Bit by Bit - Chapter 15, Part 1

Trey Smith

To be constrained in will, lofty in action, aloof from the world, apart from its customs, elevated in discourse, sullen and critical, indignation his whole concern - such is the life favored by the scholar in his mountain valley, the man who condemns the world, the worn and haggard one who means to end it all with a plunge into the deep. To discourse on benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and good faith, to be courteous, temperate, modest, and deferential, moral training his whole concern - such is the life favored by the scholar who seeks to bring the world to order, the man who teaches and instructs, who at home and abroad lives for learning. To talk of great accomplishments, win a great name, define the etiquette of ruler and subject, regulate the position of superior and inferior, the ordering of the state his only concern - such is the life favored by the scholar of court and council, the man who would honor his sovereign and strengthen his country, the bringer of accomplishment, the annexer of territory. To repair to the thickets and ponds, living idly in the wilderness, angling for fish in solitary places, inaction his only concern - such is the life favored by the scholar of the rivers and seas, the man who withdraws from the world, the unhurried idler. To pant, to puff, to hail, to sip, to spit out the old breath and draw in the new, practicing bear-hangings and bird-stretchings, longevity his only concern - such is the life favored by the scholar who practices Induction, the man who nourishes his body, who hopes to live to be as old as P'eng-tsu.
~ Burton Watson translation ~

A theme that Scott addresses frequently -- one that I wholeheartedly concur with -- is that life, by its very nature, is messy. No matter how hard or diligently we try (and readers should know by now that autistic me often tries harder than most), we fail again and again when we vainly attempt to order life to fit our whims and preferences.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

A Brand New (Old) Idea

Trey Smith

Jeffrey St. Clair is right to deplore the current low level of activity of the US left in his article, “The Silent Death of the American Left”.

St. Clair’s article omits the recent Occupy Movement, whose sudden and spontaneous emergence shows the potential for unrest lurking below the surface. But without an organization or a strategy, Occupy has disappeared. The potential is still there, because the profound problems that plague most Americans have not been solved or even ameliorated.

What is missing? A left electoral presence. To most Americans, politics means elections. But the Left lacks electoral representation.

There are a few exceptions: Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, while Dennis Kucinich served honorably for sixteen years in the House. But someone may object, what good does it do to have a Senator on our side?

Not long ago, Bernie Sanders took the floor of the Senate to read a list of dozens of big corporations who paid no income tax, and some even got tax credits. Hillary Clinton wouldn’t do that, nor would Mitch McConnell. Instead of debating whether taxes are too high or not high enough, the Left ought to point out who pays taxes – and who doesn’t. “Only little people pay taxes,” proclaimed real-estate queen Leona Helmsley, and she was right.

Sanders and Kucinich got elected without any organized Left to help. If the Left that took seriously the task of building a left electoral presence, that would entail examining every Congressional District in the country, weighing the electorate, the incumbent, the prospects for recruiting a left candidate, and the prospects for winning. It would entail teaching ourselves to explain the left perspectives to the electorate.

What we’ve been doing just does not work in building a left electoral presence:

1. Instead of recruiting our own candidates, we wait until the usual cast of opportunists and careerists get themselves nominated, then hold our noses and work for the lesser of the two evils.
2. We focus on the race for the White House, not Congress or Senator or state legislator.
3. A third party doesn’t work. The system is rigged against third parties. It costs a lot of effort just getting on the ballot. Then as election day approaches, voters realize that voting for the third party will help the Republican candidate win, and the third party fails.

Instead, I propose, in Democratic districts, to recruit and run our own candidate in the Democratic primary. That’s a strategy that actually aims at winning.
~ from The Left’s Missing Ingredient by John W. Farley ~

This is, by no means, a new idea. This is the kind of strategy that Democratic Socialists of America has advocated for decades. My feelings about this proposed strategy are ambivalent, at best.

On the one hand, the third party experiment in the US has failed to gain any significant traction. I do not write this as an outsider. For 15 years, I was involved in third party politics both as a state officer AND candidate for public office. However, after 15 years of tireless work, I honestly can't say that we or others had made much of ANY progress. Every two years we trotted out our slate of candidates and every two years we struggled to garner as much as 5 percent of the vote!

As Farley notes, our political system is rigged against third parties and that hasn't and won't change. So, third parties and their candidates work like dogs and rarely have anything to show for it!

On the other hand, Farley's strategy is far too simplistic and naive. Money is what drives politics and that is what most every truly progressive candidate lacks. Without the requisite millions of dollars in a campaign war chest, progressive candidates can't compete. Sure, they can throw their hat into the primary, but chances are great that they will be trounced. What difference would it make to run as a Democrat in the primary and struggle to garner as much as 10 percent of the vote versus running as a third party candidate in the general election and struggling to garner 5 percent of the vote? Such results equate to almost the same thing!

Until we get money OUT of politics -- which won't happen because it serves the politicians IN politics so well -- it really doesn't matter whether one tries to run inside or outside of the established system. This is why I think the answer lies outside of politics. Really, how do you reform a system that is rotten to its core?

I Ching: Hexagram 34 - The Lines, Part 5

Six in the fifth place means:
Loses the goat with ease.
No remorse.

The goat is noted for hardness outwardly and weakness within. Now the situation is such that everything is easy; there is no more resistance. One can give up a belligerent, stubborn way of acting and will not have to regret it.

Translator of this version of the I Ching is Richard Wilhelm. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the I Ching label below.

Equalizing Things X: All Things Are One Horse

Scott Bradley

This study has arrived at the dreaded this/that argument that Zhuangzi uses to logically demonstrate his conclusion that all things and opinions are fundamentally equal. I say dreaded because I, at least, am unable to always follow his arguments. This leads me to ask if it matters whether I understand them or not: Is it enough to have a sense of his conclusions? He does, after all, tell us that his argument is nothing more than "the Illumination of the Obvious" (Ziporyn), or more literally, "using the light" to reveal that which is obvious.

What is obvious? It is obvious that all our assessments about what is true or false, right or wrong, are based on our own subjective perspectives. My "this" (subjective perspective) differs from your "this" which I hold to be "that". But my "this" is your "that", and your "this" is my "that". How then, asks Zhuangzi, can we fail to conclude that "this" and "that" are really just the same? To realize this is to allow all things "to bask in the broad daylight of heaven." It is to see things from a broader perspective, the view from Dao; and this is ultimately what Zhuangzi suggests as a way of bringing an end to both internal and external disharmony.

Dao is that perspective which is the "Axis of all daos"; it is the perspective which is unpartisan; it embraces the totality of things and their individual expressions. All is well. This Dao is normative in that it has value as an indicator of how best to live, though whether we live it or not does not matter in terms of our affirmability.

The next question is what this means in terms of how we might live. Someone who embodies this understanding of the equality of all things, Zhuangzi tells us, "would not define rightness in any one way but would instead entrust it to the everyday function [of each being]. Their everyday function is what works for them . . ." Or again, "It is just a matter of going by the rightness of the present 'this'. To be doing this without knowing it, and not because you have defined it as right, is called 'the Course' [Dao]." Or again, "Thus the Sage uses various rights and wrongs to harmonize with others and yet remains in the middle of Heaven the Potter's Wheel. This is called 'Walking Two Roads'." We may not agree with someone's perspective or even that it is what would work best for them, but we nonetheless allow them to have it.

Can we try and change people’s self-contained perspectives? Unless Zhuangzi has failed of his own philosophy, apparently so, for the Inner Chapters are that attempt. But it is not a coercive attempt. Nor does it condemn those who do not respond to it. It both affirms people as they are and suggests a more harmonious way to be. This, too, is walking two roads.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

TYT - Cashing In On Students

I Ching: Hexagram 34 - The Lines, Part 4

Nine in the fourth place means:
Perseverance brings good fortune.
Remorse disappears.
The hedge opens; there is no entanglement.
Power depends upon the axle of a big cart.

If a man goes on quietly and perseveringly working at the removal of resistances, success comes in the end. The obstructions give way and all occasion for remorse arising from excessive use of power disappears.

Such a man's power does not show externally, yet it can move heavy loads, like a big cart whose real strength lies in its axle. The less that power is applied outwardly, the greater its effect.

Translator of this version of the I Ching is Richard Wilhelm. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the I Ching label below.

Badge As a Sledgehammer

Trey Smith

On Memorial Day, in Miami, a 14-year-old black kid named Tremaine McMillan was walking down the beach with his mother – and bottle-feeding his puppy – when cops blocked his path in ATVs. A few minutes before, the kid had been rough-housing in the surf with a friend, and the cops wanted to question him about it.

Moments later, the cops body-slammed the boy — still holding his puppy — onto the beach, got him in a chokehold, and arrested him for resisting arrest.

So far, so sickeningly normal.

But in this case, the police’s cover-story for the body-slam, the chokehold, and the kid’s subsequent arrest — that he was “clenching,” or, in other accounts, “flaring” his fists – was hard to sell, due to one small but troublesome fact: cellphone video showed that the kid never stopped cradling his puppy. So the police spokesman invoked a truly terrifying specter: the teenager, he said, was giving the cops “dehumanizing stares.”

Well, of course you can’t blame battle-toughened Miami cops for starting to panic when a 14-year-old black male–armed with a puppy, mind you – starts to look at them funny.

But the truth is that these so-called “dehumanizing stares” are really “humanizing” stares — stares that forced the cops to realize that they were not successful in terrorizing this kid, and that he was committing that ancient Southern offense of looking a white man in the eye.
~ from Who’s Afraid of Black Men’s Eyes? by John Eskow ~

I realize it's tough being a police officer these days. You never know when a routine situation will turn into a tense and/or deadly one. But our domestic police forces too often resemble trigger-happy war troops -- if anything moves, shoot it!.

No, no one was shot in this instance. No one died. The issue here, however, is the overzealousness of too many police officers to employ over-the-top tactics when it is rampantly obvious that such tactics are not needed! None of the evidence in this instance remotely suggests that the actions of the police officers can be justified. A skinny kid carrying a very young puppy is not an immediate threat to anyone unless, maybe, he was wearing a suicide bombing jacket.

While I agree with the author that this episode smacks of racism, there are many instances where race doesn't appear to be a factor at all (e.g., white officers brutalizing and/or killing unarmed white men with some form of mental illness). In my mind, the tie that binds all the assorted incidents of this nature is the militarization of domestic police departments. Instead of viewing people as the citizens officers are sworn to serve, they now see all of us as potential enemy combatants to be subdued by any means possible.

And the police wonder why their stock has fallen so far in the eyes of the American public!

Afternoon Matinee: Protest - World Wide Suicide

Performed by Pearl Jam

I felt the earth on Monday, it moved beneath my feet

In the form of a morning paper laid out for me to see

Saw his face in a corner picture, I recognised the name

Could not stop staring at the face I'd never see again

It's a shame to awake in a world of pain

What does it mean when a war has taken over?

It's the same everyday in a hell manmade

What can be saved and who will be left to hold her?

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

Medals on a wooden mantle, next to a handsome face

That the president took for granted, writing checks that others pay

And in all the madness, thought becomes numb and naive

So much to talk about, nothing for to say

It's the same every day and the wave won't break

Tell you to pray, while the devil's on their shoulder

Laying claim to the take that our soldiers save

Does not equate and the truth's already out there

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

Looking in the eyes of the fallen

You got to know there's another, another, another, another, another way

It's a shame to awake in a world of pain

What does it mean when a war has taken over?

It's the same everyday and the wave won't break

Tell you to pray while the devil's on their shoulder

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

The whole world, world over

It's a world wide suicide

~ from Wiki Lyric ~

They Aren't Like Us (Oh Yes, They Are!)

Trey Smith

Last night I watched a report on CNN about the unrest in Turkey. CNN star Anderson Cooper was talking over a video that showed Turkish security forces manhandling protesters. Cooper remarked that this is not the way to do things in a supposedly democratic nation. Though he never said a word about the US, it was really obvious by his indignation that he felt that the Turks could learn a thing or two about controlling public protests in a peaceful manner from US police departments.

Say what?

Were the Turks indiscriminately shooting and killing protesters? Heck no. They were using tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons...the very same things frequently utilized by US police departments. In fact, after 4 days of widespread protests all over the country, there has been one reported death (with hundreds of injuries).

If we look at the most recent Occupy Movement protests and the police response to them as compared to what is taking place in Turkey today, there really isn't a substantive difference between how either the Turkish or US governments addressed each situation. I'm not suggesting that I approve of the way both governments have chosen to deal with protesters, I'm merely suggesting that the strategies employed are remarkably similar.

And yet, here we have a nationally recognized news commentator making it sound like Turkish security forces are acting like thugs and that this is altogether different than the manner in which local police departments deal with US protesters! For me, this is yet another example of American Exceptionalism. When other nations behave as we do, they are brutal thugs. When we act that way, it is totally different...and perfectly acceptable!

Bit by Bit - Chapter 14, Part 18

Trey Smith

Confucius stayed home for three months and then came to see Lao Tan once again. "I've got it," he said. "The magpie hatches its young, the fish spit out their milt, the slim-waisted wasp has its stages of transformation, and when baby brother is born, big brother howls. For a long time now I have not been taking my place as a man along with the process of change. And if I do not take my own place as a man along with the process of change, how can I hope to change other men?"

Lao Tzu said, "Good, Ch'iu - now you've got it!"
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Changing with the times!

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Money for Nothing

Trey Smith

We live in an age of austerity, if we are to believe the scorched earth cult that has taken over most Western governments. Budgets are being slashed by economic irrationalists. Outlays are being trimmed. The nippers and snippers are doing their worst, and here, we have an astonishing statistic. The British government, through its police arm Scotland Yard, has spent somewhere in order of $5 million “guarding” Assange. The term is itself odd – guarding suggests that he might come to harm, that protection is required. The harm, of course, is purely down to the fact that the British government might just bag him and ensure his swift departure to a country that has not, as yet, laid formal charges.
~ from Guarding Assange in London by Binoy Kampmark ~

It is weird that, during these days of austerity, governments are more than willing to spend egregious amounts of taxpayer dollars on certain things. While many line item services are being slashed to the bone, others operate with an open checkbook.

Here in the US, as we get deeper into the Syrian civil war, it won't be surprising at all if we spend lavishly on it. We always seem to have enough space for tax cuts for the rich, but no money at all for things like climate change or repairing our creaking infrastructure.

Sigh. I'm not about to launch into a diatribe here. I just continue to point to this sad reality.

I Ching: Hexagram 34 - The Lines, Part 3

Nine in the third place means:
The inferior man works through power.
The superior man does not act thus.
To continue is dangerous.
A goat butts against a hedge
And gets its horns entangled.

Making a boast of power leads to entanglements, just as a goat entangles its horns when it butts against a hedge. Whereas an inferior man revels in power when he comes into possession of it, the superior man never makes this mistake. He is conscious at all times of the danger of pushing ahead regardless of circumstances, and therefore renounces in good time the empty display of force.

Translator of this version of the I Ching is Richard Wilhelm. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the I Ching label below.

Equalizing Things IX: Non-Perfection

Scott Bradley

As is typical with most philosophers, Zhuangzi takes and uses certain words in a technical and thematic sense. Among those which have a negative spin are dai (dependence), zhi (knowledge, understanding), and cheng ("fully-formed", completion, perfection). This series is an attempt to better understand the second of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, but it can only be a flawed exercise for several reasons among which are: the fact that it might not yield itself to any final interpretation, I am in any case unable to fully grasp his intended meanings, and these meanings are so tightly packed as to make it extremely difficult to lift one idea out from the rest without in some way misrepresenting it.

This post looks at a passage where Zhuangzi uses the word cheng to show what his and every philosophy is not: perfect. Thus, we might best begin by saying that, paraphrasing Zhuangzi, "If we take what is written here as 'fully-formed', we have mistaken a part for the whole.”

"If you regard what you have received as fully-formed [cheng] once and for all, unable to forget it, all the time it survives is just a vigil waiting for its end." I understand this to refer to our belief that we are "full and real" as did Yan before he realized that he had not yet begun to exist. Taking ourselves as things with a fixed-identity is the cause of our fear of losing that identity. Zhuangzi suggests that we rather understand ourselves as a momentary expression of a larger universal transformation.

"If we follow what has so far taken shape, fully-formed [cheng] in our minds, making that our teacher, who could ever be without a teacher?" (Ziporyn) Some take this as an invitation to follow one's own path, to find one's own 'inner guru' (something that I advocate), but here it means quite the opposite. One can only follow that inner voice when that voice is itself going somewhere, ever-transforming. When it believes it has arrived it has ceased to reflect the nature of things. ("Courses [daos] are obscured by the small accomplishments already formed and completed [cheng] by them.")

"But to claim that there are any such things as 'right' and 'wrong' before they come to be fully formed [cheng] in someone's mind in this way — that is like saying you left for Yue today and arrived there yesterday. This is to regard the non-existent as existent." Zhuangzi uses one of Huizi's paradoxes to illustrate that though it is perfectly natural to judge things as right or wrong, it is mistaken to hold these judgments as "fully formed", that is, as rooted in the ultimate nature of things. They are so only because we call them so. Yet our calling them so helps us to order our being in the world; negating their rootedness in ultimate reality does not negate their usefulness in our flourishing as a species.

Releasing into the ever-transforming, we remain open, clinging to nothing fixed and sure.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

TYT - Atheists Can Now Go To Heaven

I Ching: Hexagram 34 - The Lines, Part 2

Nine in the second place means:
Perseverance brings good fortune.

The premise here is that the gates to success are beginning to open. Resistance gives way and we forge ahead. This is the point at which, only too easily, we become the prey of exuberant self-confidence. This is why the oracle says that perseverance (i.e., perseverance in inner equilibrium, without excessive use of power) brings good fortune.

Translator of this version of the I Ching is Richard Wilhelm. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the I Ching label below.

Another Day, Another War

Trey Smith

When Gerald Celente branded the American media “presstitutes,” he got it right. The US print and TV media (and NPR) whore for Washington and the corporations. Reporting the real news is their last concern. The presstitutes are a Ministry of Propaganda and Coverup. This is true of the entire Western media, a collection of bought-and-paid-for whores.

It seems that every day I witness a dozen or more examples. Take May 31 for example.

The presstitutes report that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his German counterpart are working on Russia to convince that country to be a “party to peace” in Syria by not supplying the Syrian government, whose country has been invaded, with arms. Kerry and the Israelis especially do not want Russia to deliver the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria.

This was the extent of the presstitutes’ report. The presstitutes made no mention of the fact that the invasion of Syria by al-Qaeda affiliated radical Muslims was organized and equipped by Washington via its proxies in the region, such as Saudia Arabia and the oil emirates. Americans sufficiently stupid to rely on the presstitute media do not know that it is not Syrians who want to overthrow their government, but Washington, Israel, and radical Islamists who object to Syria’s secular non-confrontational government.

One might think that the US media would wonder why Washington prefers to have al-Qaeda governing Syria than a non-confrontational secular government. But such a question is off-limits for the US media.
~ from America’s Greatest Affliction: The Presstitute Media by Paul Craig Roberts ~

Sadly, as the US public tired of the war in Afghanistan, US leaders needed a new enemy to focus on. While many politicos wanted to attack Iran, the unrest in Syria -- unrest that some believe we helped to create -- served itself up on a silver platter. So now, we have a new reason to continue the perpetual war on terror.

As Conor Friedersdorf pointed out recently, if we go through with our proposed "no-fly zone", that in and of itself IS an act of war. So, despite the fact that the mainstream media will report that the US merely sits on the periphery of this civil war, we actually will be orchestrating it!

With all the domestic problems we are facing right now, the drumbeat of war always seems to carry the day. Instead of tackling unemployment or climate change, we will pour billions of taxpayer dollars into another war. When this one has run its course, then the elite will focus on Iran, Yemen or somewhere else in the Middle East or Africa.

Afternoon Matinee: Protest - God Bless This Mess

Performed by Sheryl Crow

Daddy’s in the hallway

Hanging pictures on the wall

Mama’s in the kitchen

Making casseroles for all

My brother came home yesterday

From somewhere far away

He doesn’t look like I remember

He just stares off into space

He must’ve seen some ugly things

He just can’t seem to say

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

Got a job in town

Selling insurance on the phone

With Robert and Teresa

And two con men from back home

Everyone I call up doesn’t have the time to chat

Everybody is so busy doing this and doing that

Something has gone missing

And it makes me kinda sad, oh

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

Heard about the day

that two skyscrapers came down

Firemen, policemen

And people came from all around

The smoke covered the city

And the body count arise

The president spoke words of comfort

With tears in his eyes

Then he led us as a nation

Into a war all based on lies, oh

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

God bless this mess

~ from Lyric Wiki ~

It Doesn't Always "Ad" Up

Trey Smith

Since I've been unable to sleep, I've spent the past two nights watching late night/early morning TV. While ads are played all throughout the day, cable operators have a tendency to run a limited number of them over and over and over again in the wee hours. Many of these are downright annoying for a variety of reasons.

For example, there is a certain "wonder drug" for your seasonal allergies. All the people featured in this ad go prancing around because this wondrous drug has provided them with a new lease on life. No more sneezing. No more watery eyes. No more sinus congestion and headaches!

Sounds great, doesn't it? It is great...until you hear the long list of possible side effects. But there are specific side effects that puzzle me: sneezing and sinus congestion. How are these side effects? If before you take this drug, you are sneezing with sinus congestion and then after you take it, you are still sneezing and have sinus congestion, then those two things are NOT side effects. No, that would indicate the drug is ineffective!

There is another drug that treats clinical depression. One of its side effects is a doozy. In some cases, it can lead to suicidal thoughts. Don't suicidal thoughts go hand-in-hand with some forms of depression? Again, I wouldn't consider this a "side effect"; it would more point to the fact that, in some cases, the drug is not working.

One ad that I saw way too many times had to do with one of those for-profit online "universities". The narrator points out that, due to the economic downturn for most Americans, many people are suffering from increased anxiety and depression. All these folks need psychological help and, as it turns out, this school offers just such a program leading to a certificate and degree in a "helping profession." The need is great, the narrator tells us, so why not sign up for this program today?

On its face, there are no deceptive claims made in this ad. Studies DO show that more Americans are suffering from anxiety and depression. So, what's my beef?

There is one salient fact omitted from the ad: Mental Health services across the country are being slashed as the result of the very same economic downturn. So, while the need indeed is great, the number of available jobs to address the need are rapidly dwindling. Competition for those jobs is fierce and my guess is that most are filled by mental health workers who have already lost their jobs. So, signing up for this program (which costs a pretty penny) will more than likely lead students or graduates to become anxious and depressed as they realize they are out tens of thousands of dollars and there are few job prospects in their now chosen field!

Bit by Bit - Chapter 14, Part 17

Trey Smith

Confucius said to Lao Tan, "I have been studying the Six Classics - the Odes, the Documents, the Ritual, the Music, the Changes, and the Spring and Autumn, for what I would call a long time, and I know their contents through and through. But I have been around to seventy-two different rulers with them, expounding the ways of the former kings and making clear the path trod by the dukes of Chou and Shao, and yet not a single ruler has found anything to excite his interest. How difficult it is to persuade others, how difficult to make clear the Way!"

Lao Tzu said, "It's lucky you didn't meet with a ruler who would try to govern the world as you say. The Six Classics are the old worn-out paths of the former kings - they are not the thing which walked the path. What you are expounding are simply these paths. Paths are made by shoes that walk them, they are by no means the shoes themselves!

"The white fish hawk has only to stare unblinking at its mate for fertilization to occur. With insects, the male cries on the wind above, the female cries on the wind below, and there is fertilization. The creature called the lei is both male and female and so it can fertilize itself. Inborn nature cannot be changed, fate cannot be altered, time cannot be stopped, the Way cannot be obstructed. Get hold of the Way and there's nothing that can't be done; lose it and there's nothing that can be done."
~ Burton Watson translation ~

None of us can live in the distant past. What worked wonders ten years ago or even a few minutes ago might not work right now. The variables of life are ever changing and we must change to meet them on even ground.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Lack of Zs

Trey Smith

Each of us possesses our own set of unique traits and quirks. One of mine is that, when sick with a bacterial or viral infection, I don't sleep. This appears to be opposite of most other people I know. When most of my family members or friends come down with something, they come home and go to bed. I may be IN bed, but sleep evades me.

As I have noted in my few posts of the last 2 or 3 days, I have come down with a virus that is making the rounds in South Bend. From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, I may have slept a total of 3 or 4 hours. That's it! This lack of sleep makes it difficult for me to concentrate on much of anything because I feel punch drunk. I just sort of sit around in a haze as the world moves around me.

But here is what I find the most interesting. Due to a lack of adequate sleep, one might think that I have a difficult time getting over an illness. When fighting off an infection, one of the requisite things our bodies need is adequate sleep. And yet, I tend to get over illnesses faster than most people. It doesn't make a lick of sense!

In talking to folks around town, I've learned that most people have been down for nearly an entire week with this virus. The general symptoms of head and chest congestion, sneezing, coughing and feeling generally rundown lasts for 7 - 10 days. Me? I felt altogether crappy for 2 days. My head and chest are already clearing out and, except for the fact I'm exhausted for lack of sleep, I am already feeling much better and I will probably be back in the saddle again today or, maybe, tomorrow.

I'd write more, but I need a nap!