The author of the book traveled to Hainan Island, in China. He asked his guide and interpreter what he thought about Eastern medicine vs Western medicine. The guide and interpreter offered the following analysis:

“If I have some disease or any headache I will come to the hospital for urgent things. But in daily life, I would like to have some Chinese medicine for my best health. Chinese medicine can help with good health, and in daily life. But it cannot cure a disease. . . . You know Western medicine can do a little harm to the body. Chinese medicine seems to have less harm. But Chinese medicine takes a long time to cure.”

These words stuck with me for years. What the guide seems to be saying is that the two types of medicine work in different ways, and for different purposes. Both are important in his life. Western medicine is great at curing a disease or ailment that’s already present, but isn’t as good at preventive maintenance. Eastern medicine is great at preventive maintenance and general health and well-being, but isn’t as good at quickly fixing a major problem.

(The strange and quirky book in which I discovered this gem is called The Geography of Madness by Frank Bures.)

If you own a car, you probably get regular oil changes, tire rotations, wiper fluid refills, and other tune-ups. These are minor procedures that you get done even when nothing is wrong or broken. You do this to keep the car in good working condition: to prevent larger problems. If something does go wrong with the car, you get diagnostic tests, and once the problem is pinpointed, you get repairs or replacements in a more major procedure. But it’s better to avoid problems through preventive maintenance, because it’s annoying, time consuming, and expensive to have a broken car.

This is common knowledge among vehicle owners. But while the same principles apply to our bodies, the knowledge is not as common—at least not here in the West, or at least not for all parts of the body. In the past few decades, we have seen great awareness arise around the importance of preventive maintenance when it comes to exercise and eating healthy food. Most people know that regularly exercising and eating well can prevent future diseases, even if they haven’t yet implemented these findings. But preventive maintenance for the mind is, I believe, behind in this, and only recently starting to catch up in the public understanding and imagination.

Why Meditate? My Story

I have a history of struggling with anxiety, plus physical ailments related to anxiety. I realized a while back that I needed some kind of preventive maintenance—something that Western medicine was seemingly unable to provide. If I had an anxiety attack, there were all sorts of pills I could pop and psychotherapists I could consult. But my doctors were generally silent about how I might manage my health so that that the anxiety attacks didn’t happen in the first place.

From my reading, I knew that Eastern thought held amazing promise. So I tried meditation. But it was hard. One year ago, I wrote a blog post about how difficult I found it. I wrote: “It seems that my anxieties are preventing me from using meditation as an anti-anxiety technique.”

However, over the long term, I have found that this type of Eastern medicine works just as the guide implied it would. Meditation does help “with good health, and in daily life.” In other words, it helps keep me healthy and well in the first place. Also, meditation “takes a long time to cure.” Yes. A long time. But it “seems to have less harm” than prescription drugs. Yes. Less harm.

I am happy to report that I have made astonishing progress in meditation in the past year. Whereas, a year ago, I struggled to sit for 5 minutes, I can now do 10 or 15 minutes easily. I no longer experience weird muscle tension while I meditate. But the most profound change I’ve noticed is that my daily practice does, truly, ground me. It does, truly, leave me feeling refreshed afterward and prevent the worst of the anxiety beasts from appearing.

I still find meditation supremely difficult. But I also find it supremely worthwhile. It’s a long road, this meditation journey. Yes, it’s the long game. It doesn’t cure instantly, like pills. But it does cure. And it cures in ways that are not also harmful.

So, why meditate? Here’s the Meditation 101 answer: meditation works in preventing problems of the mind, and there are no side effects. I’ll take it!

A Poem That Offers Insight on Why to Meditate

Today’s blog post arose out of me discovering the following poem by Hafiz (from the book The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky). Check this out, friends.

FIND A BETTER JOB

Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job.

What a lovely metaphor. Yes, if you have a job that’s not earning you sufficient money, it makes sense to get a different one: one that pays better. That’s a concept we Westerners can easily understand. But the same applies to worry. Thinking in this way is less familiar to us. Is worry helpful? Is worry personally lucrative? It’s important, of course, to plan for the future. However, all the excess worry that many of us do, above and beyond mere planning, is unhelpful and often detrimental. And yet, still we worry.

We worry and we worry. We get into bad patterns that we don’t know how to break free from. We don’t give our brains an oil change, we don’t give our neurons the exercise that keeps them firing smoothly. And so we trap ourselves in greater and greater worry, until some major part breaks, and the entire thing needs to be taken into the shop for some astronomically expensive repair service. For, keep in mind that, in contrast to your vehicle’s parts, your body parts are not so easily replaced. Especially not your brain parts. Any broken brain parts must be painstakingly repaired.

Why not find a better job?

The inquisitive one was in the living room, reading.

The doorbell rang. The inquisitive one was in the middle of a good part. With a sigh, the inquisitive one set down the book, hopped down the stairs, and opened the door.

No one was there. The inquisitive one almost shut the door. But a large van was making motoring noises while pulling out of the driveway. The inquisitive one looked down, scanned around, and saw a tiny Amazon box, off to the right.

“Ooo, my stuff arrived!” exclaimed the inquisitive one.

Smiling, the inquisitive one picked up the package, brought it upstairs, and got out the scissors. That was when the inquisitive one cut the box open, removed the stuff, cut the box some more, pushed it flat, popped the plastic bags, and put the box and bags in the recycling bins. Finally, the inquisitive one placed the stuff on the coffee table and resumed reading. In the middle of the good part.

Two or three hours later, the doorbell rang again. The inquisitive one was in the middle of a good part in the same book. It was turning out that the book’s whole first third was a good part! The inquisitive one blew air out of the nose in annoyance. Hopping down the stairs and opening the door, the inquisitive one again made the astute observation that no one was there.

A different delivery van was making van noises and pulling away, so the inquisitive one looked down and to the right. Nothing was there. But down and to the left was a stack of five or six medium-sized cardboard boxes, piled to a height of three or four feet.

“Ooo, more stuff!” exclaimed the inquisitive one.

Smiling, the inquisitive one picked up half the boxes and brought them up the stairs. Then the inquisitive one went back downstairs to retrieve the remaining boxes.

It took a while for the inquisitive one to unpack all the boxes, recycle the materials, place the stuff on the coffee table, and get back to the good part.

The inquisitive one had planned to do activities that day other than read, but, as it turned out, the middle two-thirds of the book was also a good part! That was why the inquisitive one was reading on the couch when, three or four hours later, the doorbell rang.

Making a low growling sound, the inquisitive one slammed the book down, stormed down the stairs, and threw open the door.

A stack of fifteen or sixteen large boxes was directly in front of the door. The stack was so tall and wide that it obscured any delivery van that may or may not have been driving away. It was unclear to the inquisitive one whether vehicle noises were being made because, right then, the inquisitive one was exclaiming,

“This is getting ridiculous!!”

The inquisitive one had no more time to read that day. There was also no time to do any of the other planned activities. The remainder of that day was spent unpacking and recycling. But, finally, the inquisitive one, exhausted, smiled at the neat stack of stuff on the coffee table, and the absence of cardboard or plastic lying around anywhere, with the exception of some dust, and staggered off to bed.

One or two weeks later, the inquisitive one was sitting in the living room, reading.

The book wasn’t a page-turner, but it was interesting. The inquisitive one hoped to finish that chapter that day.

Suddenly, a drone flew through a window that the inquisitive one had left open for that purpose. It was carrying a cardboard package. It landed, unwrapped the stuff, and placed the stuff on the coffee table. Taking the cardboard and plastic with it, it flew out.

This happened eight or nine times over the next two hours.

In the meantime, the inquisitive one finished that chapter, and also the next!

The inquisitive one closed the book and smiled. A neat stack of stuff was resting on the coffee table.

“Woo-hoo!!” said the inquisitive one.

Cancelling all other plans, the inquisitive one spent the rest of that day unpacking the unpacked stuff. The inquisitive one got the scissors out, cut open cardboard boxes and recycled them, cut open and recycled plastic, frowned at pieces of Styrofoam while trashing them, studied instruction manuals, screwed and snapped pieces together, plugged stuff in, programmed stuff, put stuff in cupboards and closets and on dressers and countertops, and in general exhausted the poor self, before staggering off to bed.