Monthly Archive: May, 2007

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there, and we all know: When there’s chemistry between two people, it just works. If you’re single and you want a man in your life, you want to maximize your chances. But doing so is all about you: When you get yourself together, chances are pretty good the right guy will come along.

On that note, here are a few tips to make the journey that much more interesting. This is how to behave in any social situation—be it a bar, the coffee shop, or your friend’s wedding:

Listen.
Yes, you know your stuff, but you don’t know his. Whenever you listen, you learn. And a man who has your ear will think you’re the most interesting person he’s met in a while.

Keep It Light.
Okay, maybe your job is crummy, you’re lonely, you’re stressed. But this is a night out! Enjoy it. Don’t dwell on your stress levels. You’re not at your shrink’s office.

Respect Each And Every Person You Speak To.
You never know who this person is (or who he might become): the love of your life, or your next boss’ best friend since Little League. You always want to put out the best impression. The right man can come along in the most unexpected package.

Don’t Scare Him Away.
Neediness is glaring. If you’re lonely, need to be touched, or are just plain stressed, take care of it in other ways. Then, you can enjoy the evening, and he can enjoy you.

Get Real.
There are so many reasons why a guy won’t call you back. Chemistry. In love with someone else. Just not that into you. It’s not personal; it’s just the way it works.

Get Philosophical.
At the end of the night, it’s a numbers game. You may have to go through hundreds of encounters with hundreds of men to find just one to go out with. And even then, only one will work for a lifetime. But really, isn’t playing in the haystack half the fun of finding the needle?

More evidence that Men Are Easy works:

My friend worked out of town through the weekend. Her husband was home, moping a bit that he hadn’t come with her. When she got home, there was no food in the house for people or dogs.

Old scenario:

“Why didn’t you go to the store? I’ve been working all weekend and all you do is blah blah blah. . .”

He checks out.

Hungry and grumpy, she goes shopping.

New scenario:

“Oh my. No food? No dog food? Oh, well. I’m going to take a bath.”

He thinks, “Oh shit. All we have is chips and beer. She’s been working all weekend and I’ve been laying around.” Lightbulb! “I’ll go get some food!”

She gets a bath and dinner, the dogs get fed, and everyone’s happy.

Maui News Columnist (retired last week!) Liz Jaynes-Brown, Mayor Charmaine Tavares, and I are on a panel for a symposium this evening at 7 p.m. at Seabury Hall in Makawao here on Maui.

When I was asked to be part of a panel to discuss “Where Is Feminism?” my first thought was, “I love this question.”

These are the five questions that we will be responding to at the beginning of the symposium:

1)   From your perspective, what is feminism?
2)   Do women have an unequal position in society or is it just that they operate in a different social, political, and economic spheres?
3)   To what extent should feminist issues be involved in policy decisions?
4)   Do you feel that feminism has constructed or deconstructed, America’s family values?
5)   Should abortion rulings be based on equal rights for all?

I’m preparing my responses this afternoon.

What are your thoughts?

In yesterday’s NY Times magazine, Bruce Stutz in his article “Self-Nonmedication” writes about his midlife breakdown, how he went on antidepressants, and then the horrific experience of withdrawals from them.

I wrote the following email:

Hello Bruce,

Thanks for your lovely article, for your clarity and honesty. A beautiful description of a
classic radical life transition complicated by fear and ignorance and then medication.

I have so many questions for you:

What if, when you were going through that craziness, your psychiatrist had said that what you were going through was not only normal but an essential brain reorganization? What if he/she had said that you were in the process of a “system upgrade” and that in a year or so you would be at a higher level of functioning, that it is not just normal but something to welcome?

Without the fear and as an observer of your own process–something that you are obviously very good at–I suspect that the experience would have been very different.

I flipped out for a while when my children were 4 and 2. We had a mortgage-free oceanfront home with pool and hot tub on Maui, great work and friends, world travel. Everything. And I was nuts. I was ready to leave it all for a man with nothing but the time to listen to me. Fortunately, I freaked him out, I really didn’t want to blow out my life, and my husband has an amazing sense of humor. My husband and I both grew up and moved on, much better off because of the experience.
This is my take on it all:
We are medicating people at 6, 13, 19, 25, postpartum, on and on.
A loss of sense of self is considered a disabling disease. Adolescence is pathology.

A loss of sense of self is the normal process of metamorphosis from one stage to the next. Okay, some transitions are more radical than others. Some you sail through and some are so disorienting that you blow out your marriage, home, and life’s work.

But, if someone had told you that the mind chaos you experienced was not breakdown leading to death but a creative breakdown that will lead to a higher level of functioning, then what would your response had been?

It’s the fear and the diagnosis of permanence that is freaking people out. Craziness in
any form is seen as permanent. Medication, the answer.

This pervasive medicalization of normal processes has been tackled before. Kubler-Ross did it for death and dying. La Maze did it for childbirth. Now someone needs to do it for the natural, painful and disorienting processes of life transitions.

I’ve written about it in Chapter 9 of my book Men Are Easy. It deserves its own book.
I’m considering just pulling out descriptions like your’s–One could argue that Betty Friedan’s “problem with no name” was a classic description of mothers/women in transition–and asking the questions.

Once you see life this way, so much makes sense. We are not machines with broken parts. We are complex evolving systems living within complex evolving systems of family and society. With a few shifts of perspective, the entire picture changes.

I’m inspired.

Aloha,
Lynn

Does this make sense to you? Have you had similar experiences?

A client mentioned recently that she didn’t quite “get” systems thinking. I told her that getting systems thinking is not required, but she always wants to know more and to go deeper.

Here’s a simple explanation that might be helpful:

A basic concept in systems thinking is that, in a complex system, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Looking at the parts of a system won’t help to understand the whole. It’s like looking at hydrogen and oxygen to describe water. (Thanks for reminding me, David Ing!)

Universities break human experience into parts to make sense of it and to study it. This works for machines but it doesn’t work for a basic understanding complex living systems like people and relationships. I’m not saying that the different approaches are wrong. They are simply too fragmented and complicated to be helpful for everyday people. Experts are  required to sort through and interpret the complexity.

Because a systems approach asks different questions, the answers are different. Instead of looking at human experience psychologically, philosophically, spiritually, and physiologically, I ask question like: What are the processes of the self? What are the boundaries, flows, and feedbacks? What is the systemic environment?  Is the system open or closed to its environment?

A simple example is a system’s view of love.  Love can’t be defined or well described from psychological, philosophical, or religious views. A systems view provides the possibility for a very different, simple definition.

Here’s my current version of a definition of love:

Love is the inner feeling and the outward expressions associated with the flow of information, matter, and energy between people. This flow results in the bonds that form social groups like marriage and community. Love is genetic and required for our survival.

Fear, anger, jealousy, grumpiness—the negative emotions—represent a protective closing to that flow. There is only one way to increase love: Open up and increase the flow.

Prayer, meditation, martial arts, and professional training are all means of “stepping back” from protective emotions and opening up. When we open up, we can see more clearly in order to respond, and then, after responding, we can see what is working and adjust our responses.

Emotions and feelings are an inner guidance system. They are clear indicators of our current level of consciousness at any given time. Am I open and clear? Is my perspective broad? Or am I protectively closed down and reacting aggressively or fearfully?

In this simple example, I integrate emotions and awareness, physiology, spiritual/religious teachings, and sociology—the formation of social groups. This is not philosophical speculation about how the mind works or how thinking works. It is a framework and a logic that is more in sync with who we are.

Does this make sense? Is it simple enough? Or complex enough?

You can begin an exploration of systems thinking at the site of the International Society for Systems Science . I posted this entry on my Amazon Connect blog. This week I’ll make an Amazon book list for systems thinking.

If anyone has any favorite recommendations for the list, I’d appreciate suggestions!