Walk, and write about it

It's always nice to have your personal predilections validated by science. But I'll keep on walking and writing whatever the peer-reviewed research says. My own private study is confirmation enough for me.

To combat afternoon slumps in enthusiasm and focus, take a walk during the lunch hour.

A new study finds that even gentle lunchtime strolls can perceptibly — and immediately — buoy people’s moods and ability to handle stress at work.

It is not news, of course, that walking is healthy and that people who walk or otherwise exercise regularly tend to be more calm, alert and happy than people who are inactive.

But many past studies of the effects of walking and other exercise on mood have focused on somewhat long-term, gradual outcomes, looking at how weeks or months of exercise change people emotionally.

Fewer studies have examined more-abrupt, day-to-day and even hour-by-hour changes in people’s moods, depending on whether they exercise, and even fewer have focused on these effects while people are at work, even though most of us spend a majority of our waking hours in an office.

So, for the new study, which was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports this month, researchers at the University of Birmingham and other universities began by recruiting sedentary office workers at the university...

 The responses, as it turned out, were substantially different when people had walked. On the afternoons after a lunchtime stroll, walkers said they felt considerably more enthusiastic, less tense, and generally more relaxed and able to cope than on afternoons when they hadn’t walked and even compared with their own moods from a morning before a walk... "The Benefits of a Lunch Hour Walk," nyt

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The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing — and then rewriting — your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness.The concept is based on the idea that we all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world and ourselves. But sometimes our inner voice doesn’t get it completely right. Some researchers believe that by writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of better health.

It may sound like self-help nonsense, but research suggests the effects are real... "Writing Your Way to Happiness"

Experience suggests the same.

Courage

Good words from Ken Paulson.

So what happens when the rallies end?

We've seen a heartening response to the brutal assassination of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper. Around the globe, people outraged by the brutal attack have gathered under the "Je Suis Charlie" banner. The same "We are Charlie" sentiment has been echoed by millions across social media.

But what happens when the town square is empty and "Charlie" is no longer trending? What happens when cartoonists sit back down at their drawing boards?

In the United States, we're blessed with the First Amendment, a constitutional guarantee of a free press. But the amendment only protects us against government censorship or punishment for what we write. It offers absolutely no protection against bullets.

In this country, we often talk about free speech in the context of controversial art or movies, or when debating the merits of incendiary tweets, or the spectacle of Kim Kardashian's backside on a magazine cover.

But consider the exercise of free speech by the editors and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo. In 2011, the newsroom was firebombed. Threats against the paper's editorial director Stephane Charbonnier led to police protection. Despite the daily threat of violence, the newspaper continued to publish provocative cartoons and content. Freedom prevailed over fear.

So often we confuse the right to express ourselves with the courage to do so.

It took courage in the 1830s for crusading abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy to continue publishing the Alton (Ill.) Observer. Time and again, pro-slavery mobs destroyed his printing presses, but he kept printing. On Nov. 7, 1837, a mob marched on a warehouse where a press was hidden, determined to set fire to the building. Lovejoy was shot to death as he rushed to protect his press.

It took courage for African-American Ida B. Wells to editorialize against lynchings in the 1890s and for Alice Paul to demonstrate for women's equality a century ago, despite being sentenced to prison for seven months in 1917. It took courage for artists like Pete Seeger to sing songs challenging authority after being blacklisted and for Lenny Bruce to perform after repeated arrests.

It took courage for Salman Rushdie to write "The Satanic Verses" and face a death sentence from Iran, and for Dutch Artist Theo van Gogh to make a film challenging the treatment of women in Islam, a movie that led to his murder.

And it took courage for American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff to report at great personal risk on events in Syria. Both were beheaded by Islamic extremists last year. Many other journalists also died in pursuit of the truth. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that worldwide at least 60 journalists were killed in 2014, with almost half of them murdered.

Free speech can lead to threats. And imprisonment. And death.

We owe a debt to those who stand up for what they believe, reporting, writing and expressing themselves, regardless of personal consequence.

I'll admit I love the idea of the free world, standing as one, declaring "We are Charlie." I only hope we're that brave.

Ken Paulson is the president of the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center in Nashville and the dean of the College of Mass Communication at Middle Tennessee State University. Nashville Tennessean 

George Eliot

Yesterday I came across two independent salutes to Brit Lit's George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans). Guess I need to read Middlemarch. I'll put it on the nightstand, right under War and Peace and The Phenomenology of Spirit.*

...the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

That's how Middlemarch ends, marvelously. I was alerted to it by her greatest fan, Rebecca Mead, who also shines a light on Eliot's philosophical smarts. For instance:

“Love does not say 'I ought to love'—it loves. Pity does not say, 'It is right to be pitiful'
—it pities. Justice does not say,'I am bound to be just'—it feels justly.” She goes on 
to say that dependency upon a rule or theory only  when moral emotion is weak. "We think experience, both in literature and in life, has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic—which insist on a lesson and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are deficient in sympathetic emotion,” she writes. My Life in Middlemarch

Score that for Hume, against Kant, and against all hyper-intellectualism in philosophical ethics.

The other salute came from Robert Coles in his intro to volume 7 of William James's Correspondence,  noting Eliot's (and Tolstoy's) superior psychological acuity to that of most professional psychologists. Probably true still, certainly so in their time.

*Existential Comics - The Return Counter

Jury duty

I dutifully reported for jury duty this morning. The jury coordinator eventually reported that there would be just one criminal trial jury seated this day, so "cross your fingers."

Older Daughter finds the whole situation tweetably amusing.

My dad is texting the family about what a miserable time he is having actually adulting. Sorry Dad, you had to grow up today.

I wasn't miserable, just unsettled. Off my routine. No dog-walk this morning.

But isn't it interesting, how she (like many of her peers, I'll bet) equates misery with adulthood? Classic Peter Pan syndrome. It's true, I'm rarely miserable. I mostly enjoy life at work and at home during breaks from school, when "adulting" includes picking up after the kids and running their taxi.

Anyway, back in the jury room...

After about 45 minutes' wait I was relieved to miss the cut, but was detained along with 24 other potential reserve jurors. May have to go back to the courthouse in an hour. Fingers still crossed. Still not miserable. Just trying to stay young at heart.