Sojka's Call

BS’ing Myself Did you ever have an Ah-Ha moment when you realized how you were bullshitting yourself? And, you could see how your mouth had just opened up and swallowed the biggest bunch of crap ever. And, you had fed it to yourself! Well, for about 60 years I never tasted my own bullshit and then one day something happened. It seemED impossible to me that I could lie to myself like a great politician and do it so well that I didn’t know it. How is it possible to be the deceiver and the deceived at the same time? It cannot be — can it? My aha was laying on a table being checked out by a PT (physical therapist) for left hip weakness. He was giving me advice on different exercises and movements I should do to fix the problem. And, I am thinking, I used to do that. I Used to do that too. I USed to do that one. I USEd to do those. I USED to do all that!!!! After leaving the PT and having time to think about the state I was in and realizing my body deterioration was almost ...

So, those long discussions about the meaning of life, the politics of defense spending, and Austrian economic theory might actually be making you happier. Hard to believe? Dr. Matthias Mehl, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona has been studying who is happier - the small-talk stater of the obvious, or, the deep-thinker who is engaged in meaningful discussions with their friends and colleagues. The implications are not so obvious at first glance. Could the reports of life dissatisfaction, for instance, after losing a job, be more about the loss of conversing about subjects that the participants have a deep and personal connection to? Maybe. The researchers recorded 79 people and thousands of their conversations over a four-day period. Participants were equipped with a digital recording device called Electronically Activated Recorder, or EAR, that sampled 30-second snippets every 12.5 minutes. The EAR captured not only conversations but also other ambient sounds as par...