Friday, July 29, 2011

little things make a difference

I'm trying to eat better.

What do I mean by better?  Well, lots of things.  In the past few years some new information has slowly been seeping into my brain and consciousness.  It began when my daughter was born and people asked me if I was going to let her have regular milk or 'organic.'  "You know," these people told me, '"all the hormones they give cows is what's making girls develop younger.'"  Well, come to think of it, it did seem to me like teenage girls were much more 'developed' than when I was a teenager.  (This is making me think of Judy Blume!)  And as a parent, suddenly it seemed important to prolong childhood as long as possible.  Despite my husband protesting about the expense of it, we began buying organic milk.

This is only to say that I am no saint.  My motives aren't always, initially anyway, for world betterment.  I'm just saying this is how my plan to eat better began.  And as you read on, I guess I am going to grossly oversimplify a lot of what some really smart people have said.

In the past couple years, I also skimmed through The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.   Among other things, he suggests that a lot of what we eat, our grandparents wouldn't even recognize as food.  He also talks about farming and environmental impacts of the way we farm and concerns about sustainability.  Here's an article I just looked at in the past week.  http://www.good.is/post/hold-the-lamb-eat-more-lentils-new-guide-ranks-proteins-by-carbon-footprint/

This past spring , I watched Food, Inc. and saw some of the conditions that some of our livestock are raised in and the copious amounts of corn fed to our cows, for example.  I was amazed to learn about corn and its ubiquity in food and other products available in our grocery stores.  I started reading labels.  Wow.  Corn.

Simultaneously, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I began facilitating a young women's breast cancer support group for the Cancer Support Community.  I researched links between diet and breast cancer.   New insights are gained all the time, but here is a reliable, balanced link:  http://www.livestrong.com/article/377091-is-there-a-link-between-breast-cancer-diet/s

What does this have to do with mental health/emotional well being? 

I'm about to make a weird leap, but I hope you'll stick with me:  many people have heard of the Butterfly Effect, which is really a demonstration of 'chaos theory.'  (A butterfly flutters its wings in Peru and it causes a wind effect that eventually leads to a hurricane in Australia).  The idea is that seemingly chaotic, random events may be caused by a precise set of circumstances at the start - if we can isolate all the beginning variables, then we can understand how the so-called chaotic event happened. 

Really, it's just that I believe everything is interconnected.   How I care about myself, how I care about the planet, how I care about all living creatures makes a difference.  How you care about yourself, the planet, others, makes a difference.  We might make little differences - at least that's what we see, but it's possible, in the end, we make a big difference (just like the butterfly).

So, I'm eating more consciously.  Not perfectly.  It's just one little thing.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

it's good to...hope

In the past few months, we got rid of cable and now filter our tv viewing through Netflix/Hulu.  I do miss The Real Housewives.  I really, really do.  BUT.  I am in the middle of the first season of Glee and I am loving it.  I think it's kind of a summer thing - some kind of nostalgia for youth, but not like "Glory Days" nostalgia, more like an appreciation of youthfulness.  I especially like Glee because the youth portrayed seems more believable to me than, say Gossip Girls  (I've never watched it, but they seem way more sophisticated than my suburban St. Louis high school.)   Glee's youth, at least in the first season, is actually kind of innocent and full of music.  This youth is full of un-coolness, and a lack of irony.  This was my kind of youth.


There's a lot that is painful and embarassing about it, but this is the thing I like about youth and I'm being reminded in a number of places - from the pool, to Glee, to the "bios" for my kids' zoo camp counselors:  youth hopes.  It might be frivolous, missplaced, or unrealistic, but it is hope!  It hasn't been beaten out them. Remember the melodramatic scene in The Breakfast Club (as if there's only one melodramatic scene!), where Allly Sheedy's character says, "when you grow up (dramatic pause) your heart dies.'  Well, it can be kind of true.  Being grown up often runs the gamut from kind of hard to very hard. 


For my mental health, it's nice to occasionally indulge in some of that innocent pleasure called hope and exuberance.  Sometimes I have to seek it out because it's not finding me - I watch Glee or I listen to a song that conveys something awesome to me.  No matter how cool or grown up I think I am, I get chills and feel like falling in love every time I hear "Don't Stop Believing" (Journey, circa 1981).


I think I've written before here that the Dalai Lama cautions against hope, because it reflects an attachment to an outcome.  I am here to say, in this instance (and probably only this instance) I disagree with the Dalai Lama.  I think there's something awesome about hoping - not for any specific thing, but allowing yourself, for a few moments to just hope.  Who knows what the future will be, but for a little while, let yourself imagine nothing in particular, but that it's a really good one.


One last thought - I found a fun website that makes me feel good and interested, and I sometimes hopeful:  http://www.good.is/