Managing So Much Suffering

It feels like I understand the idea that all suffering comes from expectation in a way I didn't used to. Now it seems so obvious, but I'm not really sure what flip was switched. It's not just that if we stop expecting to get things, we'll be happier, but how ridiculous it is to expect anything to stay the same at all, much less get better, ever. And that understanding seems to help reduce some anxiety over the things that can't be easily changed. Suffering is inevitable, but it can be somewhat diminished in order to have more contentment. We can change what counts as suffering, and we can change our perspective around tragedies, so maybe we can also change how we can continue to bear witness to, or experience, absolute atrocities.

One simple way to reduce suffering is to narrow the definition. Comedian Michelle Wolf jokes, "It's hard to have a struggle and a skin care routine," which clarifies that we might be considering some difficulties as suffering in a way that doesn't fly when we widen the scope of our horizons. Pain is pain and can't definitively be compared, yet I believe many of us have an automatic judgment in our heads that lists events in a hierarchy. Typically suffering from having to do a task we don't want to do, like write a boring report or clean out the fridge, or from wanting luxuries we can't afford, like another trip, might be relegated to the bottom as whining. The pain from it is there, though: the agony and stress from uninteresting maintenance that's necessary to further our own existence or the grief over lost opportunities. Furthermore, it can develop an extra layer of shame on top of the suffering if we try and fail to elicit sympathy for having so much food that some is left to rot and needs to be cleaned. When we realize we can't afford that trip after all, this is a suffering we are expected to bear without complaint.

The shame on top of the very real distress doesn't help, but a different perspective might: comparing to those worse off, recognizing the tasks as merely one choice with alternatives that are even less pleasant, or maybe even finding ways to enjoy the task or staycation are ideas passed down for millenia. If we can increase our distress tolerance around these lesser calamities, then we can potentially wipe out the bottom layer of our pile of pain.

It might also help to recognize how much unnecessary suffering is created from clinging to capitalist expectations of perpetual progress. We think we should constantly improve and have more and more, but, of course, there are limits to all things, including ourselves. I've watched our schools shift over the last 30 years from messages about doing your best work to insisting kids should be reaching for the stars and finding their true passion, a provocation that inevitably leads to disappointment. The fact that we can't have all the things we want is great news if we can accept our interdependency with others or cultivate a sense of enoughness by accepting our limits. The shame can add to the problem, but it can sometimes help us laugh at our own childishness if we realize our pain is because we wanted a thing that we just couldn't have because ideals are directions, not destinations. We wish we were faster or smarter or prettier or tidier. Things often don't work out the way we hoped, and that's okay.

Carl Jung spoke to this childishness: 

"The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. . . . They can never be solved, but only outgrown. . . . This “outgrowing,” as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency."

And Nietzsche advised to think before we react to a misfortune: 

”One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. . . . All lack of intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist a stimulus: — one must respond or react, every impulse is indulged.”

Of course the Stoics were all about this. Health, long life, reputation, a nice home and good food, and the company of people we love are preferences mostly out of our control, much as we try to control them. They're our preferred indifferents. It's wise to make efforts to influence them through wise choices, but it's foolish to expect them. The Stoic goal is mastering perception to see these things correctly, but it's striking how difficult it is to overcome a desire to get our way despite being constantly batted around by life. We suffer from others. Epictetus has advice for the taking an insult in the Enchiridion:

"When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, 'It seemed so to him.'"

In Meditations, Book II, Marcus Aurelius echoes this sentiment: 

"Remember to put yourself in mind every morning, that before night it will be your luck to meet with some busy-body, with some ungrateful, abusive fellow, with some knavish, envious, or unsociable churl or other. Now all this perverseness in them proceeds from their ignorance of good and evil."

We are likely much nicer and not going about insulting others or being a churl of course Despite having some nasty thoughts swirling in mind, we don't actually say them. (Where's our parade??) But, those very thoughts in our head are judgments of others, which, according to Jung, often mirror self-judgments. When we're outwardly congratulatory, but inwardly seething at the success of others, we're suffering from our own expectations of somehow being better than that other guy. The silly part is that we don't have to be. We could just see the achievement as a factual event rather than ascribe meaning to it. It's difficult but possible, and it could make us less miserable.

If we can master accepting what's beyond our control (even when we thought we could control it), then we can reduce suffering by eliminating the unreasonable expectation of things staying the same or getting better. It's an attitude that's the antithesis of our achievement society's presumption of a continuous upward trajectory. We can't always win them all, yet we're curiously flabbergasted when we don't. 

We can practice this attitude with negative mediations: premeditatio malorum as described in Epictetus's Enchiridion:

"If you are going to bathe [in the public baths], place before yourself what happens in the bath; some splashing the water, others pushing against one another, others abusing one another, and some stealing; and thus with more safety you will undertake the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature. And so you will do in every act."

Prepare for the worst not just by steeling yourself to other people's potential shenanigans, but by mentally practicing your attitude and honourable actions in the face of difficulties. The premise is that our beliefs and expectations that cause suffering have to be acknowledged before they can be diminished, like thinking we shouldn't have to tolerate being splashed.

Moving up that imagined hierarchy, however, can even more tragic suffering be mitigated with just a perspective shift? The idea of suffering being a matter of attitude starts to feel heartless when we're watching devastating clips in the news. I want to be disturbed every time, fearing any sign of desensitization. But then I still have to clean the fridge.

If we spend some time each day imagining the worst, and being prepared to cope with it, then we can be better able to manage when the time comes. The goal is accepting that the worst might happen today, from irritating people to bloody battles. It's seen in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy's exercise of "Cope Ahead Skill": consider how we might prepare for the worst to reduce stress in advance. Stoics also perceive losses as giving back. Everything we have, our things, our loved ones, our working eyes, ears and limbs, and our very selves, are all here temporarily.

If we stop expecting all of it to continue, it might be easier to bear. Seneca says the unexpected nature of misfortune "adds to the weight of a disaster." We might consider it morbid or depressive to consider what could go wrong; however, it's not to dwell on it or ruminate, but to take a limited time each day to ensure we're not taken by surprise by the inevitable. We must particularly remember death: memento mori. In his letters, he writes,

"'Rehearse death.' To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door. There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love of life. There is no need to cast this love out altogether, but it does need to be lessened somewhat so that, in the event of circumstances ever demanding this, nothing may stand in the way of our being prepared to do at once what we must do at some time or other. … We need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck."

Buddhism has similar meditations. In the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10), we're asked to contemplate the disgusting nature of our body's parts, one at a time, and then our skeleton piled up, decayed, and reduced to powder in order to reduce clinging to anything in this world. All suffering is because we're so attached to things as they are and to potential good fortune and we're so averse to anything going wrong that we miss the present moments that make up our actual lives.

Before sitting with our bones turning to dust, though, we can practice with small objects: imagine losing a favourite cup and making peace with that. Then your grandmother's china passed down to you. Then your mom. Then your partner. Then yourself.

But it's still hard to do.

Since his recent death, Robert Redford interviews have been everywhere. At 65 he said of aging, 

"You suddenly realize you have to start being careful, and I find that hard to deal with. You have to give up certain things you had when you were young, you didn’t have to think about, and suddenly you do, and that creates a restriction of some kind, and that’s kind of sad.”

I've had sudden changes affecting my physical capabilities that have thrown me for a loop because I had a silly expectation that my body would continue to function as it has been until one night, always in the far away distance, I gently die in my sleep, blithely oblivious to illness, aging, or death. It can seem like having that privileged illusion keeps us happier, and what's so great about being grounded in reality anyway! But the denial of our limitations not only slams us with an eventual and jarring truth; it can also prevent connection with others. Forum boards for people with disabilities and chronic illness are rife with stories of friends and family slowly disappearing from their lives. Fear of suffering can provoke us to be callous and indifferent to pain in the worst ways. By contrast, courageous awareness of suffering can provoke compassion.

The Stoics have a concept similar to mindfulness, prosochē: an ongoing awareness of our inner disposition as well as acting in accordance with virtues. This similar skill is encouraged in Buddhism, but also in the book of changes that influence both Taoism and Confucianism: I Ching. Pay attention to what you're thinking and feeling in order to develop and hold the right attitude in order to cultivate the right action in the moment. Managing suffering requires the right attitude, which can only be encouraged with inner awareness. In psychology we might urge people to notice and attend to defense mechanisms, like projections, and in existential philosophy, we're cautioned to avoid bad faith, all the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It all starts with noticing.

It's easier to be mindfully attuned to our attitudes when we're around others working on the same practice on a meditation retreat, for instance. It's harder when we're bombarded with ads and clickbait and others also asking if we've seen the latest thing. However, we're really not practiced on acting well amid adversity. As things get more difficult around us, we cling to what we've got. We double down on our current number of vacations and our right to buy everything we can afford or to the limits of our credit. People in power are allowing adults and children to be harmed, if not directly causing their intentional destruction, and it is so hard to see. When our cities feel more dangerous, it can send us into survival mode, hyperaware of potential harm, and no longer attentive to how aligned we are with our values. That's what makes kindness in the harshest times so heroic. It's a difficult internal battle. We don't know if we're up to the task until we're in it. 

Sometimes we work hard to fix ourselves through control over cravings, which can just add another layer of striving to overcome. The needed attitude appears to be more of a surrender, which involves removing the idea of suffering from our typical dualistic thinking as something to avoid. It's part of life that is rooted in our attachments and our failure to fully accept that life is impermanent and constantly changing. This is more true than even for many of us as we're existing under the threats of so much violence on top of climate change and unfettered AI. When so much feels out of control, the natural instinct is to reel it in, but that's like trying to cage a tornado. Trying to fight the injustices just keeps us angry, and we can quickly lose hope if we don't make a dent in this triple-headed Goliath. An alternative stance is to focus on our actions in the moment, trying to do the right thing at each step despite our limited knowledge or control, but as virtuously as possible, with compassion, courage, and thoughtfulness. If we're helpless to stop evil, we can at least add something good to the world.

This isn't a cold or callous exercise, nor is it an excuse for complacency. There is still a place for accepting the grief and impotent rage that wells up from time to time. The deepest suffering for me is watching children in pain and having zero to minimal ability to affect their plight besides making my voice heard on petitions, which staves a sense of powerlessness just a bit. Closely related is watching others make unfathomable decisions that will clearly harm people. It's not just that they harm, but that we can helplessly foresee the damage about to happen. We can only take another step, making the best choices we can with the skills and resources we can access, always aware of our devastating limitations and open to the beauty of the world.

From Marcus Aurelius: 

"What is it that troubles you? Is it the wickedness of the world? If this be your case, out with your antidote, and consider that rational beings were made for mutual advantage, that forbearance is one part of justice, and that people misbehave themselves against their will. Consider, likewise, how many men have embroiled themselves, and spent their days in disputes, suspicion, and animosities; and now they are dead, and burnt to ashes. Be quiet, then, and disturb yourself no more. … Your way is therefore to manage this minute in harmony with nature, and part with it cheerfully."

Something like that.

They're Heeeerrrrrreeee!

You might be able to book a Covid shot in Ontario right now with priority given for people who are high-risk, and on October 27th for the general public. That high-risk priority category is significantly looser than it is for who gets a second shot per year, maybe acknowledging how few come out for this shot in the first place. It includes anyone who is at high risk, but also anyone who has significant exposure to birds or mammals, anyone racialized or part of an "equity-denied" community, health-care workers, and more. 

It's still here and still causing damage. In the US, the current wastewater rates are about 2/3rds of last winter's peak. It's baffling that they want to wait for the general public until after our Thanksgiving!! In the past, uptake is so low that it's curious they still stagger the appointment openings for a month later. In the states, people have been getting shots for weeks. We're in the upward trend of very high infection rates coupled with very low immunity in the population since we're almost all a good six months from our last vaccination. That's a deadly combination. 

You might get a choice between Pfizer or Moderna (no Novavax in sight), but they appear to be pretty comparable this year. 

The most recent Ontario information says, 

which is interesting because quite recently it said 6 months instead of 3. It looks like they really want people to get this one. Just... not quite yet. 

In other Covid news, Violet Affleck (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's daughter) spoke at the United Nations on Covid and Clean Air:

Unfortunately, some in the media picked it up as a celebrity fluff piece, talking about how she looked in her mask and accusing her of having "health anxiety" despite that Covid has surpassed asthmas as the leading cause of chronic illness in children. The event was attended by experts from around the world, many of whom were wearing masks, not from anxiety, but from knowledge of the potential longterm outcomes from infection.

So it goes.

And here are some great Myths vs Facts from Durham County Department of Public Health:

Not Selves, but Not Nothing

We're living at a time when the glorification of independence and individualism is harming the world and others in it, as well as leading to an epidemic of loneliness. According to Jay Garfield, the root of suffering is in our self-alienation, and one symptom of our alienation is clinging to the notion that we are selves. "We are wired to misunderstand our own mode of existence," he writes in his brief yet substantial 2022 book, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self. 

Garfield traces arguments against the existence of a self primarily through 7th century Indian Buddhist scholar Candrakīrti and 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, and explores where many other philosophers hit or miss the mark along the way. The book is a surprisingly accessible read about a complex topic with perhaps the exception of a couple more in-depth chapters that develop arguments to further his conclusion: you don't have a self, and that's a good thing.

Garfield starts with the idea of self from ancient India: the ātman is at the core of being. A distinct self feels necessary to understand our continuity of consciousness over time (diachronic identity) and our sense of identity at a single time (synchronic identity). A self gives us a way to explain our memory and allows for a sense of just retribution when we're wronged. We feel a unity of self to the extent that it's hard to imagine it's not so.

Safe Schools and Hospitals

We're starting the school year with high levels of Covid in Ontario, and kids are still getting sick from a disease that, unlike the flu or a cold, has potential long-term consequences, leaving behind micro-clots that can lead to strokes, as well as increase chances of diabetes, brain damage, and more as it runs through the bloodstream and can affect every organ. 

Vaccinations don't entirely prevent illness and spread, but they CAN keep most people out of the hospital from the acute illness. Unfortunately they wane after several months and most of us are only allowed to get one once/year. If you're going to do it, now is the time. Also unfortunately, they're not ready yet. The government keeps putting them out with the flu shot despite that Covid is not seasonal; it spreads when people congregate. The best time to get the shot might be one in mid-August in time for school, and then early December in time for all the celebrations in late December and winter travel. Then open the windows in the spring and summer! But the powers that be will likely not release this one until next month.

Facing the Backdraft

Climate analyst Barry Saxifrage explains how the CO2 from fires is adding significantly to greenhouse gas accumulation. His charts show the dramatic increase in Canadian wildfires:

"Wildfire is now incinerating four times more forest carbon than during the 1990s. In addition to the surging immediate threats of choking smoke, wanton destruction and disrupted lives, rising wildfire is also pumping billions of tonnes of forest carbon into our atmosphere, intensifying long-term climate breakdown. ... It is piling up in an ever-thickening blanket in our atmosphere that will overheat generations to come. The extra heat being trapped by humanity's CO2 now equals the explosions of 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day. And rising. ...

Wildfire emissions totalled 30 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) [in 1990]. The much taller bar on teh far right shows that this year's wildfires have already burned massive amounts of forest. Emissions are around 500 MtCO2 so far, with many weeks of fire season still ahead. ... It is tempting to think that this current level of wildfire is our 'new normal.' But it's going to keep getting worse until we take our foot off the wildfire accelerator. ... Levels will keep rising until we stop the primary source of them, fossil fuel burning. ... 'It ain't rocket science -- when it's hotter and drier fires burn more easily and more explosively.' ... Burning fossil fuels burns Canada's forests."

Not Strategy but Symptoms

 So, things are a mess. But here's an interesting take on Trump from Andrew Wortman: 

"Trump's 2 a.m. meltdowns and dictator cosplay aren't part of a predetermined strategy--they're collapse. A malignant narcissist, weak and unhealthy, colliding with the one thing he can't escape: DEATH. And his team knows it, which is why they're going full-fascist now. As a psychologist, I can tell you: when malignant narcissists lose control, they don't fade quietly. They escalate exponentially--rage, smear campaigns, humiliation, projection, even violence. Every move is about punishing those who expose their weakness to claw back control. This isn't 'toughness.' It's disintegration. In my field we call it narcissistic mortification: the sheer terror, shame, and dread of being forced to confront one's own fragility. To them, it feels like annihilation--as the false self they've lived behind for decades shatters. 

Mortification hits with both physical and psychological shock--chest pain, burning, panic, humiliation, obsessive thoughts. They feel exposed, worthless desperate. That desperation is what fuels the meltdowns you're watching play out in real time like an SNL skit or horror film. For Trump, the trigger is being faced with his own mortality. He can't sue death. He can't cheat it, bribe it, or con his way out of it. It's inescapable. And for the first time in his life, he's powerless--and the panic shows in every crazed rant and wild attempt to project control. That's why you see him suddenly fixated on things like getting into heaven, legacy, and being remembered. Humiliation is the narcissist's deepest wound--and nothing humiliates more than colliding with the truth that you can't escape the end.

The Epstein files serve to make this terror far worse. Not only do they expose what he's spent 30+ years concealing, but if they surface after he's gone, he can't spin them. The thought of being defined by that humiliation--with no power to control the narrative--is devastating. When narcissists face both mortality AND exposure, collapse deepens. They don't reflect or accept responsibility. They deflect, rage, lie, smear, and escalate authoritarian grabs. Anything to keep the mask intact just a little bit longer--no matter who gets hurt in the process. 

Blending Psychotherapy and Spirituality

In my last post on meditation, I suggested that there's not a lot of harm that comes from meditation and mindfulness training, so maybe it doesn't need the kind of scientific scrutiny that we might expect from a clinical drug trial. However, in Toward a Psychology of Awakening (2000), Buddhist psychotherapist John Welwood documents three traps: spiritual bypass, narcissism, and desensitising, that arise in part because we've leant too far to either psychology or spirituality instead of using both. He also discusses them in brief in a paper, "Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual" (1984).

Both psychotherapy and spirituality are about "developing a new kind of loving relationship with one's experience," and both help us break free from our conditioned reactions. But spirituality doesn't address our early mishaps that affect our perceptions, and psychotherapy doesn't address the need to transcend our personal feelings.

When he first trained as a therapist, Welwood was concerned that psychotherapy has a narrow view of human nature, but then realized how much it can help once we no longer demand answers from it. It can help free people from negative childhood conditioning, particularly from dismissive or engulfing parenting, by working with our needs, scripts (now narratives), fears, self-respect, etc. A lot of us don't learn how to exist in the world well. Welwood claims that part of the problem is the "breakdown of extended families and tight-knit communities" so that children just get influenced by parents or just one parent instead of many people providing a variety of ideas that can help a child figure out where they fit in the group. As far as I understand this point, with only one or two major influences, children might accept lessons without question, then have to "spend a good part of their lives freeing themselves" from this singular impact in order to find their own sense of self. It's somewhat unintuitive, but a larger group influence helps a child find their individual self by differentiating from others more clearly at a younger age. But whether we find it at 5 or 50, it's necessary to have this "stable self-structure" before trying to go further.

But without a spiritual element, we have "too literal-minded and serious … too small a vision of what a human being is." Psychotherapy can focus too much on content and not enough on the human being. It's changing more recently, focusing less on content and more on how we are with our experience. Welwood wants to stop trying to overcome emotional content and instead open up to it. If we can't open up to anger, for example, we end up trying to be nicer (people pleasing) or overmonitoring our behaviour to avoid triggers, which can create more stress. Yet there's even more ground to cover than just this.

Yup, Still Writing About It

Covid is still here and still killing more people than car crashes. The highest vehicle fatality rate in Canada in the past decade was in 2023, with 1,964 deaths with over 8,000 serious injuries. For Covid, counting less than the last year (about 11 months) and only from participating provinces, we've had 2,248 deaths and over 33,000 serious illnesses that required hospitalization. So, more. 

In some places, it's way more right now!

California is experiencing a surge, and Honduras is experiencing such a spike in illnesses that they're mandating face masks again in hospitals, airports, shopping centres, schools, public transport, and other enclosed or crowded paces. A recent study suggests that LongCovid may be far more common than currently estimated at about one in ten people, with non-human primates studied reaching 90% of the population with bio-markers: 

"Even if you started off lean and healthy, this study shows it won't protect you from some of the worst consequences of Covid."

I compare Covid rates to car crashes because we still, pretty much all of us, take precautions whenever we get in our car, and most of it don't even think about it any more. Some precautions are imposed on us, like I had to ditch my car because apparently the MTO would take it off the road for rust that could enable exhaust to get inside the vehicle. Air bags and driving laws are imposed on us. But we willingly strap ourselves in our cars, for most of us, even when no cops are around. I do it automatically before I start the car. It became second nature.

On that Sexual Assault Case

I listened to a CBC call-in show about the London sexual assault trial of five former Hockey Canada players. All the callers were either on one side or another. I think there's a middle path. 

The gist of the case: Back in June 2018, a woman known as "E.M." was drinking at a bar where the hockey team was celebrating a big win. She consented to go back to a hotel room with one of the team members. A little later, he texted others to come up for a three-some, and up to ten guys were in the room at one point. Allegedly, five of the guys, all between 18 and 20, either had sex with her or had sexually assaulted her. Afterwards she called a friend, crying, saying she was upset at herself for what had happened. All men were acquitted because E.M.'s testimony wasn't seen as credible. A possible reason for this is that she filed a civil suit in 2020, and, if any of her testimony was different between then and now, that brings her credibility into question. Typically a criminal case is filed before a civil case, and she had started a criminal case soon after the event, but that was put on pause, at which time she moved to a civil case. That civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. 

First of all, how many of us describe an event exactly the same way after five years? Our brain changes our memories slightly whenever we re-remember an event. It's a very high bar to meet to have explain every detail exactly the same way. 

Mentalizing, Mindfulness, and the Drive for Evidence

 In reading about attachment theory, David Wallin's description of Peter Fonagy's work was intriguing, so I went down that rabbit hole. 

Fonagy developed Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) to improve emotional regulation, as distinct from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Fonagy sees our mental development as relational, but in order to have empathy for others, we need awareness of our own feelings, which can be helped with mindfulness work. However, in looking at the evidence of efficacy of these separate modalities, I question the attempt, since Freud, to make psychology into a natural science. Each of the various ways to help are useful, but there's an element of the unknowable in the way when we treat them scientifically.

According to Wallin, Fonagy's focus was on developing the understanding of the mental states of others, which he calls mentalizing, to let us understand the depths of ourselves and others. For instance, it can help heal old wounds if we understand that dad's rejection of us might be due to his depression and not our behaviour as a child. Other people's reactions to us aren't just caused by us, but there are always multiple factors at play affecting how people behave. It seems very similar to Theory of Mind. He met Bowby in the 1980s, and studied adults' behaviour relative to their own descriptions of childhood attachment, and found, when comparing severely deprived to well-connected adults, that a weak attachment was correlated with a weak "reflective functioning" (the ability to understand behaviours in terms of their thoughts, feelings, and mental states). From this, he says psychotherapy should be the "effort to restore or kindle patients' capacity to mentalize," to simultaneously feel our feelings and reflect on their meaning. To help people develop mentalizing requires a relationship that mirrors and guides emotional responses.

Vaccinate Against Variant Soup

Some weird new federal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine guidance - in layman's terms.

Variant soup ingredients from April 2025

But first, remember that, when it comes to vaccinations, Covid is like the flu, not like measles or polio. It's not one and done because the virus mutates so easily and quickly. Every few months we permit new variants to add to the mix by letting them spread and mutate, and only sometimes does anyone important mention the variety of variants out there. (By contrast, for rates of illness and death, Covid is a lot like measles and polio in the unvaccinated death and disability rate. It's a serious disease!) 

Like the flu, we need regular access to vaccinations. If people ask how many Covid shots you've had, ask them how many flu shots they've had. It's the same silly question.

If you've never been vaccinated for it, get two shots this year.

If you have been getting shots, the guidelines say you should get one a year if you're pregnant, over 65, in congregated living, a health care worker, part of a listed racialized group, or have an underlying medical condition that's associated with more severe infection, which includes diabetes and cancer and other medical conditions, but also obesity, and disabilities like ADHD, and mental health disorders like depression (but not anxiety).

Luckily, you don't have to prove you have an underlying condition because anyone may (is allowed to) get one shot. They'll come out with a new shot this fall, but who knows when that will be!

The vaccination is protective for less than six months, so you might want two shots a year. But good luck with that! 

According to their collective wisdom, you should get two shots if you're over 80, in congregated living, or moderately to severely immunocompromised due to an underlying condition. I don't think claiming severe ADHD will work, but no harm trying! You may get two shots if you're 65 to 79. 

So despite that most infections come from schools, all those kids spending their days in a school building, from junior kindergarten to university, can get a shot in September, but then are just sitting ducks come February. Make it make sense!

A good N95 is still your best bet to avoid this preventable disease!

ETA: Ontario guidance says, 

"Ontario's Covid-19 vaccine program has transitioned to an annual program in alignment witih expert recommendations from the NACI. ... If you already completed your initial series, it is recommended you receive an updated dose starting in the fall when the vaccine becomes available in Ontario, if it has been 6 months (168 days) since your last dose."

So even thought you can only get one/year, if your last one was in early March, you can still get one now - as soon as they come out. No word on when that will be, though. 

The Necessity of Feeling Seen

Attachment theory is part of the vernacular now. Even the Norwegian show Porni mentions it, and the dramatic eldest daughter blames her mom for her “relational damage”! We’ve largely accepted the questionable idea that mom’s attentiveness in childhood creates our attachment patterns for life — the gist of the theory as it’s largely understood, but what’s usefully generalizable from the actual studies? There are many criticisms of the theory, yet some university psych courses applaud it without reservation. I’m dubious about it, but I also don’t want to entirely throw this baby out with the bathwater.

 This is a huge topic, and I’ll hardly do it justice here. There are a few excellent books on it, but part of the problem with how we understand the studies might be that the most nuanced books seem to be the most academically written, and likely the least read. As it morphed into popular consumption it may have strayed further from the original intention. On top of the reading, I went to a couple workshops on attachment to find the magic solution to all our relationship ills, and my big takeaway is this (for free!): if you’re a bit distant, consider being open to getting closer, and if you’re a bit clingy, try to step back a bit. It’s good advice to notice and change patterns that are a problem, absolutely, but I’m not sure it merits the number of workshops, courses, and self-help books that it’s provoked. At worst, some books actually counsel people to avoid any “avoidant or disordered people” as if there’s no saving them from their dastardly origins. Therapeutic discussions of childhood misconnections definitely have helped people better understand themselves, but I think this theory produces such volumes of celebration and condemnation because, in difficult relationships, it feels like the answer, but to parents, it feels like blame.

Attachment Theory Criticisms 

Heidi Keller’s The Myth of Attachment Theory (2022) is an extremely thorough takedown of the theory. If attachment notions make you feel like a crappy parent, this book is vindicating. She explores the offense of putting it all on moms both because of the narrow focus on a single person as well as on singular causation, but her best work is in exploring the creation of a norm of interaction from upper-middle class, western assumptions around what it means to be sensitive to a baby’s needs, an analysis that was made at the time as well: 

Losing Our Democracy in Ontario

For a little while, Trump's mess made me über proud to be Canadian, and even a little bit okay with Ford. But that was short lived! 

If anything, the US disaster has been a distraction for us as the provincial majority government pushed through several anti-democracy policies. They're using Trump's trade war to try to justify these policies, but we all know that's bullshit. 

Bill 33: Supporting Children and Students Act, which passed second reading yesterday. It will give Ford more control over school boards and universities and colleges. It could mandate police presence in schools and mandate university admission policies. From OPSEU President JP Hornick:

"Stripping away access-focused admissions pathways threatens the socio-economic mobility of entire communities. They want to surveil and criinalize our kids from a young age and then make it even harder to access post-secondary education later on in their academic careers. Ontario's future depends on an inclusive education system, not one that intentionally keeps people out. ... It is clearly intended to defund these services in our colleges."

Covid Causes Clots!!

 A headline in the New York Post: "Why so many people are having strokes in their 20s, 30s, and 40s: We've never had patients so young." 

They report that, "Between 2020 and 2022, there was a 14.6% increase of strokes among people aged 18 to 44." Many of whom were "by all common standards, healthy." Their theories about the increase include birth control pills, stress, long working hours, physical inactivity, caffeine especially from energy drinks, and Adderall (although they add that most studies don't show a strong association between Adderall use and strokes). None of these have been shown to have increased that dramatically since 2020, but something else has. I stupidly read the comments on the article, which are all about "the jab" killing us. IT'S NOT THE VACCINE!!

There is, of course, absolutely no mention about an unmitigated brain-invasive virus doing the very type of damage researchers and doctors warned us about years ago. We knew that Covid stays in the body and forms blood clots since at least 2021, and it became widespread in 2022, which is why some wise doctors ask for a D-dimer test after a patient has problems post-Covid infection to check for clotting issues. Here are just a few: 

Protect Your Neurons from Nimbus!

The latest Covid variant has the same name as a big looming rain cloud. The more we let Covid spread, the more it will continue to mutate, and this one is even more easily transmissible. 

It's provoking people to mask up in parts of Asia, and governments are encouraging updated vaccinations in parts of Europe, and it's definitely in the states, but they're not doing much to stop it. Will we?? My kids and I still can't get another Covid shot until it's been a year since our last, and we can't access Paxlovid if we need it. But thankfully there are no mask bans being proposed here.

In the states, the FBI is treating Covid as a crime to be investigated instead of a public health matter to be mitigated:

Still Blooming!

Another milestone to reflect on life a bit today: my 60th birthday. It sounds so old, but I biked 60k total on Monday and Tuesday (didn't have time for it in one go), and played pickleball today, and I'm regularly writing 3,000 word essays, so I appear to still be reasonably sound in body and mind.  

I was hoping my crabapple would bloom for my birthday, but everything bloomed early this year. A couple years ago I wrote about some people who randomly walk by, loudly insisting my crabapple is dead. It's still not dead yet! These are the very last of the lilac blooms from my garden. Such a weird year.

New Covid Strain Causing Razor Blade Throat

Several news venues have been reporting on Covid in the last few days. An ABC News headline says: "Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from Covid every week?" 

The article explains,

"Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, Covid is still a threat to high-risk groups. 'The fact that we're still seeing deaths just means it's still circulating, and people are still catching it.' ... The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity, and not enough people accessing treatments."

That last sentence is infuriating because vaccines wane in effectiveness after a few months, and vaccinations here are restricted to yearly except for people over 65 and anyone moderately to severely immunocompromised, such as organ transplant recipients, anyone HIV+, and anyone taking immunosuppressants. Furthermore Paxlovid, our only treatment option here, is only available to people over 60 or at high risk of complications from Covid. Otherwise, you're on your own.

On Approaching Death

 CW: As the title suggests, there will be discussion of death and dying and some mention of suicide in this post.

I thought nothing of following up my last post on Irvin Yalom on the meaning of life with Yalom on the meaning of death, until I started writing here. The very reality of being a bit wary of broaching the subject reveals the strength of societal taboos against admitting that we’re all going to die. Until it’s staring us in the face, we delude ourselves into thinking we will get better and better, mentally and physically, despite that our brain starts to shrink in our 30s, and our joints and organs will start to give out not so long after. We work hard to keep death clean and sanitized so the reality doesn’t seep in too much, and we try to do all the right things to keep death at bay: exercise, various special diets, wearing masks to avoid viruses. We can fix some evidence of erosion with meds and surgeries, sometimes miraculously, but some people even hope to keep their brain going long after their body dies.

Dancing with Viruses

There are several measles cases in Waterloo Region. As of last week there were currently over 60 cases in nearby Wellington/Guelph, and over 1,300 in Ontario since October.

Measles is like Covid in that there's an incubation period in which people have no symptoms but are contagious. Viruses are stealthy! For measles, it's 7-12 days from exposure to symptoms like fever or cough, so it's really important to track cases and isolate if potentially exposed. For Covid, it can be 5-7 days before it's picked up by a rapid test, and you can have it and spread it without any symptoms at all. Both cause serious complications, including brain infection, and leads to death in about 1 or 2 in 1,000 people. 

Both can be prevented with an N95.

The biggest difference between these viruses is that getting vaccinated is extremely good protection for measles, but not for Covid. If you got your measles shots, you're very likely completely protected. Unfortunately, vaccination rates are plummeting. We need to have at least 94% of the population vaccinated to create herd immunity and keep measles at bay, and Ontario has been hovering in the 70s since Covid started and anti-vaxx nonsense got a platform. Vaccination against Covid does a lot to keep people out of the hospital, but it doesn't prevent getting and spreading the disease because, like the flu, Covid mutates all the flippin' time. Measles is just measles, but Covid could be delta, or alpha, or one of many omicron variants, or whatever's going on now. It changes so much I stopped keeping track. The more it spreads, the more it mutates, and we're doing nothing to stop the spread. 

Please Vote!!

Let's see if we can avoid our own Timbit Trump tomorrow!! If you're not sure of the best candidate to beat the cons in your riding, check out Smart Voting!  

Prime Minister Carney said of Poilievre yesterday, 

"It's easy to be negative when you've never fixed anything. It's easy to be negative when you've never built anything. It's easy to be negative when you're a career politician who has never accomplished anything." 

Taylor Noakes, agrees that Poilievre has accomplished nothing during his twenty years in Parliament:

"This isn't as much a political party as it is a ChatGPT-based slogan-generating algorithm speaking through the mouth of everyone's least favourite muppet. . . . The Conservatives have essentially made 'Fuck Trudeau' their ideology, and the average Conservative voter has made it their core identity. ... The Conservative Party have placed strict limits on who is allowed to ask him questions, and have further tried to prevent journalists from talking to party supporters and local candidates. ... According to a report by LaPress, Poilievre seems to have the loosest grasp on facts and the truth, as the publication found that he lied, embellished or misled far more than any of the other candidates during last week's debate. ... He has voted against the environment and climate 400 times ... against the Canadian Dental Care Plan, $10 a day daycare, the National School Food Program, the Canada Child Benefit, and raising the federal minimum wage ... against a proposed first-home savings account and a proposal to build four million new homes."

The Rise of Unreason

The Ontario Health Coalition put out a press release a couple weeks ago about the sharp increase in people infected with measles here. There were 816 cases from October 2024 to April, then 155 new cases from April 3-11. Our immunization rates are lower than most of Europe -- only 70% of kids have typical childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates were reduced dramatically in 2020. "This is a Public Health failure that must be addressed with the utmost urgency." 

David Fisman recently wrote about it: 

Balancing Individual Rights and Community Health Requires Knowledge of History

Ontario is in the midst of a measles outbreak, and our Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) is taking a “you do you” approach. No mandates. No strong guidance. Just a gentle suggestion that people make informed decisions…if they choose to. It’s a startling response given public health’s long history of collective action, and at times, authoritarianism. 

That authoritarianism wasn’t a bug of early public health. It was a feature. Modern public health emphasizes individual rights, but those rights can come into tension with the community’s right to health, especially during outbreaks of communicable diseases. Institutional public health grew out of fear. 

Yalom on Approaching Meaning

About 45 years ago, psychiatrist Irvin Yalom estimated that a good 30-50% of all cases of depression might actually be a crisis of meaninglessness, an existential sickness, and these cases require a different method of treatment. We experience this lack of purpose as boredom, apathy, or emptiness. We are "not told by instinct what one must do, or any longer by tradition what one should do. Nor does one know what one wants to do," so we feel lost and directionless. Instead of addressing meaninglessness as the problem, though, we've been merely addressing the symptoms of it: addictions, compulsions, obsessions, malaise. In today's context, it might suggest that even social media issues could be problems with a lack of meaning. 

The last sentences of his lengthy tome, Existential Psychotherapy, sum up his solution: "The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha taught, not edifying. One must immerse oneself in the river of life and let the question drift away." How he lands here is an intriguing path through a slew of philosophers and psychiatrists. Even without symptoms of a problem, attention to meaning is necessary as it gives birth to values, which become principles to live by as we place behaviours into our own hierarchy of acceptability. 

"One creates oneself by a series of ongoing decisions. But one cannot make each and every decision de novo throughout one's life; certain superordinate decisions must be made that provide an organizing principle for subsequent decisions." 

Yalom doesn't, however, suggest coming up with a list of values that can become meaningful to us, but that we immerse ourselves in life to become more aware of which values we already have. 

WHAT'S THE POINT? IT'S FOR US TO DECIDE

According to Yalom, we've hit this crisis point in meaninglessness because we have the leisure to think and because our work is no longer clearly purposeful, both of which are relatively recent experiences for such a large proportion of civilization. It's no longer just the philosophers of the day asking, What's it all for? What's the point of it all? He takes the existential position that it's up to us to figure it out. 

Orange Monday or MAGA Monday?

Time will tell which name will go down in history books. But April 7, 2025 will be up there with Black Monday (October 19, 1987) and Black Thursday (October 18, 1929).

Trump wants everyone to just calm down, already, in his own ever-weirdly worded way. But he said this just before millions of Americans died of Covid, too.