Pleading Guilty to a Positive Charge; or Why I'd Rather Have Drinks with Polyanna than Ebeneezer Scrooge Any Day

When I started this blog, I promised that there would be no navel-gazing, so I think it's fair to warn you that this post comes dangerously close. It has to do with positive and negative people, so I'll start by clarifying what I mean by this. To me, a positive person is one who spends most of their time focusing on the good in of their lives, practicing gratitude, and proactively seeking solutions to the challenges they encounter. Positive people tend to be active and engaged with life and to focus mostly on others. A negative person, by contrast, is one who mostly focuses on the bad and worrying about what could go wrong, quickly dismissing good things as anomalies that will soon pass. They tend to complain about problems rather than acting on them, and they are almost always focused on themselves rather than others. Important distinction: While almost everyone goes through hard times where they need to lean on friends and focus on themselves and their problems, for negative people this problem-centered, self-centered view is the norm and not reserved for times of crisis.

I recently had what turned out to be a fairly futile conversation with an acquaintance of mine about positive and negative outlooks on life. She had posted as her Facebook status a tongue-in-cheek comment about how she would not be celebrating the New Year because each passing year brings one closer to death. This sparked quite a vivid debate among her friends about positive outlook. For example, some posters noted (rightly, I think) that it's just as valid to say that you will never again be as young as you are now, so no better time to live life to the fullest. Other posters lamented (again, quite rightly) the fact that the holidays carry with them a heavy expectation that everyone should be merry all the time, an expectation that many are unable to live up to due to depression, personal hardships, or any number of other reasons. I don't think these two premises ("happiness is a matter of temperament and focus" and "it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be chipper and cheery all the time") are at all incompatible. In fact, I agree with both.

What I do object to are some of the premises and attitudes of those who argued on the side of negativity (it sounds a bit ridiculous to say that anyone would argue pro-negativity, but this is in fact what was going on). The first is a superficial observation: It's really, really annoying to be treated as naive because one has a positive outlook (Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project has noted this phenomenon in her blog several times). There are few things more grating than to be told that your deeply-cherished and hard-earned worldview is merely a symptom of youth and inexperience, and that in time you will come around to being negative and bitter and wise. It's astonishing to me that people can look at a cynical, embittered person and a happy, tranquil-spirited person and conclude that the Scrooge is the one who is "wise." What's more, this is provably false: the vast majority of our spiritual leaders and highly successful people throughout history disprove this view. Would they argue that the Dalai Lama, for example, is a naive rube who just needs to get out more?

In addition to this irritant factor, there was a deeper disagreement going on in this discussion. My friend the original poster wrote to me privately and told me about some truly terrible things that had happened to her in her life that had made her so cynical and so sad. These were real tragedies, and I felt terrible that she had gone through them. However, I profoundly disagree with this idea "if you had suffered as I have, you would be negative, too." The unspoken belief underlying this is that suffering makes us somehow different and special. I believe that quite the opposite is true: Suffering is the universal; it's what brings us together and allows us to empathize with one another. I was recently thinking of this while talking to a friend about a crisis she's experiencing: Because I went through something similar long ago, I was able to be with her in a way that wouldn't have otherwise been possible. While this idea of universal suffering might seem like a depressing thought, ironically it is quite the opposite - when we suffer we are never alone.

I could have cited a few struggles and tragedies of my own to refute this idea that I hadn't suffered enough to have earned a negative point of view, but I'm not really interested in having a Whose Life Sucks More Contest with this lady (talk about a game you can't win!). The bottom line is that I am grateful to her for leading me down a path of thought that has clarified my worldview even more as we go into the New Year. Suffering doesn't exempt us from being positive; rather, it's a call to be more committed to focusing on and increasing the good in our lives, and to being compassionate to those who suffer with us.

Note to Self on New Year's Eve

Dear Elizabeth of December 2008,

I'm writing to you from December 2009 with an important message: Relax.

How well I remember this time last year, when you walked into the unfinished room that would become Little Son's (indeed, you had just learned via ultrasound that it would be Little Son's and not Little Daughter's) nursery. You sat down in the rocking chair and tried to imagine what it would be like when the baby came. You stared at the crib and tried to imagine a baby in it. You rocked in the chair and tried to imagine rocking him to sleep. You picked up the teeny clothes and tried to imagine a teeny person filling them out. You studied the baby care books to try to learn it all, and tried to imagine putting it all into practice. As someone who likes to prepare thoroughly for and mentally rehearse important tasks, you found that the inability to imagine the future produced more than a little anxiety.

You're worried that you won't know what to do. You will. You're worried that you're going to lose your identity by devoting yourself to someone else. You won't. You're worried that the demands of a baby will make you and The Groom distant. They'll make you closer. But the best news of all is news I can't even explain to you. You've been told that your life is going to totally change, and you believe it, but no one has told you that the change has nothing to do with late nights or diapers or snotty noses. The change is not the baby. The change is you. You should smile because you're about to discover joy beyond joy; love beyond love; and a reason (beyond reason) for being in the world.

I wish I could explain it better than that, but for now, just know that you don't have to be afraid. The unknown is your friend. Which means the unknown is my friend. Which means I'm not going to worry about the unknowns of 2010, like growing my writing business and getting my solo law practice off the ground, learning new skills and changing old mindsets that have been standing in the way of my success. I know now that the unknown can transform my life in miraculous ways. And even if I encounter obstacles, what of it? I pushed an eight-and-a-half pound baby out of my pelvis without drugs and then declared the experience "awesome." What the hell do I have to fear?

With Love,
Elizabeth of December 2009

Happiness on Tour!

I am thrilled to announce that Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project will soon be on tour to promote her new book by the same name. Loyal Sanctumfolk know that Gretchen is one of the coolest people I've [n]ever met, and definitely my favorite blogger. Her Happiness Project has influenced my own -- and this blog -- so much, and I'm excited to meet her! I just hope I don't do what I did when I met my favorite author, Michael Chabon, when I planned a lovely, eloquent introduction for when I got up to the signing table, then got so nervous that I ended up saying something like "glub glub book nice." Okay, maybe a little better than that, but you get the idea.

If anyone would like to go with me to see Gretchen and get a book signed, drop me a line! You can find her tour dates and places here.

O Come Ye, O Come Ye!

Those of you who have been to the Sanctum Santoro know that there is nothing that makes me happier than entertaining. Except maybe Christmas. Which means that Christmas entertaining is just about as close to heaven on earth as I can get. Add in the fact that it's Little Son's Very First Christmas, and you have a Sanctum hostess who is joyful and triumphant. Bring it on, and the more the merrier!

It has long been a tradition in our part-Italian family to have a fish feast on Christmas Eve. Stuffed baked lobsters, steamed clams, linguine with clam sauce, and stuffed eels are just a few of the delicacies that graced the Santoro table since I was too wee to crack my own lobster claws (I used to pilfer lobster from my Dad's plate while he cracked mine for me, a transgression he still likes to remind me of on Christmas Eve). However, this year, because we have wee ones who have never had shellfish and don't want to discover that they are allergic to it on Christmas Eve, we are reversing the order of operations and having our fish feast on another day. It's fun to see how traditions grow and change with little ones around!

This leaves me with a delicious dilemma: What to cook on Christmas Eve? It's my first time hosting Christmas, not to mention the first time for my family and The Groom's family to celebrate together, and I really want to hit it out of the park. Here is my tenative, rough-draft menu, subject to the preferences of my guests and blinding flashes of inspiration:

Roast leg of lamb
Tuscan white beans with garlic and tomatoes
Caramelized whole pearl onions
Pear and Parsnip Puree (from The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook)
[Something green as yet undecided]
My sister's awesome homemade cranberry-orange relish
[Awesome dessert as yet undecided]

What do you think, Sanctumfolk? Am I missing anything? While you're at it, tell me about the great traditions you cherish in your family, and how they've changed over the years.

The Science of Baby Love

I've been fascinated by the science of love since reading Love at Goon Park, a book about the pioneering work of psychologist Harry Harlow. While you would be hard-pressed to find anyone today who doesn't agree that love, physical contact, and affection are essential for a baby's well-being, these premises were controversial in the 1950's, when Harlow's experiments (mostly with monkeys) proved that physical affection is not just important, but essential for survival.

Since having Little Son, learning about baby development has gone from being an interest to somewhat of an obsession, and I've read many more books that cite studies on the many advantages that having loving, responsive caregivers gives babies and children. Here are a few of the studies I've read about. I hope to be able to add cites sometime in the future, but since I actually have a baby in the house who needs me to be a loving, responsive caregiver, it may not be soon.

- A study in the 1980's showed that premature babies massaged three times a day for ten days averaged a 47 percent greater weight gain than a control group of those who did not receive this therapy. They were also more active, alert, and developmentally advanced, and left the hospital an average of six days sooner.

- Holding newborns skin-to-skin immediately after birth has been found to help regulate body temperature and heart rate, and reduces crying.

-When babies are not responded to when they cry, it causes the "stress hormone," cortisol, to spike and the brain to go into "primal mode," able to focus only on trying to get a response. During the time that cortisol levels are high, the brain is not as capable of learning and retaining information. Also, when cortisol levels are repeatedly high, they begin to remain persistently elevated. This can permanently affect how the brain reacts to future stress, suppress immune system function, and even inhibit growth of the hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning), the amygdala (information processing) and the corpus callosum (the connection between right or left brains). It is linked to hyperactivity, anxiety, and impulsive behavior.

-A famous study of babies from orphanages during the reign of Ceausescu in Romania, in barren rooms without stimulation or touch, showed that these babies had severe developmental problems ranging from compulsive rocking to extreme behaviors like stealing and violence.

- A study that tested infants who were securely attached to their caregivers and those that were not showed that when shown a puppet show that portrayed happy and sad events, the securely attached children remembered the happy events better than their insecurely attached counterparts.

It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could fail to respond with attentiveness and love to a baby, but the sad truth is that many factors, including postpartum depression, economic hardship, lack of healthy role models, drug abuse, and lack of support networks can severely affect parents' ability to respond to their babies in the way that they so desperately need. Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to how we might use the scientific findings on attachment and affection to help parents (particularly those in underprivileged circumstances) learn to become better caregivers. Because children who are well attended to tend to be "easier" babies (less crying, better sleep, less needy, etc.) and grow up to be better parents themselves, it would be a huge step towards breaking cycles of abuse if there were a way to teach these kinds of skills.

Just a pipe dream at this point, but one worth dreaming.

Outsourcing and Insourcing

Yesterday I attended an ABA teleconference called The Six Systems Every Lawyer Needs for More Freedom, More Money, and More Happy Clients. In spite of the infomercially name, the course taught some very practical ways of making a solo law practice run smoothly, be profitable, and most importantly, consistently provide excellent client service. Ninety minutes well spent.

What attracted me to the program the most was this little tidbit about the presenter:

Alexis Martin Neely will guide you through her experience of leaving the big law firm life and starting her own firm with limited financial resources, while she was the breadwinner in her family, had a baby at home and another on the way.

As someone who still struggles with getting a shower every day while caring for an infant, I was intrigued by the notion that someone could start her own law firm with a baby in the house, nevermind a firm that actually keeps the family afloat. During the question-and-answer period, I was anxious to explore this aspect of it, and asked Ms. Martin Neely what "systems" she had in place at home to make her home life tick, in addition to the systems she had explained that make her law firm tick.

Her answer tapped into one of my Secrets of Adulthood: Ask for Help. She was adamant that a parent who wants to run a business must confront and work through the feelings of guilt and shame that can come with not being able to "do it all" both at home and at work. She confessed that she pays someone to do her grocery shopping, cook her meals, and clean her house. She views each activity in light of her (rather impressive) billable hour, and considers whether the activity is worthy of that payscale. If not, she hires someone else to do it. When she was first starting out, she achieved a similar result by trading services with other moms who also needed help getting everything done.

There were a few big flashing red lights apparent in this answer. First, Ms. Martin Neely's husband was a stay-at-home dad while she was starting her business, with full responsibility for the care of the baby -- definitely not my situation. More alarmingly, they are now divorced, a result that she openly attributes to her expectation that her husband would take care of everything at home without her help, since she was taking care of everything financially with her business. That's a big "oops." Clearly a critical eye is in order when using this lady's experience as a model.

Still, I am encouraged by the idea that even highly organized and successful people like Ms. Martin Neely (whose firm did a million dollars in revenue three years after she started it) do not expect to be able to "do it all." One thing she said that really stuck with me was to "ask yourself what in your life and your business do you really love, and what has value to your family and your business." This was an important point for me, because my first reaction when I heard that she doesn't cook for her own family was...dismay. I love to cook for my family (and friends...and anyone else who comes down the pike...), and I would not consider it a point of success to hire someone to do that for me. Cleaning, of course, is a different story. The point, I think, is not to outsource every task that isn't worth $250/hour on the job market, but to do a thoughtful assessment of what tasks have value to me and which do not.

Cooking for my loved ones, spending time with The Groom, and being there for and with Little Son have no financial value, but that's because they are, in fact, priceless. Doing the assessment of my value-for-time in this way will, I think, do more for my quality of life than a million dollars in revenue ever could.

Your socks are showing

I remember as a kid in public school, once a year we had unannounced medical screenings with the nurse. All the kids would line up in the hall in our stocking feet, feet that we never thought anyone would see. Inevitably, inevitably medical exam day would fall on the one day of all the long year when I had worn mismatched socks or socks with little pink ponies or socks with big gaping holes at the heel. Oh, the ridicule!

I was thinking about this now that the holidays are upon us. This joyful season brings a host of situations that catch people out, not with ugly socks, but with ugly manners. We give and receive gifts. We go to parties at work or at friends' houses, meeting new people and introducing friends to each other. We host guests in our homes or are guests in other people's houses. Dinners are a bit more formal than usual. Cards are sent out to people of different religions and cultures. In short, there are a lot of opportunities to get caught with your shoes off.

When many people think of etiquette, they think of a blue-haired maiden aunt extending her pinky finger while drinking tea from a china cup. But in its true sense, etiquette is nothing more than the art of making others feel comfortable. All the important rules of etiquette can be summed up in the Golden Rule, "do unto others as we would have them do unto us." As Peggy Post very beautifully wrote in the introduction to the most recent edition of Etiquette:

"Manners, ultimately, are a combination of common sense, generosity of spirit, and some specific know-how that helps us do things thoughtfully and with care for one another...These are not 'prescriptions for properness,' comprising rigid, formal, stuffy rules. Rather, they are guidelines for doing things with consideration, gracefully and well."

As I drink a toast to doing things with consideration, gracefully and well, I want to talk about a few etiquette sand traps I have seen people fall into at the holiday season. If this is you, it's time to think about getting some better socks, socially speaking. If you've been the victim of this behavior, oh, call me, my friend, and we'll have a good laugh sharing stories.

Give Thanks Ye People All
The correct response when someone gives you a gift is "thank you." If you don't like the gift, the proper response is still "thank you." If you think the gift was not big enough or expensive enough, the proper response is "thank you" and then to examine your priorities and the true spirit of giving, and perhaps spend some time volunteering with the less fortunate to remember that many don't get gifts at all during this or any season. I can attest firsthand that there is nothing more hurtful and horrifying than to spend time picking out a thoughtful gift or card, only to have it rebuffed by the recipient.

Let's Keep the Party Polite
Holiday parties are a people-watcher's dream. Look there by the hors d'oeuvres, where a gentleman has been cornered by a lady who has been going on about herself for the last twenty-five minutes as he glances with increasing desperation at the exit. Or over there, the man whose girlfriend is trying her best to get in on a "shop talk" conversation among his coworkers, to whom he has not introduced her. Or in the corner, where the introverts are mostly just staring at each other uncomfortably and not saying anything. We won't get started on the intern who has overindulged at the punch bowl and will learn what he said at the party through the grapevine tomorrow, poor soul. Remember, etiquette is not about using the right fork, but about making others comfortable. The best way to do that is to include people. Start every conversation with the thought, "does everyone here know each other?" and if not, make some introductions, including a tidbit of information, if possible, that might get a conversation started between them ("If I remember correctly, you and Ed share an interest in butterflies."). Converse by the rule of respectful curiosity, asking the other person questions about themselves and really listening to the answers. Even if you barely say a word about yourself, people treated in this way will remember you as a brilliant conversationalist. And while we're on the subject of parties, don't forget a small gift for the host and a warm "thank you" before you leave the scene.

Unplug It
While we're on the subject of being an attentive conversationalist, I can't resist a word on my pet peeve: technology misuse. Whether it's Christmas dinner, an office party, or trimming the tree with your in-laws, show the people around you some respect by not texting, checking e-mail, or, God forbid, taking a cell phone call. If you are really unable to be fully present with people for a few hours at a time, it's not just an etiquette issue, but time to do an audit of your quality of life and relationships.

Let's get out there and add to the warmth of the season by making people feel good. It's good karma, it's good manners, and best of all, it returns to you a hundredfold. I wish each of you a holiday season filled with warmth, joy, and the love of family and friends.

A Shot in the Dark

As the news pieces about swine flu become increasingly dire, many people are starting to think about where and when they can get vaccinated.

Others, not so much.

I had a discussion with an old high school classmate on Facebook over the weekend that blew my mind. I was aware that there is some debate about the safety of vaccinations. My childbirth class devoted an evening to Dr. Robert Sears's The Vaccine Book, which recommends an alternative vaccination schedule to that recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, due to concerns about the safety of giving babies too many vaccines at once. But, call me naive, but I never knew until this week that there are actually people in America in 2009 who believe that vaccines don't work. This woman with whom I debated the issue briefly (before giving up in despair - more on this below) enlightened me with these websites:

This one, claiming that "there is no connection between death from infectious diseases and vaccinations; that's right, 'none'. "

This vegan site, claiming that even Louis Pasteur didn't believe in germ theory at the time of his death and that "there is no evidence to support" the claim that vaccines eradicated polio.

This site which goes a step further by claiming that vaccines cause paralytic polio. I found this one particularly insulting because I had a dear uncle who was paralyzed by polio as a young man and eventually died from its complications. His generation lived in terror of this disease that is now gone thanks to vaccines.

My personal favorite, this site includes a completely nonsensical chart, apparently for no other reason than that having a chart makes you look like you are not making shit up. This one claims that disease is not, in fact, caused by germs, but by "toxaemia," a condition caused by "overconsumption of animal, dairy, and refined processed foods" as well as a variety of pollutants. Help me out here; does this make any sense to you? Even if you believed this and believed you could eliminate all these bad things from your child's environment, wouldn't you worry that your kid might have a Twinkie-and-Cheeto binge at a friend's house one day and, unvaccinated, come down with some horrible disease? The lady I discussed it with told me that she keeps her kids healthy with homeopathic remedies like echinacea. Really. And that works for, say, tetanus?

What I quickly came to realize, as my mind reeled at this horrifying lack of scientific rigor and I began frantically citing the very abundant scientific studies proving that vaccines do work, is that there was no way on our blue planet that I was going to convince this woman of anything. Why? Because people who believe in this crap will not believe a reliable source, a replicable study, a peer-reviewed medical journal. People who believe that vaccines don't work believe that there is a big, nasty conspiracy to cover up the ill effects of vaccines (indeed, the article that prompted our discussion was entitled "The Great Thimerosal Cover-Up"). What they could possibly gain from such a cover-up is beyond me, but the FDA, the AAP, the CDC, your average pediatrician, any institution of any meaningful gravitas is, by the self-same definition that makes it reliable to you and me, utterly not to be trusted in the eyes of an antivaccination nut wack job individual. Hence, they believe sources like vegfamily.com and vaccinationdebate.com. Especially in the age of the internet, when any nut with a theory (and, of course, a chart) can make a website about it, people without the ability to tell a good source of information from a bad one are sitting ducks.

I just want to put a few facts in this post, in case anyone finds it while surfing for information about vaccines. I do not claim to be a reliable medical source, but hey, I can't be worse than vegfamily.com.

1. Routine vaccines for children no longer contain thimerosal. They haven't since 1991.

2. There is more mercury in a tuna sandwich than there is in a thimerosal-containing vaccine. However you may feel about tuna, I imagine you probably find it less frightening than, say, rotavirus.

3. No study has shown a link between vaccines and autism. None. The study you are thinking of was the 1998 MMR study on only 8 patients, and the scientists who signed it have since withdrawn their claims, saying there is no link. Not between the MMR vaccine and autism; not between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, nyet. In fact, there is one study of 100,000 children that showed a slightly higher autism rate in children who got thimerosal-free vaccines (Communicable Disease Surveillance Center, London).

4. The diseases that pediatricians routinely vaccinate for kill. They kill children. I know it's easy to take for granted that most American children are healthy and well in the age of vaccines, but it was frankly not that long ago when measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus, etc. commonly killed babies and children.

5. Your decision not to vaccinate your child puts my family at risk. If you don't believe me, study on Boulder, Colorado, which has a three-times-higher rate of whooping cough than the rest of Colorado because of the large number of parents who don't vaccinate there. When you sign that waiver and feel smug about your Constitutional right to send your unvaccinated child to public school, you put other kids at risk, particularly those babies back at home who are too young to have all their shots yet.

And I am mad at you about that, mad in that feral way that only a mother can be angry over the safety of her cub. I don't know how you sleep at night. I hope, in fact, that you don't.