And on the seventh day...

“But when you leave, we will still be here. And if we do not drink tea, we cannot make it to tomorrow.”

- Veteran missionaries, to bright-eyed young missionaries

I just finished reading a book called, Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity by Keri Wyatt Kent. It’s a book that runs counter to the go-go-go world that society forces down our throat. It approaches the idea of the Sabbath from several different angles, and highlights the general importance of rest. Overall, moderately readable book, super important message.

I know I’m guilty of worshiping the productivity gods. In college I ran cross country, and took classic pre-med classes like biochemistry and physics. Basically, I was surrounded with overachievers of all kinds, and I thought I worked hard, but I was always blown away by the level of commitment displayed by my peers.

Being surrounded by such an overachieving atmosphere, my competitive side drew me to want gold stars, and push myself more and more. I figured, people would like me more, only if I did more. This tendency caused me to burn out repeatedly, and then go into a vegetable-like coma for days, inefficiently trying to recover.

At the same time, I also noticed that my peers had a frantic aura of not having enough time. I felt like I couldn’t ask them to help me with a problem set, cover one of my shifts at work, or even just chat about my problems. Seeing how inaccessible this made them, I promised myself not to carry that same aura.

So anyways, this desire to be accessible has intrigued me with the idea of Sabbath. Rest raised the important point that Sabbath is not just about rest and veging out, ie - sitting mindlessly in front of the TV for hours on end or sleeping through half the day.

Instead, it’s about separating ourselves from our self-importance, appreciating the people around us, and replenishing ourselves with the energy we need to face the week. I love this concept of intentional recovery, not only so I don’t have to deal with the stress of burnout, but also just so I can be accessible, and generally a nice person.

I think this sort of rest has to include a general mentality of rest, in addition to a set of behaviors.

As far as the mentality goes, it has to be an ongoing - every day and every moment - type of mentality focusing on rest. Simply being appreciative of those few moments in the middle of a busy day that I can take to read the sports section of the paper, or take an extra minute to breathe before I rush out of the shower. I kind of imagine stress being a cumulative thing, where I try not to let it get past a tipping point, so those small moments of reducing my stress level is a huge help.

The set of behaviors is a lot more complicated for me to figure out. As for a starting point, as much as it pains me not to “be productive” for a day, I think it has to start with taking a day off from work. Then, the focus has to move to those life-replenishing things. For me, I need enough alone time to blow off some steam by working out, but also time to reflect on my week by writing, like now.

Anyways, hopefully focusing on rest will help me make it to tomorrow.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Happiness is a big smiling stuffed animal dolphin pillow

Last July, I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and her similarly titled blog. In her book, she has a chapter on career growth, the importance of constantly exposing yourself to criticism, and how she was inspired to start her blog. Reading the fear she overcame in starting her own blog was really what tipped me over the edge and put my writing public.

On said blog, she occasionally profiles different writers and asks her the following questions about happiness, to discover more life truths that other people have discovered. I thought it might be fun for me to attack these questions myself. Anyways, some thoughts:

What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?

Showering. It just feels like a moment of quiet, peace, and cleanliness. I hate feeling sweaty and sticky, so it feels good to be clean and smell good. I can’t really explain why this makes me feel better, it just does and I love it. Let’s move on.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?

I love being busy, challenging myself to become better, and stretching myself as far as possible. That always comes with taking on too much, and at the end of it, I just don’t have the mental and spiritual energy to appropriately deal with that stress. I’ve let that affect my relationships in the past, so I want to be aware of how far into fatigue debt I am.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?

It goes on. A few summers ago, I spent my life on a ranch in Wyoming. That summer I memorized several Robert Frost poems. I like him because of his understanding of life’s transitoriness (not a word, but should be). Anyways, Frost was quoted,

“If there is one thing I’ve learned about life, it is this: it goes on.”

This may be one of the most important things I’ve ever learned. Life has ups and downs, but usually, it goes on. It’s prevented me from letting myself get paralyzed and dwelling on the downs.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?

Yes, always. I always try to find ways to relieve my stress, find ways to optimize my general outlook towards life. I recently read Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, a book about what religious history tells us about compassion. One of my favorite parts was about Buddhism.

When Siddhattha Gotama (the Buddha’s real name, thanks Wikipedia for making me look smarter than I am) attained enlightenment and inner peace towards the suffering brought on by life, he didn’t just sit by himself and enjoy his enlightened state. Rather, he took it upon himself to spread his newfound understanding and empower others to enjoy the relief that came with such peace.

My guess is that it’s not a zero/one question of do you have peace or not, but I think this is the purpose of life. To endure suffering, gain peace, and help others through their suffering. I think “happier” is analogous to “peace.” So yes, I do work on being happier.

I cut out some questions in the interest of length, but those are some thoughts I had on happiness.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

How's life today?

Have you ever thought, I should make an attempt to talk to (insert person you interact with but don’t actually talk to, like a grocery store cashier or bus driver)? Did you decide to make small talk with them by asking, “How’s it going?” or “How are you?” Was their verbal response, “Fine” or “Good, you?” but their body language sounded more like, “Move it along, nothing to see here.”

I’ve been thinking about this dilemma for a while, wondering how I can avoid too much awkwardness, but also get an actual answer instead of a programmed response.

Sidenote: I’ve been thinking about this situation a lot because I volunteer at a needle exchange.

Sidenote again: For those of you who don’t know, a needle exchange is a public health program that provides injection drug users with free clean needles. In Portland, heroin is the drug of choice, and there’s a lot of Hep C and HIV carriers walking around, so we’re trying to reduce the transmission of these diseases. We’re also secretly trying to get everybody addicted to heroin, but do us a favor and don’t tell the needle exchange haters. Just kidding.

Basically, here’s what happens: my volunteer buddy and I sit in a room chatting until a client walks in, counts out their dirty needles, drops them off in a biohazard bin, we swap them out for clean needles, ask their age, and they go on with their day. Repeat for about 200 clients, and that’s a day in the life.

I’m all about the needle exchange kool-aid, but not because of its hotly debated public health benefits. I love it because it provides a safe-haven for people who have been told by society that they are failures and useless.

“But Ken!”, you might be thinking, “Don’t drug users deserve to be shit on by society because they made a bad choice?” That can be argued, of course. But as someone who has had to make a choice before, I think it’s hard to make the right choice all the time, or even a right choice. It’s even harder when it feels like nobody cares about your decision or their consequences.

Having just one person be nice to you, even if it’s only for a short two-minute interaction, can snap you back into a totally shifted view of reality. I know lots of times I find myself feeling alone in the lab, grinding out a gel-running-pipetting-tissue-harvesting session, completely forgetting that people exist. Then, I’ll take a break to get coffee, the barista will be nice to me, and it stupidly feels like a total shock to the system, “Whoa, I forgot that people exist in the world, and that people can be nice. Well, I guess I should be nice too.”

But it’s hard to make people feel cared for, right? Especially in such a robotic interaction like our needle exchange where the regulars have the routine down and are in out and within a minute.

I recently got some fantastic advice: to ask the question, “How’s life today?” This was a huge breakthrough for me.

I’ve been testing this question out at the needle exchange, at Trader Joe’s, and people definitely gave me a more personal response to: “How’s life today?” One of our needle exchange regulars that I’ve started to establish some rapport with replied with a pained twang in his voice, “It’s been tough today.. but thanks a lot for asking man. How’s your’s?” It was a small victory, but it made my day.

Anyways, that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the past week.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

The Wisdom of Surfers

Jack Johnson once asked, “Where’d all the good people go?”

Several times on this blog, I’ve tried to work through my thoughts on what angle I want to take on social justice. [What is Social Justice?, From the one who has been entrusted with much] I’ve been involved from several different angles ranging from global poverty awareness, biomedical research, homelessness, to drug addiction. Seeing this range of problems, and combining that with the introspection that goes into this blog has really focused my eyes on an overarching question.

“Where’d all the good people go?”

I think the world lacks virtuous human beings, those that my friend Mooks and I would refer to as beasts at life.

Sidenote: Mooks and I once did a beasts at life fantasy draft over email, which was mostly to discuss people we knew, and the qualities that made them good at life. We did this to emphasize to ourselves, that there were traditional metrics used to measure human beings like physical appearance, income, popularity, number of cars, hotness of trophy wife, etc., and then there was a separate set of qualities we thought made you a beast at life.

Reading this book reminded me of something I said to myself last summer. I had just wrapped up my undergrad and I was planning on taking two years off before heading back to med school. I thought about why I wanted to take those two years off, and I reached the conclusion: I am at an academic level necessary to be the doctor I want to be, but I hadn’t attained the level of human being, aka beast of life status, that I needed.

Sidenote: you might think it’s cocky to try to be a “beast at life,” and you are probably right.

Anyways, I recently heard of Ben Franklin’s quest to attain moral perfection, which he started as a twenty year old. He took a systematic approach by listing out thirteen essential virtues and the days of the week. Each day he failed at one of the virtues he would put an x next to that box, with the goal of attaining as few x’s as possible.

The combination of the Jack Johnson’s song, Mooks’ idea of “beast at life”, and Ben Franklin’s systematic approach to attaining moral perfection, has motivated me to make a similar list of virtues. But instead of having the goal of attaining moral perfection, I would like to attain, being a beast at life. Mostly because I think it sounds better.

Anyways, based on qualities Mooks and I loved in others, here’s my list

Humility – Prioritize others, swallow pride.
Moderation – Some is good, more is not better.
Independence – A Ken can only be a good Ken.
Sacrifice – I want to sacrifice, but without placing this sort of burden on others: “FINE! I’ll do this for you, but you owe me a BIG one.”
Working Hard – When I die, I want my friends and enemies to say two things about me. 1- Yeah, he was a good guy, he helped me once. 2- Yeah, I don’t know if he was a good guy, but he sure worked hard. In fact, I might just want to hear the second one.
Gratitude – Keep on the sunny side.
Control – Have emotions, don’t let them have you.
Humility, again – Accept my limits.

To bring this back to social justice, the word radical and the word radish come from the same latin word meaning root. And so, a radical, like a radish, must always be concerned with its roots. I think the root cause of the global AIDS epidemic, homelessness, drug addiction, and maybe all social justice issues is that there are not enough good people in the world. I think we as humans need to be stronger.

I want to know what makes a beast at life, a beast, and more importantly, I want to know what prevents people from becoming a beast at life.

Arthur Lydiard, a legendary running coach who revolutionized distance running, was famous for having initially experimented his radical training methods on himself, an average runner. So, I figured it would be appropriate for me to experiment different aspects and angles on being a beast at life on myself, an average human being.

I have no deceptions about this, and I don’t expect to ever attain moral perfection, or maybe even reach a level of human being that I can accept as beast at life, but, I think I will have a lot of fun trying.

Worst case scenario, to turn back to the words of Jack Johnson:

“I want to turn the whole thing upside down, and I’ll share this love I find with everyone.”

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com