That you can make someone laugh but you cannot make them happy.

Just a quick review....I first saw this on a plane and must confess I was a little disappointed after all the marketing hype.  However, I watched it for a second time (again in a 4x4 screen in a plane) and think it might be one of my favorite movies.  As with all Wes Anderson movies, the devil is in the details; the sublte inflexion in the voice, or a barely raised eyebrow.  I bought the DVD yesterday so I can watch it on a real TV and share it with my boys (they are 12 and 15 but are evolved enough to definately appreciate it.  I believe they may be more spiritually aware than me...this morning over a 30 minute period I got the following-from the 12 year old after I asked him why he seemed sad this morning.."acting is not the same as being".  Wow. And from the 15 year old when I asked him if he had his lacrosse shorts for the fifth time.." mom, read some more Ghandi books and stop nagging".  I considered myself told on both accounts).

The film was especially interesting because of the subsequent probems suffered by the main character, Owen Wilson.  I did detect a seriousness in him that is not often seen in his movies, but the script called for it anyway.  I think he is a brilliant comedic actor whose sense of timing translates well to comi-dramas of the Wes Anderson type.   The acting throughout was superb by all actors.  I especially like the irritable train guard actually.  Anyway--watch the movie and enjoy!

I'm reading some Eckhart Tolle and loving it.  It hit me today that there are three basic modes of living.  First there is the ego driven life that requiree validation constantly.  I used to think that validation was important for happiness and success.  I though that some individuals were destined to continually seek for acceptance to fill the void created in their early years from not being vaildated by parents and caregivers.   I felt validation of core identity was the key.  I now think differently.  Validation is still important, especially in the first half of life.  We want to be seen to be successful, pretty, competent, 'identified'.  After reading Tolle I realize that it is just the ego that needs the validation and will indeed continually seek it.  Marketers love the ego.  Fashion, smelly candles, clubs, holidays, shoes (my ego loves shoes), houses, all validate the ego and create a sense of belonging through ownership or involvement.  Without the ego and its constant need for satisafaction, capitalism would struggle to survive.

The second mode of living is the conscious mode that Tolle talks about.  It is akin to 'second level' stages of the Spiral.  This mode develops through the second half of life (I am speaking in generalities since all lives evolve at their own pace and some people seem born into conscious existance, while others live through their ego to the bitter end).  As the first mode declines, and the ego becomes more observed and therefor emore under control then conscious living takes over.  It seems the two oscillate with ego winning at first, and consciousness taking over for the latter half.  Perhaps the time the balance shifts from ego to consciousness is what we view as the 'mid-life crisis'.    If so, I hope one day we will learn to welcome the crisis, working through and then above it, through to enlightenment.  I'd recommend Tolle's books.  To me they represent a fundamental truth that I have always known but not always understood.

The third mode of life is familiar to many in the US, and paid my salary for many years.  It is the medicated life.  This is the life that disturbs me the most,  I have nothing against medications for the most part; just last week my mother's life was saved by a high dose intravneous diuretic that  was in essence, a miracle cure for the acute condition she found herself in.  However,  we turn too readily to drugs to calm and soothe, energize and stimulate.  We expect to find solace and health in a pill.  If enough of us continue to live this way, our culture will hit a very real hurdle in its evolution.  However, I do sense a scepticism about medicines that could lead to a more healthy application of them.  Hopefully, over time we can become more conscious in the way we diagnose and treat illness, making use of all available therapies from across the traditionaland complementary spectrum.  I think Tolle has a unique way of expressing the duality that causes us so many problems as we wrestle a demon we often do not even know  exists.  I wonder if it is most usefully applied to this third mode of life where have become so disconnected from our own healing mechanisms.

I was in a book store at the weekend, for a reading by a friend who has just published her 20th (!) book.   It's not often (maybe it's never happened) that I am in a book store and not frantically rifling through the shelves.  That day, however, I was forced to be still and to listen to my friends words as she read to the crowd.  The book was inspiring just like the ones that came before but despite my interest, I found myself looking around in wonder at the books around me.  As her words gently hummed with a rhythm that held her audience in thrall, a blinding epiphany came to me.  

I read today that drugs commonly used to treat some Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients do not do any good, and may even do some harm.  The BBC reported on their website that the neuroleptic drugs that are sometimes given to AD patients to control behavior, can also compromise verbal skills in patients with only mild cognitive impairment.  These drugs were originally developed to treat psychosis in schizophrenic patients but are often given to elderly patients with dementia because they can control the aggression that comes with the progression of AD.  This latter indication is an off-label indication since the FDA has not approved it for such use, nor has it been tested widely in the elderly.  Olanzapine (trade name, Zyprexa) made by Lilly) has come under particular fire lately for inappropriate advertising and administration for off-label indications. 

In 2004 the Committee on the Safety of Medicines in the UK issued a warning that Zyprexa could cause strokes in patients with dementia and recommended it not be used for that purpose.  In 2004 my father died from the effects of Zyprexa while under the care of a nursing home in my home town of Newark, UK. 
My father had been deteriorating from the effects of Lewy Body Disease (a type of dementia that has features of AD as well as Parkinson's like shuffling) and was taking Zyprexa daily to control aggression.  I remember the day the hospital doctor told me it was his only hope.  He would sit on the floor and refuse to get up, strike out occasionally and wander in the streets at night. It was explained to me that Zyprexa was his last chance to retain some some semblance of manageability as his dementia continued to progress.  That same doctor told me that he 'was not in there' when he went through a phase of not talking, but of course, his family knew differently.  He was there all along, but he just couldn't always show us.  After he had been in the nursing home for a couple of years, the doctor decided to increase his dose of Zyprexa.  He was too lively it seemed.  Not for long. The day nurse increased his dose.  The night nurse increased his dose. The result was a fatal overdose.  The day he got the double dose, he immediately spike a fever.  My mum relayed to me that his face was very flushed and he was silent.  He seemed to be in pain and his urine was very dark. He had taken to his bed and could not get up. The research I was doing at the time while at Pfizer led me to the web where my suspicions were confirmed.  He was suffering a rare (but is it that rare?) side effect of some anti-psychotic medications, Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome.  The high temperature brought on my the drug caused his muscle tissue to break down giving rise to the tell-tale dark brown urine color of rhabdomyolysis or muscle toxicity. He never got out of bed again and 4 months later, passed away.  His medicine records were never found and my mum would not consent to a postmortem so it looked as though he just slipped away from advanced dementia.   There are so many things wrong with the picture I just painted but I want to raise one that has nothing to do with the use of anti-psychotics in the elderly and everything to do with how we view dementia in the first place.  A new book I am reading called The Myth of Alzheimer's questions our categorization of the disease and suggests that we over-focus on the disease labels and unnecessary treatments, and under focus on the social aspect of caring for our elderly as they progress through old age and is challenges.  In his book, Dr Peter Whitehouse suggests that AD is little more than a convenient marketing empire that distracts us from the core issues with the disease which are, that we do not know what causes it, or whether it merely represents a 'normal' aging of the brain that occurs at different times in different people (a bit like some people get aching bones earlier than others perhaps...).
The book makes me wonder about my own experience with a loved one with dementia.  The drugs, the quick proclamation that 'he's not in there any more' when he clearly was very much 'in there', and the fear and denial associated with his daily delusions (he was usually happy with his hallucinations, it was us that were not).  Perhaps we need to learn to be more gracious with the demented.  Perhaps our social systems should be more geared towards support of the elderly rather than condemnation to a disease state that strikes fear into the hearts of all of us.  My dad had a good life and retained his character until the end but in a changed form.  His 'disease' created another version of himself that was as fascinating as it was sad.  He didn't lose himself as much as found a new self.  If we had been able to grasp that at the time, we may have been better company for him in his last years.

Just by being thoughtful.  I find many of my own actions as well as those around me are often knee-jerk re-actions.  Just being mindful gives way to the challenging of assumptions and a better way of caring.

I'm exhausted from all my socializing, most of which I do from this very spot. Face to face with a 17" screen, I chat, play, work, sing (yes-I have sung to my computer and with the wonders of Logic Pro I can make myself sound like Celine Dion on steroids with a mere tap of a key), laugh and even sometimes, cry. I heard yesterday that about 10% of Americans are addicted to the internet and I understand why. The web has it going on.

Rather than talk about what's wrong with that (and there is much), I'm going to talk about the upside. Being connected is a fundamental human need. Being without a community is a bad for your health as giving up smoking is good (Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam--great book). Two days ago a far away friend mentioned how discomforting it had been to be 2 weeks without home internet when his system threw a wobbly. He felt like he'd been missing a friend, he said. Another friend in a far place asked me today if I had figured out what the point of Facebook might be. I had to think, because it wasn't immediately apparent. I have LinkedIn for serious work networking, I have YouTube for a laugh and to keep track of my musically prolific son, Plaxo Pluse for keeping in touch with old friends, and I have zaadz.com for the weird side of me that still believes in fairies. So what is Facebook for? It must be good for something. Sheryl Sandberg, Google's (ex) VP of global online sales defected to Facebook to become COO this week. I pondered my recent experience with it. Why, just in the last three days I was poked by two people I have never met, sent a leprechaun by someone I care a great deal about but rarely see, and turned into a vampire by one of the smartest and successful people I know, who should know better. Oh, and I threw some beads at a couple of folks as part of a bizarre on-line Mardi Gras party that seems to go on forever. Add to that the two games of Scrabble I'm currently playing with remote friends, it seems like Facebook might just be for plain fun.

All of these sites allow me to feel like I am part of the Universe as it moves along in time. I am part of the ebb and flow of my friends' lives in an unobtrusive but slightly voyeuristic way. It feels good to be connected, although I can't fully rationalize the value in a purely logical way. One thing I realized in all my pondering: Facebook does have a purpose. It is to remind us not to take life and ourselves so seriously, that there is no shame is getting of the perch of progress and regressing occasionally. So go on. Sign in and throw a few beads. You'll feel better for it, and so will those that receive.

...seem to be leading me further into the esoteric.  For several years I have been drawn to mystical texts and books that question the logic of traditional science.  I have many, many books on fringy topics such as astrology, Mayan culture, secret societies, corrupt science etc.  I have been attracted to these books despite my training that such metaphysical topics are nonsense, primitive even.  I have read some of them, but not most, and I have kept an open mind on their potential truths.

Today I'm working on my book.  I've been away from it for a while because of work committments but the break has helped me see a better way to put it together.  I so enjoy researching and writing and would love to spend more time on it.  So.....I've been thinking of how to raise some sponsorship money to support me for about a day a week to devote to the book until I'm ready to scout for a publisher or an agent.  I have some ideas and as I try them, I will post my progress on this blog.

My first idea is to just put it out there that I am interested in finding a sponsor and and agent for my book.  In keeping with The Secret, I am going to tell the Universe what I want.  Most of my life I haven't really known what I want and I appreciate the difficulty of using The Secret with that level of uncertainty in my mind.  It's a bit like hoping to win the lottery someday, without actually ever buying a ticket.

So here is what I want--I want sponsors and, soon after, an agent!  I have an outline, and sections of chapters written and I am getting them put together into a book proposal so I have something to share if I get the opportunity to pitch.  I'd like about 10 sponsors that would be willing to donate $1-5k  and in return I will write a section at the back of the book on each sponsor.  Ideally, I would like integral-friendly sponsors.  So, as soon as I get the proposal into reasonable shape, I am going to try a social/professional network I am part of http://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryltorr   and see what happens!

Wish me luck!

Peace for the Holidays
Spiral5 x

Thinking about truth today and realized that maybe it’s not that important, at least to some people. I’m reading a book on corruption in science. Apparently there is a great deal of it in history. I’m not that surprised by the corruption, but I am shocked by the apparent lack of concern for getting the truth out when it becomes apparent that fraud has occurred. Corrupted Science by John Grant has many, many examples that will make your toes curl. Legendary figures who stole or fudged data, whistleblowers who were persecuted for revealing the truth, academic institutions who protected the scammer etc, etc. In a mini-epiphany the other day, I realized, the truth maybe really doesn’t matter. Once the data is out and accepted as conventional wisdom, may be it is too much to challenge it?
The gap between truth and belief is always going to be there. For one thing, truth is hard to define and even harder to prove. It always seems relative somehow. Perhaps, because by definition, we are subjective creatures,we are unable to grasp absolute truth, even though we seem to be on a never-ending task to find it. Beside that, we tend to believe what suits us and go find the evidence to support that belief.

So does truth matter and what if it doesn’t? I think the answer depends on who you are talking about. For me to believe that I can keep eating chips and fries and not get clogged arteries is one thing. I can always see the statistics and choose to believe that it won’t happen to me. That belief hurts only me and anyone who relies on me for their normal life (ie husband and kids). But if I am a leader who others look up to, and who is expected to make decisions that affect many lives, the gap between truth and belief becomes very troubling. For those that are in positions of judgement and action, we must require them to be open to the truth, and to correcting circumstances where it has been hidden, misinterpreted or altered, particularly for personal gain at others expense.

My take--we must continue to seek the truth, and importantly, require that our leaders do the same, be it in corporations, government or academia. If we are to progress as a society, I think there have to be visible consequences for those who abuse their status to deliberately mislead or collude with others who do. The challenge these days fro all of use however, is in sifting through the masses of data and opinions in the media to get at the truth, whatever we define it to be.