Tis the Season for Santa and Pharma!

Case story #54 on the Pharmaceuticalization of America

Seemed like an innocent offer - a free sit on Santa's lap, and my little girl's first time to see the big ole' jolly man. But my jolliness turned to gloom as I signed in, and saw what the church had chosen for their writing utensils. I looked around to see if there were boxes of free samples, maybe an attractive drug rep posing as one of "santa's helpers" but it was just the pens. Next year, maybe there will be a more elaborate set-up...maybe while you are sitting on Santa's lap, instead of asking him for gifts, he will be giving the little ones a quick questionare to see if they meet criteria for ADHD (i.e. "Have you ever been in a hyperactive state for 3 seconds or longer?") or Dependent Personality Syndrome (i.e. "Do you depend on your mother to feed you?"). And I am sure that on Santa's lap, Happiness Syndrome would be quite prevalent, indicating a dire need for strong medicine, immediately!

Big PhRMA, coming to a Santa's lap near you!

A pearl for healthcare policy from an unlikely source...

In this week's sound bites over the continuing dilemma of how to fix our most immediate issues surrounding money (not to be confused with what I feel is our most important issue needing to be addressed in this realm - GREED and the culture that spews, cultivates, and perpetuates it), our fearless and clueless dictator spewed something that I found to be quite profound...don't worry, he did not understand what we was saying, so we cannot give him full credit for its profundity. Speaking of the new bailout plan he said,

"[This is] not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it."

What a beautiful statement for a logical, sane, equitable, and efficient way to do healthcare - a national health plan. As in a single-payer system in which profit motives and perverse profit incentives no longer drive the care that is given and that which is with-held.

A single-payer solution to the quagmire that is our current, default national health plan -

Don't get sick, and if you do, remember that the only place where you won't get a door slammed in your face due to billing and insurance issues is the local emergency room

It is not an issue of taking over healthcare's free market so valued by the AMA, PhRMA, Insurance companies, hospital associations, and co-conspirators in the HIC (Health Industrial Complex). Instead, it is a move to preserve healthcare and the free market that supports it in the U.S., starting with the greater than 50% of dollars that come from public funds.

As a physician, I support a single-payer health plan because I see it as the clearest way to preserve the ethical and moral principles of the healing arts, and to do so in a way that saves us money while restoring these higher ideals back to the individual and collective healer-patient relationship

...no more 50 million left out in the cold, while three-piece-suited CEOs strike up conversation inside over what preventive health service to stop reimbursing next
...no more economics language where everyone is reduced to either "clients", "consumers," "purchasers," "payers" or "providers" of healthcare
...no more out-spending the rest of the world and having little to show for it except for high administrative costs and ridiculous wealth being raked in at the top
...no more "you deserve as much healthcare as you can pay for" and the other dehumanizing elements that ultimately lead to sicker lives and quicker deaths, reducing people and their healthcare to a commodity

I say, and probably for the first time on-record, yes to G.W...we need a drastic shift in how we see, operate, think about, and fund healthcare. Not to take it over, but to take it back, to preserve it, to put in place a logical systeming of rationing of what we spend and where we spend it to replace the current-day illogical, greed-based system of rationing that is 100% about dollars and 0% about the health of those residing in our country.


In health and beauty,
Anthony
Un-paid, self-appointed lobbyist for my patients

The beautiful feather...

This Eagle feather, which hangs above the bed, fell into Nizhoni's lap, with mom finding her as you see in the picture. We had noticed her fixating on the feathers earlier, and the dropping of the feather was a way for them to greet her in return...Creator speaks in mysterious and beautiful ways!

Blessing in the water

Here, I am with my dad and mom at the Taos Pueblo, set against the beautiful mountains of northern New Mexico. In this Tribe, newborn babies are taken to this stream in the middle of the village, and the water is used to bless the baby. My dad performed the ceremony, and though the water was a little cold for my liking, I did feel a sense of harmony and peace as the water touched me.

Beauty is born into the world!

Nizhoni Rose Fleg, born 3:36am on August 4th

Nizhoni = "beauty" in Dine/Navajo language

Rose = her grandmother's and great grandmother's name

Update (as of 18 hours of life)

- knows most of her ABCs

- working on simple algebra

- learning to breakdance

- not yet dating (per parental rules)

Otherwise, doing the normal things of an almost 1 day old!

Seeing a little one emerge into this world is something truly amazing, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, gratitude-inducing...powerful medicine for the soul, and profound reminder to us of God's presence amongst us.

And my first trick that I am going to teach her, once we leave the hospital

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBSYD0dQCAw

The way we (continue) to tell the story of America's past: ignorant at best, racist for sure

I recently visited Santa Fe, a small town in northen New Mexico whose economy is heavily tied to the rich Indigenous heritage of the land. This is a community, possibly more than any other in the U.S., which appears to treasure and honor American Indians, their art and culture. From paintings to sculptures, breathtaking beadwork to elaborate silver jewelry, and an array of turquoise art, Santa Fe's shops and galleries collectively form a museum of Indigenous craftsmanship. Of course, the city also profits heavily off of the labor of Native artisans, as most of the pieces in Santa Fe are sold by non-native vendors at incredible mark-up from what was payed to the artist, at prices that the wealthy tourists in the town will pay.

Thus, it is a place where "homage to Native culture" and "exploitation of Native culture" are often hard to tease apart. There was one shop in the town's downtown district that heightened my concern - amidst some of the most beautiful (and expensive) Indigenous jewelry and decorative pottery I have ever seen, on the way out of the shop, I noticed the good ole' "dress up Indian" rack. $5 packages of feathers, headresses, tomahawks, etc. so that little Jimmy and Sally could play dress-up while mommy and daddy "honored" Indigenous artisans by buying a $3,000 necklace.


...I then went to the New Mexico History Museum, in the hallowed Palace of the Governers in the town's main square, and was greeted in the entrance with a plaque that introduces visitors to the history of this land. Interestingly, the prominance of American Indians in the rest of the town's shops was apparently not contagious, as this sign spoke nothing of the Pueblos and Zuni's whose land this was. In fact, the only mention of Indigenous peoples in this plaque was by a curious title - HOSTILE INDIANS. I wondered if this was, perhaps, a Tribe I have never heard of? The Hostile Indian Nation? Here are the three references to the land's first peoples, quoted exactly:

New Mexico, a part of the new nation, was expected to protect Mexico's interior from foreigners and hostile Indians.

HOSTILE INDIANS WERE THE GREATEST THREAT to communities. Disruptive raids caused the abandonment of numerous small frontier settlements.

Attempts to stop hostile Indians so depleted the treasury that it was often impossible to provide arms for the settlers.

I think the sheet ignorance and racism here speaks for itself, but I will comment briefly.

First, this is the third time in the last 6 months where I have seen similarly barbaric and dehumanizing depictions of American Indians in places where I would expect better, the national park of Sabino Canyon and Mt. Ranier being the other two. So, shrugging this off as an incidental finding, as opposed to an indictment of how we continue to tell the story of our land and its history, is a bit difficult.

Second, I can only laugh at this notion that American Indians sole contribution to this land was to stand in the way of the good, Christian Europeans who were trying to make themselves a home. Forget telling the 10,000+ year history of what happened before Europeans graced the land...forget thinking about the "disruptive raids" of the colonizers into Native communities. Instead, we'll focus on the way that the barbaric Indians stood as a hindrance and barrier to European development (with amnesia to the reality of how the annihilation of Indigenous communities might have stood as a slight hindrance to their own development). How can we continue to tell such a fairy tale version of our history and what does this say about our collective conscience as a nation in terms of our ability to accept the dark truths about the founding of this land?

Finally, a question for all of us - When we continue to tell our history this way, where all of the pre-European millenia are tidied into one paragraph called "the prehistoric time," with the next sentence beginning with a description of how peoples of this land stood as a disruption to the proud mission of civilizing the primitive land (a.k.a. colonization and genocide), how can we expect this same society to treat American Indians humanely, with some sense of dignity or humanity?

If a stranger were to come to this land and stand there at the entrance of the New Mexico History Museum reading this plaque, what condition would we she expect to find today's descendents of these "hostile Indians"? In poverty? Treated as less than fully American, less than fully human?Banished to barren lands without proper infrastructure for water, electricity, health care, and jobs? Or, equally devastating, suffering from the same as invisible wanderers in America's cities?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The way we tell our history says a lot about who we are - until we re-write the story of our nation's past, we surely won't right the wrongs of the present.

In sadness and hope,
Anthony

p.s. not to be hypocritical, I will now begin writing my letter of discontent to the museum and our local papers.

Happy Interdependence Day!

Writing in the last minutes of July 4th - INTERDEPENDENCE Day, 2008.

As the fireworks fade, I think about the greatness of America.

Does it lie in our ability to exert our will over all other nations, or does it lie in being willing to do our small part in bringing nations together to save this planet and put an end to violence and war?

Does America's greatness lie in our ability to occupy, to invade, to devastate other lands...or does it lie in developing an occupation, a fascination with peacemaking.

Does our greatness lie in thinking that we are the critical central piece holding the world together, or does it lie in being humble enough to see that we are just one small piece in the larger puzzle that is the global community.

Celebrate Inter-depedence day...
recognizing the work we have to do in lowering our nation's ego to half-mast (a solemn tribute and "goodbye" to the bull-headed arrogance that led us, for instance, to the delusion that bulldozing our way through foreign lands in the name of national security in order to exponentially increase profits for our impoverished oil tycoons is good foreign policy).

understanding that, like the fireworks of tonight, an existence based on boasting of our superiority will quickly fade away from its initial brilliance, becoming nothing more than smoke in the sky.

believing that love, generosity, kindness, and the principles of equity and justice can be the foundation for our interactions with the world, with soul power replacing military power
as the ticket to national security.

The question is not nonviolence vs. violence. It is nonviolence vs. nonexistence.

Happy Interdependence Day!!!!!

A promise to love

As I take the leap off the cliff into my family medicine residency at UNM, now adorned with letters behind my name, I think about how important it is to stay grounded in the principles of love, caring, generosity, and justice.

How will I, in those sleep-deprived moments/minutes/months be the physician I would want caring for my family, my loved ones...or for myself?

When comments are made about patients and their families, how will I steer clear of denegrating and de-humanizing their foibles?

How will I adhere to principles of health as a human right amidst a system that denies coverage and care to so many?

I thought I would start to answer these questions by a simple act of proactivism, declaring what I stand for, and not waiting for things to happen so that I can declare what I am against.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am a human - I will make mistakes, and I will humbly accept these mistakes, trying to learn from each and every one so that I can be a better healer in the future

I also believe in my humanity in the sense that I will not be afraid to feel, to cry, to laugh, to suffer with, to empathize, to experience life, death, sickness, healing, and health with my patients and colleagues.

I will take time to recognize the gift that each and every patient I see has given me, and will honor this gift through the highest moral and ethical standards by which I will conduct myself.

I believe in, and will use, the healing power of laughter, prayer, clown noses, farting, etc. etc.

I will maintain my PharmFree stance, taking no gifts from industry that would fracture the sacred trust held between my patients and me.

I will take time to let others around me know that their work is special, and that they are special.

I do believe that it takes everyone to create a place in which healing takes place - accordingly, I will never let the letter behind my name trick me into thinking that I am any better, higher, smarter, or more gifted than those around me; instead, I will seek to see the wonderful ways in which all of us work for the good of the patients who come to UNM.

I most certainly believe that health and health care is a human right, and will do all in my power to work for changes in the system to move us closer to that reality. On a personal level, I vow never to turn a person away because of their ability to pay.

I will love my work, my profession, my patients...I will love life, staying spiritually grounded in the gift of each new day.

I will honor my body, mind and spirit through this process - staying physically fit, keeping a connection to Creator through prayer and mindfulness, and rejuvinating the soul through hikes into the mountains, bike rides by the river, and lots of adventures.

I will honor the family that supports me, making my wife and baby first priority when I am away from the hospital. I will not let work become an excuse for not being there for them, nor will I let distance be an excuse to lose touch with my family in MD, CO, AZ, etc.

Amen.

The meaning of "miracle"

We were in the waiting room of the hospital, myself and 30 of my Navajo family. Grandma Mae, a beautiful 87 year old grandmother of ours, had just gone through open heart surgery after presenting with severe blockage of the coronary artery that supplies the left side of the heart.

In the Navajo way, family comes together in big ways at times like these, and at this moment, we had claimed this land as ours (socio-political pun intended), taking over the ICU waiting room and adjacent hallway.

We got to praying, under the direction of Grandpa Eddie and the elders, and I got to thinking about the miracles of this day...

Yes, it was a miracle that Grandma made it to the hospital, that that last bit of open space remained, allowing life-sustaining bloodflow to the heart.

Yes, it was a miracle that she survived such an intense surgery, and would be able to get back to days of herding sheep and teaching humility to all in her presence

But there was more in this day's lesson.

Each moment's breath that gives us oxygen to sustain the fragile thing called life...

Each moment's electrical impulses that allow brain and heart to function in a coordinated manner, organizing billions of cells for a purpose

Each moment's gift of the sight, with all that it takes in nerves, muscles, vessels, and tissues of the eye just to allow us to see (..and how quickly we could lose this ability if one of the multitude of parts were to fail)

And each night's journey into the Creator's Hands, as we literally and figuratively give our lives over to Hand's Higher as we fall asleep, with no promise, and certainly no human ability, to wake to see another day.

We need not be 87 or 67 or 37 years old to see that miracles are happening around us constantly.

Acknowledging these miracles is the hard part.

Seeing and appreciating the miracles of life has little to do with what happens to us, and has everything to do with where we are spiritually.

So, let us take a moment to listen to the breath, to put a hand over the heart's steady rhythm of life, to notice the gift of sight...

And to take the first moment of each new day as the MIRACLE it is, and to live that day accordingly, in gratitude, with humility, and with a passion for healing our families, our communities, and our planet.

Ahe 'eeh,
Ahe 'eeh shi Diyin God,
Ahe 'eeh,
Hastiin Ba Hozhooni

{Translation from Navajo:
Thank you,
Thank you Creator,
Thank you,
The Man Who Smiles Much}

Allegre D - Wiping the smiles away, once bank account at a time!

How are you today?

If you are like many Americans, you may answer this with a positive answer - "doing well", "loving life", etc....this is a grave warning sign that you might be suffering needlessly!

And in answering this question, you might even crack a smile and exhibit what we at Good Living Upliftment Covert Kommodity (GLUCK) Pharmaceuticals call "signs and symptoms of behavioral adaptations toward a positive metaphysical response." (e.g. happiness)

Yes, we know this is very complex stuff, so let us break it down, Smurf style:

Of the Smurfs, you may have noticed the one that stuck out as completely dysfunctional, unable to perform his Smurf duties, or even to have the wherewithal to help Pappa Smurf with emotional support as a single-father - Yup! Happy Smurf! We can all agree that Lazy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, Handsome Smurf and their siblings all clearly outperformed Happy when it came to Darwinian fitness, largely because they did not suffer from happiness as he did.

(For a quick re-fresher on the entire Smurfdom, see

http://bluebuddies.com/help/smurf_names_and_list_of_the_smurfs.htm#who)

Which surepticiously brings us, the GLUCK family, to our point.

Happiness is something that has been pushed upon us through the evil plots of the makers of children's cartoons, makers of greeting cards, Santa Claus, and a host of NGOs too numerous to list here. It has become the epidemic of the 21st century, with an estimated 262,386,432 Americans affected (source: unpublished industry data)

And like Happy Smurf, these millions upon millions are finding it hard to function in life, which unlike the comforting world that incubated the Smurfs, is a cold, crass, and cruel environment in which to live.

GLUCK has a (culturally and linguistically-competent) solution called Allegre D, a revolutionary drug that will turn that smile into a frown, one that will make your lightheartedness fade quicker than a Smurf who sees Gargamel. This drug is re-inventing what it means to be human, and liberating humanity from its captivity to happiness.

Allegre D is a revolutionary drug, the first in a class called SSREs - Selective Serotonin Reuptake Enhancers - making sure that the serotonin (or as we call it at GLUCK, ""the awful, awful, horrible, nasty, toxic neurotransmitter") is ridded from the synapses of your nervous system.

This drug, when taken as part of a healthy diet of glum-ness, sorrow, and incidental horrific life experiences, has been shown (in left-handed lab mice lacking a frontal lobe of the brain) to decrease symptoms of happiness in over 98% (of those willing to take it at a neurotoxic IV dose)

Allegre D can do the same for you!

Please send check and money order to GLUCK today, for an easy payment of $349.99 (to be repeated weekly), and we will promise you that your sunny, smiley, beautiful days of suffering
are over.

So the next time you feel a smile coming on, think about
Allegre D - it stands for Allegre (Happy) Detox, and it will do just that, detoxing you system, one nueron at a time, and restoring you to those days when all you will want to do is cry, scoff, frown, fret, fart, etc.

*As with all medications, please ask your doctor is medical advice from a pharmaceutical ad is right for you *

* Do not consume Allegre D with SSRI's - this has been shown to cause catatonia due to the clashing of these two molecules at the nueronal synapse. Also, do not consume with sushi, lettuce, salt, graham crackers, ice cream, cooked meat, uncooked meat, mandarin oranges, or other foods known to elicit feelings of happiness.

* If you have any positive things happening in your life, we encourage immediate discontinuing of such activities before beginning Allegre D for optimal results

* And if you can't afford Allegre D, we have a great "Helping Patients Frown" assitance program, which will allow you to get one pill free, and will then automatically take payments for ensuing pills out of your children's college funds or your house mortgage, whichever is deemed to be the route of monetary extraction that will inflict the most pain (e.g. be most opposite to happiness)

The Purple Jellybean - powerful medicine!

I had the opportunity to spend Easter on call, and it was very interesting how, here in the ICU, no one acknowledged that this was a holiday for the rest of the world. I did my best to wish families and patients a Happy Easter, but felt somewhat uncomfortable doing so, as no one else on the medical team wanted this to enter into "the serious business of healing." One patient, after the team had left, felt comfortable telling me that what she really wanted on this Easter was a purple jellybean to eat. Luckily, she was one of the few patients in the ICU who was allowed to eat, and I then trecked to see if I could find the purplish treat...I also started coming up with my story, so that when I was asked, I could convince my superiors that this was really a powerful medicine I was delivering.

"What is that you are bringing to room 16?"
(a beautiful exhibition of the inability to refer to patients as humans...they are either known by their disease, their room number, and if they have an impressive enough case, maybe just by an organ..."the liver over there")
"Uh, yeah, this is the noon dose of the antibiotics she is on."
"You mean, the Jelly Belly brand of antibiotics, since that is what is plastered on the side of the pills?"
"I guess the Jellybean industry is as cutthroat as the Pharmaceutical industry, and have decided to place ads on prescription meds" (mumbled as I walk away)

Well, I found a purple jellybean, delivered it without incidence, and was met with such a great smile that I quickly thought back to common sense medicine (which is not taught in medical school), which suggests that if a small dose is effective in bringing healing, then a larger dose is indicated...so, a little while later, after going through the stash of jellybeans I had found, picking out the purple ones, I had a nice little cup of "medicine" to deliver...and indeed, common sense medicine held true - her smile was just a bit bigger this time, and I even got a positive "laugh sign" on my physical exam!

A good reminder to myself that, as a healer, I can
cure occassionally,
heal often,
and comfort always

Also a reminder that when suffocated with seriousness, a random act of kindness is good medicine for all.

PEACE - IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

As our community feels the painful consequences of violence, with an un-identified 16 year-old and UNC senior Eve Carson both being shot walking distance from UNC’s tree-lined, picturesque campus, it puts an added perspective on the 5-year anniversary of the violence of the Iraq war. As much as we are hurting, this day reminds us of violent deaths numbering more than 100,000, each of which leaves a family, a community suffering and grieving.

This is a day that implores us, those who have come face-to-face with violence in our community, to become champions for peace, to advocate for another way of being toward our neighbor, our community, our fellow nations, and the planet that is struggling to support us.
I turn to two humble examples of the drive for peaceful, loving, trusting, equitable world that we all seek, expecting that their stories will inspire us to make peace the way of our hearts and lives.

The Peace Club at Chapel Hill High School
Sarah Jane Kerwin is a young woman who embraces being a little different. A freshman at Chapel Hill High School, she is troubled by the violence she sees around her. “It begins long before nations begin fight other nations...it is in the language we use, the racial and homophobic slurs around us, and the bullying we see in schools.” Sarah and fellow freshman Marina Ramos-Pezzati formed the Peace Club at their high school, advertising around the school with bottle tops turned into vestiges for peace, adorned with signs and phrases of peace (see photo). Says Sarah, “I knew that other students cared about peace. I simply decided that instead of waiting for them to find me, I would find them.”

Little more than six months old, the Peace Club, under the tutelage of world history Corey Waters, has decided that embracing and cultivating a culture of peaceful relations amongst students was not enough, and instead turned their focus to working on issues of injustices, in our community and beyond. Sarah comments, “Justice and peace cannot be separated – the best peace work we can do is to better our community, one person at a time,” says Kerwin. The Peace Club, now affiliated with O Ambassadors, groups of youth working for social change through Oprah. And on April 3rd, they will be invited guests of Oprah, hoping to appear on the show itself. When asked for her vision for peace, Sarah takes a deep breath, trying to put words to her life's mission. “It is easy to say that you want peace, but it is much harder to do something about it. I think that if people would just think before they act, whether it is an offensive word they are using, a way they are destroying the environment, or how we support violence through our silence, we could make peace a reality.”

The Peace Pilgrim
The woman known as Peace Pilgrim offered the world a simple message as she hiked thousands of miles across the world: when we collectively nourish ourselves to find inner peace, our institutions will reflect that peace and war will be no more. She would not give her name or age, and would simply describe herself as coming from poverty, with little education and no special talents. “Rather, I live a guided life,” she would say.

A small woman with incredible moral and spiritual strength, she used her legs over the course of 29 years (1953-1981) to make cross-country hikes for world peace, logging over 25,000 miles. She would stop to speak the peace message, living simply and relying on others for food and shelter. When asked why war exists and how to turn it into peace, Peace Pilgrim echoed Sarah's sentiments: “The real problem is immaturity [and] the key is approaching with love and openness, rather than hatred and mistrust”. She would add that the peace needed was not simply the absence of war, but the absence of the causes of war. (Read more about her: http://www.peacepilgrim.net/)

Inspired by these two champions for peace, I know that each of us can be thermostats for peace, not thermometers that mirror the politicized ideas of what is “realistic”, and which often tell us that violence and war is necessary. Responding to the recent acts of violence in our community, I don't hear suggestions that such events are necessary, nor have I heard that label “unrealistic” given to the idea of working together toward a community where violence is not present. Yet, we accept war as “necessary”, and consider the promotion of peace (including the conditions that encourage peace) “unrealistic” as a primary means of securing our broader national community. A few of us actively promote this notion, and the rest of us accept it through our silence.

Which brings us to a good exit strategy for this piece. Find the strength that Sarah and her classmates have found…take a step toward actively becoming a peacemaker like the Peace Pilgrim. Cultivate within the peace that you wish to breathe into our community, our planet, and our world. This is the only remedy that will bring us from this discouraging moment of time where violence has increasingly taken us all hostage into a day when we – individually and collectively – know peace as the way of our world.

In health and beauty,
Anthony Fleg

HYPER-RESPONSIVENESS SYNDROME - get medicine quick!

Have you ever felt something (e.g. sadness, happiness, joy, pleasure, pain, etc)?

If so, you may be one of the Americans that is suffering needlessly from what we at Superior Health-Achieving Medicines (SHAM) Pharmaceuticals call

HYPER-RESPONSIVENESS SYNDROME

I know, this may hard to take...you may even feel a wave of emotions come over you at this very moment...not to worry - a few years on our new drug, FEEL-NO-MORE (Sodium chloride dihydroxy-oxygen) at a new low cost of $130 per pill, and you will be SYMPTOM (e.g. feeling) FREE!

Please call now, and one of our SHAM representatives will be happy to listen to your story, persuade you out of lifestyle changes, and make sure that you are a "candidate" for the drug (e.g. making a 6 figure salary).

1-800-SHAM-NOW

FEEL NO MORE - Because you don't have to suffer any longer!

Side effects may include emotional numbness, inability to smile, inability to cry, blah, blah, blah...we tend to think of these as the therapeutic effect, anyway!

An experiment with Joy at the local gorcery store

After a wonferfully inspiring 4 days at the Health Justice Gathering at the Gesundheit! Institute, I wondered what my next step was. Long hours of driving and a flat tire that resulted in a good three hours delay at the mecca of "monoculture of the mind" (Wal Mart) left me in state of hazy gloom.

With one stop before getting home the grocery, I began to think about the little clown nose I had in my pocket...what if.....

My experiment wth Joy:

Why was it so hard to do this? I could barely get out of my car once fitted with the red nose, completely afraid of...happiness? silliness? myself?

Once into the store, I had not made it more than 20 feet toward Aisle 1 when a gentleman shouted out,"Hey, your nose looks like mine felt last week." This started a 30 minute conversation, in the backdrop of the week's end-of-aisle special on canned snow peas. He shared lots of incredible things with me- his life as a "mentally different" person, his views of the VA healthcare system, his struggles to pay medical bills and get medications, and his Buddhist philosophy that this was one of those "events of synchronicity."

We hugged, I breathed deep, and thought to myself how nice it was to feel joy, sheer joy, long before I had started picking out my vegetables for the week.

But it didn't stop there, because right after a few awkward glances from folks amidst the greens and fruits (which is completely explainable by the fact that this is an higher-class, college town where we are to be dignified, serious, and adult-like), I heard the fish/meat worker say, "Say, is Rudolph still in town?"

Now this began another foray into the world of beautiful conversations with strangers. This man, Mr. Izel, was full of happiness and not afraid to show it. I made sure to ask him his secret tincture, in case any of my patients needed a dose of it, to which he told me it was hugging his wife and children each and every night.

After a reasonably uneventful trip through the cereal aisle and frozen foods, I made my way to the checkout line, where spontaneously four other grocers came over to help me check out, drawn to the spherical nasal appendage by some innate desire to laugh and enjoy the company of another. I insisted that my nose gave me magical powers to bag my own groceries, thus freeing them up to talk with me as I worked. I can't quite remember all of the things we laughed about, but I do remember one of them mentioning, "You look like that Patch Adams guy"

How many times have you walked out of the grocery on cloud nine (not including those days when your favorite ice cream was 50% reduced!)????

How many times have you allowed yourself to be a free-of-charge magnet for conversations, laughter, and even for those struggling with Uptightness Syndrome, an under the breath sigh of "Huh?" ?????

I invite you to try this, but not at home...in the grocery, in the department store, in he hospital, or just for an entire day (which I plan to do as experiment #2 tomorrow)

Some other reflections from this experiment:
* Children were very attracted to the nose, with an ability to smile immediately, without checking to see who was watching them as the adults did
* Again, I found it very hard to initiate the experiment, and would have continued in this state of discomfort unless someone has drawn me in, and given to me in the way that these first two gentle souls did...did they realize that they were healing me as they talked and laughed with me?
* I realized how self-conscious I was throughout the grocery adventure, and could begin to relate to what it must be like to have a deformity or to think I had a deformity, and then to have to bare it for all of the world to see...or what if I simply didn't like the way that I looked and had to live with this self-created, but quite powerful, image of everyone staring at me wherever I went?
* My actions were most sincere when I reminded myself that I was doing this to bring joy to myself, and less so when I began to get carried away with the notion that I was a "joy agent" for others

In love, with gratitude for allowing me to share,
Lovemeister