Giving in

Article in today's NYTimes about how people head for their internet connections to the outside world first thing in the morning. Kids sleep with their phones in hand. Of course, this is deplored as taking us away from the traditional morning activities of a certain privileged demographic (us), like walking the dog or helping the kids find their homework. Yes, I think the dog should be walked. I also think there's a certain Luddite resistance to change.

If I tell you I remember when television came in, you will think I am 66 11/12 years old, and so last century. I try to think of it as accumulated wisdom, or at least experience. Television. We were all fascinated by it, stunned by the availability of entertainment. Until then I had been lucky to go to the local movies once a week, where I would patiently sit through an entire double feature, even cowboy movies. They were movies. I loved them.

I had a girlfriend whose household had the magic box, and she and I used to watch all the sitcoms we possibly could. It all pleased us, though it was aimed at adults, and I suppose we didn't understand most of what went on. We liked Topper, and My Favorite Bachelor. I knew a kid who actually sat and watched test patterns, waiting for the programming to start. Parents, surly about the whole phenomenon ("Radio was good enough for me"), became fixated on watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite. Then, hearing other grownups talk about actually indulging in TV, my own parents allowed themselves to watch Sid Caesar and the Ed Sullivan show. Thus I got to see the American debut of an English singing sensation.

I have a point here and I am wandering toward it as you can when you have no editors to please. It is this - let us stop berating email and texting and Facebook and admit it - we like this stuff. What's wrong with that? A Zen Teacher I used to work with had a way of saying things that struck home for me. In one talk he referred to simple desires, and he shocked some earnest vegetarians by saying, "If you want a Big Mac, go ahead and have one, and enjoy it. Be with it all the way." The idea was, it doesn't have to be a big thing.

Doesn't it sometimes seem like we spend our lives resisting ourselves? There are impulses well worth resisting, arson, infidelity, just one cigarette, but that doesn't mean goodness is purchased through self-denial. Sometimes I think about the string of stupid diets I've been on in my life, thinking that being slimmer or abstractly "healthier" would translate into happiness. It didn't.

I hate thinking about that self-denial. I mean, one of these diets, prescribed by an alternative MD, had me off all gluten, dairy, and sugar. You could hardly find gluten-free products at the time. When this doctor intuited that I should stop eating potatoes and drinking water, I finally said No. But I had wasted months concocting unpleasant milkshakes with all sorts of stuff in them. I regret that now that my kidneys are wearing out, because I really do have to follow a diet, no choice. The experience of the last years confirms the medical wisdom: limit potassium, phosphates, protein and, God help me, salt. I can't binge on this diet. Eating the wrong things overloads my poor kidneys, and I get a major congestion headache or an episode of arrythmia, or lie awake all night feeling the ribs I treated myself to because it was my birthday.

There actually is more to life than food, that's just one example. In fact, we Americans obviously do indulge too much in food, mindlessly, I think. The real thing is to become intimate with yourself and your cravings. Does this circle me back to the fact that I, too, get up, make coffee, and check my e-mail? Yes. Facebook, yes. Maybe someone else is online at 5:00 a.m.

I can make a logical argument for all this internet connection, but it really isn't about logic - it's about enjoying what we decide to do. This can be a challenge when it comes to eating that Big Mac, which I did not long ago. In reality, it is precooked and never warm enough. But eating it reminded me of these realities, and stopped the craving for that ideal Big Mac they advertise, at least for a while.

Thoughts on the Brain (Dead) Diet

As a practicing psychiatrist for over 30 years I can tell you confidently that what you see and hear affects your brain and your behavior. The good news is you can use that fact to have a better life. You have a large level of control over what you allow in to your brain. You can turn off the TV, or make better choices about what you watch. You can select music that is soothing. You can engage in thoughtful learning activities that will help you live a better life today and extend the vibrant function of your brain for additional years. Just as so many are "diet conscious" when it comes to food intake, let me encourage you to monitor your "brain diet" as well.

Dr. Daniel Amen, quoted above, has been writing to me for months, trying to get me to pull up my bootstraps, buy a lot of his books and supplements, and find perfect joy. Now he wants me to go on a "brain diet." Not that he's wrong. I just know from research, and a long life spent repeating the same mistakes, that diets don't work.

The truth is, diet is a word like budget; whatever it's supposed to denote, it says to us, "Deny yourself." Dieticians try to convince us otherwise. They want us to deny the truth of desire, the allure of pepperoni-mushroom pizzas and hot fudge sundaes, and switch our brains around to think positively about snacking on raw cauliflower. This is like trying to reformat a hard drive with a feather. All you're going to accomplish is confusion.

But people keep trying. I remember decades ago sitting with a bunch of other plump women listening to a Weight Watchers motivational speaker brightly say that instead of a piece of apple pie, we could enjoy a graham cracker with applesauce on it. And cinnamon! Mmmm, wrong. Now WW has changed their tune; you can have one little piece of pie, just count the calories, disguised as points. But the Weight Watcher's speaker who said that was a good thirty or forty pounds overweight. "It's a constant struggle," she told us, or maybe she said "challenge." One of those battle words. They always want us to fight.

Dr. Amen is right, in theory. Just as every Godiva chocolate bar applies itself to your thighs, every TV drama goes in and changes your brain, teaches you something about the way the world works, and how a person should act. And it's true, you don't want to stuff your brain repeatedly with ideas like romantic Love or Winning will redeem you. You're getting these messages everywhere in the culture as it is, and maybe from your hormones, as well.

It's the natural Zen in me that is drawn to the ideas put forth in a little diet-NOT! book titled Intuitive Eating, which I am pleased to see has been reprinted and put out on audio. This is an intelligent book written by qualified women who know for a fact that diets don't work, and who encourage their miserable clients to learn to eat what they enjoy, and mindfully enjoy what they eat. It's another instance of accidental Buddhism.

I have to think we should approach what we stuff in our minds with the same idea: watch what you enjoy, know you're watching it. Step into that fantasy world if you like, know it's a fantasy, have fun. Then step out into the real world. The key is not to eat fictions automatically, because you don't have anything else to do, or don't want to do what you need to do. That's like eating directly from the bag of Double-stuf Oreos with the clicker in your hand until you feel sick and there is nothing left but chocolate crumbs all over the rug. Take what you want. Be with it while you eat it. This is really not so hard. Any second-grader can tell you how to spend time with a single M&M.

As for organic carrot sticks and inspirational morning dharma from Tricycle and listening to Mozart, I often find I like things like that as long as someone isn't telling me I Ought To. That's the key. Fresh, open to everything, be there. Now. You know.