During their child’s first 12 years of life 19,286 mothers had a total of 25,176 episodes of depression and 8,012 fathers had a total of 9,683 episodes of depression. The overall rate of depression was 7.53 per 100 mothers and 2.69 per 100 fathers per year. In the first year after the child’s birth the depression rate was 13.93 per 100 mothers and 3.56 per 100 fathers.

Dr. Dave said the most likely factors for these high rates of post-partum depression shared by all parents are poor parental sleep, extra demands on parents and the negative effects of stress on spousal intimacy. Some specific factors that would apply to some but not all parents include being young parents, having an unplanned pregnancy, being low wage earners unable to afford child care, having a limited social support network, and the temporary discontinuation of mothers taking anti-depressants while pregnant and breastfeeding. Dr. Dave’s study was published in the September 6, 2010, online version of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Lawyers should be aware of theses findings, because they may tend to attribute all feelings of depression to their work even when those feelings are coming from raising a new child. Let’s face it, raising a new child is stressful for anyone but especially so when you have to be up early for court, completely prepared for argument, well groomed, bright-eyed and alert – instead of exhausted, bleary eyed and covered in baby vomit.

Despite our high earning potential, lawyers are living in weird economic times – a stagnant recession – when jobs are scarce for new lawyers and layoffs are plentiful for older lawyers. The financial stress of unemployment or underemployment for a lawyer can add fuel to depression associated with raising a child. 

Once you realize and acknowledge that raising your child is contributing to an episode of depression for you and/or your spouse, then you are in a position to deal with it by seeing a psychologist, getting counseling, going on temporary medication and learning how to develop a stronger social support network.

It’s also a time to open your perspective to include you, your spouse and your child. Maternal or paternal depression during a child’s first years can cause permanent emotional damage to a child and raise his or her lifetime risk for depression and other psychiatric problems. Yes your career is important and yes it’s important to earn money, but your child is very important too. If you’re stuck at home due to a lousy job market, rather than spend all your time brooding and being resentful of your parental responsibilities which limit your time for job hunting, relax into parenting, enjoy it and create a beautiful bond with your child. This can ease your depression by creating meaning and pleasure during a layoff which would otherwise by somewhat tense and joyless. Yes children are burdensome (in some respects), but they are also a gift, the greatest gift I know.

The answer is yes. We all know people who have mastered their craving and permanently given up smoking, illicit drug use or alcoholic drinking. Some of them used a twelve step group. Some used meditation or other relaxation techniques. And, some of them took up running or other intense exercise. What do these people have in common? One thing they have in common is full awareness of the terrible long term consequences of giving into their cravings, and a strong conscious commitment to overcome their cravings and break free of addiction so they can lead healthier, happier, longer lives.

What else do they have in common? That’s what a group of neuroscientists led by psychology professor Kevin Ochsner, Ph.D., of Columbia University wanted to find out. Dr. Ochsner’s group did brain scans of a group of smokers who had been taught cognitive strategies to control their craving for cigarettes, especially to think about the long term consequences of smoking. Their paper was published in the August 3, 2010 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The smokers who had been taught to control their cravings showed increased activity in the parts of the brain associated with rational thought and cognitive control over emotions (the dorsomedial, dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). They also showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain associated with craving for substances, reward-seeking and addiction (the ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate, amygdale and ventral tegmentum). Co-author Hedy Krober, assistant professor psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, said “This shows that smokers can indeed control their cravings, they just need to be told how to do it.”

What Dr. Krober is talking about here is not the same thing as the silly “just say no” campaign during the Regan years. Lawyers who are dependent on cigarettes, illicit drugs or alcohol to relieve the many stresses of law practices aren’t going to quit because someone tells them to just say no. The fact is that the stresses will continue, the temptations to indulge will continue and you will continue to be surrounded by lawyers who do indulge. However, you can enroll in a program which teaches cognitive strategies to control your cravings and gradually teach your brain to control your cravings as it strengthens the command circuit running from the prefrontal cortex to the subcortical dopamine producing and receiving areas.

Approximately one-third of depressed patients do not respond to conventional anti-depressant drugs like Prozac and Zoloft. These drugs work by blocking the re-uptake of serotonin from the synapses after it is released, so more of it is available for neuro-transmission. They are called SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. In order to explore whether SAMe supplementation would help depressed patients whose depression was not improving by taking an SSRI medication, investigators at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston recruited a group of 73 adults with depression who were resistant to SSRIs.

According to lead author, psychiatrist George I. Papakostas of Mass. General, all of the patients were kept on their regular medication for the six week study. However, 39 were randomly assigned to take SAMe and 34 received a placebo. Neither the investigators not the patients knew who was getting SAMe and who was getting placebo. This sort of study is called a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled study.

At the end of the study 36% of the patients taking a combination of anti-depressant and SAMe showed improvement compared to just 18% of those taking anti-depressant and placebo. And 26% of the patients in the SAMe group achieved complete remission of symptoms, compared to 12% in the placebo group.

Dr. Papakostas published the results of the study in American Journal of Psychiatry (in the July 2010 online version and the August 2010 hard copy). He said that SAMe appears to be a valuable adjunctive therapy to regular anti-depressants for some patients, but larger studies are required to replicate his findings. Dr. Papakostas speculated that SAMe helps by facilitating the biosynthesis of serotonin, which is different from simply blocking its reuptake.

If you’re taking a conventional anti-depressant drug which works by blocking re-uptake of a neurotransmitter and you’re not experiencing improvement, then you should talk to your physician or psychiatrist about this study. In an editorial accompanying Dr. Papakostas’ study psychiatrist Craig Nelson of the UCSF Medical Center said that SAMe shows promise for helping patients with treatment-resistant depression, but is not covered by most insurance companies. The cost of a one month supply of SAMe from Pharmavite is about $143.

Dr. Wood recruited a group of people to learn the psychological implications of what people say about each others. He had friends rate each other, college freshmen rate others they knew in their dorms, and fraternity and sorority members rate others in their organization. He then had the raters undergo psychological and personality testing.

There were two key findings. First there is a strong association between positively judging others and how enthusiastic, happy, kind-hearted, courteous, emotionally stable and capable the person describes oneself and is described by others. Second negative perceptions of others are associated with higher levels of narcissism, other personality disorders and anti-social behavior. Dr. Wood said “The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression….”

Dr. Wood’s research showed that the greater the negativity in your assessment of others the more likely you are unhappy, disagreeable and neurotic. Could there be a link between the incivility epidemic in contemporary legal practice and the fact that 1 out of every 5 lawyers suffers from major depression? Since we live in the world our mind creates the answer is likely to be yes. If you have bad things to say about most of your colleagues and you are unhappy most of the time, then you should start thinking very seriously about making a change.

Today is a new day. Begin with a practice of finding good things to say about others at the office. It won’t come easy at first, but will get easier with practice. The more positive things you say about others, the more positive things you will see in them, appreciate and take pleasure in. The people around you will notice the change and start feeling a whole lot more positive about you. Over time the veil of misery will lift. Once you’ve proven to yourself that this technique works, you can recommend it to other lawyers. Pass it on.

Under the traditional  model the doctor doesn’t see his patient as a person or undertake a comprehensive inquiry into the patient’s life to understand all the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual factors that may play a role in his illness. Rather, he spends 15 minutes with a patient, orders lab tests, identifies his “medical problem,” and then attempts to fix his problem with a drug. Pills that lower cholesterol, blood sugar or blood pressure don’t address the root cause of obesity, diabetes or hypertension. They don’t address the stress of commuting and working, reduced physical activity, lots of time spent in front of screens, consumption of comfort foods high in sugar and unhealthy fats, heavy alcohol consumption or smoking.

The traditional medical approach makes the person with the illness completely passive and precludes him from playing an active and helpful role in figuring out why he’s ill and what he can do to regain his health and wellbeing. Dr. Weiss advocates that people make a total commitment to their health and that they collaborate with their physician to develop a treatment plan which realistically addresses their unique issues. If you’re obese because you have a very stressful job and you habitually engage in emotional over-eating to self-soothe, then being told to lose weight or being given a pill to reduce the hypertension from the obesity won’t work.

Dr. Weiss stresses that all patients are different and that cookie-cutter approaches to obesity, diabetes, and hypertension will fail. Some patients are and some are not prepared to stick to a plan that involves completely cutting out smoking or TV watching, cooking healthy meals and getting vigorous exercise. To get well you need to work with your doctor to lay out all the options and choose options you know you can handle. An effective health plan could include exercising more, getting more sleep, eating healthier foods, cutting out or reducing TV watching, cutting out or reducing junk food, cutting out or reducing alcohol consumption, or adopting stress reduction techniques such as walking, listening to music or meditation.

Dr. Weiss wisely advises us that no one can succeed on their own and that we will increase our chances of success by building a support network made up of family and friends to help us with things like quitting smoking or resisting that pint of ice cream. He tells us to forgive ourselves if we slip up by having too much wine, having one cigarette or eating a pint of ice cream. After all we’re only human, and a commitment to health is a lifelong commitment on a very long journey. Better to forgive than to engage in self-hate and despair and go completely off the wagon.

Dr. Weiss finds it helpful to think of our alternatives in terms of vicious or virtuous cycle. In the vicious cycle negative thoughts and feelings interact and reinforce each other. In the virtuous cycle positive thoughts do the same. A vicious cycle can occur when a minor injury leads to less exercise, more comfort food eating, weight gain, self-recrimination and loss of self-confidence. A virtuous cycle occurs when more exercise takes off pounds and yields a more attractive, energetic body producing still greater resolve to eat healthy, exercise regularly and stay on track. We should be conscious of which cycle we’re in at any given moment. Seeking honest feedback from trusted people helps. If we are in a vicious cycle, then seeking help from our support network will help get us back into a virtuous one.

More Health, Less Care is bursting with anecdotes and tips to help motivate you and guide you to overcome your obesity, diabetes or hypertension and regain your health. I strongly recommend you buy a copy, read it cover to cover and give your copy to a friend you care about who has similar issues.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Will you have lived as a timid visitor, simply observing life from the outside because you were too fearful to plunge in – or will you have committed,  lived fully and left your footprints here in this world?

Yesterday at lunch I attended a fascinating talk by Bonnie O’Brien Jonsson, M.S., who teaches MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction), Buddhist meditation and a class for dying persons on how to live their last year. Bonnie said that life is poised on the fingertips of your intention. She asked each member of the audience to face another member and tell them what made him feel most alive and what he most wanted out of the life remaining to him. She reminded us that life makes no guarantees except for constant change up until the unknowable moment we die.

The past is gone and exists only in the form of a story. The future is not yet here and may never come. Bonnie reminded us that all the people who died in the 9/11 catastrophe showed up for work that morning believing they would be fine. They were in a state of complete ignorance that they were going to die that morning. Given that our death is certain but we never know when it will come, tomorrow or 30 years from now, what makes more sense – to live suffocated by the fear of dying (which causes us to withhold loving others, taking chances and being creative) or to live our unique purpose and “dance the wild dance” of those who know they won’t get out of life alive?

How do you live at work? Are you grateful for any of the time you spend at the office? Do you notice and appreciate any of what happens during the work day? Perhaps you’re like most lawyers out there. You start off by making a list of tasks which you regard as hard, tedious, unpleasant but essential. Then you rush through those tasks as fast as you can without coming up for air so you can experience the relief that comes from getting them done. You do this day in and day out. Then one day you’re old and gray and the doctor says you have heart disease or cancer. Not a pretty picture is it?

What keeps us back from making full use of our time and really living life? Is it because we are busy or are we busy because we are afraid and being busy distracts us from our fears? Bonnie, who has worked intimately with dying people for a dozen years, says it’s fear. Fear of what? Fear of dying, sickness, injury and pain. Fear of social rejection. Fear of breaking free of the story of one’s past that makes one a helpless victim and becoming responsible for oneself. Fear of trying and failing at a goal and making a fool of oneself. Fear of succeeding and then losing everything. Fear of succeeding and having to live with too many demands and expectations.

So how can we transcend fear and learn to take risks? Bonnie says it’s only by befriending our fear. Fear is an emotion. It will not kill us. It can be faced. The word courage comes from an old French term for heart. The heart is the seat of compassion. Bonnie says that having compassion for yourself is the key to facing and transcending fear.

She had everyone in the class do an exercise. First she had us close our eyes and call to mind an old fear. Next she told us to allow the fear to spread and feel all the sensations of the fear in our body, e.g. a tight abdomen. Then we were asked to trace the pattern of the fear in our body with our hands while having full compassion for ourselves. Bonnie suggested we use our hands to approach the anatomic area of our fear as if it was a puppy or a cute, helpless infant – by stroking it in a loving manner with a loving intention while silently murmuring reassuring words (may you be safe, healthy, happy, peaceful and at ease).

This exercise worked for everyone in the sense that it enabled us to face, endure, soften and reduce an old fear. If you engage in frequent practice of this exercise you may find it reduces the fears that are holding you back from risking change, living in the present moment and getting more out of life.

Yesterday evening I had the privilege of attending a talk given by Julia Butterfly Hill, the young woman who attained fame by sitting in a one thousand year old redwood tree for 2 years which forced a logging company to abandon its plan to cut down that tree and the grove in which it stood.

By coincidence (or was it synchronicity) Julia addressed the same issue. How can we commit ourselves to anything when we know we may lose, that we would feel terrible and even have our hearts broken? Julia said she learned from the tree to stay flexible and bend in life’s storms instead of being rigid and snapping. It boils down to attachment. If you are attached to the outcome of any endeavor (which means you make the value of your work and your happiness contingent on getting the result you envisioned), then you will keep on experiencing the fear of losing and you are setting yourself up for misery.

Few if any events in life happen exactly just when and how we want them. But if we learn to release our attachment to the result, then we can stay committed without the constant fear in our belly that makes us give up or never try in the first place. Julia ended her talk by saying her credo is to serve others for no reason. That is her shorthand way of saying that she serves others without attachment to the result she envisions. This enables her to stay loose instead of being tight (both figuratively and literally) as she serves.

Can she pull this off all the time? No. Julia said part of being human is slipping back into attachment. She knows she’s getting attached when she experiences rage or cynicism. Julia copes with the unconscious process of re-attachment by doing her best to stay mindful and monitor her thoughts and feelings. Then she can consciously choose to let go of her attachment and usher in freedom and inner peace. In the tree Julia could only enjoy the tree, the birds, the sky, and the clouds, in a state of non-attachment to the result of her fight with the logging company. Through practice she spends much more of her time in a state of non-attachment (serving for no reason), but her life is still a bit of a see-saw, because she sometimes get re-attached.

I hope you will take away something useful from the example and the advice of these two wise women. Don’t let fear of fear or fear of suffering hold you back from living your best life. Work on releasing your attachment to results. If the fear keeps coming up, then have compassion for yourself and use Bonnie’s exercise of patting and stroking the part of your body that is tight and clenched while breathing and wishing yourself well.

The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first one volunteers took either a 1,000 mg. acetaminophen pill or a placebo pill every day and kept a diary in which they reported their social pain. The subjects who took the acetaminophen reported substantially less social pain.

In the second experiment volunteers took either a 2,000 mg. acetaminophen pill or a placebo pill everyday for 3 weeks. At the end of the 3 week period all participants played a computer game designed to elicit feelings of social rejection while a functional MRI scanner monitored their brain activity. The MRI showed that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions associated with distress from social pain (the anterior cingulate cortex) and from physical pain (the insula). 

This simple yet remarkable experiment showed that a drug designed to reduce physical pain managed to reduce the pain of social rejection. Dr. DeWall says the study shows that social and physical pain centers may overlap in the brain and rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms. Dr. Webster said the experiment showed that the physical and social or emotional pain systems are inherently linked and it makes sense, because if someone is hurting you, you want to know about it and get away.

What does this mean for us? Clearly the old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” isn’t true. When lawyers exchange rude, insulting language which conveys contempt they aren’t just “pissing each other off” (to use another bodily expression) they are causing each other social, and perhaps also, physical pain. Do you live with headaches, neck aches, stomach aches or other aches which have no apparent cause? These could be coming from your law practice.

In life we get back what we give. It’s called karma. When you’re unreasonable and downright hostile to other lawyers, they will treat you the same way. If you’re reasonable and civil to other lawyers, they will act the same towards you. One way guarantees social stress, muscle tension, and very possibly physical ailments, while the other invites peace and calm even in the midst of strong disagreements over legal issues. You get to choose the way.

The good news from these researchers is that naringenin activates a family of small proteins called nuclear receptors which cause the liver to break down fatty acids and increase insulin sensitivity. Thus naringenin naturally reduces lipids and sugar in the blood helping to fight obesity and regulate blood sugar in diabetics. Dr. Nahmias said that naringenin puts the body in a fat busting state typically induced by long periods of fasting. He added that it does what the Atkins diet does without many of the side effects. Dr. Nahmias hopes that one day grapefruit extract could be used in the treatment of high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

If you are concerned about your weight or the risk of diabetes, then help yourself by consuming grapefruit everyday. You can buy whole grapefruits that you cut up, jars of precut grapefruit sections in water rather than sugary syrup or unsweetened grapefruit juice. To take the bitterness out of the grapefruit juice you can blend it with orange juice or add a natural sweetener like agave, stevia or truvia (which contains stevia). Remember that table sugar, brown sugar, honey, corn syrup and maple syrup will raise your blood sugar. I don’t recommend artificial sweeteners.

Holding grudges and burning with anger has a physiologic cost and damages your health. Holding a grudge elevates heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tension. It increases pain for people already in pain. Holding a grudge is known to cause insomnia, anxiety and depression. It may appear to produce a short term gain, because you feel powerful when you indulge outrage against opposing counsel, but it produces a long term loss of health. While jet engines can be cleaned or even replaced it’s not so easy with your cardiovascular system.

Living in a state of anger against other people increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and lowers life expectancy. A recent study at Johns Hopkins Medical School which tracked 1,337 male medical students for 36 years following medical school, found that students who became angry quickly under stress were 3 times more likely to develop premature heart disease and 5 times more likely to have an early heart attack. The American Heart Association says that women also suffer increased heart attacks from anger.

Forgiveness is a decision to let go of bitterness, resentment and thoughts of revenge. It is based on understanding the negative effects of grudge holding on your own health and wellbeing. To forgive you don’t have to condone, excuse, justify or accept the act done to you. But you do have to forgive the person who did it. You have to stop hating that person for hurting you. Forgiveness sometimes leads to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you. Whether it does or doesn’t help you see the other in a softer light, forgiveness effectively lessens the grip of anger on you and helps you focus on the positive parts of your life. It melts away preoccupation with hurt and revenge. Forgiveness brings peace and it’s the state of peace that enables you to go on with your life and to enjoy your life. Forgiveness reverses the adverse physiologic effects of grudge holding, increases your health and wellbeing and makes you more optimistic.

To avoid practicing law in a grudge-based way that is bad for your cardiovascular system make an effort to be more patient, gentle and accommodating with other people. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with their objectives, arguments or tactics or let them walk all over you. What it does mean is finding a way to relate to others in a more relaxed way instead of the seethe and snap way.

Try always to remember that your opponent is under pressures and has worries just like you and that these can lead him to say or do things which can irritate or offend you. Law school has no courses in diplomacy. It rewards highly competitive people. Too many law firms and clients think the most aggressive lawyer is the best lawyer instead of prizing tact, intelligence and persuasion.

Try to remember that under the aggressive persona there lays a human being who is trying to support his family and who has fears about losing the case, losing face and maybe losing his job. Try to remember that a person with these fears can become agitated, anxious and unpleasant without meaning to be. Can you find anything about your opponent that you like or share in common? Is it possible to tone down the rancor and lighten things up with some humor?

At the end of the day the only person burdened by a grudge is the grudge holder. The person who hurt the grudge holder is typically not even aware of the grudge and he certainly isn’t harmed by it in any way. Grudge isn’t voodoo. You can’t hurt another person by holding one. You only hurt yourself and the people who have to practice law with you and live with you. If you are going to practice law in a non-grudge based way it can’t be by a mere surface pretense. You have to be sincere. Meditation is a great way to get into and stay in this mode of relating. 

          Two sources of information on how to release a grudge and forgive are the Mayo Clinic website (which has a series of articles on this) and Dr. Fred Luskin’s website www.learningtoforgive.com

This weekend I got to observe and experience this process while on a trip with my 9 year old son Elliott, my friend Bruce and Bruce’s 10 year old son Diego. The four of us live in the Bay Area. On Friday night we drove to a cabin on Alpine Lake in the Sierra Mountains. Saturday we spent the day trout fishing with lures, power bait and worms. The scenery (a mountain lake at 8,000 feet elevation) was beautiful, but the trout weren’t biting because it was quite cold and windy for a late August day. Instead of eating pan fried trout in our cabin as we had hoped, we settled for some tasty pizza at the nearby Bear Valley ski lodge which was open for mountain bikers and hikers.

On Sunday we spent our day in and near the little town of Murphys named after the town’s founder John Murphy who made 1.5 million in the Gold Rush, married a survivor of the bad luck Donner Party and left to become mayor of San Jose. The town and its immediate surroundings are a mix of  old settler culture; small business people who are staunchly Republican; organic farmers; wine makers; olive oil makers; gourmet chefs; motorcycle clubs whose members ride Harleys and sport Harley Davidson clothes; and good ole boys who rekindle memories of the Dukes of Hazard.

Just before hitting town we stopped at Quayle Pottery. This is farm/winery which makes its own clay, glaze and pottery on the premises and sells modeling clay to local schools. The owner’s daughter Dolores invited us in and showed us around their clay making operation, pottery studio and vineyard. We got to hang out with the farm’s pet geese, a small flock of Chinese geese with black beaks and large, black horn-like protuberance sticking up out their foreheads. These geese were not only tame but downright friendly. They helped the farmer out by eating the weeds in his garden. One of the geese was named Gaggle. Dolores held him in her arms like a small dog, petted him and stroked his long s-shaped throat. She invited us to pet him and we did. It was great fun. Elliott got to see that country folks could be surprisingly kind and interesting and that just because a town has a lot of McCain-Palin bumper stickers on the cars doesn’t make it a cold or hostile place.  

In the afternoon we went zip lining on the grounds of Moaning Caverns. The young men who helped us on and off the zip line were tall, lanky college age guys sporting long hair, unkempt beards and tattoos. They were nice, friendly guys with good senses of humor who cracked us up with their jokes. We asked what else we could do for fun before we went home and we were told about Natural Bridges, a place a few miles away where a creek had cut a grotto out of the limestone. We drove over and had a blast. Once you get in the creek you can swim into, through and out the back of a cave with a tall roof. The depth of the water in the middle of the cave is over six feet. The cave was covered in stalactites and stalagmites displayed in many shapes, sizes and colors. The stalactites were dripping water into the creek below. The water felt freezing and must have been in the 50s.

The people sitting around the creek or enjoying the swim through the grotto were a mix of families and bikers with big arms and lots of tattoos. There were some picnic tables near the grotto. One of them was occupied by a very loud, boisterous group of bikers. They were drinking beer from cans, smoking, joking and laughing uproariously. My son and I overhead one of them say, “There’s nothing in the whole world I like more than to have a beer, smoke and shoot something.” Elliott turned and looked at Bruce and I. He said, “I just can’t imagine anyone thinking that way.”

From Elliott’s perspective this guy had just landed from outer space and expressed a form of logic which did not compute here on Earth. The problem was that Elliott was surrounded by other people who felt the same way as the speaker. Not only that but all of them were human beings just like Elliott who were just as entitled as he was to enjoy the sunshine, the air, the creek, the Grotto and the picnic tables. This started a discussion about tolerance, and the need for us to see commonalities in people rather than stop at the obvious differences which seem to divide us.

Bruce and I are both love to take long bicycle trips, but never ride motorcycles. The people we ride bikes with under our own leg power wear Spandex with names like CSC and Credit Agricole. They like wine and cheese and love to ride bikes in groups in the countryside. They fantasize about riding in France or Italy. The bikers wear black leather with names like Iron Spartans and the Forgotten Ones. They like chips and beer. They like to ride everywhere including multi-lane highways where they can go faster than cars. We asked Elliott if bicyclists and bikers are really that different.

Don’t both of them love riding in the countryside with friends in the sunshine? Don’t both of them love a certain style of clothes bearing names that have a certain sound? Don’t both have their own lingo, their own heroes and their favorite snacks? Bicyclists love to fly down hills after a tough grind uphill. What if bicyclists got a chance to ride a motorcycle? Wouldn’t they likely enjoy the speed and the steering in turns? What if bikers got a chance to ride a fine road bike and experience the challenge and camaraderie that goes with a tough group ride ending in a communal feast? Wouldn’t they enjoy it? It became pretty easy to imagine that we could all exchange places and it might be fun to do so. Suddenly the other side didn’t seem so alien or so objectionable.

Before driving home to the Bay Area we ate in town at a local cantina because the boys wanted burritos. The friend tortilla chips and salsa were incredible. The food was tasty, filling and cheap. The young waitresses, all high school girls, were super friendly and gave us good suggestions for menu selections. Bruce and I began to philosophize about the difference between seeing a place as tourist and spending time in a place in an open-minded, open-hearted way that connects you with its people.

You don’t have to leave your country, your state or your region within a state to be a tourist. It’s very possible to see strangers in your own city, your own neighborhood and even your own block from the eyes of a tourist.  A tourist sees strangers as colorful alien beings with a different way of life whose customs and mannerisms range from the quaint/pleasant to the disturbing/grotesque. When you choose to see strangers as other people, then the surface differences that come from where people live and how they earn their money begin to dissolve and you are able to accept and appreciate them. At that moment their differences become interesting and intriguing and a source of celebration rather than a reason for dismissing them as weird. The critical factor is releasing judgment. When you can release judgment you will enhance your relationships and reduce your stress at the office and at home.