Photo of the Day: Nature's Classroom Edition

Almost as if on cue, the weather changed to give a hint of the autumn to come right as the moving trucks descended upon Cambridge filled with first year students. Class is in session: study hard and be mindful of nature's classroom. She'll teach you well.

Community Politics

It seems that wherever dogs and people come together there is controversy. The politics have gotten a bit tense in my neck of the woods.


I'm not sure when this whole situation started. I've been aware of it since last March. From my vantage point, the current recipe for disaster involves the following ingredients: there is a group of people with well mannered dogs who like to walk their dog without a leash in an open field along our neighborhood reservoir. There are people who are not from the neighborhood who do not have well mannered (or well trained!) dogs who like to walk their dogs without a leash. Still others have well mannered dogs who walk on leashes. There is a local community action committee president that appears not to like people who walk their dogs without leashes very much (regardless of leash status). 


Combine these three ingredients, stir, and you get a whole lot of trouble.


As I talk with neighbors I hear stories of other neighbors taking pictures of people and their dogs and sending it to the police. I hear that those pictures are presented along with a citation to dog owners on their front porch by the police. I've received letters (which all neighbors have received) warning of the leash law and stating that if there are repeated violations dogs may be confiscated. Yours truly, the irreverent psychologist, nearly went off the deep end today when he noticed he was getting his picture taken while playing with his dog on a leash.


What's most sad about this whole situation is that in general, the people arguing about the people walking dogs without a leash and the people who are walking dogs without a leash are the people who spend the most time caring for the reservoir. Both groups of people spend time at the reservoir walking, clearing away litter, and building a community garden. With this controversy neighbors start to distrust neighbors. Many have started walking their dogs elsewhere. 

The results of this? At first nothing. The change was imperceptible. Many still walk their dogs. A few dedicated gardeners still work the soil and coax magnificent plants to blossom. However right under the surface, the steady march of urban decay started back up. The trash, as you can see on the right, is really starting to pile up. The images is what Maggie and I gathered on two sequential mornings while walking. 

With groups of neighbors (often with dogs) no longer gathering at the top of the reservoir to watch the sunset I started noticing larger and larger groups of teens gathering. This isn't a problem in-and-of-itself. However, without the presence of adults, the teens started feeling that the reservoir was a good place to be unsupervised. They bring blankets, beer, and condoms. I find the remains of their adventures in the morning when I'm walking Maggie. Every week I find just a little bit more garbage. 


Of course teens partied at the reservoir when there were more neighbors enjoying the park. Teens (and adults) still left behind litter. It is just that it was more controlled when the younger folks though that they might be noticed. They knew this was a community that was cared for and were likely to care for it themselves. 


With the arrival of more young people and the litter they left behind, I started noticing a steady increase of dog poop underfoot. It took me awhile to understand this. Less dog walkers should mean less dog poop. I finally figured it out a few days ago. There are less responsible dog walkers (with leashes, or without) who are picking up after their dog. Some of those people were also picking up after other dogs, but there is something even more powerful at play. With less responsible dog owners, there is less role modeling. Those that remain walking their dogs (ironically, with leashes) are the ones most likely to leave dog poop behind. 


As urban decay has marched on the problems have increased. Every day there is more litter, more dog poop, more graffiti (I've been noticing more swastikas and such), more remainders of drug deals, and more reports of crime.


I shouldn't be all that surprised. Since 1982 social scientists have spoken about the notion of the broken windows theory. The main idea, taken from the original article, is this:

• Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
• Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

The theory explains itself by three main points. The urban environment (well cared for, or in disrepair) applies influence with three major factors: social norms and conformity; the presence or lack of monitoring; and social signaling and signal crime. What does this mean? The norms of the community greatly influence the behaviors of those who enter it (picking up dog poop vs. not; leaving litter behind versus collecting it and disposing it; stopping to have conversations with neighbors versus ignoring them). Having neighbors who mention "do you need a bag to pick up that poop" applies powerful influence to other neighbors demonstrating that they are being monitored--when monitored people are more likely to conform to social normals. Signal crimes are those that make people generally feel that there is a possibility they are unsafe (graffiti, vandalism, etc.). 


The irony here is that this neighborhood was once the site of an experiment conducted by researchers at Harvard and Suffolk Universities. They looked at the concept of the broken window theory and recorded if there were differences in neighborhoods that received extra attention versus those that did not. The theory was supported by the research and calls to the police dropped nearly 20 percent. 


So what is my point here? My point is this: communities are living breathing creatures that need to be cared for and nurtured. It's so sad to watch neighbors close down, turn inward, and stop relating to each other. The community suffers and the neighborhood starts marching a little closer toward urban decay. 

365 Days of Mindfulness: Part One

I had a great conversation with someone this week about mindfulness. Usually when someone says that word we conjure up blissful images of quiet rooms, comfortable cushions, or maybe a babbling brook. Those are all great images--they can inspire one to take in their surroundings without judgement, evaluation, or thought. It's not a requirement, however. Mindfulness simply put is seeing things as they are while quieting the minds' ongoing narrative about what is being experienced. You can be mindful someplace peaceful. You can also be mindful someplace noisy, upsetting, or otherwise distracting.

For the last 39 days I've been involved in a little project of mind: 365 Days of Mindfulness. My hope is to stand in one spot every day for a year and spend five seconds being mindful. I'm recording the image of what I see from that spot and uploading it to the blog. If you look on the right you'll see a widget window that plays a slideshow of the pictures.

Below is a clip of the first 39 days. What do you see?

The Sparrow and the Hawk

A couple of days ago Maggie and I were out walking and we encountered two hawks. The two of us must have spent an hour watching them dive, swoop, and otherwise go about their hawk-like business. What really captured my interest (a mixture of curiosity, horror, and awe) was when the hawk settled in high up on a telephone pole. 

First I noticed the chatter of other birds. Then I saw a sparrow. One lone sparrow came swooping in on the hawk, fluttering around, then flying away. This process repeated over and over for twenty minutes. Sometimes the bird would flutter in the air. Sometimes the bird would get so close I was fairly sure it was pecking the hawk. 

For the most part the hawk stood still. Finally the hawk caught a gust of rising warm air and soared away, high up into the air.

It got me thinking about a quote that I've posted on Facebook and tweeted about in recent weeks. When the Temple Grandin bio-pic first came out I stopped it at a particular point to write down a quote. At various times I've tweeted that quote and posted it on facebook. I got to thinking about this quote while I was watching the sparrow and the hawk

Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be. -- Temple Grandin

I like this quote. I like it because it serves as a reminder that we have choices about our actions. Watching the sparrow and hawk I realized Temple got this a little wrong (assuming it was Temple who said this and not a script writer).

We often imbue nature with person-like qualities. Nature as mother, for example--or nature as cruel sadist, as another example. Nature however isn't a person--it just is. Neither the sparrow or the hawk were engaged in the very human activity of cruelty. Neither were seeking to harm the other for pleasure, or engaged in behavior devoid of humane emotions. The hawk and sparrow were doing what hawks and sparrows do: the hawk was looking for food, the sparrow was trying to keep the flock from being food. I have no evidence to suggest that either animal has the capacity to make another choice.

We humans--well that's a different story. That's the part Temple got right. By the nature of our cognitive abilities we have been afforded a certain amount of choices. We can choose to be cruel. We can choose not to be. The choices we humans have available to us are seemingly endless. 

This choice can lead to such freedom. History is replete with examples of how easy it is for us to make choices that lead away from freedom.

What kind of choices are you making today?

Is Your Life Folding or Unfolding?

The other day I became fascinated by a comment that someone made in passing. They were talking about how a particular situation was unfolding. What fascinated me wasn't really about the content about what was unfolding (though, that was interesting too). I became transfixed by the image that appeared in my mind of a life unfolding and reveling itself from birth to death.

A nice image. Not anything particularly life-altering. This notion of a something unfolding is a pretty common figure of speech. A Google search of "unfolding experience" results in about 11,800 items. The first three search results:

• A blog entitled "The Unfolding Experience" that opens with this Kahil Gibran quote: "The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. 

• A book for sale entitled Homeopathic Education: The Unfolding of Experience

• A sample of the book "Becoming a Reflexive Practitioner" that says that "The narrative intends to capture the unfolding experience of working or journeying alongside a patient through their health-wellness experience. 

This still isn't what caught my interest. What really distracted me that hour--and for the last couple of weeks--is that generally we don't have lives that unfold. Overtime our lives become folded and compressed. Possibilities of what might be shrink. Our emotional ranges are limited. We become smaller rather than expansive. The world of opportunity that youth and innocence offer us becomes replaced by cynicism and regret.

Whoops.

This might not be the right direction to be moving in, no? I'm becoming much  more aware of how we use language that limits the possibility of what might be--and inviting those I work with to find ways to open their language up more and unfold into something larger. 

Try it out.

365 Days of Mindfulness

This summer I've been thinking about travel. Vacations are a wonderful opportunity to travel together with family and friends, share an experience, create common experiences that can last a lifetime, and deepen and nourish relationships. Vacations can be about learning something new (traveling to historic spots, visiting museums, or learning a new hobby) or about play (getting away from it all at the beach, unplugging from the electronic devices and sleeping under the open sky, or sitting under in a comfortable chair reading a good book).

Vacations can be long or short. They can be far or close to home. Sometimes a vacation might even take the form of a mini-mental vacation. In DBT, one set of skills that are taught are those that IMPROVE the  moment. Improve is an acronym, and the v is for a mini vacation.

Overwhelmed by feelings? At the end of your rope? Try taking a mini-vacation. Close your eyes, use your imagination to fantasize what an ideal peaceful place would be. Perhaps it's a beach, a mountain top, or your favorite comfortable chair. Whatever the case is, a few moments spent on a mini-vacation there helps us slow down and think before we react rather than reacting without thinking.

There is a place near where I live which is an ideal place for me to think about when I take a mini-mental vacation. The local reservoir is a generally peaceful place. Neighbors walk their dogs there. A group of dedicated men and women tend to an ever-growing butterfly garden. Despite being in the middle of an urban environment, birds flock, deer roam, and I can let the natural environment nourish and recharge me when I'm tired, crabby, or down.

I've decided a few days ago that I'm going to start a little project for myself. It's a cross between a mini-vacation, a mindfulness practice, and a photography project. Maggie and I generally go for a walk every morning. Rain or shine, cold or hot, we'll start our day with a few trips around the local reservoir. We've done this for a year now. It's been enjoyable for both of us. I've met lots of neighbors, learned all the local gossip, watched flowers blossom and wither, and seen the seasons change.

I got to thinking that it would be interesting to spend a moment in the same spot every day for a year. What would it be to stand and watch the seasons change? What would I learn from taking a moment to observe every day?

Off to the right I'm adding a slide show widget where I'll upload the pictures as I go along. It's apparently going to take awhile for the slideshow to work: I'm having a few technical difficulties here on Blogger. The images will all be as I see them: no photoshopping, cropping, or editing. In the meantime, while we are waiting for my difficulties to be solved, here is day one of the 365 Days of Mindfulness project. I took the image on July 12, 2010.

What do you notice as the images change? Perhaps you are inspired to do something similar. If you are, make a comment here or send me an e-mail and share what you discover.

The View From Here: About Last Night Edition

I was inspecting my rooftop garden last night. There is a small overhang above my front door with a wrought iron fence around it. When I moved here it was the beginning of my gardening. Since then, I've taken over the whole yard. This remains my favorite place to garden. This year I have three different types of basil, three different kinds of coleus for color, rosemary, nasturtium, a stray pumpkin (I think!) that self seeded from an Autumn scene that I created last year, and a single morning glory plant that self seeded from last summer's window boxes.

Anyway, I was greeted by this glorious cloud. As I stood there watching it grew an arm as if to wave at me. Apparently I wasn't the only one looking up into the sky yesterday: Last Night's Sky.

Cloud watching makes for a useful activity. I frequently use it as a metaphor for mindfulness. In mindfulness, I explain, our thoughts become like clouds. We certainly wouldn't try to control a cloud or fashion it into a particular shape. We can learn to watch our thoughts in the same way: not trying to control or direct them at any way but let them pass in and out of our  mind like a cloud passes through the sky.