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I Love My Clutter, Thank You Very Much
A confession, first: I love clutter. The horizontal surfaces in my family room are covered with newspapers, magazines, books I’ve started, books I intend to read, books I want to read but never will, erasable pens, a sweatshirt or two, a soccer ball, a bucket of toy cars, and wayward Legos that gouge my stockinged feet.
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The Emotional Benefits of Wandering
One of my greatest pleasures is to be what the French call a “flâneur”—someone who wanders randomly through a big city, stumbling on new scenes. The flâneur has a long and honored literary history. The surrealists used to choose a Paris streetcar at random, ride to the end of the line and then walk around. And think of Mrs. Dalloway in London, Leopold Bloom in Dublin or Holden Caulfield in New York. But is there any scientific evidence for the benefit of “street-haunting,” as Virginia Woolf called it? Two new studies led by Catherine Hartley of New York University and colleagues suggest that being a flâneur is good for you. In both, they cleverly combined GPS data with happiness ratings.
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Simple Steps for Managing Holiday Loneliness
The holidays are a time for joy and togetherness, but for many they can also spur feelings of loneliness. There aren’t comprehensive statistics for how many people feel starved for connection this time of year, but there are clues: A 2017 AARP survey, for instance, found that 31 percent of adults aged 18 and older have felt lonely during the holidays. And the past few holiday seasons have been especially fraught: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a global uptick in loneliness, which experts describe as the difference between how much connection a person wants and how much they’re actually getting.
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The Very Serious Science of Humor
To find mirth in the world is to be human. No culture is unfamiliar with humor, according to Joseph Polimeni, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba. For someone who analyzes humor, Polimeni tells me he’s still surprised by its complexity: How words and phrases and jokes have different meanings to everyone, but we all have the instinct to laugh. Just as humans have an innate ability to understand language, Polimeni says, so, too, do they have a reflex for comprehending everyday comedy. Sure, there are people who are better suited at making others laugh, but “almost everybody,” Polimeni tells me, can appreciate a quip.
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Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions
In early 2021 emergency room physician Torree McGowan hoped the worst of the pandemic was behind her. She and her colleagues had adapted to the COVID-causing virus, donning layers of protection before seeing each patient, but they’d managed to keep things running smoothly. The central Oregon region where McGowan lived—a high desert plateau ringed by snow-capped mountains—had largely escaped the first COVID waves that slammed areas such as New York City. Then the virus’s Delta variant hit central Oregon with exponential fury, and the delicate balance McGowan had maintained came crashing down.
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‘How Do We Know Ourselves?’ Review: A Humbling Look Inside
The title of “How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind” suggests that Hope College psychologist David Myers will, in this brief book, focus primarily on the process of self-discovery. But a better title might have been “How Well Do We Know Ourselves?” The answer that emerges, over 40 charming and clear-eyed chapters that cover disparate areas of psychology including memory, relationships and personality, is: not very. Consider a study on dissent. A huge majority of the participants—95%—predicted that they would immediately protest sexist comments in a hypothetical group scenario.
