Christine Lagarde, Newsweek

Christine Lagarde, my hero, is on the cover of this week's Newsweek magazine.  My favorite quote from the article, "...I think it [a compromise platform] has to include as many people as possible. I leave aside the bastards, because that's one thing that I don't compromise with: people who lie, people who cheat, people who are not with the group and behave like parasites. That, I can't stand."

Book group narratives

Okay, I'm a few pages further in my book on narrative gerontology, it's been a busy week.

Today's topic was a continued  discussion of the importance of the narrative environment.  The authors discuss macro and micro environments.  How our stories are shaped by our culture, our religion, our gender, and our politics. The "master narratives" of our lives. But also how our narratives vary within those realms.  I certainly noticed how the narrative environment of academic administration differed from that of the academic faculty.  Many of the problems between faculty and administrators, I think, can be traced to differences in narrative.

I was very interested in comments about friendships.  Some years ago I read a great book, "Necessary Losses" by Judith Viorst. I was familiar with her more personal essays and memoirs, but this book is an accessible introduction to the principles of psychotherapy.  In one chapter she discusses friendships and the notion that we have "friends in spots."  That no one friendship provides all that we need or want in a relationship. Some friends are good for discussing issues around work, others are good for discussing family. Some friends are mostly there for fun and entertainment, with others we share more intimate details.

I was really struck by another part of Viorst’s book, the idea that friendships help us grow. She wrote that “growth demands relatedness and that intimacy produces continuing growth throughout our life because being known affirms and strengthens the self.” I liked the quote from Buber she uses, “Through the Thou a man becomes I.” Friends all add different elements to our lives, but through each of those encounters a different part of ourselves gets “opened up” or exercised.

Our friendships are also narratives, conversations. As Randall and McKim say in "Reading Our Lives," each friendship "develops its own brand of narrative environment, its own rules of engagement, its own codes for talking and listening, for sharing and withholding...Between the story of me and the story of thee is the story of us."  (Why is it we revert to old English when we want to talk about something REALLY IMPORTANT?)  Our friends become coauthors of our lives, and we of theirs.  At any time there are storylines about them and their lives swirling around inside of our heads.  "Narratively speaking, our lives are intertwined."

Sitting with my book group last night, our discussion found its way to books we have read together in the past. It is interesting to think about how our discussion of narratives becomes part of our narrative lives, individually and collectively.

Family stories

Spurred by my recent attendance at the session on narrative gerontology, I've been doing some reading on narratives.  Right now I'm crawling through Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old. I only understand about a third of it, and it is slow going, but today I ran across an interesting few paragraphs. The discussion was about the "culture of embeddedness" we encounter in our families of origin. In our family we learn (the book says "inherit") patterns for talking about our actions, expressing our emotions, and conveying our ideas.  We are exposed to entire strategies for composing and editing the stories of our lives; the little stories and the big ones.  Being conversant in this "family genre" is essential for our inclusion in the group.

However, this group is not static, it changes over time as people age, or die, and people come and go.  So both the players and their perspectives shift.  Here is a nice sociological line, "In short, we shape the stories we are part of even as they shape us."  It reminds me of the analogy we use for society and the effects of individuals, or cohorts, on society.  We can view social life as a river, it is bounded by shorelines, and those shorelines keep us "on track" in some sense.  However, the stream is also shifting the shorelines over time. Some parts are eroded, the course changes subtly or dramatically. So, the same idea we are shaping society as society shapes us.

Also interesting is the idea that there is some objective story or history and our individual perceptions of it.  I am always fascinated when my siblings and I start to compare childhood memories. We have very different versions of the same event, we even argue about the actual "facts"--who was there, where or when did it occur.  I like this sentence, "What we make of that history, however--the episodes that stand out for each of us andd the overall myth we have composed of it inside our own minds--is another matter."  I emphasized the word myth because I like the sense of our life stories being mythical.

Well, that was one page of reading.

The power of alone

I read a great review of a new book, "Quiet:: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking," today.  Here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html

The author makes the case that we, as a society, have put too much emphasis on group work, team building, and collaboration. Turns out there is a lot of scientific evidence that people work best alone.  From the article, "Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption." The book's author, Susan Cain, describes how group work is now found in the workplace, in schools, even in churches where worship is public and theatrical.

Yet, many of us enjoy and thrive in an environment that is quieter, more subdued, more focused and concentrated.  We like moving at our own pace, not the pace of the group--spending more time on some problems and less on others. Interestingly, electronic communication and collaboration acts more like independent thinking than group work. The anonymity of the screen helps to recreate that sense of independence found in working alone.  We are alone together, and, in this instance, it is good thing.

I crave alone time. Taking long walks alone feels almost essential to my well-being.  I need time during the day to pursue solitude and quiet. As Cain notes, "...most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy."  Learning to balance those two impulses and desires is the key to happiness.

Car conversations

I love car conversations. As a parent you can learn so much.  Here are two tidbits from the last few weeks, gleaned while transporting  two boys, 16 and 17 years old.

"I wish we had better snacks at home. All we have are chips."
"I know what you mean. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen, look in the cupboards, look in the fridge and think, 'There's nothing here that I can make in less than 2 minutes. I'll just have to starve.'"
"Yeah, who wants to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
"Right. It is so much work. You have to get out the bread, get out the peanut butter, get out the jelly, get out a knife."
"Then you have to spread the stuff on the bread, put it together. It takes forever."
"And it's not even worth it!  All that work and all you have is a stupid PBJ."


Here are the comments following a verbal slip I made, running two sentences together.

"Mrs. Himes, that didn't make any sense. You said 'You..Mrs. Fragola and I.'  I didn't understand you."
"No, Sam, there was a period between 'you' and 'Mrs. Fragola.' My mom was saying two separate sentences."
"Oh. Well, Mrs. Himes, you should say your periods better."
"Yeah, Mom. That sounded more like a comma than a period. You didn't really come to a full stop."
"Or maybe a semi-colon.  What good are they anyway?"
"I know! When do you ever need a semi-colon in life?"
"I don't ever use them. Colons, they make sense. But, semi-colons, worthless."

P.S.  My son wants me to note that he called the semicolon a "punctuation abomination."  So noted.

Growing Old

I have been running across some very well-worn ideas about aging and death recently. None of these are my own, none are new or novel, but they seem to be coming together in a new confluence of thinking for me. 

At heart, they have to do with the notion of "growing old" as opposed to "getting old."  As someone who has studied various aspects of aging for nearly 25 years, the idea that we age from the moment of birth is not new. But what does it mean to grow old?  Psychologists have their life stage theories, maybe Erikson's theory of psychosocial development is the best known.  His 7th and 8th stages, in which generativity and integrity are the conflicts, deal with aging directly.  At the end of life we should be able to look back in life review and feel good about what we have done or accomplished.

What I find puzzling, though, is the emphasis on looking back, looking to the past for confirmation of who you are and what you have done. Some critics of Erikson point to his emphasis, throughout the life course, on accomplishment.  "Growing" old would encourage, I think, a more forward perspective.

I've also been reading about death and dying as part of my preparation for hospice work.  Some of the focus is on preparing for death, the tasks that some dying people encounter.  These might include making amends, resolving old interpersonal conflicts, or completing some concrete task (knitting a sweater, compiling a photo album).  Narrative gerontology focuses on the life story. The notion that our lives are stories...they have beginnings, middles, and ends. As authors of our lives do we have a goal of creating a tidy ending? tying up all the loose ends of our story and character before closing the book?