If You're Not Laughing, You're Not Doing it Right

"It is a happy talent to know how to play."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yesterday concluded my week of spring vacation, and despite the incessant rain and the fact that I was trapped inside for days on end, it was nevertheless great having free time. Nine days--216 hours--which I didn't completely waste on naps.

I managed, despite being housebound, to spend some quality time playing. In my world, this meant doing craft projects, painting furniture I bought off Craigslist, reading,goofing around with Frida, and riding my bike before the rubber on the tires decays from lack of use.

The good news is that time spent playing is not squandered, according to researchers. In Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart Brown, M.D. shares a plethora of anecdotal and scientific research indicating that not only is play important, it is absolutely vital for the health and development of the brain. And the data applies not just to children, but to adults as well. "Play...seems to continue the process of neural evolution...it promotes the creation of new connections that didn't exist before...play seems to be one of the most advanced methods nature has invented to allow a complex brain to create itself." Even if you're not interested in getting any smarter, you might be inclined to play for the health benefits. "People who continue to play games are less likely to get heart disease and other afflictions that seem to have nothing to do with the brain," Brown writes.
He devotes a significant portion of the book to the play we're most familiar with--the stuff kids do when their parents tell them to go outside. Unfortunately, he notes, unstructured playtime has become more rare, usurped by scheduled playdates, organized sports teams, assorted lessons, and other activities planned by adults. The quest for improved standardized test scores in schools also forces cut-backs in the arts, P.E., and music, something Brown says is "the wrong approach" for many reasons. "Play isn't the enemy of learning," Brown writes. "It's learning's partner. Play is like fertilizer for brain growth. It's crazy not to use it." In addition, today's students will face a work world required more ingenuity and creativity than ever before--thinking skills best developed in unstructured, imaginative play and exploratory music and art classes.

Adults, too, have to give themselves permission to play. We've been led to believe that playing or goofing off is a waste of time, but the opposite is true--in all arenas. Not only do studies show that adults who play stave off dementia and other health issues, they're also happier (duh) and better employees. "Employees who have engaged in play throughout their lives outside of work and bring that emotion to the office are able to do well at work-related tasks that might seem to have no connection to work at all," Brown says. "Respecting our biological need for play can bring back excitement and newness to the job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process...work does not work without play." So all the practical jokes we execute at work? Not just harmess pranks. They're brain builders. Remember that the next time someone covers your car windows with Post-it notes.

Despite the weather (which is beautiful, of course, now that I'm back at work), I played as much as I could last week: hung with my aging buddy Kosha, took Frida to the dog park, biked with Laural and my roommate, played Scrabbled, hot-tubbed, and watched another 47 (or so) episodes of Rescue Me; I did some yardening, read, napped, visited my nephew, family, and friends, went on the Downtown Gallery Walk, made it to the gym a few times, and basically pursued my usualness with freedom and frivolity. Yes, the weather sucks a lot of the time, chores have to be done, and therenever seems to be enough energy/money/time. But whatever you do, if If you're laughing, you're playing. And I don't know what's any better than that.

This Is Your Brain on Books. Also, Another Death Book.

One of the ways I try to convince my students to read is by sharing with them the irrefutable data that reading regularly changes their brains. Actual, physical activities happen upstairs when the cells are activated by the introductions of letters, words, and the ideas and stories resulting from their combinations. "Think of me as a P.E. teacher, only for your brain," I tell them. "It's my job to motivate you to exercise and strengthen those brain cells by reading, just the way your P.E. teacher tries to help you develop a strong body by making you play badminton and go power-walking."

Since I've been a librarian, I'm forever on the look-out for information supporting the connection between reading and brain power. Luckily, there is a lot of it. And none that I've found (so far) that says any kind of reading is harmful to brain cells, unless you're lounging around with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a crack pipe while trying to read the instructions on a rocket launcher. The research is pretty conclusive: read more=strengthen the connections between neurons=solve problems more effectively=kick your roommates' butts on crossword puzzles=live happily ever after.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor University whose first book of fiction, Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife, is a stunning collection of forty short stories--all addressing the question, "What, if anything, happens when we die?" Eagleman has impressively imagined some possibilities in language so clear and yet so artful that it reads like poetry. He obviously not only understands the brain, but has one of his own that is adept at orchestrating some amazing unions between words and ideas.

In the opening story, "Sum," the dead experience their lives over again--except this time, all like activities are grouped together and occur in a clump before the next event happens: two weeks are spent counting money, 18 days staring into the fridge, seven months having sex, etc. "In this afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny, swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand."

In "Mary," the dead discover that Mary Shelley sits on a throne, protected by angels, because God's favorite book is Frankenstein. Having created humans and watched them destroy each other, God now "locks Himself in His room, and at night sneaks out onto the roof with Frankenstein, reading again and again how Dr. Victor Frankenstein is taunted by his merciless monster...and God consoles Himself with the thought that all creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought."

Although generally serious in tone, throughout Sum there is an undercurrent of intelligent humor--not mocking, exactly, but a sly questioning of assorted systems of belief and their corresponding visions of the afterlife: we live forever, we are punished, we celebrate, we are reunited, we are remembered, we remember, we are completely forgotten, we forget everything we ever knew; we are exactly the way we were on earth, only better. Or worse.

In examining our perceptions about death, Eagleman creates a remarkably insightful dissection of how we live, and in particular, how we think about ourselves. We are gargantuan and meaningful or infintismally inconsequential. We are everything, or we are nothing.

The Person Your Dog Knows You Are

"It's just like magic. When you live by yourself, all of your annoying habits are gone," says humorist Merrill Markoe, and I couldn't agree more, especially now that I have three roommates, and I'm suddenly aware that some of the stuff I could get away with when I lived alone is no longer acceptable, like leaving the dryer full of unmentionables and neglecting the cat box for a week at a time. Having roommates has made me more conscientious, although I'm a little paranoid after reading Matt Haig's novel, The Labrador Pact, that I have always been under another set of watchful eyes...

Prince is a black Labrador who oversees the well-being of the Hunter family--parents Adam and Kate and teenagers Charlotte and Hal--as part of an age old pact created by Labradors in which they vow allegiance to their humans. "Duty above all" is their mantra.

Unbeknownst to humans, dogs are able to communicate with one another, and they can understand people when they talk. This makes them witness to the most private moments of their masters and families. Because dogs are also keenly aware of smells and subtler nuances, Prince informs us, they are able to predict human's emotions before the people themselves show any signs that they're happy, worried, depressed, or whatever.

As the story begins, Prince informs us that he is on his way to the vet to be euthanizied; knowing he's going to die, he takes us back through the series of experiences leading up to his execution day--events which were mandated by his adherence to the Labrador Pact.

When he senses his family falling apart, Prince collaborates with his best canine friends, Henry and Falstaff, to set about saving the Hunters from themselves. Adam and Kate are both acting suspicious and prickly, hovering on the verge of adultery and divorce, the teenage daughter Charlotte is dating a creep, and older son Hal is partying and defying his folks. Worse, an old friend of Adam's from the past, Simon, re-enters their lives, and Prince is immediately alerted to the threat he poses, and knows it is his duty to protect his people from this intruder. Unfortunately, the steps he must take require him to violate the Pact and sacrifice himself for the safety of the Hunter family.

"Humans don't realise it," we are told, "but the speed of our wag directly impacts their own happiness. Our tails dictate the rhythm of Family life..." Unfortunately, Prince isn't able to save Adam, Kate, Charlotte, and Hal with simple tail-wagging. But his narration --his wry observations of family life, his commitment to the Hunters' happiness, and his earnest, loving, and ultimately doomed attempt to make all right in their world--is absorbing and endearing. I can only hope that Frida, despite the many unseemly things she may have witnessed (and I'm only implicating myself here, not roommates Cynthia, Chris, and Mark), shares Prince's feelings of duty and devotion...or least, my sense of the same for her.

I Promise: Next Week, I Won't Write about Death

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for BUST magazine about my decision to donate my body to the University of Tennessee's Anthropological Research Facility, a.k.a. The Body Farm. Besides the whole recycling aspect of donation, and my qualms about the funeral industry (see Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death for complete details), I like the idea that my remains might solve crimes.

I have always been intrigued by mysteries, and especially real-life stories of disappearances and murders. It isn't the grisliness that appeals to me, it's the psychology behind the stories that I am gripped by--the why rather than the what or the how. For that reason, I'm pretty finicky about the "true crime" that I read--see the sidebar for a list of my all-time favorites--they have to have some unique quality or focus that distinguishes them from the dozens of grocery-store paperbacks that appear on the shelves. They have to reveal something new about behavior and life, something that helps.

Kathryn Harrison's book While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family, fit my criteria. Ostensibly about Billy Gilley's 1984 murder of his parents and sister in Medford, Oregon, it's really about the psychology of family; the impact of violence, and the possibility and process of healing in the aftermath of horror. Because Gilley spared his older sister, Jody, Harrison has access to the only person besides the murderer who can offer insight into the crimes, and much of the research she did for While They Slept involved meeting with Jody again and again to find out what happened in her family prior to its destruction and how, in the twenty years since, she has created a successful, happy life despite her shocking history.

Harrison carefully examines the pathology of the Gilley family, exposing the Gilleys as abusive parents who failed to nurture their son; the child protection services that failed to investigate claims of abuse in the home, and the mentality of the man whose rage and warped sense of justice made him a killer. She juxtaposes Billy Gilley's psyche with that of the sister he spared--a woman who, growing up, retreated from the violence and mistreatment in the home by surrounding herself with books, and one who ultimately has repaired the damage that was done before and after her parents were killed.

Harrison is a gifted writer, able to pull together the many complex elements of this story and the lives of each member of the Gilley family to create an account that is certain to be compared to In Cold Blood for both its literary quality and its insightful and unique approach to the analysis of tragedy.

You Learn Something Everyday, Whether You Want to or Not

My friend Dorothy passed away recently at the age of 79. We didn't know each other long--that's us on our first outing, the annual Seniors' Picnic at Hovander Park last August--but even in our brief friendship, I gleaned a lot about living from her stories.

Now that I don't have Dorothy to learn from, I try to connect with other older people and steal their smarts. I'm not going to name names here, but let's just say that a) there are a lot of people older than me and b) there are even more who are smarter. I'm not even smart enough to have come up with the idea of getting smarter by listening to what old people have to say about life. Someone else thought of it, wrote a book about it, and is now probably not selling his stuff on Craigslist to pay the mortgage.

Henry Alford recently published How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth),an entertaining exploration of what older people have to teach us about life. Rather than a collection of pithy anecdotes or sweet stories, the book is a memoir of Alford’s visits with numerous elders who have experienced great achievements, sorrow, fame, or simply, ordinariness. Among his subjects are Ram Dass, Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom, Edward Albee, Ashleigh Brilliant, and his own mother—whose life is profoundly affected by her son’s quest for information.

Alford's subjects have plenty of wisdom to offer him and his readers, bu Edward Albee may have stated it best in his play Three Tall Women, when a character says she's wise because she's given up her illusions about the past and future and settled in the present. "Enough shit gone through to have a sense of the shit that's ahead, but way past sitting and playing in it," she says. And that, quite possibly, is the sum of the wisdom Alford gathers from all of his interviewees: getting old means growing wise not because you've collected facts, but because you've collected experiences, which translate into perspective. Alford says this kind of wisdom is "hard-won, forged as it is in the crucible of failure," and cites researcher Ekhonon Goldberg, who says wisdom is a product of the accumulation of cognitive templates--basically, we get increasingly better at recognizing patters, whether they be in economics, relationships, work situations, or whatever.

In addition to talking to actual old people, author Alford spoke with theorists specializing in wisdom--what it is, how people get it, how you can snag some of your own--and found (unsurprisingly) a lot of variation. The best answer came from psychologist Robert Sternberg, who identifies four components of wisdom: using knowledge and skills for the common good; balancing interpersonal and extrapersonal goals, balancing short-term and long-term interests, and "dialogical thinking"--i.e. the ability to see other people's points of view. I might add that the wisest older people I know personally (pictured here are three of them: Aunts Marge and Barbara and Uncle Herb) are those that keep on keepin' on: they take up painting at 68 or still referee soccer games at 69, or continue working at jobs they love until they're 84, like Aunt Barbara.

Alford ends the book by seeking out aphorisms from numerous old people; basically, he's looking for their lives' wisdom summed up in a single phrase. And he finds a lot of it, most notably from Ashleigh Brilliant, the most-quoted writer in history, who is known for his some 10,000 copyrighted epigrams, quips that are generally clever and sometimes corny. Old people like to talk--Dorothy told some fantastic stories about growing up in small-town Idaho, but the end of this book seems to suggest that all of what we learn in life can be boiled down to simple bits of truth. Wisdom, it turns out, isn't necessarily about knowing a lot, but about knowing what matters.