The medical community has clearly established that physical inflammation harms our health.

But what about emotional inflammation? Aside from being unpleasant, I believe that repeated and persistent emotional stress likewise harms our health.

One specific example that I find personally stressful is television news.  The criteria for most TV news stories seems to be:

1. Few news reports last more than a minute.
2. There must be something visually arresting to attract and hold the viewers’ attention, such as a swarm of locusts or a crime scene.
3. “How do you feel about losing your . . . ?”  This is a question often asked to the victim of a loss.
4. Creating fear or a sense of danger. Most news stories involve a possible threat to life or well-being, such as the Hillside Strangler or yet another mass shooting.

During the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic many, if not most, TV news stories have covered the novel coronavirus.  That news is scary, which is both a reason to watch, but also a reason not to.

Until two weeks ago I was glued to TV news every morning, every evening, and occasionally during the day.  I must have spent three or four hours daily in front of a television set, becoming more worried and upset by the minute.

Two weeks ago I quit watching TV news completely, and I’ve only cheated once (for forty minutes).  Many friends and most of my family were ahead of me.  They gave up TV news months or years ago.  In my view, no news anchor has ever improved on Walter Cronkite, or the late night talk show host and comedian Johnny Carson.

While I used to enjoy the excitement of TV news, I more and more objected to the negativity.

I have now cut off TV news as a source of emotional inflammation in my life.  I still read the sports section of the LA Times, as well as specific online articles which interest me.

But TV news?  No more.  I’d rather read a book, write a blog, or enjoy my garden.  I’m much happier.  I may have less information (that I probably didn’t need anyway), but I carry with me far less emotional inflammation.

Alan

I’ve read that a habit is first a cobweb, then a cord, and finally a cable.

It’s important to be thoughtful about the habits we develop.  They can control us for a lifetime.

In my life I have changed several basic habits.

At an early age I developed an eating routine which I found difficult to modify.

I hung out in the kitchen every afternoon.  While my mom cooked dinner I separately devoured a two-hour snack.  My favorites were melted cheese sandwiches, sour cream dip with potato chips, and peanut butter and jelly on sour dough French bread.

At dinner, Mom’s salads were far too healthy.  The salad dressing was either vinegar straight from the bottle or lemon juice.  Yuck!  I learned to dislike salad.  I also disliked vegetables because they were always overcooked, limp, and unappetizing.  Worst of all, I was required to eat everything on my plate even if I wasn’t hungry.

At a restaurant I would immediately consume four or five slices of bread and butter, even before ordering real food.  After all, it was free.  (More accurately, Daveen would say it was “included.”)  Lunch and dinner were three or four courses.  After all, a meal isn’t complete without desert.

In short, my eating habits were undisciplined, like the old joke – “I’m on a seafood diet.  I see food, I eat it.”  For most of my life my weight reflected a conspicuous lack of self-control.

I’m happy to report that yesterday evening I enjoyed a dinner that years ago would have been unthinkable – a salad.  No bread.  No meat.  Just a salad with blue cheese lite and balsamic vinegar dressing.  It was delicious, and I wasn’t hungry afterward.

The transformation of my eating habits has been gradual but complete.  I learned that for lunch I was satisfied with a single open-faced sandwich, one-half at noon and the other half in the afternoon.  No potato chips.  No French fries.  No weight gain.

Another habit I’ve changed for the better is not aiming to work too fast.

In the third grade I took a sixteen-problem math test.  As always, I was the first to finish and proudly took my answers to the teacher.  A few minutes later she returned my paper.

“Alan, this is a quiz in subtraction, not addition.”

Oops.  In my haste I had failed to read the instructions.  I again answered all the problems and was still the first to finish.  Thank goodness she gave me a second chance.

But working quickly was a habit that became entrenched. In business I always tried to finish everything as fast as I could. The problem was that if I didn’t immediately know what to do, i.e. respond to a letter, then I would put it aside for later.  Over a period of weeks I would pick up the same letter many times, read it, then put it back on the pile.  That habit kept my in-box filled to overflowing.

I might never be perfect about this, but today I usually respond to an email immediately, or forward it to someone else who can.  I might be a little slower than I was, but I’m definitely more efficient.

Last week I began to change another stressful habit – watching three or four hours of TV news each day.  I’ll write more about that next week.

You might consider your own habits, those cables to which you are tethered.  Perhaps you can detach yourself from one or two, and enjoy your life even more than you thought possible.

Alan

My mother and father were both professional musicians.  My mother played the trumpet, my father the French horn. They met in a student orchestra during the 1930s.  No wonder my dad insisted that I take piano lessons at an early age. But he also advised me to not become a professional musician.  More than once he said, “It’s a lousy way to earn a living.”

There were two pianos in the small living room of my childhood home.  I still remember sitting at one of the pianos practicing when my father, who taught French horn students in the same room, demanded from over my shoulder, “Make it interesting.  Each phrase must be interesting.”

I was still struggling to hit the right notes. Though I knew the difference between pianissimo (very soft) and forte (loud), phrasing was not yet part of my repertoire.  But Dad, as always, persisted.  And it turned out he was right.  He was a great teacher, though somewhat gruff in those days.

“Don’t rush to get to the good parts,” he directed.  “Remember that the notes become a phrase, like a breath, and each phrase must be colorful and interesting.”

When I was in college, headed toward a degree in accounting, I asked my dad, “Do you think I had enough talent to be a concert pianist?”

He thought about it briefly.

“Yes,” he said.  “Definitely.  But you would have had to practice constantly, be on the road half the year, and accept a lower standard of living.  It’s a lousy way to earn a living.”  My dad often repeated himself.

What he didn’t mention was that he knew how much I hated to practice.  With rare exception, I found even the obligatory hour a day unpleasant.  Once I recorded half an hour of myself practicing the piano on my Dad’s new tape recorder.  Then, thinking I could fool him, I played the tape instead of practicing.

On the second day Dad burst into the living room from his bedroom.

“You’re not practicing.  That’s a recording.  I hear exactly the same mistakes over and over.”  So much for that ploy!

In writing I have one essential rule – make it Interesting.  When I read a book, or even a news story, it has to hold my interest.  If not, I skip to something else.  In that respect writing is similar to performing music, every phrase must count.

But ultimately, my Dad was right.  I wasn’t suited to being a professional musician. For years I’ve stared at the two Steinway pianos in my own home, and yet, during the past twenty years, I haven’t played a note.

Alan