To Sleep...

I just started reading The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington. Here are two interesting passages from the introduction.

...do you know what happens if you type the words “why am I” into Google? Before you can type the next word, Google's autocomplete function—based on the most common searches—helpfully offers to finish your thought. The first suggestion: “why am I so tired?”

I'm confident you will come away from this exploration with a newfound respect for sleep. But you may also find yourself beginning a love affair with it. We need to reclaim this special realm—not just because sleep makes us better at our jobs (thought there's that) and not just because it makes us healthier in every way (there is that, too) but also because of the unique way it allows us to connect with a deeper part of ourselves. Because when we are asleep, the things that define our identity when we-re awake—our jobs, our relationships, our hopes our fear—recede. And that makes possible one of the lease discussed benefits (or miracles, really) of sleep: the way it allows us, once we return from our night's journey, to see the world anew, with fresh eyes and a reinvigorated spirit, to step out of time and come back to our lives restored...

The Mystery of Love

In 1996 Mariana Cook interviewed Michelle and Barack Obama. Barack said this about Michelle.

Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her. And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.

Joy

Yesterday's post was so grim, I need to show the other side of things today. I'm sure I've posted this flash mob before, but here it is again, today, bet flash mob I've ever seen.

Hell in Europe

I haven't posted much here for awhile, partly because I have been reading this tome. It my be the hardest book I have ever read. It's long, dense, and full of horror. Chapter 8, “Hell on Earth,” begins with this description of World War Two which is close to a summary of the book. I'm left marveling at the awfulness and amazed that Europe has recovered so well. 

For millions of Europeans the Second World War, more even than the First, was the closest they came to hell on earth. The death toll alone—over 40 million just in Europe, more than four times as high as in the first World War—gives a sense of the horror. The losses defy the imagination. The Soviet Union's alone were more than 25 million. Germany's dead numbered around 7 million, Poland's 6 million. The bare figures convey nothing of the extremities of their suffering, or the misery inflicted on countless families. Nor do they give any impression of the geographical weighting of the immense casualties....

Unlike the First World War civilian deaths in the Second greatly outnumbered those of the fighting troops. This was, much more than the earlier great conflict, a war that enveloped whole societies. The high death rate among civilians was not least a consequence of the genocidal nature of the Second World War. For, unlike the war of 1914-18, genocide lay at the heart of the later great conflagration. This war brought an assault on humanity unprecedented in history. It was a descent into the abyss never previously encountered, the devastation of all the ideals of civilization that had arisen from the Enlightenment. It was a war of apocalyptic proportions, Europe's Armageddon.

I was inspired to read this book after consuming a lot of both prose and fiction about WWII. The book provided an overall context, but it's a hard to comprehend so much suffering. What else can I say?

Decisions, Decisions

I have been rereading parts of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I guess it could fall in to the self-help genre, but what makes it particularly interesting to me is reports on research and studies that help us identify barriers to change. I have been reading it this time from the perspective of ways this research could help my dyslexic grandson improve his reading. As I watched him read and write today, I was aware of how many decisions he needed to make every time he read or wrote. “Is it this or that?” So much of it is not automatic to him. Over and over again, he must ask, “Is it this or that?” And over and over, he must struggle with self control. The authors emphasize that both self-control and decision making are exhausting. No wonder my grandson is reluctant to read and write; it's tiring work. And no wonder I'm procrastinating with a writing project right now. It's at the stage where many decisions are required.