Communication
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Jean A. Costa / Posts tagged "Communication"
June 29, 2014 In Uncategorized

10 Hugs a Day

Affirmation:  I gather ten hugs a day.
My mother
is of English-Scottish decent and my father was an only child whose father was
Swiss-German.  I don’t know if that’s why
we didn’t do a lot of hugging but we didn’t. 
My husband’s family is pure Italian. 
Some are from Naples and others are from Sicily but both his mother and
his father’s family immigrated from Italy. 
When Sandy took me to his house to meet his family the front door flew
open and his mother, all five feet of her, threw open her arms and hugged me
with all her might.  I was home.  I think I had waited my whole young life to
be embraced with such ardor.  This was
where I belonged.
I read
many years ago that we are supposed to gather ten hugs a day.  I know some people don’t like being
touched.  I know it’s not appropriate to
go around hugging everyone but oh, how I love to give and get a hug.  I’ve found it fascinating that once you tell
someone about the ten hug a day quota, or at least the people I see regularly,
they are excited about sharing a hug.  I
have adopted Yolanda’s warm greeting with almost everyone who comes to our
home.  I feel my hug says
“Welcome!  I’m so glad you’re
here!  Come in and share the warmth and
safety of our home.” 
Most of
the groups I belong to greet each other with a hug.  Touch is an essential part of staying
healthy.  During World War II
psychologists noted that orphaned infants who were not cuddled suffered stunted
growth both physically and mentally and in some instances actually died. Now we
have all sorts of programs that insure babies will be held and even massaged to
promote their healthy development.  We
all need to be touched.  Massage has been
shown to be an amazing tool in the arsenal for staying healthy.  The elderly need touch.  When I did my MSW at Chapel Hill, NC I
focused on gerontology. One of the topics discussed was how as we age many
people don’t get enough affection.  Now,
whenever I visit the assisted living or the Alzheimer’s unit I make sure to
hold hands or touch their arms or shoulders. 
If they seem agreeable to a hug, I freely give one.  
There are
so many ways to greet people and so much of it is determined by the culture in
which we reside.  Of course it’s also
determined by the relationship we have with a person.  In most cases we greet a complete stranger
with a nod, perhaps a smile or a handshake. 
I’ve been in European countries where I was kissed on both cheeks by
someone I’d just met.  When I was at
Kripalu studying Yoga, we had one full day of silence.  It was not the first time I’d been in a
silent mode at a retreat but this time the teacher instructed us to not even
make eye contact.  She explained that
even that type of communication required energy and the purpose of this exercise
was to completely focus within.  It was
the first time I was so aware of how much effort I put into my casual
contacts.  I can remember walking the
quad in college and making an effort to acknowledge everyone I passed that I
knew or that even looked familiar.  I
still do that.  My walks around Apex Lake
here in North Carolina contain many nods, smiles and greetings.  It seems so natural to me.  I am always perplexed by those who have on
their ear pieces and don’t even look my way as they pass by, perplexed but I do
not judge them.  Perhaps this is their
“silent retreat” time. 
My
husband, Sandy, believes the Italians invented hugging but my daughter-in-law
is from Ecuador and they too are great huggers. 
She has taught even us how to greet every family member.  You get up from wherever you are and you go
to the person who has just arrived and you give them a warm hug and maybe even
a kiss.  Her greetings say, “I love
you and you are important in my life.” 
It’s been another gift she has brought to our family.
There are
many different types of hugs.  There is
the one arm hug, the wrap your arms around someone and hold them tenderly hug,
there is the bear hug, there is the spoon while lying down hug and there is the
heart to heart hug.  If you rest your
left cheek on the other’s left cheek and shift your weight to the right, your
heart will rest on top of theirs and you’ll feel the heart’s rhythm.
How do
you greet people?  What comes
naturally?  Do you think you can learn to
hug if it doesn’t come naturally?  Once I
was with a friend in a department store and I went and asked a sales person a
question.  The sales associate had on a
name tag and I called her by her name. 
My friend was shocked that I would use someone’s name to whom I had
never been introduced.  I love a name
tag.  I make every effort I can to read a
service person’s tag and to call them by name. 
For me, it’s another type of a hug, a verbal hug.  It’s the same message we each send when we
greet someone warmly, “I care about you. You are important.” 

Ten hugs
a day keeps the doctor away.  Yesterday I
walked into the choir room at St. 
Michael the Archangel to sing for a funeral.  I am a member of the Resurrection choir.  The room was packed with people because our
former pastor was being buried and the regular choir from two churches were
singing.  I was immediately embraced by
several people.  I found myself counting,
“one, two, three, four, five.” 
Five hugs plus Sandy’s early morning hug, “six.”  “Only four more to go,” I thought,
“this will be an easy goal today.” 
Ten hugs a day keeps us healthy and keeps those healthy with whom we
share them.  A simple heart felt hug can
brighten your life and the lives of all those you care about.  Can you gather ten hugs today?  Be careful, it’s a random act of sharing joy
and affection.  Once you begin you might
have to hold back with that stranger walking past you. 

July 14, 2013 In Uncategorized

The Demise of Cursive Writing

Affirmation:  I am a life-long learner.

The
conversation with my children was about writing.  It wasn’t about creative writing, it was
about penmanship.  Well there’s an old
fashioned word.  I didn’t know how outdated
it was until we had this discussion.  I
was informed by my adult daughter, Melissa, that cursive writing was no longer
part of the core curriculum in the North Carolina school system.  After the third grade, children are not
taught how to write long-hand.  I’m still
in shock.  I’ve been writing three pages
of long-hand in my journal every morning for over fifteen years.  My adult son, Joey, went onto say that he
almost never uses a pen or a pencil. 
When he does, he finds them awkward to use.  His writing method is almost always a keyboard.  Penmanship is no longer considered an
essential life skill.

That
certainly wasn’t true when I was in school. 
The cursive alphabet was on long strips of black paper resting above the
black board.  Yes, the board was black,
not white and we used chalk not erasable magic markers.  There were several lines on the paper and
each one was a height that determined where a loop, a “t”, an
“i” or a capital letter was to land on the page.  We were handed blank lined pages and the
students tried to copy the letters onto the paper from the form above the
boards.  We used number 2 pencils with
erasers.  I loved it!  I liked the form and the lines for guidance
and the feel of the pencil on the paper and I loved seeing the letters take
shape and appear on the page.  I became a
math teacher later in life.  I was never
much for coloring outside the lines so it seems fairly understandable why I
liked the rigid format that was used to learn cursive. 

I’ve
always been fascinated by hand writing. 
Some is so legible and others completely illegible.  Some is neat and clean and others are
sloppy.  Some is flowery and others are
straight up and down.  People have made a
living “reading” hand writing. 
They are supposed to be able to figure out a person’s personality from
what their hand writing looks like.  Not
anymore!  Did you ever watch a detective
show where the sleuth looked at a type written note and determined whether
someone was right handed or left handed because of how some of the letters
appeared darker; they had been hit harder by the dominant hand?  Not anymore! 
I went to summer school to learn how to type.  My mother told me it was an invaluable life
skill.  She was right!  The key board I use today is laid out exactly
the same as the one that was on my manual typewriter.  If you don’t know what a typewriter looks
like, Google it. But, they don’t teach typing in school anymore
either.  I think it comes already hard
wired in the brains of anyone born after 1990. 
I’ve seen two year olds working a computer key board. 

Reading,
writing and arithmetic were the three “Rs” that we were told were the
core skills we would need for life.  The
question about why we needed to learn mathematics when most people would never
use it once they were out of school is decades old.  As a math teacher, I sometimes wondered the
same thing but I knew the value of making the brain work in different ways and
for me there was always a great satisfaction in solving a problem correctly.  I loved solving the “puzzle.” But,
it’s true; most people didn’t have any use for Algebra or Geometry or Trig.
once they have finished with the class. 
Now, most people don’t even need to know the basics of math.  There’s a calculator on every phone.  It appears to be one more life skill we no
longer need. 

So, that
leaves reading as the last core skill we were told we needed.  I can’t imagine not reading. I love a good
book.  Recently I had cataract surgery
and the lenses that were implanted were determined by whether or not I read
books and papers regularly or if I read from a computer.  Can you imagine not being able to read?  There are organizations dedicated to teaching
adults how to read.  It seems it still is
an essential life skill.  But, I wonder
will that always be true?  Recently, I
downloaded an app called OverDrive.  It
allows me to connect to my library and to download audio books onto my phone or
iPad.  I can then listen to the book
wherever and whenever I want.  I know
there have been audio books for decades but now they are prolific and free; for
many it’s their preferred way to “read” a book.  What does this foretell?

If we
don’t need to learn the three “Rs” any longer, what do we need to
learn or even more important, what do we need to be teaching?  What are the schools focusing on that is
preparing our young people to live meaningful, productive lives?  We have several people in the family who have
been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. 
I know it is more commonly diagnosed today than ever before.  I’m not sure if it’s because more people
struggle with it or because we’re more knowledgeable about it.  My youngest grandson was really struggling in
his traditional middle school because of ADD. 
We were fortunate to find a small private local school that had a
different, more hands-on approach to learning. 
Once there he blossomed both mentally and emotionally.  His learning “style” needed a place
with a different environment in order for it to take root.  What is he learning at his new school that is
different from the other one?  He’s
learning how to learn. 

Let’s
face it all the information we need or want to learn  is available to us
in one form or another.  Today it’s even
more readily available because of our access to the Internet.  I am in awe of the range of information
available online.  There are lessons on
everything!  There are lessons about
things I probably don’t want know anything about.  I have, however, looked up music lessons and
how to fix different things.  My son uses
the Internet to renovate equipment, like boats, cars, engines and all sorts of
electronic equipment.  The other day our
refrigerator broke down and the first thing we did, after throwing away the
perishables was to go online to see if we could diagnose it and fix it
ourselves.  Owen is always telling me
about different places he’s never been to or about scientific data he’s looked
up.  It’s beyond exciting!  Back in March of 2013 he pretended to be a
reporter and interviewed Galileo about his theories.  My husband, Sandy, played the role of the
famous scientist.  It was for Owen’s
science project.  Everyone learned
something and it was fun. 

I’d like
to think that our educational system is closely examining what our young people
need to learn in order to be productive healthy citizens.  What do you think the new core skills should
be?  It seems to me one of the most
important ones would be to learn how to learn. 
Owen is an experiential learner. 
Once he discovered that, he found he can learn whatever he wants.  I am mainly an auditory learner.  If I had known that earlier on, learning
would have come a lot easier to me.  Some
of us are visual; others need a variety of approaches. Once we’ve learned how
to gather the information, the rest is just doing it.  But what other core skills do we want our
children to master?  What are the
essential life skills?  If it’s true we
learn all we need to know in Kindergarten, what are we doing with the rest of
our years of schooling?  How about
focusing on the Golden Rule?  “Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  How about the Ten Commandments?  What about relationship skills: how to
resolve conflict, how to create community, how to get your needs met without
hurting another?  What if the three
“Rs” morphed into the three “Cs”: compassion, communication
and cooperation? 

Yes, we
still need to know how to read and write, if not in cursive than at least we
need to know how to compose a grammatically correct sentence.  But, the key to all of this is it’s not so
much what we learn but that we do learn and not just while we’re in school but
for as long as we’re alive.  Expand your
knowledge.  Go out there and learn about
life, learn about living, learn whatever it is that makes you feel fully
alive.  Then perhaps you’ll write about
it.  Perhaps you’ll share it with the
world.  Who knows maybe someday someone
will download it and listen to it. 

April 29, 2012 In Uncategorized

Easy to Unhook

Affirmation:  I embrace the concept of being “easy to
unhook.”

In
Ecuador,in the home of my nuera, my daughter-in-law, there is not a TV in the
living area.  In fact, I’ve visited
several of their relative’s homes and none of them have a TV in the main living
area.  I know that there are homes in
many parts of the world that cannot afford a TV so that’s the least of their
issues and I know there are some homes in the United States who also keep their
living areas TV free.  A couple of my
friends actually have this practice but when I visit Ecuador I have the
privilege of staying with my consuegra, my daughter-in-law’s mother sometimes
for extended periods. Perhaps the simple fact that they have a word for the
mother or father of their son or daughter’s in-law is an example of how
different their culture is than ours.
Our
home is not TV free.  We have managed to
keep the TV out of the bedroom but it has a strong presence in our
kitchen.  When the families that I have
met in Ecuador gather their main activity is conversation.  I was lucky enough to be invited to the home
of one of the aunts for Fanesca.  We were
away from the city and her family was gathering for a traditional Ecuadorean
feast.  It’s celebrated after Easter
(Semana Santa.)  In the past, all the
farmers would come together after they harvested their grains, which normally
occurred after Easter. It was explained to me that different farmers grew
different types of grains and so each family would contribute to the fanesca, the
potato type soup.  It also contained many
different types of beans.  The
celebration I attended had a fruit salad as its first course.  In Ecuador the variety of fruit is
amazing.  I was told there are 40
different types of bananas.  After the
fruit came the soup. When the fanesca was served I was amazed that they had
enough dishes and glasses to serve everyone, no paper or plastic. The
accoutrements for the soup included empanadas, pickled vegetables, hard boiled
eggs and some sort of fish that looked like flaked tuna but tasted much
saltier.  You decided if you wanted all
or some of the sides to put into your soup. 
I tried them all but I had been forewarned about eating too much of the
grain-bean entree because visitors didn’t necessarily digest the soup
easily.  After the soup came birthday
cake and ice cream.  I knew I could
digest that just fine.
At
the aunt’s home there were three buildings. 
The first was the home of her son and his family.  Then, there was her home.  It was a simple stone building with 1
bedroom.  There is no heat or air
conditioning.  If it’s cold, you close
the windows; if it’s hot, you open them. 
The third building was the family gathering space.  The day I visited, there were around 30
people, all ages.  When we arrived I, a
complete stranger, was kissed by everyone there who could walk. If someone was
chatting with another or sitting down or running around playing, their activity
came to a halt and they came over to greet us. 
We
were there about 4 hours.  We talked and
then we talked some more.  Most of the
adults made an effort to come over and sit with me and let me share some of my
visit in my halting, stumbling Spanish. 
The really good news was how many of them are fluent in English.  I also watched.  The children even the teenagers either ran
around playing outside or just gathered and talked.  There wasn’t any type of electronic gadgets
being used by anyone.  Although many of
the adults had cell phones, few of them paid any attention to them.  I wondered if the existence of the cell phone
was the beginning of the demise of this delightful “unhooked”
tradition. 
Everywhere
we went during my visit it was the same. 
Warm greetings from all and people who seemed to value time and
connecting to each other more than what was going on somewhere else or what was
coming next.  Most evenings at home with
my host family, we sat and talked or my daughter-in-law spent hours helping me
with my Spanish.  One evening we sat and
played cards, four of us including one of the teenage granddaughters.  It was delightful.
I
had been thinking of redoing my living room to include one of those big screen
TVs that they show in all the commercials. 
We have a TV but it’s behind a cabinet and it’s seldom used.  After my Ecuadorian experience I’m wondering
if I shouldn’t remove it and the kitchen TV and try life “unhooked.”
I wonder if our family gatherings would include more talking or if everyone
would simply go off to find their personal way of connecting somewhere else.  My eldest daughter and her husband and his
boys are good at being present to family and friends.  I wonder if it’s a personality trait, a
cultural trait or if it’s something that can be learned?  I wonder if our American culture will allow
us to “unhook?”  I actually
find myself worrying about us loosing the art of visiting and
communicating. 
The
cartoon Wally was a satire about what will happen to us in the future if we
don’t make an effort to change.  The
people of earth were now living on a space ship because they had wrecked the
earth.  Their arms and legs no longer
functioned because they had floating recliners and in front of them they had
floating monitors and that’s how they communicated.  They weren’t even aware of the people next to
them until this rogue robot appeared and kept upsetting everything. 
I
know our monitors and chairs are not floating yet but have you watched people
on the streets or in the airports or at parties?  How many times have you been talking with
someone when their cell phone rang and they answered it, like you’re not even
there or  like this person calling is
more important than you or like the caller will never call back or not leave a
message?  Once again I am being called to
stay present to the moment and to the people I am with.  My daughter-in-law describes my son, a
computer programmer, as someone who is “easy to unhook.” He doesn’t
even take his phone with him when he plays golf.  I think that’s great!

There’s
my goal, I want to be “unhooked.” Actually, I’m pretty good at it.
The issue, and that’s a whole other story, is that I want my whole family to be
unhooked and I know I am not in charge of changing anyone except myself.  I think if I suggested removing the TV from
the kitchen, some in my family would revolt. 
Maybe I could just cover it with a towel and try doing without for a
week or two.  I’m also considering
putting a basket by the front door in which people can drop their gadgets.  Do you think anyone would come visit us
anymore?  What if I promised to still
feed them?  What if I promised they could
retrieve them at any time as long as they used them outside the house, like
most public places do with cigarettes.  I
can see it now, most of my family standing on the front steps or in the driveway
until I call “dinner is served!”