We give loved ones a nudge.  Maybe you are not as good a multitasker as you think.  It does not feel good, we might say, to be assured that the ballgame in progress will not interfere with your hearing me as fully as your interest requires.

Sometimes conversations go awry because people do not grasp that a conversation is taking place.  Conversation implies mutual interest.  When the interest is not mutual, we call it something else: a lecture, perhaps, or a scolding, or a performance.  When we sit down together over coffee, or respond to one another’s incoming messages, we open ourselves to one another, assuming the other person reciprocates our interest in what they have to say.  When our thoughts are overlooked, or our words come back twisted, we are likely to be frustrated, hurt, and angry.  Listening is a form of respect, and when it goes wrong, we take it to heart.

Community gatherings are invitations to mutual listening about a shared concern.  When listening in a group setting fails, it is often because people think they are objective listeners, when they are not.  Nobody is.  We all have filters, and easily tune out anything we hear that sounds “wrong”: too different, too much like what grandma used to say, too bold, too touchy-feely, too academic, too ethnic, too political.  Listening, within a community, happens when we feel empathy for the others in the room, when we sense a common bond.  That sense of connectedness can be ephemeral; when a speaker seems too much like an Outsider, the impulse to listen vanishes like footprints in the mist.

Without listening, relationships quickly stagnate.  Listening is replaced by the hearer’s unexamined beliefs about what their partner, or everybody else in the room, or the church, or the nation, is thinking.  Listening is replaced by projection of the hearer’s hopes and fears onto other people.  The speaker’s words may stir his feelings about something significant, but people become little more than memes in the hearer’s picture of the world.  People who hear without listening do not realize they are doing this.  They just think they are right.

Failure to listen does damage.   When somebody fails to listen to us, we feel isolated and devalued.  Polite protest may go unnoticed, or it may be minimized, characterized as needy or presumptuous.  If a relationship really is mutual in the first place, and worth preserving, it may require something more.

A jolt of healthy anger.

If they are not listening, and content to not listen, we can be angry with our loved ones, our friends or our church, without losing civility.  Anger scares us, and for good reason;  people say hurtful things in anger that they later regret.  Diffuse, unreflective anger poisons public debate, making it emotionally risky to talk about religion or politics.  We reject emotional violence; we have tried sending ourselves to “anger management” training, hoping to control a force that we have seen run amok.  We seek inner transformation, hoping that through spiritual practice, we might become so benign and generous that we are never really angry.  Maybe just a little annoyed.  What good could it possibly do, to listen to anger?

Anger tells us that the normal routine is causing unforeseen hurt, which is ongoing, invisible and inaudible to the people who need to know, because they are not listening.

If our lives are connected, we are vulnerable to one another.  If somebody I care about, or a group I care about, fails to listen, our relationship is diminished.  Of course I am angry.  What else could I be?  Anger is only toxic if you swallow it.

Once our loved ones realize that something is missing, change becomes possible.  How well do we really know one another, and care for the fulfillment of one another’s hopes?  Want to fix that?

Listening requires humility; our picture of the world must be subject to revision.   Then again, that sounds very much like the life plan of someone who is willing to grow.

This kind of language is no longer limited to the yoga studio or the temple.   Something fascinating is happening, when the pursuit of deep peace shows up in Forbes Magazine, in a piece called 5 Yogic Tips to Tackle Stress.  Corporate culture may value the ability to remain calm under pressure, and to focus; but if the 1% take heed, they are about to discover that contemplative practice is more than a relaxation technique.

The workplace is a community of sorts, with a complex web of relationships.  Many things go wrong.  People interrupt one another, make arbitrary decisions, promote themselves and fail to help one another.  People feel anxious, powerless, and unappreciated.  People talk behind your back, text message compulsively while talking to you, and use their backyard barbecue voices when you are trying to think.  The workplace is emotional chaos.

Finding the place of quiet at work isn’t easy.  Ironically, the technology that allows us to maintain internet access while on an African safari, also provides smartphone apps with the sounds of Tibetan temple bells, evoking places so quiet that you can hear the chirp of crickets, and the rush of fresh water over pebbles.  These are designed to help us find peace without leaving the office.

We must learn to listen, all over again.

The Zen mind listens to anxiety, and lets most of it go.  Where we pridefully busy our minds with multimedia stimulation, it seeks to gently focus on one thing at a time.  Zen discipline involves basic things like breathing, which of course happens all day without our awareness; the intent is to do it mindfully.  If we listen, and do each small thing mindfully, and let go of distractions, we find harmony where frantic activity used to be.  There is something humbling in thinking of the myriad of things that populate our anxious, achievement-oriented minds, as distractions.

The Daily Mind blog writes about how to use your work as a meditation tool.  If all day long we are meditative about our small choices at work, we slowly create harmony within ourselves, letting go of whatever does not belong.  We remind ourselves of what brought us here, of why we are doing the work in the first place.  We remember our priorities.  As we become peaceful, we gradually release the toxic influences of other people. When we sense we are not at risk of being wounded, we can afford to be more tolerant of those co-workers who remain thoughtless, anxious, or needy, or who have completely lost their way.  The Zen mind becomes compassionate, in other words.

It will be fascinating to see how this process of becoming compassionate evolves, if Zen practice takes root in the mahogany paneled boardrooms of Wall Street.  It will be fascinating to see how each of our workplaces evolve, when we release the small irritations of life in work community, and unearth the true injustices that call us to action.

In short, we can choose our response to the workplace, and choose to regard those who treat us unkindly with compassion they do not earn.  Systems theory predicts that they will have to adjust to changes we bring, in order to maintain the work relationship.  We notice our own emotional responses, and treat ourselves kindly.  If others do not nurture us, we are empowered to nurture ourselves.

Tiny Buddha has blog post entitled Zen business: the Eightfold Path to peace and productivity at work.  When we become mindful of our own inner life, we become mindful of the community as well.  Awkward questions arise: do our own actions in the workplace express the compassion we want for  ourselves and the world?  In multi-tasking, are we participating in each human interaction with a whole heart?  Are we doing the good for the world that we originally intended?  This process of becoming mindful can lead to unexpected places.

In becoming quiet, we come to notice habits of thought that had somehow become automatic: paranoid thoughts,  unkind thoughts, pointless frustration and anger with the annoying habits of others, who are struggling to get their inarticulate needs met.  What we notice, we can let go.  The space left over frees us in unforeseen ways.  What creative inspiration may come, filling the space you have created?

Sometimes a client will come into my office so completely overwhelmed – perhaps with the hurt of  betrayal, or rejection, or grief, or fear that one of her darkest suspicions may be true – that she can barely breathe.  In a moment like that, the possibility of letting go of suffering for a minute is very welcome.  We want respite.

In a moment like that, we are not usually worried that if we drift off, we may lose our way, and not be able to return to our unfolding drama.  When our lives become a bit too much to bear, we willingly, gladly let go, trusting that our unanswered questions, unfinished work, screaming spouse, unfulfilled hopes, and the conversation  replaying in our head, will be back later.

Choosing to let go, when we are not exhausted or desperate for relief, is different.  We want to know what benefit could possibly come of setting aside the self we have spent years constructing.  We are often so attached to our habits and our assumptions and our relationships that they seem inevitable, as if we would cease to exist if we were not depressed, or angry with ourselves for past mistakes, or compulsive about food, money, love.  Sometimes we become so caught up in our social entanglements, the ok ones and the disturbing ones, that we lose awareness of the universe.  The point of letting go of familiar self is that when we disengage gears, we may encounter fuller possibilities within us.  Perhaps, later, we might re-engage differently. Scary thought.

Letting go of self is a spiritual practice that is, needless to say not in everybody’s repertoire.   Nonetheless, the need for respite from self is real.  When we seek to take a vacation from self, instead we may use other, more familiar means; some of these possibilities can be risky.  Intoxication, for example, is a time-honored way to lose ourselves, though it involves little introspection.  We sometimes numb ourselves from unwelcome emotion, or confuse our impulsive words, spoken under the influence, for freedom from crippling inhibition.

Sometimes we lose ourselves in love.  Have you ever encountered someone who, on finding “the one,” forgets her old friends or her old consuming passions, in order to give herself fully to a relationship?  The intoxication of new love can invite us to forget who we are, for a while.  The risk of this kind of loss of self, though, is that we may lose the qualities that make us unique and interesting.  Intoxicating love can make us more vulnerable than we realized.  Some partners find this an opportunity to replace our wants, goals, and visions with their own.  When we sacrifice our selves, we become only what the relationship makes of us.

Loss of self takes healthy forms, of course.  Letting go of self in a safe setting, allows us to relax into an inner state in which we can risk encountering the deepest desires of our heart, without manipulation.  In that state we can let go of stuff that keeps us stuck, without sacrificing what really matters to us.  Many traditions of meditation practice, though using different techniques, share the intent to help us quiet our thoughts long enough to notice who we truly are, when the drama is paused and the anxiety becomes quiet.

What happens to us when we relax our grip on our self?  We enter a state of being in which the details fade.  We are fully in the present moment, aware only perhaps of the chair, the birds outside, and the sensation of  breathing.  Then even those things go.  Letting go is legitimately scary, because we do not control it.  Appropriate care is wise.  Yet, we do this all the time, when we go to the movies.

We always take a risk when we lose ourselves.  The benefit is that we are likely find more of ourselves, the parts formerly obscured by suffering, anxiety, and habits of thought that no longer fit.   We awaken from the journey inward, to reclaim the questions that seem important, the eternal love of chocolate, and the people who nurture our spirit.  Moments in which we lose our self have healing potential, offering fresh questions, though rarely easy answers.  Then, neither does therapy, if we do it right.

Extroversion is the social norm, describing the habits of people who like to chat, tailgate, and to think out loud, animated by a posse of collaborators.  Introversion, the habit of going inward for inspiration, and sheltering from noise, had been pathologized.  Introverts need to go hike in the woods to replenish the energy expended in having a rich social life.  There is much mutual misunderstanding.  Being an oddball introvert doesn’t imply loneliness or depression, though feeling like an outsider much of the time can send you down that road.  Truthfully, pure introverts and extroverts are rare; most people secretly harbor elements of both traits.

It turns out that social bias favoring extroverts has cost society heavily, according to Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.

The bias against introverts starts in childhood classrooms where group projects are emphasized over solo work, in which introverted kids excel, and emotional nurture is provided at mandatory pep rallies.  Introverted kids conform as best they can, sacrificing their distinctiveness in the hope of fitting in.  In adult life, quiet employees, just like quiet schoolkids in the classroom, are often overlooked in the workplace, and so are their gifts.  American society needs to value its introverts differently, says Cain, who was recently interviewed on National Public Radio “Quiet, Please” (January 30), as well as FastCompany.com “The Fortunes of Solitude” (February 7).  Last week, Time Magazine’s cover story was “The Upside of Being an Introvert”.

It’s always refreshing to hear that your personality type, while nonconforming, is no longer a problem, but even, in fact, fascinating to others.  Society’s unexpressed apology is accepted.  Introverted people do enjoy being included in the social world.  Their love of quiet is not due to coldness or fear of rejection; it’s just that for them, home is their complex inner life.

For introverts, reclaiming personal power requires finding a second home in the world of extroverted people, while remaining faithful to the love of Gregorian chant.  Introverts’ native eccentricity brings fresh perspective.   But even if the larger culture becomes more hospitable to introverts for its own sake, introverts must also reach out, to become better understood.  Instead of faking extroversion, those of us who love solitude in the midst of daily life, can express our authentic traits more boldly.  Here are some possibilities.

1)  Be visible.  Introverts tend to be less attention seeking than extroverts, and may humbly accept marginal roles. Instead, bring your unique viewpoint into daylight.   Introverts in positions of leadership, as it turns out, tend to use attention differently; introverts tend to empower others, rather than dominate by strength of personality.  Hello, Zuckerberg.  Becoming more visible, and audible, can express the introvert’s focus on the work itself, rather than the person who gets credit.  Think about Gandhi.

2) Set clear boundaries.  Deal with noise intrusion in a way that makes clear that your request for quiet is for something you value; it is not rejection of others.  Communication must be clear, with neighbors whose talk spills into your work space.  There are times to not be silent.

3) Take more risks.  The strength of introverts in listening well, and thinking carefully before speaking, can sometimes become a liability.  We prefer to perfect our thoughts before speaking.  If we can tolerate imperfection, we can share a bit more readily with our extroverted associates.

4)  Repeat yourself.   Interrupt, in a friendly way, if you are not heard.  Communication styles of introverts and extroverts are very different.   Attention drifts to louder voices, and shifts rapidly as extroverts revise their thoughts aloud.  Louder is not necessarily more valuable.  Your contribution is worth repeating.

5) Pause the action as needed.  Your need for quiet is legitimate, and as essential to your wellbeing as is the need for conversation and exchange of ideas.   The value of solitude is difficult to explain, though others may be drawn to yours.  Do not accept unfair characterizations, such as that introverts, by being quiet, are not contributing, or self absorbed, or thinking too much.  Do not allow others to define you.

The introverts around you may offer surprising gifts, when they feel worthy of notice.  The introvert lurking within you may, as well.  Curious to discover it?  You may wish to try an online personality test for introversion/extroversion here.

The response has been fascinating.   A nerve has been touched.  The President has called Ms Fluke to offer support, and she is now fielding respectful interview questions.  Online petition drives are swirling; some seek denunciation of Limbaugh’s remarks by politicians who benefit from his support.  Some petitions are directed toward Limbaugh’s advertisers; today, interestingly, he has offered a thin apology limited to his “word choices”.  Some are petitions of solidarity with Ms Fluke; others are demands for Limbaugh to be removed from the airwaves entirely.  A Google search yields 194,000 related sites.

The background of quiet anger has been stirring in recent weeks.   Some conservative politicians have focused their concern on employers who would rather not, for religious reasons, pay for contraceptives that their women employees require.  Ms Fluke made her case, and Limbaugh was enraged.  He is often angry, vulgar, and caustic, and his views on public policy extreme.  The public tunes in, or not; but something is different this time.

Public anger on behalf of Ms Fluke comes from a deep place.  The intensity makes it clear that this is not just about sticking up for a young woman who has been insulted.  The moment has coalesced around her, and made her a symbol; she found the energy to speak up on behalf of others, and was bullied.   Consumers of the news have been awakened from their inertia and vague depression about politics, and have been moved to speak out in anger.  We identify with her.  For the moment, at least, we are disinclined to take it any more.  We have been dissed, and we are taking it personally.

Several thousand people have suddenly found their voice.   When one woman, speaking respectfully and out of conviction, was humiliated over the airwaves and called a slut, something resonated.  Perhaps the sexualized nature of the verbal abuse was too much.  The vulgar suggestions by Limbaugh that paying for women’s contraceptives like any other medical expense, was no different than “paying for sex,” and women should compensate by supplying pornographic video, was not just unfunny but too much.  The response was an awakening of healthy anger.

Small examples of shaming are familiar to all of us, and have toxic consequences for our emotional wellbeing.  Often, these get swallowed for the sake of keeping the peace, to our own detriment.  Private outrage, shared with a close friend, can be comforting.  It is a huge improvement over internalizing the shame of one’s verbal abuse, and becoming depressed.  The nurture of one’s personal circle of support can help us direct anger where it belongs, instead of becoming defeated.

Public outrage has power.  One of the things that makes this moment interesting is that it feels personal to viewers, in a way that leads to reaching out, not just for support but for change.  Social media make it easy to act on that flicker of an activist impulse.  Ms Fluke defended a widely shared view, that access to contraceptives is important for our health and wellbeing.  Giving the employer the option to refuse, based on his personal views, is to take away personal power.  We may have risen above partisan politics in rising up in focused anger this week, and expecting, as Ms Fluke did, to be heard.

Depression is the inner experience of lost power, and a sense that being diminished by others is just the way life is, or the way our life is.  Loss of civility in public discourse is disheartening, and it has been lamented as if it, too, is inevitable.

Perhaps it is not.

Being part of a couple is the norm.  Living solo is a minority lifestyle, with lots of complications.  Being single and living alone with one’s art, or one’s mad entrepreneurial dreams, feels empowering one day, and isolating the next.  Anyone who has ever been single at midlife has stories to tell, of being the extra at the dinner party, or presumed to be gay and closeted, or shy, or difficult.

But increasingly, living solo –whether by choice or not – has sustained such rapid growth that researchers are taking notice.  Scholars seem startled to discover that single adults are often comfortable with their lifestyle.  This week, sociologist Eric Klinenberg  published a new and interesting study called Going Solo: the Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.   He was interviewed last week on Smithsonian.com.  Dr Klinenberg notices that living alone does not imply loneliness, in this era of abundant online networking and Starbucks on every corner.   He thinks that the revolutionary changes in social media have transformed the experience of living alone from something to be tolerated, to a distinct coping advantage: living alone offers respite from too much communication, an oasis in the middle of a busy life.

Being single seems to be working, for a lot of Americans.  It’s just another response to the eternal paradox: how do we gain companionship, while holding onto our individuality and our solitude?  So why does the coupled lifestyle get celebrated with Valentine gifts, leaving singles to explain themselves?

Question: if going solo is really fine, why is Valentine’s Day so depressing?

The hope of true companionship has not lost its power to charm us.  Eharmony is making its fortune on the impulse, even in the midst of busy, fulfilling lives, to find new partners.  People don’t like to dine alone.  As a therapist, I’ve seen  lots of strong women jump into iffy relationships with men whose hearts they barely know, or fear to leave them when the time comes.   Being solo scares us.

I think depression about being solo, living on one’s own, is less about the lifestyle, and more about the way it gets us marginalized.  Yes, of course you can cope with Valentine’s Day.  Watch a movie.  Share cappuccino and dark humor with your nonconforming friends, or play laser tag.  But that’s not the point.  It’s that our hearts require special tending, as if being solo were a failure of the natural order of things, rather than an alternative.  If this thought is lurking, bring it into daylight.

Single people do feel sad on Valentine’s Day, even when they have full, creative lives.   It’s not a betrayal of our solitary journey, to acknowledge this sadness.  Lives often unfold differently from the way we had imagined them.   Disappointment for the lack of a soulmate is not a clinical diagnosis, nor is it a sign that finding a partner is the thing to do.   Enjoyment of the solo life is not at odds with the hope for deep, meaningful love.  But in the meantime, what?  Why aren’t there celebrations for solo contentment?

It’s hard for solo people to remain centered while forced to bear witness to all the champagne and frou-frou of Valentine’s Day, but that is the path toward wholeness.  It is somebody else’s holiday, masquerading as everybody’s  fantasy.   Breathe.  Step away.  There are some interesting online resources for solo life with all its ambiguities, such as Quirkyalone.   This imaginative site describes itself as a community for people who enjoy being solo, offering a mindset of self-acceptance, high expectations for love, and tolerance for the nonconforming journey.   On February 14 it celebrates International Quirkyalone Day, when uncompromising romantics go their own way.

May we all allow ourselves solitude in a noisy world.  May we enjoy our chocolate on a vista overlooking the meadow or the skyline or the sea, in the company of ourselves, and whoever may love and nurture us, without reservation.   Solo is fine.

This news has been greeted with intense emotion in the blogosphere.  Facebook Timeline: There’s no Escaping it Now, observes Technolog  at msnbc.com, a bit ominously.   They report a new study in which half of the respondents –thousands– say they are worried about this change, and nearly a third say  they don’t know why they are still on Facebook.   When people respond so  strongly, the anxiety must go deeper than feelings  about having to learn one’s way all over again.  The tech savvy are anxious too.  What unease has this design update stirred up?

For those not already in on the story, Facebook is about to replace everybody’s personal profile, the place where we post our thoughts, images, and self-description, with a substantially changed homepage for our Facebook life.   Now, with Timeline, everything we have ever posted will be readily available at once, for a big picture nobody, even we ourselves, may have seen before.   Our stuff, the small ephemeral sharings of late nights online, will all become integrated into a story.  Once Timeline is in place, we will have a week to edit, compose, and reconsider our requirements for  privacy.

Of course, privacy concerns are nothing new for Facebook regulars.  Long before Timeline emerged, users demanded – and got—nuanced controls of who has access to their personal words and pictures.  Timeline promotes more sharing.  It offers “frictionless” apps, designed to automatically share with our Facebook friends what we are reading on the Washington Post app, what coupons  we bought on LivingSocial, and how our exercise plan is progressing.   We can still control privacy settings, with some effort.   HuffPost’s Captain Gadget blog gives clear directions.

Thinking about privacy does stir unease.  But Timeline anxiety feels even more personal than that: exposure of a much bigger, and more revealing, picture of who we are, or who we say we are.  No wonder we are anxious.  No doubt, advertisers will enjoy this greater insight, and use it as a marketing strategy.  But this possibility seems more suited to irritation than anxiety.   I wonder if the trepidation may have more to do with what our Facebook history may expose to ourselves, and those we want to see us kindly.  How do we cope when we feel vulnerable?

Changing the place we call home resonates deeply.  Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and guru, understands this.  “We want to design a place that feels like your home,” he said of Timeline, quoted in HuffPost Tech on January 26.  “Where you tell your story online is very personal.   It gives you the ability to curate all your stories so you can express who you really are.”

Timeline makes us uneasy because we will now be doing openly what we have always done unconsciously: curating our own online life story, making it more flattering, or more zany, or more coherent, or more something, for our Facebook friends.  We will be creating our own autobiographies.   But first, we will get a peek at the data we have generated over time, and see what we make of it ourselves.  Living in the moment, we do not have the perspective that Timeline offers.

We are about to become curators of our own story.  But are we doing it right?  In a post called The Existential Angst of Facebook Timeline, Big Think blog wonders if we will now obsess about posting the right amount of information, capturing the right moments with the right pictures and the right music playlist, to capture the truth of who we really are.   We are a work in progress, and we are potentially always on.  The boundaries between public and private have become so blurred that we have some radical rethinking to do about who we want to be, online.

Breakthrough Journal reflects on What it Means to Forget on Facebook.   Having an online archive of our small moments, our evolution as a human being, forces us to remember what we might be happy to forget.  What are the implications of this, as we go forward, stumbling through the journey of personal growth?  Will we take fewer chances, or will we choose to let go of anxiety, knowing the record can always be curated later?  Or can it?

All new things stir emotion, as the most adventurous of us hold tightly to our moorings.  While we wait to see how significant the impact of Timeline really is, we are wondering what to hope for.  Meantime, early adopters have already signed on; perhaps some of them are your friends.  In a time of anxiety, it can be comforting to survey the impact of small changes.   One thing, for sure, is contributing to our unease about Timeline: it would have been nice to be asked.

Public  condemnation has come from chefs, doctors, and furious bloggers who wonder what she has been thinking.  Has she owned up to the role of diet in her health crisis?  Not so much.  Will she repent, change her culinary style, and assume a new mentoring role, leading us away from our obsession with deep fried anything?  Not so far, but the story is just unfolding.  Her self image and cultural identity are involved, and she states she will continue to be who she is.  Why are we so angry?

After all, it’s not as if we didn’t know better.  High fat diets lead to overweight and, quite often, to adult onset diabetes, somewhere down the line.   The stats are worrisome.  Yet we continue to fall under the spell of celestial desserts, as well as fast foods not chef made at all, as if there were no consequences.  Sounds a bit like the mind of an addict. Scary, isn’t it?   Ms Deen shares the inner sanctum of her restaurant kitchen with us, and her hospitality is part of the food experience.  We want a part of the contagious delight she takes in her food; we are hungry for unambiguous joy.  We have turned the TV chef into a guru with a whisk.

But seriously, how can this be?  In the era of abundant health information online, with a hundred food apps for your phone, the public has fallen in love with Ooey-gooey Butter Cake, Deep Fried Lasagna, Fried Butter Balls, a burger served between two Krispy Kreme donuts, and, yes, Deep Fried Cheesecake.  Ms Deen told Oprah, a few years back, “Honey, I’m your cook, not your doctor”.   She might be a lot of fun, but we clearly need to choose our gurus more mindfully.   Now she is diabetic.  Nothing is more infuriating than having cold reality pull back the curtain on our fantasies, or our wizards, and discovering that they are fragile, and so are we.  What have we projected onto her, that we are so angry?

The Trouble with Paula Deen’s Diabetes Announcement Isn’t the Food, observes Slate.com.   Perhaps it’s the rationalizing:  the outrage is attributed by her supporters to food snobbery toward Southern culture, or to her folksy femininity.  Would a male French chef with a pint of heavy cream receive similar scorn?  Perhaps not, but that’s a thin defense, if you’re a Food Network star,  for creating food fantasies that lead your fans in a dangerous direction, in an era of epidemic obesity, even among educated people.  Of course, it’s our choice to follow her into the pantry.  Southern chefs complain, too,  that her food misrepresents their culinary traditions.  It’s complicated.

But the blogosphere is mostly angry that Paula Deen continues to teach recipes that, arguably, led not only to her illness, but to an opportunity to reap profit from the medications that treat it.  Diabetes is not a death sentence, she proclaims, and that is in many ways true.  But does she promote naïve confidence in the ability of pharma to save us from our food obsessions?  Meanwhile, her faithful viewers continue to stir their butter cream frosting, trusting in Paula and in the redemptive capability of modern medicine.  The chefs and doctors and bloggers are furious.   Will she yet repent, while remaining true to herself?  Will we?  Not clear.

Anger can be a healthy emotion.  But is our anger placed where it belongs?

Those who carry true phobias about travel need lots of support.  Those who struggle with fear of flying, fear of strangers wearing ethnic garb, or fear of catching life-threatening germs, will have a rough ride.  Some people I meet in the airport will perhaps be braving agoraphobia, the fear of being away from a safe environment when a crisis occurs.  May they have kind travel companions.

For most of us, travel angst is an intrusion on the inner peace we have been cultivating, on the benign thoughts we want to bring to the holiday season, and on dignity itself.  We don’t doubt these assaults are survivable; but we prefer to rise above them if we can.  Let’s try.

What have I forgotten?  This thought comes to me as soon as I merge into highway traffic en route to the airport.  Ticket and login ID, check.  Toothbrush, check.   Gifts, unwrapped, with wrapping stuff, check.  Phone charger, check.   I did forget the phone charger one year, long ago, and the anxiety about dwindling minutes of access to the universe never left me.    Imagine how magnified that anxiety would be, now that I have bonded with my smartphone.   Perhaps there is a hidden gift here: an opportunity for reflection on what we would miss most, in an unplanned electronic retreat, a day or two offline.   Where to find peace in this: know that you get to choose your  apps, in this life journey.

Leaving pets behind.   Adult human loved ones presumably understand that you are not abandoning them, and will return.  But part of the opportunity for self-torture that  travel provides, is the lingering worry that our furry (or feathered or finned) loved ones are miserable without us, or rearranging the living room, or that they will not recognize us when we return.   We can remind ourselves that this ritual has played out more or less successfully in past years, but then again, this is not a rational worry.  We miss our critters.  They miss us.  To find peace while traveling, it is necessary to tolerate being apart, and also, at times, disappointing loved ones.  We can find peace by confirming, in our quiet moments, that our bonds are strong.

Loss of dignity in the airport is not a small thing.  I have witnessed a public suitcase search, in which some poor traveler’s lingerie was held up for close inspection.   I have been scanned by uniformed personnel bearing wands, and ushered through a booth that sniffs for explosives.   Once I even left behind a set of keys that had been set aside in preparation for the walk through the metal detector.  That will not happen again.   I have noticed, though, the benign relationship between strangers making their way through this awkward process we call airport security.  We do not stare, as others are scanned.  We empathize, as others repack and rebuckle and verify that keys are in place.  If there is peace to be found in this experience, it is that this indignity has a sane purpose.  And that we are capable of showing maturity in airports that would be welcome in, say, city traffic.

Coping with fellow travelers is not always pleasant.  That five minutes between the time the plane lands and the time the door opens, is subjectively longer than the entire rest of the journey.  It would be easy to succumb to anger with the passengers who stuff the overhead bins with their worldly possessions, hogging shared space and flinging precious sporting equipment they do not wish to check.   Of course they want to avoid baggage claim, and extra fees.  But they invoke irritation by presuming about who gets space, and whose stuff is important.  The reality is that the journey causes some people to prioritize their own convenience over yours.  It is essential to find peace here, by reminding yourself that their insensitivity does not have to be contagious.  We can all continue to be generous of spirit, in a time that others do not.  That is the nature of the journey.

May it be peaceful and stimulating, each at the right time, and may you come home safe, the same person and a new one, each in the ways that matter most.

But what if you become worried about fictional characters, as I do sometimes, or miss them when they’re gone?  Crazy?  What if you made the chocolate dessert, and feel hurt by a harsh criticism, or offended by a politician’s joke?   You might be told you take things too personally, or too seriously.  If you avoid stepping on bugs, you might be called hypersensitive.

What if you feel overwhelmed with big loud parties, sparkly holiday lights, and  joyful music blasting in public places?   You might be called a grinch.  (Good luck, if you are an introvert in our extroverted culture, in an extroverted season.)  Is there such a thing as excessive sensitivity to noise or nuances of speech, and does it call for treatment, or does the very question reflect a bias of our times?

If any of this sounds familiar, you might be among the 15-20% of us who psychologist Elaine Aron calls “Highly Sensitive People” (HSP).  She has researched this personality type for 20 years, and made some interesting observations.  There is a neurological basis for our quirks; our brains work differently.  70% of us are introverts.  We do typically notice more than others, which doesn’t always make you popular; the extra information takes longer to process, so we take longer to make decisions; we are more sensitive to light, sound, and coffee, etc; and we experience emotions more intensely than others.  As a result, we are more easily hurt, even by the suffering of others.  What used to be pathologized, labelled as fragility, shyness or neurosis – a symptom cluster that certainly makes you eligible for treatment – may, as it turns out, be a reasonable way for the HSP among us to stay sane in what feels like a harsh world.  Maybe we are also more easily amused?

In short, you may not be crazy.  And you certainly don’t need to defend yourself.

Being highly sensitive may seem like a mixed blessing; the majority, who do not experience it, are statistically “normal,” and sometimes greet HSP traits with resentment.  Some of them may be your relatives.  WebMD addresses this in an article called Are You Too Sensitive?  The author, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, acknowledges that she initially wondered whether HSP would expect special treatment, or force everyone else to “walk on eggshells”.    Awkward, to realize that others experience your comments, or the volume of your music, differently from the way you do.  But wouldn’t you want to know?

If you think you might be an HSP, there are lots of online resources for coping in a world that has a slightly different operating system from yours.  You know that a topic has gone mainstream when Psychology Today has a blog about it, called Sense and Sensitivity.   Facebook also has a Highly Sensitive People Support Network.

Being highly sensitive, needless to say, offers gifts as well as challenges.  Psychologist Douglas Eby has written about the 5 Gifts of Being Highly Sensitive, for the Psych Central blog.  He observes that the HSP can detect more subtle differences of color or taste or sound, and often has greater awareness of  inner emotional states, which is helpful if you happen to be a writer, a musician, or an artist.  Heightened empathy can be a great resource for teachers and healers.   A Highly Sensitive Person is likely to notice nuances of meaning, and therefore weigh possibilities more carefully before acting.  (Note: this seriously gets on people’s nerves, even if they benefit from the result.)

Not surprising, if an HSP feels different from others.  There is no minimizing the seriousness of being temperamentally at odds with the majority culture.  Because others may not notice or accommodate your heightened feelings, self care is critical.  When you need a break from the action, take one.

At least, the knowledge that one has a healthy trait not shared by everyone, and not a personal weakness, can be helpful.   Being highly sensitive can support us in our creative work and our passion for healing the world. Naming it may help us respond well to others who may urge us to just toughen up, calm down, fit in.   In the midst of a world designed for others, our ability to find peace and coherence may end up offering lessons useful to everyone.  Or, who knows, it may lead to a great science fiction movie.