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Why 30 Is Not the New 20

I just heard a great TED talk “Why 30 Is Not the New 20,” by Meg Jay, Ph.D. Dr. Jay, who is a clinical psychologist and author of the book, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now, believes it’s a huge mistake for young adults in their twenties to think that they have all the time in the world to start their real lives. The decade that seems to be all about postponing careers, postponing marriage and postponing childbearing is evolving into an extension of childhood, yet according to Dr. Jay, the twenties are not only the pivotal decade of a person’s life, but claiming your 20s “is one of the simplest, yet most transformative, things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world.”

Why are the twenties the pivotal decade of a young woman’s life? Dr. Jay gives the following research statistics: eight out of ten “aha” moments that make your life what it is have happened by the time you’re 35. More than half of Americans are married or are dating their future partner by 30. The first ten years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money you’re going to earn. Female fertility peaks at age 28 and things get tricky after age 35. She concludes, “So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.”

TM, Stress and Addiction

On the 4th of July I watched the fireworks from the Oakland hills, where I enjoyed a panoramic view of the entire San Francisco Bay area. From that broadened perspective, the chaos of civilization looked like a perfectly coordinated organism, the ever-flowing traffic the veins and arteries, the pulsing Golden Gate bridge display as the heart, the firework displays of at least nine different townships firing off like neurons in what appeared to be a beautifully coordinated synchrony.

Sometimes I wish that researchers and doctors—who focus so intently on a particular fragment of the human body, on one broken or painful area—could draw back and see our minds, bodies and emotions from a wider perspective, as a perfectly functioning organism with every part working in perfect harmony with the other.

Onward, Upward, Inward

When I was in fourth grade in the 1960s my parents gave me a volume that I still keep in my library, Living Biographies of Famous Women. My parents felt that my sister and I should be able to go to college, have a brilliant career, and rise to the top, just like Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, and Florence Nightingale, all featured in my book. And they wanted me to know that I could be as successful as any man in that pre-women’s liberation era, when few women had careers.

I think I took something away from reading their stories that was different from what my parents expected, though. I noticed that while these women were indisputably powerful and successful, many of them lacked one important thing: a satisfying personal life. Only one, Madame Curie, the famous scientist who did pioneering research on radioactivity, seemed to have a happy family life and a full career at the same time.

Portable Bliss

After forty years in Washington, DC, I just moved eight thousand miles away and am settled in Jerusalem, Israel. Every morning when I finish my morning meditation I think, “This is the best thing I could have brought with me”…and the easiest. It required no luggage, airfare, shipment or space. I carry it inside my very self wherever I am.

I so wish EVERYONE knew how easy it is to learn, to practice and to live, love, be creative, energetic and find strength from this magnificent quiet daily practice of TM.

Creativity Is Sharing, An Overflowing Of Fullness

“Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, bold and compassionate. Because the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?”—Brenda Ueland, author*

“The artist, constantly using his creative impulses, continues to draw from the reservoir of creativity present in his own Being. This is how his consciousness, bathing in the fresh springs of creativity, rises to the prodigious brilliance of natural creation.”—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Founder, Transcendental Meditation technique

Gender Balance: What Women Bring to the Table

Thirty years ago, statistics showed that fifty percent of the college graduates in the United States were women. Thirty years later, women still only hold a small percentage of leadership positions in government, business and industry. This means that women’s voices are not heard in the decisions that most affect our lives.

Warren Buffett said recently in an interview in Fortune Magazine, “ For most of our history, women—whatever their abilities—have been relegated to the sidelines.” Mr. Buffet points at the amazing progress that has been made even when society has used only 50% of its human potential by sidelining women. He says, “If you visualize what 100% can do, you’ll join me as an unbridled optimist about America’s future…Women are a major reason we will do so well.”

Help for Kids with PTSD

Recently John Christoffersen wrote in the Huffington Post that mothers are still struggling to calm their children after the Sandy Hook disaster. Even though the children have been moved to a different school and have received the best counseling available, the children and teachers are still spooked by loud noises, which make them think another intruder has entered their school. Nightmares and trouble concentrating are other problems that linger.

Between 8 to 15 percent of those who experience traumas such as mass shootings develop PTSD, said Russell Jones, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech who counseled survivors of a mass shooting at his school. Fortunately, about half of them no longer have the symptoms after three months, he said.

Wellness in Children Takes More than Wishful Thinking

When you look at health statistics for children, there is a heartbreaking trend toward more disease during the past two decades. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control tell us that 9.5% of children currently have asthma, 8.4% have been diagnosed with ADHD, and a shocking 18% are not just overweight, but clinically obese.

In a recent Huffington Post piece, “The Last Well Child,” pediatrician Lawrence Rosen, M.D., remarks that he recently saw a healthy child in his office, which was such an unusual event that it got him thinking. He wonders if our health care system isn’t actually a disease-treatment system in disguise—and with so much emphasis on labeling, classifying and treating disease, we are doing our children (and ourselves) a great disservice.

Nothing Depressing About That

It turns out I have a job that puts me at risk for depression. Writers, artists and other creatives are on a list of the top ten jobs linked to depression posted on Health.com in 2012. Understandably, caregivers, health-care workers and teachers are in the top ten, but writers? The article cites irregular paychecks, uncertain hours, and isolation as stressful elements of the job. Creative people may also have higher rates of mood disorders, with 9 percent reporting an episode of major depression in the previous year.

From another perspective, just being a woman puts me at risk for depression. Nearly twice as many women suffer from depression than men, research shows, most likely because the female brain is wired in a way that makes women more susceptible to stress. Women are affected by lower levels of stress than men, produce more stress hormones than men and recover from stress less quickly.

Fear of Change and the Field of Changelessness

Right around the time I learned how to meditate, I read a haiku from the sixth century AD:

He creeps along the log in fear and trembling,
He does not know that the bridge is flowing and the water is not.

For some reason, this haiku rang bells for me. Somehow I had always intuited the truth of this haiku in my own life—that what we experience from day to day and year to year in our lives is ever changing and impermanent. However what lies within us and at the basis of the ever-changing universe is non-changing eternity. Fear of falling off the log is based on a false image of what is real and what isn’t.