On Overeating

The American Medical Association recently classified Obesity as a disease rather than a condition. I am reluctant to even opine on whether this is correct or not, because the problem is very deep and complex in our culture, and I am no medical expert. However, I will share a story.

When I was in college, I spent a semester abroad eating candy bars. I might have squeezed in some other activities-- some museums and things-- but primarily, my job was eating candy bars. Or so it seems to my recollection some 15 years later. I had never been a compulsive eater before that, but something about the lack of parental or institutional oversight coupled with the stress of culture shock and intense academic expectations led me to ... you got it... candy bars.

It was a habit that started off innocently enough- sampling exotic foreign flavors of goo piled with other different kinds of goo and coated in chocolate. Who wouldn't be seduced? But it developed into quite a regular habit, to the point where I found myself nightly consuming one or more candy bars alone in my room, secretively and guiltily. The net result of my efforts was 10 or 15 pounds gained in the space of 4 months-- a shocking achievement.

Luckily, my indulgences were tied to triggers that I left behind in a foreign land. I returned to a normal diet and exercise habits when I came home, and eventually I also returned to a normal weight. It didn't take me long to figure out that my problem was with regulating my own emotions, learning how to put them into perspective- when to turn a blind eye toward them, when to extinguish them. I didn't know who I wanted to be, and so I had nothing to shape myself into. I figured it out and I stopped the problem.

I am not saying that everyone who develops an eating problem develops it for the same reason. I am genetically predisposed toward thinness and this was an aberration for me. Some people are genetically predisposed to be heavy-set, ad that is just the way they are made. For them, a healthy weight is somewhere far above what our culture says is "perfect"-- and I'm not even talking about those people... although I think it has to be harder for them to know when they have crossed over into dangerous territory. Others are biologically set up for obesity by the way their mothers ate when they were in the womb. Others are taught horrible eating habits when they are growing up. There are all sorts of causes of the problem. But it is a problem, and it's an emotional problem.

By designating obesity as a disease, there may be some real benefits to people who are over-weight. They may get much-needed insurance coverage for life-enhancing treatments. I can't argue with that. But I worry about the cultural concept that is created when we begin to think of obesity as a disease. It is something that a large swath of our population (more than half) struggles with, for various reasons. But it's not good. It's not something hideous; it is not a reason to condemn people; it is not a reason to discriminate. But it is still very, very unhealthy and it's something we should discuss and try to figure out. I think the answer to the problem is very personal and individual and emotionally-based. But I do think that common, every-day wisdom can be a huge antidote to the problem if we don't shy away from it as such a taboo topic. I think that classifying it as a disease keeps it in the realm of sealed lips, as something we can't talk about directly. That only worsens the problem.

Birthday Reflections

I'm 34 years old now. At once I feel incredibly powerful and incredibly weak. I feel powerful in that my lifetime persona, the odd combination of flaws and virtues that animate me, is fully formed. I know my role and it has depth. I am deeply enmeshed in fascinating casts of characters in my career, in the running world and in my family. I am treated as a valuable player in all of those realms, an equal among peers, a person with something definite to contribute.

But at the same time I feel the loss underneath it all that is constantly occurring- I see my oldest graduating from Kindergarten, I see the generation that taught me everything I know growing thinner and wrinklier even as I see the youth that will forever run through them flowing just as it always has, and I try to bury its beauty inside of me.

Everything that I have always striven for and at some level now attained is painfully obviously fleeting. This must be the feeling of mid-life-- a time when you are at the top of the bell curve, full of precisely the same amount of potential and kinetic energy, feeling collapsed into the same moment all of the past and future- like you are the Little Prince treading constantly against the spin of a tiny globe- forever keeping pace only to the precise moment in which you are, every moment, present.

Thinking Obliquely

I have been fortunate to have some formative professional experiences with creative thinkers who understand how to work with their subconscious minds in order to solve complex problems. I think it's possible to ape their behavior in order to achieve similar results, and so I think their stories are worth sharing. I refer to their analytical style as "thinking obliquely," for lack of a better term. 


My first encounter with this style of thinking was in the person of Jim Eiss, my boss of the last (gulp) 12 years. I've never met anyone who mulls things over more than he does, and it's the thing I love about him. It's why he is one of the most brilliant immigration attorneys. He is well aware of the fact that his subconscious brain contains a spark of genius and he knows how to work WITH it, even though he doesn't know how exactly it works. It's like a mysterious machine that he knows how to operate. So Jim gets a call from a client with a difficult case and he has the vague shape of a solution in his brain. He has a way of satisfying the client that he will figure out their case even though he hasn't nailed down the solution yet (another art form that will no doubt result in a future blog entry). Then his next step is to read absolutely everything he can find about the subject. Often he then comes to me to discuss it. We bounce the idea back and forth and flesh it out a little more. Then he sleeps on it. It's like he's sowed a seed and just has to wait for it to sprout. And then he doesn't talk about it until he's ready. He's like a grandma with something in the oven who magically knows when it's ready to come out. And then a day later, maybe 3 days later, maybe a week, he will just pop out some ingenious solution to the complex problem. 

My second encounter with the notion of oblique thinking was with this writing professor in law school, Janet Lindgren. She accepted me for an independent research project for a semester. I had decided to write proposed regulations on AC21 (an immigration law from 2001 that still hasn't been regulated to this day), and I was slogging my way through it for several weeks. About halfway through the semester she told me she thought that she was getting to the bottom of what my writing problem was and that she needed to approach it in another way, so she had me quit working on the regulations and asked me to bring in a brief I was working on at work. So I did. She helped me to rewrite that brief for a very difficult permanent resident application into one of the best things I'd ever written, and I think it was because of that that the client became a permanent resident. 

I thought that switching tracks at that point was rather odd, but she seemed to have a plan so I didn't question her methods. I intrigued by them, though, and after the fact tried to get her to explain why she'd diverted me into another project. (We did eventually get back to hammering out the regulations). Her only explanation was something about it being like needing to use her peripheral vision to hone in on what was right in front of her. She needed to see a completely different writing sample from me- something that would point in a different way at what was the flaw in my approach. In the end, she nailed it perfectly: she said I needed to take my hands off the reader's neck. It sounds so obvious and simple but it's revolutionized the way that I think and write. I never trusted the reader before that to understand the point I was making and so I would over-explain it to the point of insulting the reader.
Both Jim and Professor Lindgren have a similar approach to solving complex problems. They study the problem in depth, until they understand it inside and out, and then they back away from it and allow their subconscious minds to process it. They trust some part of themselves to work out the problem away from their conscious gaze. It's something I try to emulate. I think that just being aware that the brain is capable of functioning in this way can revolutionize one's approach to problem solving. 

Pythagorean Aesthetics

Your body is the shape of your habits
Like the shape in the sand
Is the picture of an ideal
In the mind of a man
Who believes in a universal order
That we shadow with our efforts
When we strive toward a perfection in form.

What this points toward
Is that beauty is what isn't--
It's the flower in the sidewalk,
It's the joy that's born of sorrow--
It's the soul's resolution
That fills up every space in our thoughts.

Glass House

The woman in the glass knows
She can never cast a stone
Because the one who holds her captive
Knows the name that breaks her bones.

The mirror brings together
The accuser and accused-
It is the prison glass that shields us
When we come to break the news.