Storms of change

Are you a roll with the punches kind of person? Do you take challenges in stride and move along down the road?

Or are you someone who is easily stressed over life changes? Do extreme life shifts throw you off kilter and challenge your ability to stay upright and functional?

I’m guessing, if you’re like me, you’ve got a little bit of both of these types of responses. In fact, most people typically have a variety of responses to the changes in their lives based on the type, severity, and scope of change they are enduring.

I mean, it’s one thing if Starbucks is out of your favorite flavor syrup (oh noes!).

It quite another thing when a loved one dies unexpectedly.

The fact of the matter is, that change is one of the few guaranteed constants in our lives. It’s right up there with death and taxes. Even the recluse who’s holed up in his house, refusing to encounter the outside world for fear of it hurting him, will experience the plodding of time taking it’s toll on body and mind.

Face it. Change is here to stay. You can’t avoid it. So stop trying.

However, you can set yourself up well to encounter change, endure it, and bounce back. There are things that I can do to protect myself when I know change is coming. There are healthy behaviors that I can engage in to process the effects of change. I have coping mechanisms that I can rely on to weather the turbulent storm approaching.

And it strikes me that I’m certainly blessed to have the ability (financially, intellectually, emotionally) to even have the option to foster those healthy behaviors and to prepare for change as much as possible, because for some people, that preparation is simply not at option.

In thinking about what we know about human development, it strikes me that all of our problems come back to the degree to which we as biological organisms are capable of successfully and positively adapting to the changes constantly being pelted at us. The complicated part of all of this of course is that change can come from many sources. It can compound on top of existing change. It can stem from things completely out of your control. And it can feed on itself.  

 

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For example, say you’ve come down with the stomach bug. Now, that stomach bug could be brought on by a number of factors. The microbiologists among us might say that it was brought on due to exposure to a bacteria or virus that the immune system could not fight off effectively. The gastroenterologist might say that it’s due to a bout of food poisoning. But the epidemiologist might say that your race, social status, level of affluence, and access to healthcare might have influenced the onset and longevity of this stomach bug. The historian might look at the situation and say that the neighborhood you reside in has been linked to higher levels of illness due to the presence of a chemical factory in the 1920s. And the dietician says that your propensity to eat copious amounts of unhealthy types of foods means that you’re likely to cause a disruption in your system to warrant a stomach bug.

These are all valid explanations for what might be going on.

And the thing is, all of these explanations might be, at least in part, true.

Because life really IS that complex. Change is constant and it feeds on the instability of influential life factors in a way that is often baffling to comprehend.

Coming back to the stomach bug. Let’s play out two scenarios:

1) You come from an affluent, clean and safe neighborhood. You haven’t been sleeping much lately due to some work stress, but you’ve got a vacation coming up that you’re looking forward to enjoying. You try to exercise at least three times a week, and though you enjoy the occasional cheeseburger, you tend to have a fairly balanced diet. Somehow, you contract a stomach bug, and though it makes you miserable for a few days, and you get behind on some work, you manage to make it through relatively unscathed in time for your vacation.

2) You’re a single mom with 3 kids working 2 jobs to make ends meet. You often eat at fast food restaurants because that’s the easiest and cheapest option. You try to take your kids to the playground, or go for a walk around the block with them, but only before dark as your neighborhood is not especially safe at night. You haven’t slept for 8 hours straight in longer than you can remember, and your youngest child has an ear infection, but you can’t afford to go to the doctor, so you’ve been doing home remedies. You get the stomach bug. You fight through it because you have to, but you notice that even 2 months later, you’re still not feeling 100%. You worry that something might be seriously wrong, but you know you can’t afford the necessary doctor’s bills to figure out what’s really going on.

Think about it. When you have the means, access to some of the best healthcare in the world (despite it’s many limitations), and minimal chance of dying during a normal day, you have security and position of adaptability that enhances the chances of weathering disruptive change relatively well.

 

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But when you don’t have the financial means, have limited access to healthcare, and are at increased risk of daily bodily harm, chances are that your capability to weather change effectively and efficiently is hindered.

Scenario 2 is that case.

The challenges of position, class, status, financial stability, physical and mental health, stress -  we all face them to a certain degree. But some of us are faced with more of those challenges, and more often, than others.

And the ability to adapt to those changes and challenges and move forward from them is what’s key to survival.

It always has been. Since the days people were living in caves.

But here’s a cool prospect about this “adaptability” thing. It’s not entirely predictable.

We hear cases every day of children and youth facing horribly traumatic and challenging struggles in life, only to find that they come out the other side of those changes stronger and wiser. Think about the kids I wrote about last week living in some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of our country who are just trying to get out to a better life. In those situations of deep struggle, some people express resilience, a scientific term which refers to the process of flexibly “bouncing back” or recovering from difficulties quickly. Some people are adaptable to change, despite almost everything surrounding them stacking the odds against them. Somehow, some people can make it through, even when it’s least expected.

But there are those who don’t make it through.

And sometimes those who don’t make it through had so many things going right for them, that it’s baffling to see them fail in the face of seemingly minimal change.

But it happens every day.

This inability to exactly predict an individual’s adaptability to change is both the puzzling, head-scratching part of human existence, and one of the most beautiful parts of the human condition.

It means we’re not living in the Minority Report. Despite scientific advancements and technological leaps forward, we haven’t cracked the human code. We can’t predict it all.

And that’s a good thing. Because like any avid movie-goer will tell you, the meat of the story – what happens to, and through, the characters – and the telling of it, is what can make or break a movie. Those challenges, predictable and unpredictable, that characters face that force them to re-evaluate who they are and adapt accordingly – those are the most moving, thrilling, unflinchingly human stories there are.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to improve the lives of people facing adversity – quite the opposite. Removing barriers is one part of that. Providing opportunities another.

 

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But the core of what we as humankind can do to benefit one another, is build and strengthen one another’s capacity to adapt to the never-ending changes in life. To better weather the damage of the hurricanes of change in our lives successfully, and well. Increasing the odds that people will adapt flexibly and positively to change is perhaps one of the most important things we can do for each other.

Building people’s capacity to succeed in the face of change and adversity doesn’t rely wholly on the functionality of bloated systems of government to come through and save the day, but rather builds on what exists in each person, and changes the whole from within. It plays to the strengths of human goodness and hope.

Is this idea of building individual adaptability perfect? No. Does it fix everything? Not likely. Is it the one and only answer? Definitely not.

But it means that even in the face of turbulent destruction and horrendous trauma, there is hope, however small, that perseverance will prevail. Goodness will win out. Humanity will survive, adapt, and thrive.

That hope is integral to the plot of every good human survival movie for a reason. 

Because we need that hope to be real to know that we can survive in the face of the ceaseless change staring us down every single day.

Plight of the "wrong" neighborhood

Recently I stumbled upon a video journalism series put on by the Chicago Tribune called Chicago Under the Gun. Its gut-wrenching portrayal of the ever-present violent chaos on Chicago’s South and West sides has been stuck with me ever since.

 

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Between sobbing cries of mothers who have had their children gunned down at the playground, to the angry rage of brothers of young men slain for walking down the street, this video series is about more than just crime statistics. It’s more than an emotionally disconnected report on the problem areas of the city. It shows the reality of the pain, anger, and frustration that entire communities of people face all too often, just for living where they do.

And if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can find the full series here: http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/under-the-gun/

Warning, there are graphic images and explicit language.

For those of you who, like me, have to be careful to screen what you watch because of the effects it can have on you (nightmares, ruminating, feeling depressed, etc), I’ll lay out it all out here, in words.

Chicago has a long history of gun violence. Some of the highest numbers of homicides come from the early 1970’s (970 homicides in 1974), and it has persistently been an issue. Last year, Chicago witnessed another spike in homicides, 506 reported, the highest rate in the country last year. 

Many analysts are suggesting that 2012 was a fluke year, that 2013 will not match that rate. As of August 12^th murders are down 26% from last year, and shootings are down 22% from last year. In fact, the murder rate has not been this low since 1965. Indeed, according to redeyechicago.com, only 250 homicides have occurred so far this year as of August 11^th, 2013.

But here’s the thing. Last weekend alone (August 9-11^th) from Friday night through Sunday night, 4 people were killed and 37 were wounded in Chicago, most of them shot. Chicago had logged 15 homicides in the month of August as of August 11th.

To put that in perspective, only 21people had been killed in Minneapolis this year as of mid July. That’s only 6 more than were killed in Chicago in 11 days.

Now, I realize that none of this takes into account the size of the cities, number of people, etc. In fact, if you’re measuring per capita, Chicago doesn’t even make the top 25 most dangerous cities. Statistically speaking, the odds of being murdered in Chicago are about a 1 in 6,250.

But, what happens if you narrow that down to Chicago’s West and South sides as opposed to including the entire 227.3 square miles of the entire Chicago area? Well, the odds of being shot while walking down the street are closer to 3in 1,000 on the West Side of Chicago. And if you happen to be somehow connected to a gang, be it by family or friend, or even friend of a friend, your risk in some neighborhoods, like the West Side of Chicago, skyrockets to an estimated 30 in 1,000 (read more here about using Social Networks to map crime).

 

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Now clearly, violent homicide is a pervasive problem across the U.S. and the world, not just in Chicago. And yes, there are many MANY factors contributing to it. Poverty, disrupted family structure, poor education, lacking community supports, insufficient health care, and lack of gun control to name a few.

Yet somehow, despite knowing all of this, we often treat these cases with a dangerous ambivalence. Somehow, there’s this idea that loss of life of people from the “wrong neighborhood” means less than life lost in other places – in places where “that kind of thing just doesn’t happen here.”

Somehow, we’ve gotten to a place of complacence. Where the death of a 6-month-old child who was shot and killed while her dad changed her diaper in the back of a car can be minimized to an explanation of living on the rough side of town and having a criminal for a father.

But her dad’s grief is real, and in no way less traumatic than the grief of any of the parents who suffered from the slayings of their innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut.

So why do they sometimes feel so different? Why does it so quickly come down to “being from the rough part of town,” rather than an understanding that grief over lost innocence is as immeasurable there as the grief of the families in Newtown? Is it the media? Is it about race? Poverty? Social standing? Perception?

My sense is, it’s probably a little of all of the above.

I understand that making sense out of tragedy is part of the process of grief. As humans we seek to compartmentalize and rationalize horrendous crimes – to figure out “why” this happened. And the “wrong neighborhood” explanation is a quick and easy rationalization of brutal murder.

But when you live in a place where grief becomes the norm, you start believing that you don’t deserve more – that this constant grief and fear of certain, impending loss weaves its way into your psych.

How do you fight back when the things you’re fighting have become the hard facts of life?

What do you tell your children, who are growing up taking their own lives in their hands everyday just by hopping on the playground swing set?

What about the teenagers, who are trying desperately to get out of this place to a new life, who have to face the death of their best friend, whose only sin was running to find shelter in a rainstorm after school?

This is the reality that many children are facing everyday, here, in America. It’s not a reality that many of us are aware of, or comfortable talking about. But if we don’t talk about it, if we’re not aware of it, that reality will be the same for the next generation, and the next, and the next.

Clearly, there is no one right, or easy, answer to the pervasive issue of violence. Despite increased efforts to curb violence in Chicago, and many other communities across the country, it’s still a present threat in children’s lives.

One of the experts featured in the Chicago Under the Gun film, Marlita White, the Director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Chicago, argues that this kind of pervasive violence inserts itself into the psych of an entire community, and is a public health issue. Violence affects and is affected by poverty, lack of education, disrupted family structure, and absent community supports. Violence dehumanizes people and entire communities. White reflects: “If we respond to violence as we respond to other kinds of health concerns [then] we can turn the tide on violence.”

The only way out of this is coordinated, extensive, systems-wide, extremely costly reforms to many of our biggest, most unwieldy systems. Education. Welfare. Physical and mental healthcare. Law enforcement.

The chances of this happening successfully? The pessimist in me says not good. The optimist says we’ve got to start somewhere.

I applaud the strength and courage of so many in this country who already take on those challenges every day; the people who serve, who protect, who mentor, who lead, who guide, and who tirelessly advocate for others. You are the ones who make the difference.

In academic jargon, it comes down to implementing systems and structures than can, and should, promote positive change in the lives of kids and families, no matter what neighborhood they’re from.

In plain English, it comes down to taking better care of each other.

In the meantime, I cling to the hope that there are ways to make this better. There have to be.

On coming back from vacation

For the 2 of you who actually follow this blog and wonder where the heck I was last week, well I have a legitimate excuse for dropping off the face of the blogosphere.

 

I was on vacation. Staring at a lake, enjoying nature, letting my brain rest and recuperate. 

And then I came back to work this week and went “why did I ever leave!”

And I mean that not as “Why did I ever leave the lake and the beautiful nature?!” – though that was part of it to be sure. No, it was more like “Why did I ever leave work in the first place?!” I hate the get-back-into-work-after-missing-a-full-week-you-didn’t-really-have-time-to-miss craze.

Somehow, all of the restorative powers of vacation to let you decompress, think about things other than your to do list, and read a trashy novel because you want to, vanish in an instant. Immediately the slightly-crazed look comes back in your eyes and you’re right back where you were before you left for vacation only MORE behind.

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Great. Awesome. Perfect.

I’ve realized that, in general, the American culture has a working problem. This has many facets. It’s our tendency in America to be work-a-holics. It’s the 60+  hour workweek when only getting paid (meagerly) for 40. It’s the lack of paid time off for new moms and dads to take care of their newborns (men are lucky to get 2 weeks, women are lucky to get 6 weeks in most places) or recently adopted child (you might get 2 weeks, even at some of the more progressive places of employment). It’s the curse of the modern world that basically demands that everyone have a smart phone just so that you can be working all the time. Even when you’re on vacation. It’s the crushing force of the recession which demands more work from fewer people resulting in working through lunch, coming in early, leaving late, and bringing work home on the weekends.

And for what?

So we can be burned-out, grumpy, unhealthy, non-productive members of society?

Great. Awesome. Perfect.

The more I hear about the European model of working, the more I like it. Though I realize it comes with it’s downsides (an average 46.1% income tax rate in Western Europe…OUCH), it also comes with some pretty nice perks. With anywhere between 25 and 40 paid vacation days a year, Europeans also tend to have shorter workweeks (between 25-38 hours per week). Yet a study from 2011 indicates that wealthier countries also tend to have higher rates of depression than less wealthy countries (Bromet et al., 2011). However, even within the defined wealthier countries, there were major differences. Germany, a country with notably higher paid vacation time, and generally fewer hours per week of work, the depression rates were reported at 9.9%. In the U.S. we’re at 19.2%.

Now clearly there are cultural differences in expression, understanding, and cultural acceptability of depression that may be leading to some of these differences. And then of course there are the economic reasons that could be contributing to these higher rates of depression in some places over others.

However, given how I feel after a 60 hour workweek, versus after a 25 hour one, I think there may be something to this idea that the amount of time spent working might be linked to depression.

So why do we work so much?

For some of us it’s driven by need.

For others it’s about passion.

Though these days, it seems to be a lot more about the former than the latter.

I wonder if there’s something to that. Whether the oppressive feeling of having no other choice but to work more hours harder, plagues more and more people across the world because of the world-wide recession and cultural shifts in priorities.

That’s pretty bleak, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it were true.

So what do we do?

Though you could probably picket your employer and demand more vacation time, I doubt that would be a highly effective way to make substantive changes to your happiness.

No, the changes I propose are more on an individual level. Because let’s face it, you control what you do everyday, at least to some extent.

These are just some coping strategies that I’ve come up with to handle those really insane days or weeks where it just feels like the to-do list is never-ending and life will not slow down. This is by no means comprehensive. It’s just my two cents, take ‘em or leave ‘em.

• Do one thing you enjoy everyday. This can be as simple as enjoying a cup of coffee on your way to work in the morning, or walking your dog when you get home. It could be playing with your kids, or just popping into your friend’s office just to say hi. Many of these things don’t take much time, or money. I’ve found much of life’s simple pleasures are that way. Free.
• Get some fresh air. Even if it’s the middle of winter, or pouring rain. Open a window. Stick your head outside. Breathe in. There’s something deeply restorative about fresh air, no matter how bitter cold or boiling hot.
•  Laugh. As often as you can. Watch a funny video on YouTube (I recommend these: 17 rants in 4 minutes; David after Dentist), read some jokes, laugh at a friend’s story, relive a funny moment from your holiday spent with your family.
• Exercise. This one is huge for me, but I know it’s less crucial for other people. I’ll just say that a walk around the block can clean out the cobwebs in my head, and going for a run keeps me from wanting to hit things. Try it. You might find you like it.
• Plan your next vacation – even if it’s imaginary. I do this every year in February. Because there is nothing worse than February in Minnesota (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but really, February is horrible). When I Just. Can’t. Take. It. Anymore., I’ll look for cheap flights to exotic places, read up on the best travel locales, and spend a few minutes looking at pictures of pristine beaches. Somehow even visualizing a beautiful relaxing place brings my heart rate down a little when I’m feeling stir crazy.

Those are just a few things that I try to remind myself of when I’m feeling stressed. The last rule that I try very hard to heed (though it’s admittedly difficult):

When you’re on vacation, BE ON VACATION.

News flash: The chances of the world ending because you don’t check your email every day are very, very, VERY small.

Vacation is your time to be away. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. Because with only 12-20 vacation days a year, in the U. S. at least, it’s your only chance to take advantage of that much needed time to unplug and reconnect with yourself apart from the demands of the work world. It will all be waiting for you when you get back. And despite the panic inducing feeling of never-ending catch-up, you’ll be better prepared to look at work in a new, refreshed way. Who knows, you might come up with something completely new because you allowed yourself to step away long enough to approach a problem from another angle.

And with that, I now resume the unavoidable vacation catch-up game…after a quick walk outside and that one hilarious YouTube video…