TGIF

• The Introvert Song! 

   

• I'm so like the below. 

   

• The Shidduch Song? 

   

Be Careful What You Wish For

My bedroom windows face full east. This poses a wee bit of a problem in the spring and summer months, as my eyelids are forced open at approximately 5 a.m., when blaring sun rattles me awake. 

I concocted a means to block the light with a McGyver-esque contraption composed of 3M hooks, tent poles, and blackout curtains I purchased on Amazon. Yet no matter how I drape them, one beam manages to pierce through. 

Feeling quite pushed to the limit after a number of nights of hindered rest, I decided, what the heck. After all, enough morahs insisted you could ask Hashem for anything, even new shoes. 

I blubbered, "Hashem, You know me. If I don't get the right amount of sleep, I'm not very pleasant to be around. If You could be so kind, and help me out, so that I can stay asleep until close to 6, I would be very grateful. Thank you." 

I dozed off, confident my plea was heard. 

I was then coaxed into consciousness by a muffled thump. I slowly ascended to the surface, blinking drowsily. Wow, did I make it until 6? My hand patted about for the clock. 

1:26, the red digits gleamed.

What? 

I looked about the room. Something wasn't right. Wait, where did my shades go? 

The 3M hooks had called it quits, and the bright streetlamp shone inwards. 

Look, I soothed myself. Hashem has His ways. Maybe this is the means to recalibrating your internal alarm. You'll see! 

I couldn't fall asleep. I had awoken bright-eyed to seize the day, not muzzily enough to slumber yet again. I read. I did yoga. I did deep-breathing. 

Eventually, almost nearly as soon as I had to get up, I managed to drift off. 

My personal message from this? The Eibishter wacking me upside the head for being a wuss. 

Time Warp

"Now slide your body forward from downward dog to plank. Breathe." 

I slide my body forward from downward dog to plank, and breathe. I love doing yoga from a DVD. My schedule, my rules, and I can cheat if I want to. 

Breathe. Mmm. Gettin' me some biceps.

*PIIIING* 

Dang. Who is it? Yeah, I have to answer her back. Finishing stupid plank. Pause DVD. Quickly text back. Play. Alrighty, now into forward fold.

*PIIIING* 

Oh, bite me. I'm in forward fold now, you'll have to wait. But remember, Lea, to text her back. Remember remember remember. Now my whole cleared-mind-meditative thing is shot. Blaaaaaah. Pause. Text. Play.

*PIIIING* 

Blargle! 

That's why I hate the phone. Just when I'm enjoying myself, or not even enjoying myself doing yoga, it interrupts me, jarring my groove, man. Not cool. 

Nick Bilton complains about technologies intrusions on vacation in "How to Vacation Like It's 1999." 

The second you land, you check your cellphone and are greeted by a flood of messages. After an hour sitting in your hotel room replying to work emails, you finally go to the beach.

You pull out your iPad to read a book and, oh, look: You have a message on Facebook, not to mention WhatsApp, Snapchat and Twitter.

And because the beach is so beautiful, it’s probably a good idea to take an Instagram. After a hundred attempts to capture the best and most original photo of a beach ever taken, you spend another hour seeing how many “likes” your photo got.

More messages come in. You end up getting stressed about all the work emails you have to respond to back at the hotel.

Luckily, he has remedies, like airplane mode, which allows access to camera and books but no internet. Oh, and those so-called "emergencies" from work? Most of the time they aren't "emergencies"; the office is just calling you because they can. 

Bilton concludes: 

But I don’t think people should wait until vacation to unplug.

In recent months, I’ve started deleting some social media apps from my phone on weekends. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are removed entirely on Friday afternoons. On Monday morning, I reinstall everything for the workweek ahead.

If you still can’t stop yourself from logging on and checking in after all this, I have only one piece of advice left. Dunk your devices in water and replace them with an old yellow Sony Discman.

Sounds good to me.     

Thick and Thin

Manhattan Love Story, "It's Complicated": 

After their reservation at a top restaurant gets pushed, Dana and Peter opt for an establishment with a C- health rating. After retiring to his place, Peter fights through symptoms of food poisoning, only to puke on Dana's feet. Despite her horror, she offers to stay to look after him. But a few minutes later, Dana is hurling as well. 

 

The two spend the night panting, sweating, and wheezing side by side. Peter feebly attempts to open the window, but fails. Dana weakly dabs his forehead with a wet cloth of dubious origin. Eventually, they team up to pry the window open. Peter strums on the guitar a ditty on the agony of vomiting, making Dana laugh.  
 

As the horror begins to pass, Peter asks Dana why she stayed after getting hit with his projectile, as most girls would have left. She says she considered it, but she doesn't want to be one of those couples that miss all their chances. 

Peter says they won't, because last night was the most intimate encounter he ever had, that he knows way more about her than before. 

"Me too," she replies.  

I sometimes wonder if we do our carefully manicured dating selves any good by maintaining that Shabbos Face for so long whilst courting. We don't really see each other as fully as we could. One doesn't truly know someone until they share closet space with them, true, but if that mystery within could be revealed just a little bit more . . .   

TGIF

• Debunking common myths about our brains; 

• You can grow new brain cells;

• The future of money;

• How your posture impacts the mind; and

• The Piano Guys strike a chord.  

Battle of the Bulge: Yeah, It Sucks

Losing the weight wasn't fun and Shonda [Rhimes] admitted that she 'hated it the whole time.'

'Once I decided it wasn't gonna be fun, like, I lowered my expectations. It got kind of easier,' Shonda told Extra.

'I just changed everything I ate - and I hated all of that - and then I hate exercising and I did that, too, and I hated it the whole time.'

When asked if she found something she does like about her healthier lifestyle, Shonda quipped: 'No, I still hate it. I hate every minute of it.'

'I eat everything I want to eat but I try to make it much less and smaller portions,' she said, adding: 'But you change what your palate wants. I'm suddenly craving fish and salad.'

'It's upsetting. It's like, where's my cake?' Shonda said, adding on a positive note: 'I have a lot of extra energy so I feel much better.'

'I realized I could either spend my life going, "I wish I could lose weight," or I could just do it,' Shonda told Entertainment Tonight last week.

Here's the secret of successful weight loss: You will not enjoy yourself. 

Sure, you'll get to a point when you'll feel healthy, light, bouncy, and energetic. But you will still really really want to fall headfirst into a pizza. 

There will be times when you are hungry. But it's not quite lunchtime yet, so you sadly find some sort of household chore to keep busy for the next hour. There will be times when you feel cheated, like how the whole shul pounces on the oozing kokosh by a kiddush while you just longingly watch. There will be times when you think, "To heck with this." 

But you manage to plod along, even after a few transgressions. And all those other benefits—health, lightness, bounciness, and energy—can actually feel worth it. You won't want to eat so much anymore. You won't want to eat that thing anymore. You'll love the fact that you can fit into (nearly) whatever you like.

And you'll have confidence, because you did something difficult, and you succeeded.    

I Don't Mean to Be Grim

From my miserable historical-fiction reading, I am exceedingly grateful to be living in this century. This is how stories used to go, by the way: 

Once upon a time, everybody died. 

And I mean everybody. No one was spared. From the moment babies drew breath, they were ticking time bombs. To quote Epictetus, "As you kiss your son good night, whisper to yourself, 'He may be dead in the morning.'" (Got that one from Resilience.) 

Meaning, the idea that infants are matter-of-factly thriving well into adulthood is a gift we should be merrily celebrating. 

Let it be known that I do not wish to be flippant regarding death. Yet we seem to have an unhealthy approach to the matter when those who have lived long, full, spectacular lives are still clung to frantically by their loved ones, their inevitable ends gruesomely extended. 

 

I once heard from a woman the beautiful tale of her father's passing. He refused to go to the hospital or a home; she cared for him under her own roof. He died holding her hand, smiling. 

Deborah Lutz's article says it all: "See Death as a Triumph, Not a Failure." 

The Victorians looked at death differently than we do now. 

The Victorians recognized that death’s presence was woven into the texture of life, giving that life one of its essential meanings.Religion, of course, played a role in this attitude. Evangelical revivals early in the 19th century reinvigorated the tradition of the good death, in which God called believers to him. 

There is even a Talmudic example, perhaps, of "death's presence giving life meaning":

At the wedding feast of Mar the son of Ravina, the sages present turned to Rav Hamnuna Zuti and requested: "Let master sing for us." Most probably to the surprise of those present, who expected a cheery song or jovial ditty, Rav Hamnuna Zuti complied with a mournfully lament: "Woe to us that we are destined to die! Woe to us that we are destined to die!" 

As for "the good death," consider Beth's demise in Little Women. A triumph indeed. 

By the beginning of the 20th century, however, these views of the dead body began to change. Doctors and scientists acquired a deeper understanding of bacteria and disease; death became medicalized. God hadn’t called the individual to him; rather, a malady had overtaken the body. Rather than dying at home, the sick were carted off to hospitals.

In addition, fewer people believed in the afterlife. No longer a triumph, death became a failure — of the physician’s skill, of the patient’s will. It was to be avoided at all costs. The mass death of the Great War, which left so many bodies missing, exploded or rotting on the ground, further undermined the view of the corpse as a meaningful stage of life. Cremation grew in popularity as a way to “cleanse” with fire the last shameful disintegration.

What we have lost is not only a savoring of ephemerality, but also an appreciation of the way that time marks the body. We try too hard to keep the terminally ill alive because we can’t admit to finality. . .

. . . the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s lament in the 1930s about death still rings true. By avoiding the sight of the dying, he felt, one misses the moment when the meaning of a life is completed and illuminated in its ending. The denial of death then leads to the demise of the art of storytelling. He called his contemporaries “dry dwellers of eternity” because they “live in rooms that have never been touched by death.”

We are not immune, us now liberated Jews. We think now the same way—stay alive, no matter the cost. Even though Rebbe's maidservant was praised for ending his suffering.     

Love You . . .

Public displays of affection are not encouraged in the Jewish community. It makes perfect sense; that which is precious and sacred between two people should not be on display.  Not only that, scenes of open affection can be hurtful to those who have none in their lives. I believe that is the actual lawful reason—not to cause pain to others.  

But there are other relationships that involve PDA, such as that between parents and their children. Or grandparents and their descendants. Or in my case, between an aunt and her kinfauna. 

One Shabbos, a beaming Babi marched in with a grandchild, and for the rest of Mussaf I heard wet smooches. Frankly, it made me feel a tad ill. I mistrust the need to blatantly slaver devotion when an audience is present. There's plenty of time available to profess adoration within the comforting walls of one's own home; no need to prove to the world that one loves that which bears one's DNA. 

Take those overheard cellphone conversations. "Love you," may be a crooned sign-off. But really, a "love you" tossed casually doesn't mean much to me.

I once overheard the one-sided tirade over a cell phone from a girl to her grandfather. After becoming breathless with disrespect, she purringly concluded, "Love you." I happen to know my niece opts for "Love you" when she needs a favor.  

Luke was dropping off his daughter at school. Eewok is always up for cuddling and hugs, which we are happy to provide. In the schoolyard, the four-year-old grabbed her father's head and began pecking kisses on his cheeks. He gently told her that this is not the place. She understood. She happily skipped off into the building, feeling no less loved. 

TGIF

• The health benefits of being thankful;

• Is the Internet making us addicted to distractions?;

• A musical performance in honor of Holocaust victims . . . with very special instruments; and 

• The "I See You" Experiment.

Protein, Longevity Feasts, and Water

I am a born carb eater. I am not kidding when I say that I get weak-kneed at the sight of potatoes. Any potato will do, even reconstituted. And don't mention bread. I'm not strong enough.

Scrape me off the floor.

But for the scale-conscious, carbs are austerely limited. Sigh. Fruit instead of cereal for breakfast; vegetable soup rather than pasta for lunch; broccoli instead of rice for dinner. 

Protein, they say! Protein will save us all! The thing is, while I have cut back on carbs, I haven't really replaced them with protein. There's only carbs for me; protein doesn't fill the void. I eat fish a couple times a week. A Greek yogurt here and there. But I've been primarily subsisting on produce, healthy fats (nuts, oils, avocados), and legumes with a dusting of carbs (oat bran, Korean/Oriental/Japanese/Asian sweet potato, Shabbos whole-wheat matzah/challah) here and there, and I gotta say, I feel quite good.

Dean Ornish will bum out the protein lovers with "The Myth of High-Protein Diets," along with Time magazine's Markham Heid's piece.  

 

Animal protein is not very friendly on the body. It prematurely ages it. Those in the Blue Zones rely on legumes for protein, and live, like, forever. 

Jeff Gordinier went food shopping with Dan Buettner (of "Blue Zones" fame) for a "longevity feast." 

Dan Buettner

Current research shows that those who dutifully pop kale into the shopping cart park a pint of ice cream right next to it; Buettner advocates basic healthy yummies, and no processed so-called "health food," like juices or shakes. 

. . . Seventh-day Adventists have a tendency to outlive their fellow Americans, thanks to a mostly vegetarian diet that is heavy on nuts, beans, oatmeal, 100 percent whole-grain bread and avocados.

Sounds good to me, although the bread has to be "real sourdough bread." Oh, and go for long walks. Blue Zonies are always walking. 

Lastly, "The Persistent Health Myth of 8 Glasses a Day." As Aaron Carroll reports, water is in a lot of the things we consume, and coffee doesn't suck the liquid out of you, either. 

According to the Rambam, one should only drink when thirsty. The awesome bodies we've been given will tell us when we are.