Fresh ideas about career, education, the life well-led, and improving the world.
It seems that more of my clients are choosing to shrink their world. My Psychology Today article today offers a case study. It then asks questions to help you decide if you want to keep your world small, and offers suggestions in case you want to take baby steps to interacting more.
My Psychology Today article today offers five dilemmas that derive from key issues of our time: COVID
and political polarization. For each dilemma, I offer opposing
positions.
The COVID pandemic embeds important ethical issues. They have implications for our psychological as well as physical health. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers thoughts on five such issues.
But in the silences and amid my pre-New-Year's walks, the following thoughts have entered my mind. I share them in hopes they might inform some of your New Year's thinking, feeling, and conversation.
Dear Santa,
Forgive the graphic term, but 2020 pretty much sucked.
I’m not just talking about COVID with its shutdowns, lockdowns, and snotty masks — and that assumes you didn’t have to go on a ventilator.
We also had a presidential campaign that should embarrass anyone—Were those two the best that America had to offer?
Then there was the racial roiling: If you are a liberal, you called it “unrest,” “protests” or “activism.” If you aren’t liberal, you called it, “rioting,” “looting” and “burning down cities.”
Plus, if you lived in the “land of dreams,” California, following years of drought and water restrictions, 2020 treated you to wildfires that turned even a health nut into a chain smoker.
Oh for a better 2021. Regression to the mean promises that, but Santa, I want to be much greedier:
I want a vaccine that doesn’t knock people out for a day, which understandably makes them hesitate to come out for Round 2. Better still Santa, give me a one-dose vaccine, like the Johnson & Johnson one that’s in Phase III trials. Oh, and I want my vaccine to have no side effects, and oh, one that confers lifetime immunity.
And Santa, the zillions spent on a COVID vaccine should offer lessons for creating a vaccine against other scourges. Could you thus give our COVID nightmare the dreamy side effect of birthing a vaccine for AIDS, even cancer?
And while I’m thinking ginormous:
Santa, I want an economy that comes back enough to restore jobs but one that isn't so robust that it encourages the over-materialistic lifestyle that cheapens people’s existence. Too many people focus on the Wise Men’s gift of gold, far fewer people on the frankincense and myrrh.
Santa, my next wish is very personal to me. I waste so much time every year keeping tax records and preparing my income tax returns. We need a tax system that replaces all that, not to mention the tax-avoidance shenanigans — Cayman Islands? What we need is a value-added tax. Santa, in case you're not up on taxation systems, a VAT is pretty much like a sales tax paid by consumers and manufacturers so it adds up to the same amount that the income tax yields. No tax return, no cheating, well, less cheating.
Santa, we also really need an election system that doesn’t require candidates to double-talk and press tawdry flesh for four years. No surprise, that deters the best people from running. Instead, elections should be just two weeks long, publicly funded, with a true debate — no biased moderators — and if one candidate rudely dominates (a particular presidential candidate rushes to mind), it’s there for all to see. The campaign would also include candidates’ voting record and platforms compiled by, say, Consumer Reports.
And while we’re reinventing systems, education is ripe for that. The EduBlob — district, county, regional, state, and federal bureaucracies — each mandate a Manhattan phonebook of rules and regulations, some of which contradict each other. That means that a fortune in our tax dollars and educator efforts are wrested from where it matters — the classroom.
Speaking of the classroom, at the high school level at least, classroom lessons should be presented online by the world’s most transformative instructors, so that all students, from Harlem to Hollywood, can get the best. A live teacher would be in the classroom to answer questions, lead discussions and interactive activities, explain homework, and keep kids from dancing on their desk. I never danced on my desk but I think of how much time I spent chained to my school desk bored or befuddled. Santa, please save the next generation from that!
Dear reader, you may make fun of me, calling my wish list no more realistic than is Santa Claus, but seriously, we all need to dream, to aspire, to believe in something more hopeful than what we’ve experienced in 2020. Here’s to a Santa-Claus 2021.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Because of the dire warnings, many people are canceling holiday get-togethers. My Psychology Today article today offers my responses to two composite letters. One is from a person who is grieving the loss, the other is from a person who is relieved.
My Psychology Today article today offers two COVID-related worries that my clients have expressed. One is about holiday trips. The other is about remote schooling's effects on their child.
Many people, including those with no underlying conditions, are
choosing to pretty much be on personal lockdown. One of its
manifestations is that no one, outside the immediate family are allowed
to visit. Too often, the result is increased sadness, loneliness, and their impacts such as substance abuse, overeating, and even domestic violence.
