Greatness

There was a time when I played poker regularly and I was pretty good.  I ended each year winning more than I lost, which put me in the top 10% of visitors to the casino.  However, I calculated that I was winning approximately fifty cents for every hour that I played.  Giving up my day job was never an option.  As I said, I was pretty good, but not great.

There are few who are truly great.  Why not me?  Searching for an answer, I read a biography about Stu Ungar, arguably the greatest poker player ever.  He was a genius, with a photographic memory, a quick mind for numbers, a quick read on his opponents coupled together with absolute fearlessness at the poker table.  Ungar has the distinction of being the only three-time champion of The World Series of Poker main event.

In his first attempt in 1980, Ungar won The World Series of Poker by defeating the legendary Doyle Brunson.  At that time, Ungar was the youngest winner ever. His win was no fluke.  The following year he won his second title.  However, Ungar did not win his third and final championship until 1997.  During much of that sixteen-year hiatus, Ungar lived a wild, roller-coaster lifestyle.  He was a high stakes gambler. On more than one occasion he won a million dollars, only to go broke soon thereafter on ill-advised sports betting.  When winning, he was lavishly generous to friends.  When losing, he could be abusive to card dealers and less-skilled opponents.  Ungar loved the fast life.  He didn’t sit down to eat.  He could go for days without sleep.  Maybe he had ADHD.  Maybe he was bipolar. However, close friends attribute his ultimate downfall to hardcore drug abuse.  After destroying his nose snorting cocaine, when he could no longer snort, he switched to crack cocaine.

Stu Ungar was my age.  He was born 2 months before I was.  He died on my 45th birthday. The cause of his death was heart failure attributed to chronic drug abuse.  In his lifetime, it is estimated that he won over $30-million dollars playing poker.  When he died, he had only $800 dollars in his possession, all that was left from a $25,000 loan.

Biographies can inspire and inform.  Ungar’s biography is not inspiring, but it does inform.  It is a warning. Stu Ungar was a great poker player, maybe the greatest ever.   He was one of the most fearless players ever, but there is a fine line between ‘fearless’ and ‘reckless’.  Ungar was ‘reckless’ in life.  He lacked perspective and priority.  The thrill of the bet, the rush of the game, like the rush of cocaine, was an end unto itself. Sadly, the fearlessness that made him so formidable at the poker table, was ultimately the recklessness that destroyed his life.  Ungar had talent and genius.  He was a great poker player, but greatness came at too high a price.

Is this story only about Stu Ungar and poker?  Is there's a broader lesson to consider, perhaps a lesson in-general about the high cost of greatness?  When it comes to poker, I'm okay with being pretty good.

Maybe next, I'll read a biography about the world’s greatest blogger.

Gratitude

“Who are rich?  Those who are content with their portion.”  (attributed to Simon ben Zoma, early 2nd century)

C.S. Lewis was a renowned and influential writer, perhaps best known as author of the children’s stories The Chronicles of Narnia.  He was a professor of literature at Cambridge University, a friend and colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien, and an atheist turned Christian.  In 1942, living and writing in war-torn England, he published The Screwtape Letters, a witty yet serious treatise on evil.  In the story, Screwtape is an experienced demon who mentors his nephew Wormwood, a demon-in-training.  Wormwood’s task is to obtain a human’s soul for damnation.  In order to do this, he must successfully exploit the vulnerabilities of his human subject.  

Through letters to his nephew, Screwtape describes a series of effective damning techniques.  In one letter, he tells Wormwood to use “the horror of the Same Old Thing.”  Screwtape explains, for humans there is a natural pleasure experienced with change.  The devil must twist this “into a demand for absolute novelty.”  It is the devil’s task to discourage satisfaction with the status quo.  The goal is to create an unquenchable desire for change by constantly promoting new tastes and new fashions.  Make what is new today, obsolete tomorrow.  The resulting unrest and desire will lead to avarice which will, in-turn, set in motion the endless and futile pursuit of material acquisition.

Seen as allegorical, Screwtape encourages Wormwood to be a good marketer, a good advertiser.  After all, it is the purpose of advertising to create an unquenchable desire for change by promoting new tastes and fashions. And when successful, good advertising can set in motion the endless pursuit of material acquisition.  Advertising is everywhere.  It influences visually and verbally, consciously and unconsciously, by methods that are subtle and sophisticated.  Success in advertising depends on its ability to create unrest, craving, and dissatisfaction with the status quo. The emotional reaction to advertising is ”I need,” “I want,”  and “I gotta have.” Advertising needs us to be unhappy. Advertising works.  It is a savvy multi-billion-dollar industry.  It is embedded into our daily lives and it's not going away.  I have long contended that the most harmful effect of media is the cumulative impact of constant advertising.  I have called the impact of advertising “toxic.”  I believe that C.S. Lewis would have called it “evil.”

If, as I contend, advertising is the toxin, what then is the remedy, the antidote?  I believe the answer is "gratitude."  Perhaps a thank-you a day can keep Screwtape at bay.  We protect ourselves by giving thanks for what we have and for who we are.  We must remember to say, “I’m thankful,” “I’m blessed,” “I have enough.”  In a materialistic society, constantly bombarded by toxic advertising, it is important to regularly inoculate ourselves with a dose of gratitude.

In my work, I was often asked by parents how to raise a happy child.  I replied, “Teach your child to say thank-you.”

When I Was a Little Boy

“When I was a little boy . . .”, the opening words of a tale told by a grandfather to his grandchild.

When I was a little boy, telephones were black, sat on a table and actually had to be dialed.  I remember the first push-button phones.  I remember the first stream-lined ‘Princess’ phones that came in a variety of colors.  I remember that you could dial long-distance direct, or you could place a call through the operator asking to ‘call collect’ or ‘person-to-person’.  In those days, when people traveled, they seldom made long-distance calls.  It was too expensive.  Instead, they wrote letters and sent postcards.

When I was a little boy, I listened to music on my record player.  I remember my first ‘hi-fi stereo’.  Records were vinyl, easily scratched and warped.  Single song records were called '45’s', the speed at which they played.  The larger records played at ‘78’, that is until the first LP’s (long-playing records) came along and they played at ‘33’.  For laughs, we would play 45 records at a 78 speed.  I could make The Kingston Trio sound just like The Chipmunks.

When I was a little boy, I remember my grandfather buying one of the first color television sets.  It was a big piece of furniture, sticking out a few feet into the room.  In those days, most of the T.V. shows were still in black and white, but a few were in ‘living color’.  You had to get out of your chair to change the channel, at least until my grandfather bought one of the first remote control T.V.s.  You had to constantly turn knobs to adjust the color and use the horizontal control so the picture wouldn’t roll.

When I was a little boy, there were five channels to choose from; ABC, NBC, CBS, a local station and the educational channel.  All the stations signed off-the-air by midnight to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner and came back on-the-air by 6:00 or 7:00 the next morning.  On Saturday mornings, before anyone ever heard of binge-watching, my cousin and I would binge-watch cartoons. On Sunday nights my parents would watch Ed Sullivan.  During the remainder of the week, I would watch an assortment of Westerns, variety-shows and sitcoms complete with all the commercials.  To this day, I can recite many of the commercial jingles.

When I was a little boy, the content of television shows was tightly regulated.  It was all ‘family friendly’.  Married couples slept apart in twin beds and women did housework in dresses and pearls.  T.V. portrayed a sanitized, fantasy version of mostly white upper-middle-class families, nothing at all like real life.  But, when I was a little boy, I didn’t know any better.

When I was a little boy, children watched on average about 2 hours of television each day. Televisions were the only screens. Today, children spend 7 or 8 hours daily in front of some kind of screen or other.  When my mother said to turn off the T.V. there was only one screen in the house for her to worry about.  And what did I do with those extra 6 hours in a day?  I played with my toys.  I read lots of books.  I learned to play board games and card games.  I played outside with the neighbors.  I got together, face-to-face, with my friends.  I had conversations with the grown-ups.  And, with no screens to distract me, I loved listening to my grandfather tell me tales about when he was a little boy.

A Childhood Song

Sue and I were on a car trip, talking about music.  Given my profession as a Child Psychiatrist and hers as an Early Childhood Education Director, it was inevitable that we would discuss children’s music.  We both agreed about the profound importance of music to children of all ages, even the very young.  We reminisced about the songs we once sang to our children.  Then we began to sing, and to listen to the words as we imagined our children might have heard them.  Humorously we observed that lyrics sometime soothe (“rock-a-bye baby”), and sometime do not (“down will come baby, cradle and all”).

We continued singing.  “you put your right hand in and you shake it all about.”  We recalled the satirical bumper sticker that asked, “Is the Hokey Pokey really what it’s all about?”

We laughed and sang some more.  “Row row row your boat.”  Jokingly, we began to analyze the meaning of these words.  However, we soon realized that, quite unlike the Hokey Pokey, this apparently simple tune with simple words was not so simple after all.  Did whoever write the lyrics to this tune intend to convey to children a subtle message, a first philosophy-of-life lesson?

ROW ROW ROW.  This three-letter word, repeated three times, implies a great truth.  Life is hard and one must work.

YOUR BOAT.  As used by many poets, writers, and lyricists, the boat is a metaphor for the vessel that is our body and ours alone, a vessel that must be steered through the vicissitudes of life.

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM.  We must row, not always fighting against the currents of life, but moving forward gently where the stream of life leads.

MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY.  Not just three, but four times repeated, attitude is everything.  Approach life joyously.

LIFE IS BUT A DREAM.  These words introduce the great mystery of existence.  Life is a vapor, a fleeting breath, short, transient.

Finally, I am reminded that ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT is often sung as a round.  We can live in harmony and in rhythm with those around us.  We can make music together, while each of us sing in our own voice.

Stay tuned.  Sometime In a future blog, I shall attempt to unlock the deep and hidden meaning of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Parenting

“For to miss the joy is to miss all.”  (R.L. Stevenson)

There are hundreds of books offering advice to parents.  The books range from the very straight-forward to the very philosophic.  Some are written about specific challenges.  Others provide a general overview of parenting. Some are practical how-to books.  Others tend to focus on the parent-child relationship.  There are so many books because there are so many parents asking questions and there is no one right answer.  When it comes to raising children, there is little scientific consensus.  There is mostly opinion.

I taught a course on parent guidance to young doctors.  In this course we reviewed many parenting books, good and bad.  Though each author had a unique perspective and opinion to offer, there were themes, ideas about ‘good parenting’, that seemed to reoccur through many of the books.  From this, my class distilled forty principles of good parenting.  Here are eleven of them.

1.    Principle I:  Parents must provide children with the basics; food shelter, medical care, and a safe protected environment.  All other principles are secondary and contingent upon this first.

2.    Principle II:  Parents must provide leadership.  Good leadership is calm and confident.  Leadership remains so even in the face of challenge and crisis.  When parents scream, threaten, nag or hit then credible leadership has been lost.

3.    Principle III:  Parents must model what they teach.  Model character.  Model willingness to change.  It is said, “if you don’t model what you teach, you’re teaching something else.” 

4.    Principle IV:  Parents must raise adults.  It is the task of parenting to prepare children to become independent.  Give your children the opportunity to develop skills that will lead to competence and autonomy.

5.    Principle VIII:  Parents must be consistent.  Parents are human.  There will always be good days and bad.  There will always be situations well or poorly handled.  Consistency means that despite the everyday ups and downs, there remains a consistent set of beliefs and guiding principles.

6.    Principle XVIII:  Parents must utilize time-outs for both children and themselves.  This is time to cool off, to think and to reflect.  Rather than lash out in anger, say to a child, “I need time to get my thoughts together," “I’m too angry to speak right now,” or “I don’t want to say something now I’ll regret later.”  Cool off, then deal with it.

7.    Principle XIX:  Parents must turn their children’s mistakes and misdeeds into learning opportunities.  It is far more important to learn from mistakes than to be punished for mistakes.  To discipline is different than to punish. To discipline means to teach.

8.    Principle XX:  Parents must not only point out problems to their children, they must encourage their children to be problem solvers.  Teach children to be part of the solution.

9.    Principle XXIII:  Parents must acknowledge with empathy their children’s challenges. However, parents must consistently remind their children that challenges are different than excuses.  Challenges can be faced and overcome with courage and tenacity.

10. Principle XXX:  Parents must avoid unnecessary win/lose battles with their children. Children who win these battles become insufferable.  Children who lose these battles become sullen and resentful.  Parenting is not a contest of wills. It is a journey of parent and child together.

And, as for the eleventh bit of advice, Principle XL:  Find the joy in parenting.  It’s hard work.  It’s a 24/7 job.  But children are a great blessing and to miss the joy is to miss all.

Spanking

My children weren’t spanked.  That’s not to say I was never tempted.  I was.  But I remained consistent with my belief that children can and should be raised without corporal punishment.

That I was tempted underscores one of the problems.  Spankings happen when parents are exasperated and at a loss for options.  If I had allowed myself to spank it would not have been for my child’s good.  It would have been the expression of frustration and my inability to formulate an alternative solution.

At bottom line (so to speak), I am a pragmatist.  Do what works.  Pragmatically speaking, spanking doesn’t work.  Spanking doesn’t foster, and may even hinder, the development of conscience and guilt.  When a spanking is over the price has been paid, Often, when the punishment ceases so is the need for remorse.  Many children prefer the sting of a spanking to other disciplines.  Many would rather not have to think about their actions nor take responsibility for the consequences.

Children do not learn choice from spanking.  They learn to not to get caught.  Occasionally, they learn obedience.  Just as often, children learn there is an opposite to obedience; disobedience.  The adage “spare the rod and spoil the child” just isn’t so.  The rod, in excess, often pushes children in the direction of rebellious and antisocial behaviors.

It is true that a spanking gets immediate attention, and it can put an immediate end to an undesired behavior.  It may even keep future behavior in check out of fear of punishment.  But I don’t encourage fear-based parenting.

Spanking, even when effective at first, ceases to work.  Kids get used to it.  Frustrated parents respond by spanking with greater intensity, greater frequency and lesser results.  There comes a time when children will laugh derisively in the face of the spanker or turn and hit back.  Parents must then choose to either stop spanking or to escalate further.  Families find themselves up the creek without a paddle (so to speak).

Spanking models an inconsistent message. Hitting is condoned, so long as you’re bigger and self-righteous. It models for children that hitting is an acceptable means of solving problems, particularly at times of anger and frustration.  Children struck by those bigger and stronger will often do in kind to those weaker than them.

When I have spoken to parents, few subjects have stirred up so much emotion as ‘spanking’.  Parents argued with me.  “I was spanked and I turned out just fine.”  I argued back.  “I wasn’t spanked, and I turned out just fine (and, by the way, so have my children.)”

Actually, I was spanked once and remember it vividly.  I was 4 or 5, playing in front of my house.  I ran into the street.  Moments later I was suspended on one of my father’s arms, while his free hand delivered the blows.  I never ran out into the street again.

I’ve struggled with this incident.  Are there exceptions that justify spanking?  My father acted out of fear for my safety.  He never doubted what he did was right and necessary.  I certainly don’t believe I was abused or mistreated.  Perhaps the point is this was an exception, not the rule.

Many cling to the acceptability of spanking because it is how they were raised.  To give up spanking, for some, feels as if they are being asked to condemn their parents.  They are not.  Most parents did the very best for their children that they were able to do given the time, the place, and the prevailing attitudes.

But today’s parents need to let go of the past for the sake of the present.  There is a high price paid when spanking is accepted as the norm in child rearing.  This is becoming an increasingly violent society.  We must re-evaluate, pragmatically, how to curb this trend.  We must learn to raise moral, responsible and kind children.

There is too much rear in child rearing.  I believe in a philosophy of hands off.  The end.

Humor

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”  (Mark Twain, 1835--1910)

• Where do old unicorns go?  To the glitter glue factory.
• What do you call a transsexual rabbi?  Reformed.
• New advertising slogan:  Chick-fil-A, we do chicken rites.
• New state travel slogan:  Missouri loves company

I’ve been doing some serious thinking about humor.  Until recently, I was unaware that ‘humor’ was the subject of serious discourse, not only among comedians, but among philosophers and psychologists.  I can not recall any discussion of humor in my undergraduate Psychology classes.  During medical school I was aware of the work of Norman Cousins who documented the benefits of laughter in his recovery from a serious chronic illness. A little later there was Doctor Patch Adams. But otherwise, humor was not a subject taught in medical school.  Now, 35 years later, I discover that there are courses being taught on The Philosophy of Humor, texts written on The Psychology of Humor, and labs studying the biology of humor.

As a child psychiatrist I had occasion to observe the connection between humor and development.  The baby, mastering object constancy, gets a good laugh from peek-a-boo.  The young child, mastering bodily functions, loves a good poop or fart joke.  Children, as they learn to make friends and identify with groups, often tell jokes ridiculing the outsider.  With cognitive maturity, humor becomes valued for its cleverness and originality.  With old age, bodily function, I fear, is once again the ‘butt’ of jokes.

As a child psychiatrist, I saw humor as a marker of good mental health.  I was always concerned about a child who could not laugh. I was concerned about the parent and child who could not share laughter with one another.  On many occasions, I advised parents to boost their child’s confidence by teaching an important social skill.  I advised them to teach their child to tell a joke.  Many took me seriously.  A few thought I was joking.

I have learned that there is power in humor.  It has power to heal or to wound, to bring together or to alienate, to humanize or to marginalize.  In individuals, laughter has been shown to have power to reduce stress-related hormones, to reduce blood pressure, to help alleviate pain, to improve immunity and, if I recall correctly, even to improve memory.

There is political power in humor.  In a democracy, humor is a force of conscience and accountability.  In a despotic state, it is a threat to government stability.  There was no late-night stand-up comedy in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union.  I suppose that no ‘bad barber’ jokes are allowed in North Korea.  Beware the government that frowns upon humor.

I once read a book about stand-up comedy.  It said that comedy is mostly about either the hard, the weird, the scary, or the stupid.  Involuntarily my thoughts drifted to politics which, currently, provides abundant material for the hard, weird, scary, and stupid.

So, help me with this one:  The President, the Chief Justice, and the Speaker of the House walk into a bar.  The bartender says, “What’ll you have?”  

I need you to give me the punch line.  I think I just lost my sense of humor.