A Grin
After more than fifty years of teaching psychiatry in medical schools, writing research papers on various subjects, and spending many hours in therapy with patients, I suppose I am qualified to make a statement about Mother Earth’s gentle smile [grin] about humankind’s inanities.
The first goal of these writings is a grin for the reader -- remember a grin is a participatory response, a small satori understanding as noted below. The next goal is I find some of the ideas useful as homework for patients. A third goal is to market (sell seems crude -- ok sell) two spoofs -- the sexual Olympics and AKC-Cattle judging standards for selection of mates -- a current example fed through TV sets are the Batchelor and Batchelorette shows. While dairy offers some possibilities because of attention to mammary development and scrotal circumferene (visual inspection), American Kennal Club has standards more acceptable to those people east of the Hudson river. For starters NSA -- no surgical alterations. Correct, no surgical alterations. This includes teeth. Orthodonists will cringe.
A grin is a participatory response as a signal of recognition, a little satori if you will. A participatory response is mediated by the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system [PANS] in contrast to the sympathetic autonomic nervous system [SYNS] which is in charge of activation and arousal of the defense alarm portion of our autonomic peripheral nervous system. Both are under marching orders from the cerebral cortex. For PANS, think warmth, love, digestion, and sleep. For the SYNS think of activation, arousal, stress, fear, flight or fight or laughter as laughing at some others mistake such as them taking a pratfall. My position in life has given me an inner view of the world without being arrested as a peeping tom, a more palpable term than voyeur. Should you come to my office I will, of course, use the prestigious term to justify my fee.
While sitting on the bench of life, I compare it to the dead pecker bench located at the stoplight in a small town where I got older—I did not grow up there as that took a few more decades. So if you might get a grin or so, join a grumpy old psychiatrist on the bench between the reluctant stop—red stop and green go.
