What a long, strange trip it's been

We got back from our annual visit with Doug's family last Sunday. Traveling always gives me lots of time to think, and I came home with a fistful of new ideas for blog posts. But I'm having trouble wrestling them into anything coherent, so I'll just tell you briefly about our fortieth anniversary, which was a month ago (by the time you're reading this).

Forty (forty!) is a long time. I wrote a post about long marriages back in 2015, and at one point I had planned on writing an update and passing along whatever wisdom I have learned in the 9 years since. But it's a month later and I still haven't written it, because I'm not sure what to say. 

We had to go through a major transition when Doug cut back to half-time and started working mostly from home. Since we moved here in 1992, he had been going to work by at least 7:30am and getting home at 6:30 or 7pm four days a week, and sometimes he would get home much later than that, and sometimes he would work for as many as ten or twelve days in a row. 

And then suddenly, he was just home. All the time. It drove me nuts. So after several months, we actually went back to do some marriage counseling last fall. We learned a lot. We're doing better. Even when you've been married forty years, you still have things to learn. 

Every marriage is different. Don't ever think you know what is going on inside someone else's marriage. By the same token, I can't see how our marriage looks from the outside or how we might look to you. So there's no point in me trying to give you some kind of advice, or tell you nine secrets for going the distance or 7 tips to staying together forever or whatever. 

I can just tell you that he knows me better than anyone on the planet, and he still stays with me. Even when we've been through rough times, even when I'm not sure if we're going to survive, he's been my rock, my safe shelter. I'm keeping him.

And also: I love his family. We had so much fun last week. 

Hug your loved ones close and have a great weekend.

too many diet books later, plus more late night thoughts

I've told you before that I have long been anti-diet, but on the other hand, it seems that every winter I gain a few pounds, and unless I want to buy all new clothes, I have to figure out how to get rid of the fluff. 

So a few years ago, when several of my friends were all excited about the Whole 30 diet, I decided to read the book to see if it might be useful for me. Researching it turned out to be the wrong thing to do-- if you read the rationale behind it, it makes, uh, no sense. 

But that got me curious about other eating plans, and I started reading. And reading. I checked out keto, paleo, vegetarian, and vegan, to name a few. (Enneagram fives-- we do research! and if we can keep researching and put off actually doing something, so much the better!) 

If you've ever read a diet book, you know they all follow the same basic outline. They start with all the reasons why the way you are currently eating is bad--maybe it's even killing you-- and all the reasons, frequently backed up by data and research and studies, that their way of eating is going to be the ultimate solution, not just for losing weight but for vibrant health, overflowing energy, better skin, hair, and nails.

Then there will be anecdotes about people who stopped eating the SAD diet (Standard American Diet), started eating the (insert diet name here) diet, and now they've lost 50 pounds and they bounce out of bed in the morning and have clear eyes and good skin.

If you just read one, it's super convincing. If you read a bunch in a row, it starts sounding like propaganda. Really, they're sales people. They're selling you a better life, and all you have to do is a) buy the book(s) and b) do the thing, and you will be saved. 

And weirdly, even though they use pseudo-scientific language and what seems to be irrefutable logic, they frequently make directly opposite claims. Don't eat meat or any animal products, says one book. You can only eat meat and tubers, says another book. Only eat these specific foods, says another. You can eat anything, just don't eat very much of it, says yet another. Did you know that fasting and restricting your calorie intake might help you live longer? Why would you want to live longer if you can't eat good food? 

I'm no expert, so I'm not going to give you any diet advice, and if I did, you shouldn't take it because I am not thin. I'm just telling you what I observed from reading too many diet books. Unfortunately, as with so many things, you just have to figure it out for yourself. For myself, I keep coming back to something I read online somewhere-- if you don't want to diet, you can at least starting eating the way you would if you'd already lost the weight (to use the language of the diet books, skip ahead to the maintenance phase).

Or whatever works for you. People are different, which is what makes life so damn complicated. One of my sisters and one of my dear friends can tell within a couple of hours if they've eaten gluten. I've tried being gluten-free a couple of times and it didn't make any difference at all to me. What works for someone else may not work for you, and vice versa. The friends I mentioned above still think Whole 30 is great.

I just deleted a whole bunch more on that topic, you're welcome. 

Here is another, slightly related, hypothetical thing to think about, though, another half-formed idea that probably isn't worth a full post. 

The whole rationale behind the so-called paleo diet is that our digestive systems developed over millennia while our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. After our ancestors began to farm (relatively recently), we added grains, dairy products, sugar, etc. The theory is that our digestive systems have not evolved as quickly as our diets have changed. So we will feel healthier if we go back to the hunter-gatherer diet: heavy on meat, with fruits and vegetables on the side; no grain, no sugar.

Because I think too much, I wonder if there's a similar situation with our spiritual selves. Human beings weren't capable of a scientific outlook until a few centuries ago. Before that, belief in a god or goddess or deities of some kind was assumed, because there had to be some way to explain the weather and the movement of the stars and the way the world is. 

What if the human psyche evolved to center around belief in god(s)? What if stripping gods/goddesses out of the center of our psyche leaves us with unstable mental health? Sure there are people who have left religion behind and never missed it, and of course religion can be its own source of psychosis, but I think there are a solid percentage of people, maybe even a majority of people, who need to believe in God, or at least in a stable higher order, in order to function in a healthy way in the world. It would explain a lot. 

Maybe the intellectual basis for religious belief isn't proof of the existence of a divine being, but a matter of pragmatism: I will function better if I find a belief system I can use as a structure, a support system, for life in this crazy world. 

Maybe. I have exactly no credentials to make a statement like that, but I think about it quite a bit.

p.s. I accidentally published this early, apologies if you saw that early, unedited version. We will be out of town next week so probably no post from me.

Typological, except maybe not very logical

I have three posts that are in varying stages of completion and I just can't get excited about any of them. So I'll tell you a story this week that might become relevant next week, or maybe not.

Years ago a friend of mine told me that she went to a professional development meeting where there were about 30 other attendees. The first thing they did was take the MBTI, the test that identifies your Meyers-Briggs personality type. After they each had their type-- it's hard to believe anyone will be unfamiliar with this, but it's four letters like ESFJ or INTP-- the conference leaders went letter by letter and divided them into their types. 

So the first letter is either an I or an E based on whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. They told everyone to plan their perfect weekend, then they sent the extroverts into another room. After 15 minutes or so, they reunited the group and asked what they had come up with. The introverts had each individually described their perfect weekend--take the dog for a walk, read a book, work in the garden, go out to dinner with a friend. The extroverts, with no additional instructions, had planned what they would do as a group--we'll go to a club Friday night, then we'll go on an all-day hike on Saturday, etc. I just love that.

The next letter is either S (sensing) if you perceive the world through your five senses, or N (iNtuitive) if you perceive the world more intuitively. This time they sent the intuitives to another room. Then they put a chair in the middle of the room and said to the sensory people: describe what you see. The sensory folks came up with a fairly detailed description of the height of the chair, what it was made of, how sturdy it was, how it was placed in the room, and so on. 

Then they brought the intuitive people back in the room and said: describe what you see. The first response was, "I see possibility!" I love that one even more. 

(If my friend told me about the final two letters, I don't remember it.) Of course no one is completely introvert or completely extrovert, and no one is completely sensory or completely intuitive. But it can be a pretty interesting way to understand yourself and others.

For the record, even though you didn't ask, I'm INTJ, although in the example of the chair, I can't imagine I would have done anything other than describe the chair. Maybe if you'd said tell me the story of how this chair got here, I would have made up something good.

It's been so long since I took the test that I don't remember exactly how it worked, but the version of the test that I took gave you back your results as a scale-- I was way introverted, and definitely on the intuitive side but not as extreme. 

The next one is T (Thinking) vs. F (Feeling), and I am pretty solidly on the thinking side of that one, and I think (har) that's getting worse as I get older and more cynical. And then the last one is J (Judging, you like structure, you don't like surprises) vs P (Perceiving, you like things looser and more spontaneous), and I was almost right in the middle on that one, barely a J. 

You didn't ask any of my other ones either, but I am an Enneagram 5 with a strong 4 wing, and when I worked at our local hospital a few years ago I took a workplace test called DiSC, and I was a C. The original description I got back was C for Compliant--when I told Doug, he just started laughing-- but when I read further, it turns out that C is for Conscientious, and sadly I am that. It's such a pain in the butt but it can make me a little crazy to not have all the i's dotted and t's crossed.

Hmmmm. I'm tempted to throw out my far-fetched idea for the next post just so you can have something interesting to think about. You know, I think I will because it's not really a strong enough idea to support an entire post, so just saying it is probably enough.

So, here's the idea: I've wondered for years now if the second Meyers-Briggs letter (Sensing/iNtuitive) has a correlation with whether or not having a spiritual life is important to you. Because for some people, particularly science types--who to my uninformed brain, would most likely be Sensing, and only interested in what can be perceived through the five senses-- the idea of a spiritual life is just ridiculous, a waste of time. While intuitives might be more interested in curating a life that feeds the soul, maybe sees patterns and ideas and a larger version of reality. (I see possibility!)

That's it. I can think about this stuff for hours and hours and classify all my friends. But as crazy as it may sound, understanding my personality better has saved me thousands in therapy bills, especially the Enneagram. It's just a framework, it's not magic, and as always there are people who take it way too far. But it's fascinating to me.

Have a good weekend. It's supposed to be spectacular here-- we've had a couple of weeks of rain and finally everything is green and gorgeous. There is no place prettier than Northwest Montana when the weather is good.