Transmute Anger Into Sadness, and Then Sadness Into Love

19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone's face was younger 

than mine.

That's from Curriculum Vitae by Lisel Mueller, collected in Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. I just started the book this morning and am a few pages in. The quote resonates with me. Also this, which appears as a kind of preface at the very front of the book.

In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey

of afternoon light

flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off

its special mystery

in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious

Autumn always elicits a melancholy joy in me about the ephemeral nature of beauty. I love the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings all around, but I can never enjoy it without the sense that it is a fleeting transition to winter and darkness. I haven't done a good job of getting out and properly enjoying it, or of capturing it in photos, but we're having a particularly colorful fall this year.

I think the annual cycle is accompanied by bigger thoughts in particular this time because tomorrow officially marks half a century for me. I still don't feel mature enough to qualify for such an age, yet I do feel my perspective is no longer one of someone young.

For fun, I compiled this list of notable things that began the same year as I did:

• Disney World
• Microprocessors
• Email
• Chat Rooms
• Pocket Calculators
• Floppy Disks
• Nasdaq Stock Exchange
• The Oregon Trail game
• CT Scans
• Kevlar
• Soft Contact Lenses
• Greenpeace
• NPR
• FedEx
• Amtrak
• 26th Amendment to the Constitution
• Ban on TV Cigarette Ads
• Starbucks Coffee
• Quarter Pounder at McDonald's
• The U.S War on Drugs

It provides interesting context.

So does this.

It randomly showed up in my feed a few days after my wife shared a story with our boys about her mom who, fresh from divorce at the end of the 60s, needed her brother to drive across multiple state lines to sign for her so she could get an apartment, open a bank account, and similar.

Speaking of our boys (ages 6 & 8), a couple of recent anecdotes. First, they received their Covid-19 vaccinations (first dose) a week ago. They were some of the first in the 5-11 age range to do so because the vaccine was only just approved for them. They weren't too keen about flu shots this year and we met some resistance when they were confronted with anticipated pain from the needle. They were excited for this covid vaccine, though, because they knew it would make everyone around them safer. They were happy to do it for the sake of others.

Also, they recently learned about the concept of private schools and just how much it can cost to go to one. (They went to private preschool but now public elementary school.) Soon after, the younger asked us what our dream jobs were. His mom described the journey that led to her to wanting to be a doctor (a desire yet unfulfilled). "I have an idea," he responded. "Doctors should be free. And schools. Doctors and schools should be free." At six, he dreamed up the concepts of public education and healthcare.

I am proud of their compassion.

Our family reads a lot together, which I'm sure comes as no surprise. I'm also sure I've implicitly passed values on to them through books more than through things I've said or tried explicitly to teach them. I'm always bringing books home from the library. A wide variety. But, of course, always with ideas I can endorse. I thought today I would share a few of the latest. 

I discovered a love of Goodreads years ago as a way to keep track of what I'd read, then decided I'd try to write some kind of review for everything I rated. It helps me remember later, when I'm making recommendations, what I thought, both by being there to look up and by helping me digest each title as I reflect on what I want to say about it.

I rarely review--or even rate--picture books, though, because I read so many. I'm always looking for new storytime selections and can get through many of them in a short amount of time. It's simply too many to keep track of or be meaningful. Every once in a while, though, I feel inspired to break my rule.

Chez Bob, by Bob Shea, is one such exception. I wrote:

I've loved Bob Shea's books since even before Dinosaur vs. Bedtime burst onto the scene. My favorite has always been one of his lesser known stories, Buddy and the Bunnies in Don't Play with Your Food. I've read it countless times for storytime and at home. When we attended a presentation he gave in 2017 and he offered to draw us something after, he was surprised by our request. It still hangs on our bedroom wall (not the kids' to keep them from destroying it until they're older).

Bob's new book is that title's successor. It features all new characters acting out the same basic story. Though what makes it special is not the storyline itself, but the way he tells it. The wording and details. In Chez Bob, a lazy alligator is frustrated birds won't just fly into his mouth and is jealous of the grass: "Lucky grass! I wish I had seeds on me. Then I'd have all the birds I want. WAIT! THAT'S IT!" He decides to open a birdseed restaurant on his nose so birds will actually land on him and fly basically into his mouth. Except he gets so caught up in making his restaurant excellent and popular to attract as much prey as possible that he ends up bonding with the birds and becoming part of their community. I think this might be my favorite page. I'm looking forward to sharing it with more kids.

Next is a simple book with a powerful message. It doesn't really tell a story, but it makes a point.

Someone once asked me, "What are you?"

I didn't know what to say.

So I didn't answer, and they left.

But I kept thinking about it.

What I Am

by Divya Srinivasan

I am a girl.

I am a human.

I am a human animal.

I am a daughter.

I am a granddaughter.

I am an Amma to my guys.

I am vegetarian.

I am dark.

I am pale.

In summer, I'm different colors.

I like to look at animals,

but I am nervous around animals.

I don't win.

I love what I made!

I might be an artist.

I have so much.

I don't have enough.

I am selfish.

I am generous.

I am mean.

I am kind.

I am a scaredy-cat.

I am brave.

I am not mischievous

(most of the time).

Sometimes I am a witch!

I like to be with friends.

I like to be alone.

I dance! I sing!

I don't dance or sing.

I don't want to go to parties.

Am I shy?

I say hi.

I don't want to leave parties.

I am American.

I am Indian.

What I am

is more than I can say.

I am part of the world.

I am part of the universe.

This last book is somewhere in between the two above, telling a bit of a story and illustrating a point too. It starts with one lonely little girl sharing her story with readers, then a teacher echoing with a somewhat similar one. Finally, it shifts to the open sharing of stories started in the third spread I depict below. Some excerpts:

I Wish You Knew

by Jackie Azue Kramer

ill. by Magdalena Mora

I wish you knew

that when I forget my homework

or sit alone at lunch

or cry over little things,

it's because I miss him.

I wish they knew

that when they forget their homework

or sit alone at lunch

or cry over little things,

they

are not

alone.

My classmates and my new favorite place

is our class's sharing circle

called Wish You Knew.

We write down things that have happened

and feelings we wish others knew

on a piece of paper.

They're secret,

but they don't have to be

if you're ready to share.

I want to tie the ideas in those three books together with a couple of things from my feed recently:

To repeat:

We need diverse representation not only so every kid can see themselves as the hero of the story, but so that every kid can understand that other kinds of kids are also the heroes of the story.

For more on that, see:

• The Antidote of Mirrors and Windows
• It Doesn't Have to Be Your Experience

And this:

I've said it before (in Library 101, for instance): A great library has something in it to offend everyone. Not just a great library, any good one. If you're going to have a well-rounded collection representing a diversity of viewpoints, then you're going to have enough viewpoints that each person can find something to disagree with.

One of the picture books I remember most vividly from my childhood is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I loved that book. It was notable for being one of the first picture books from a mainstream publisher to feature Black characters; and it won major awards and became a best-seller.

I just watched a short video, Tell Me Another Story, about the award started in Keats' honor (with money he provided). The Ezra Jack Keats Award looks for books that in the spirit of Keats celebrate the universal experience of childhood and at the same time celebrate differences, the video says. It talks about the power of stories that feature characters children can identify with. I pulled out this quote:

A child being able to see themself in a book, that's permission to be themselves, that's permission that they have from the world to exist.

Books as mirrors for those less represented in society.

I want to make a slight shift to a bigger idea about the power of stories in general. As mirrors to see ourselves, as windows to see others, as a way to share values, and more.

Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction

Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. . . . Most of our mind does not even realize that fiction is fiction, so we react to it almost as though it were real.

At the same time, very young children “can rationally deal with the make-believe aspects of stories,” distinguishing the actual, the possible, and the fantastical with sophistication . . . That may help explain why, when stories are done well, we love them so much. Just as artificial sweeteners fool our minds into thinking we’re eating sugar, stories--even weird ones like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland--take advantage of our natural tendency to want to learn about real people, and how to treat them. . . . 

The rational parts of our minds, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, do indeed know that what we’re looking at, or reading, isn’t real. One way to understand this is by thinking about optical illusions. In the Muller-Lyer illusion, we can trace and know the two horizontal lines are the same length, but at the same time appear to be different lengths. Even after you understand how an illusion operates, it continues to fool part of your mind. This is the kind of double knowledge we have when we consume fiction.

These perceptual areas of our brains are very closely connected to our emotions. That’s why emotions don’t just motivate us to act in certain ways but force us to interpret the world differently.

Stories are real. Their impact is real. They define and change us.

I love this quote from Ink in the Blood, by Kim Smejkal:

She understood pictures because they could be anything, mean anything. Maybe a teardrop today could be rain tomorrow. Or even something good: a fresh pear or a cheery mandolin. And maybe, one day, something so lovely it breaks your heart: paisley on your child's dress the day they whisper their name for the first time.

Pictures stayed the same but changed with you. They were past, the present, the future, all at once.

The character in the book is an artist, so she is describing pictures in the quote, but the same is true of books and stories and all art--and all life.

For more on that, see my last couple of posts. To revisit a bit of them:

Backward Phrenology

Authors are curators of experience. They filter the world's noise, and out of that noise they make the purest signal they can--out of disorder they create narrative. They administer this narrative in the form of a book, and preside, in some ineffable way, over the reading experience. Yet no matter how pure the data set that authors provide to readers--no matter how diligently prefiltered and tightly reconstructed--readers' brains will continue in the prescribed assignment: to analyze, screen, and sort. Our brains will treat a book as if it were any other of the world's many unfiltered, encrypted signals. That is, the author's book, for readers, reverts to a species of noise. We take in as much of the author's world as we can, and mix this material with our own in the alembic of our reading minds, combining them to alchemize something unique. I would propose that this is why reading "works": reading mirrors the procedure by which we acquaint ourselves with the world. It is not that our narratives necessarily tell us something true about the world (though they might), but rather that the practice or reading feels like, and is like, consciousness itself: imperfect; partial; hazy; co-creative.

-----

Imagination Is the Essence of Humankind

What we hold in mind are necessarily patchy, sketchy and wonky versions of ‘reality’ – good enough for most purposes, but full of gaps, false assumptions and recollections. What’s surprising is not the imperfections, but how little we notice them. That’s precisely because we are Homo imaginatus, the master fabulators. Craving narratives that help us make sense of the world, we unconsciously and effortlessly fill in or revise the details until the story works. In this sense, imagination is a normal part of what we do all the time. . . .

Imagined and remembered events both arise by the brain doing the same thing: what Addis calls ‘the mental rendering of experience’. Imagination and memory use a cognitive network for ‘simulation’ that turns the raw ingredients of sensory experience into a kind of internal movie, filled not just with sound and action but with emotional responses, interpretation and evaluation. Not only is that happening when we think about yesterday or tomorrow, says Addis – it’s what we’re doing right now as we experience the present. This simply is the world of the mind. The imaginative capacity, she says, is the key to the fluidity with which we turn threads of experience into a tapestry. . . .

It would be quite wrong to suppose that the artistic imagination is just an evolutionary overdevelopment of an ability to plan how we’ll get tomorrow’s meal. On the contrary, the imaginative dimensions of the arts could be the paradigmatic expression of our skills at prediction and anticipation. The literary scholar Brian Boyd of the University of Auckland thinks this is where our predilection for inventing stories comes from. Specifically, he thinks they serve to flex the muscles of our social cognition. . . .

Imagination is the essence of humankind. It’s what our brains do, and in large part it may be what they are for.

And I think this short training I just took at work makes some surprising and wonderful connections to all of the preceding.

Library Leadership Podcast: Beating Burnout with Amanda Moore

Stress is a neurological and a physiological shift that happens in our bodies when we encounter a threat. 

It’s an evolutionarily adaptive response that helps us cope with stressors—such a thing as being chased by a lion, or dealing with a dangerous library patron. When our brain notices the lion it activates the stress response. Our heart beats a little faster. Our blood pressure increases. We breathe more quickly. Our muscles tense and we become less sensitive to pain. We’re vigilant, and our senses are heightened. Our entire body and mind change in response to the perceived threat.

Burnout is simply chronic stress that’s unaddressed. It’s a state of emotional and physical exhaustion that results in feelings of futility and loss of personal identity. So, it’s tough stuff. Physiologically, when we are confronted by a lion our heart beats faster. Our blood pressure increases, etc. This allows us to run away. However, when we’re confronted by a threatening library patron all the same physiological and mental changes happen, but we can’t really run. We deal with the threat and then we return to our desk in the library and we sit. And, we might also complain to others in the library. 

We’re not getting aerobic exercise, or resting, and we’re really not changing our mindset. These are the central ingredients to reducing our bodies stress response. It cuts adrenaline and other stress hormones. So, the stress builds in our body over time. . . . 

Adopt an attitude of compassion. Feel compassion. This doesn’t mean that you have to be nice to a problem patron, you might still call the police on them, but feel compassion rather than anger toward that person. Anger eats us alive. Sometimes I find that I have trouble getting to compassion so here’s what works for me--if I’m angry then I ask myself, What is sad about this situation? Because, there’s usually sadness behind that anger. And in that sadness I recognize a feeling of concern about the well-being of the other. Compassion literally means with passion. So, my formula is this--I work on transmuting anger into sadness, and then sadness into love, and that really helps me a lot. So, an attitude of compassion.

Of course, from now on I'm going to think of difficult patrons as lions.

Lions I can come to understand and feel compassion for.

A related bit of news that I missed over the summer and only just now discovered. From the American Library Association:

ALA Adopts New Code of Ethics Principle on Racial and Social Justice

07/28/2021

During the American Library Association (ALA) Annual and Exhibition virtual conference, the ALA Council unanimously adopted a new ninth principle on racial and social justice to the association's Code of Ethics. . . . 

The ninth principle within the ALA Code of Ethics reads:

“We affirm the inherent dignity and rights of every person. We work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, profession, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces.”

The ALA Code of Ethics translates the values of intellectual freedom that define the profession of librarianship into broad principles and provides a framework for library professionals dealing with situations involving ethical conflicts. The addition of the principle codifies the library and information services profession’s commitment to racial and social justice and further emphasizes diversity and inclusion as one of the profession’s core values.

I love it and support it wholeheartedly. I'm proud of my profession.

I took that picture of a display on the wall of the library at our kids' elementary school. I think maybe those same goals are up in every classroom in the building.

Goals for Life:

1. I can make good choices even if I am mad or upset.
2. I can be okay even if others are not okay.
3. I can do something even if I don't want to or it's hard.

I think those goals are as good as any I know for everyone at all ages. That, and compassion.