claire charlton

One winter day, I rode with my family in our car to a local museum. It must have been the deepest part of winter because the landscape was bitter and gray. We turned off the highway to the long entrance of the museum and directly in front of me, I saw a bird of prey fly in from high to low to capture a small animal. It was picture perfect, as if a movie director had carefully planned and executed the scene. Something we don’t see very often.

Did you see that?

Unbelievably, no one else in the car saw what I saw.

But isn’t that how it is? The moment we witness something remarkable, whether it’s an unrepeatable act of nature or a let’s-watch-it-again funniest home video, we seek to share the experience. We want others to see what we see, to feel what we feel.

Turns out there is a reason for this. A study published in the Journal of Social Issues suggests that individually, we seek to revisit our initial emotions through sharing, but the value-added bonus of the shared experience is a strengthened social bond. We feel closer to those around us when we share something we observed. We seek to connect and are rewarded when we share something significant.

What’s even more fulfilling is a connection gained when we experience something awesome as a group, in other words, when everyone sees what we see at the same time. This is why flash mobs are so memorable, and also why tragedies touch us so deeply.

While we can’t plan freak shared experiences like automobile accidents or rainbows, we can seek to connect with those around us through day-to-day encounters. Next time you are forced to stand in line, resist the urge to check your email on your smartphone. Instead, look around you. Make eye contact with those in line. Offer an empathetic smile; you are in this together, after all.

Next time you walk through a doorway, hold the door for the person behind you, even if you have to pause for longer than a moment to do so. Chances are that person will move more quickly to honor your offer, providing you an opportunity to smile and acknowledge appreciation. Plus, no one likes to have a door slam in their face.

In other words, keep your head up. Spend this day looking outside yourself in every way you can. Actively connect with others around you.

Your goal is to feel connected, but who knows? You may experience something amazing at the same time.

Once again, I am deep in summer training for the Detroit half marathon. I have a love/hate relationship with this experience, and I wait for the moment when training becomes “easy.”

It never does.

My training schedule requires running four days each week for 22 weeks. During the summer, I find myself wishing for more days in the week, so I can get every run in easily.

Off-season, I cross train with lots of different exercise. I walk with friends, run as many miles as whim carries me, swim a few times each week, and sweat through regular spinning classes. Last winter I felt like I was in pretty good shape, at least by my own standards.

With a goal of carrying this strength through training season, I haven’t given up spinning or swimming. Unfortunately, my running is suffering. So, while I’m not necessarily cutting back, I am easing intensity. I go to my regular weekly endurance cycling class, but bump down the gear to ease the load on my legs. I think I’ve hit my stride, or in today’s vernacular: I’ve found balance.

My experience is a metaphor for every woman’s fragmented life. We work, raise children, run households, plan vacations, coordinate volunteer meetings, sit on boards, budget for our children’s college tuition, clean, cook and counsel. We are busy, busy people.

As our children get older, and our personal needs begin to shift, we find pleasure in giving up some tasks, melancholy in others. We want to accomplish all we have grown accustomed to, so we find other activities to fill our time. And occasionally, we feel our energy level slipping.

This is the time to ease off, to reduce the intensity, without regret. While the 30-somethings in class are pushing at gear 15, there’s no shame, at almost 48, in backing off to 12.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating pulling every plug and reclining in the long shadows of life’s afternoon. Afternoon can be the most productive time for some of us. What I am saying is sometimes we need to get used to providing 100% where it counts, backing off to 75% where it doesn’t. Maybe this is a difficult task for those who only spin at one speed, but it’s one worth exploring.

Life-long strength depends upon it.

My husband is a confessed single-tasker.

He can only process one to-do at a time, completing it to the best of his ability before moving on. This includes talking versus juicing, stirring the soup versus pulling bread from the toaster and walking versus texting.

And while nothing is more infuriating to one who survived raising two children by juggling six to eight different tasks simultaneously, I must admit, sometimes his way is better.

When we run outside together, my husband is always the one cautiously meets a driver’s eye before stepping into the street. And while I get irritated because he puts this practice ahead of responding to my incessant questions about nothing of any great importance, I’m glad that his brain prioritizes his actions and keeps us safe.

One skill at a time.

Completely relevant to multitasking while driving, my friend Cindy La Ferle shouted out on Facebook that she is absolutely fed up with drivers who text or talk and drive at the same time. I wonder if those who engage admit the practice is dangerous only when attempted by those less skilled at multitasking. A “Don’t try this at home, kids. We’re professionals” type thing. Like somehow they are more blessed with multitasking ability than behavior researchers and lawmakers alike could ever dream of.

Beyond the life-or-death aspect of multitasking, a busy life offers many daily reminders that we are attempting to do too much all at once. My son has lost his wallet twice in the past week, failing to find it even when he retraces his steps. After prying it from between the car’s back seat and door, he confessed to being too preoccupied to pay attention to where he throws his wallet.

Then my husband returned from yoga class carrying a parking ticket because he simply forgot to put money in the meter. “And that’s exactly why I need to go to yoga,” he said.

All roads lead back to mindfulness. When we walk around in a haze, our minds whirring with thoughts of the past or of the future, or if we are too busy reading, texting, processing or Googling to experience life in each and every moment, we get ourselves into trouble.

But will it be little trouble, like owing ten bucks for a parking ticket? Or will it be much bigger trouble with lifelong impact for us or for others? Now that’s for you to decide.

We Americans pride ourselves on our independence. I write this in the days prior to the Fourth of July, our true “Independence Day,” so it’s appropriate. But apart from barbecues, family picnics and fireworks celebrations, everyday is independence day.

Perhaps because the very foundation of our country lies in our historic action of fleeing those who sought to oppress, then fighting the ruling party to crush a system of unfair taxation.

It always comes down to money, somehow, doesn’t it?

At any rate, a huge percentage of our country was founded by brave individuals forging west, searching for space to settle, farm and stretch their arms wide. I’ve always been fascinated by the fortitude of our nation’s pioneers. Laura Ingalls Wilder probably had something to do with this.

The truth is, our pioneers could only live independently for so long. In time, they created settlements, the precursors to our modern cities, so they could live in communities and benefit from the abundance that comes from many hands working together.

We Americans like to consider ourselves islands. Individuals who live side by side, but who don’t really require each other, even in the most basic sense. We have babies, yet expect them to learn independence from birth. We guide our children to stand alone, resist peer pressure and always move upstream, even when the entire population is moving downstream. We spurn the greater good in favor of personal achievement.

As such, we have trouble understanding a philosophy that is built on the whole, instead of on the individual. We shun collectivism, boosting the lone fist high above the clasped hands. We fail to understand that other nations were built not by individuals, but by communities. Not everyone believes in the individual above all else.

And that doesn’t necessarily make it good or bad. It just is what it is.

Our recent health care reform is one example. Countries with nationalized insurance plans provide adequate care for everyone, and it seems to work moderately well. Is it a perfect situation? Probably not. But how perfect is a system that ultimately works to keep people sick for the sake of profit? How perfect is a system that only goes so far to provide wellness programs through hospitals and clinics, knowing that successful results mean substantially fewer dollars generated?

Yes, taxes are higher for people with “socialized” medicine, perhaps reducing the average person’s disposable income substantially. But a nation whose people don’t feel tied to an employer’s health care plan is potentially a nation richer in entrepreneurial spirit, where people learn that there are many ways to make a living, to earn a decent amount of money without slaving to the 9 to 5 routine.

Because how is being shackled to an employer, who can wave you off as easily as hug you tight, true independence? We fear building government that has the potential to provide each citizen with some element of coverage in times of grave illness or injury, yet cling to a system that does not necessarily promote what we prize above all else – a true spirit of independence.

Of course, nothing is ever as simple as writers like me make it seem. We have a long way to go to make our health care system right, and perhaps an even longer way to go until we, as individuals, learn to take responsibility for our own health in a way that reduces our need for lifelong medical care. Now that’s true independence.

I have faith that we can get there. If we really want to.