Judith Peck Books

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

The red car was positioned at an angle behind the bird, its rear jutting out into the road, as if stopped in unintended haste. Situated behind the bird, his car could not have been the one that struck it. The driver must have seen it lying in the road, as I did driving a car behind him, then pulled over to the side.

I slowed down and when I saw the man step out of his car and approach the stricken bird, I was compelled to pull off the road and watch. The bird, a small one, perhaps a sparrow, lay in the road flapping its wings spasmodically, unable to move. Cars approaching behind me drove around the bird slowly, rubbernecking, as they might in any accident occurring in their path.

The man stood over the bird for a second or two assessing its injury then bending, gently scooped up the bird, cradling it in his handkerchief. He took a few steps and set it safely in the grass, distant from the road bed. There, it had a chance to recover, or not; ravaged by a cat, a predatory bird, or not. But its perils would not include another speeding car.

The man’s act of kindness moved me profoundly. The purity of his feelings transferred to spontaneous action. To feel the bird’s helplessness—a bird, some might say—and involve oneself in its peril. Motion, mind and body brought together to help, whether or not survival was even possible. Reward for the man in the red car was only to do the deed. Not what others passing by would surely do, myself included: bemoan the happening, feel sadness for the bird, vaguely hope the bird would survive or someone or something would come along to put it out of its misery. But for this man in the red car, passing by was harder than stopping.

Kindness. The sense that the outer world in all its human, animal or natural forms belongs to you—attached to you by invisible threads, consciously or instinctively. And conversely, that you are not alone within it; that it is yours and you are theirs.  And so there is external reward to the man in the red car after all. For he is attached by his act of kindness to all of nature, and to me by my seeing the act. And though I did not stop to help the bird but merely watched, I felt peaceful that the bird was moved to safety. I am attached to his act of kindness, feeling cared for and not alone.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, is an eye-opener on many levels. Reading it is probably a better prescription for bodily and mental health than a trip to the doctor, going on a diet, or running around the block. Walker, a PhD, is Director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, and he starts out with this bit of perspective: “No matter what vantage point you take, sleep would appear to be the most foolish of biological phenomena. When you are asleep, you cannot gather food. You cannot socialize. You cannot find a mate and reproduce.  You cannot nurture or protect your offspring. Worse still, sleep leaves you vulnerable to predation. Sleep is surely one of the most puzzling of all human behaviors.”

Yet, Walker notes that sleep prevails across the entire animal kingdom and its “perseverance through evolution means there must be  tremendous benefits that far outweigh all of the obvious hazards and detriments.” Indeed, those listed benefits fairly blew me away, which is why I am sharing this and bought his book as Christmas fare for my family. He says and proves: There is not one major organ within the body or process within the brain that isn’t enhanced by sleep or impaired when we don’t get enough.

“Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions including our ability to learn, memorize, make logical decisions and choices… allowing us to navigate next-day social and psychological challenges with cool-headed composure.”  As if this wasn’t imperative enough, I was surprised to discover these alarming physical effects of sleep deprivation: “Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer… determining whether you will develop Alzheimer’s disease… increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure … and contributes to depression, anxiety and suicidality.” And then there is this little whopper: you eat more when you’re tired from too little sleep.

I predict you’ will lose sleep in panic after reading about the vital things that sleep accomplishes in the third of your life that you lie there doing it (or trying to). Because of the peril of this, I will share my behaviors in the hope this might help calm such panic. I read, which of course, most of us do until the eyes get sleepy. For me, that can be in the middle of a paragraph, sentence or word. (It’s best not to try to get to the end of the chapter; writers work hard to make that the last place you close the book.) So when your eyes begin shutting like a Venetian blind and you no longer make sense of the sentence in front of you, turn out that light and curl up under the covers. An hour later, if you are still awake, read a bit more and about 45 minutes later that will do it. You doubtless have your own tips for your bedtime/reading routines which  I’d like to know about. (Because mine don’t always work.)

Walker’s information about dreaming struck me as notable:” Dreaming provides “a consoling neurochemical bath that mollifies painful memories and a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.” We are all creative in one way or another, but I wonder if my busy visual life all the day long doesn’t account for my wild dreams just about every night. After a steady week of nightly dreams and remembering each one on awakening, I slipped into bed mumbling, “Okay, what are we gonna do tonight?

I hope the intensity of this commentary on Walker’s book doesn’t put you to sleep. But wait …. maybe it will. If so, wishing you pleasant dreams.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

Enjoying morning coffee on the patio, feet on a stool and looking out beyond the trees to the street beyond, I spied a runner jogging past. I’d seen this lithe, athletic female before and memory jogged along that she did 3 turns around this block. Was this the 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd? In some opaque, unreasonable quest for information I needed to know.

For an answer, I sat and waited. A turn around this block at jogging pace would take about ten minutes. It didn’t take me long to recognize this allocation of time as useless,  tantamount nutritionally to the empty calories of a 12 ounce soda. Yet I had to wait, my brain apparently like a frenzied computer wired for resolution. The woman did appear again and I was satisfied enough not to care if this was #2 or 3.

So, how often did I swig such empty brain calories?  Let me count the ways, I mused, not so much a song of Solomon as lament. As I gazed at the gentle breeze of treetops against the cloudless sky and watched the squirrels in their high-wire leap across tree limbs to balance on the slenderest of twigs and wondered how and when a bird would decide to stay or fly off, I contemplated if these too were empty brain calories. It took only an instant to know they were not.  For these were senses, not soda pop, my brain was taking in, a healing cocktail of sight and sound and even the sense of touch, each observation flowing through my system in some studied brain-way to persuade knowledge, emotional satisfaction, or action to occur. Sometimes, even wisdom.

What constituted empty brain calories? These were not hard to recognize even as I consumed them. A TV show that offered itself but gave nothing back, that scrubbed at my brain and rinsed it then left it limp. Not the same as the gift good acting offered, an intriguing plot, polished direction—enumerable messages my brain could engage with, nutritious on many levels.

What else comes under the banner of emptiness? Conversations consisting of an interplay of words and messaging, never ascending to a level compelling human interaction. When a thought articulated inspires only repetitious recollections from the other or reminders of personal complaints or are met with unrelated responses gleaned from semi-listening if at all. You sort of know when you are in a genuine conversation and not a 12 oz diet coke.

There is another extreme: the danger of mistaking for emptying the brain work of fumbling: false starts in writing, failing relationships, bumbling errands, wrong turns in driving, upset plans. This frailty is “life in all its manifestations,” a pithy phrase of Alfred North Whitehead, which translates to experienced life. The flip side, of course. is that change, growth and opportunity appear at every turn.

Finally, empty brain calories should not pejoratively be reckoned with as wasted time. Some waste is necessary in daily living: the physical effluent expelled from the body; the years with a spouse before divorce; the time devoted to tests and challenges that failed. Each of these efforts enabled others to function.

You know the difference between empty and full, sometimes by the gulp of guilt that washes down like a 12 oz soda. Just as you know that belly-full of happiness after a satisfying, brain-full gourmet meal.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

Classic music spreads tranquility but much more. Because of its complexity, classical music is the choice to play around newborns as they kick and tumble under their mobiles and young children toddle about. Listening stimulates neurons in the brain to make synaptic connections. So while the body and mood relaxes, the brain is active.

Not to be underestimated in value, Mom and Dad are soothed with music, frazzled nerves smoothed after sleep-deprived nights and the wails of their dudes and damsels in distress. Mozart to the rescue. But for a trifecta of accomplishment under stress, try making music yourself, by singing. You will be amazed how much the kids will love it. And so will you.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

Does anyone remember the joy of folding diapers?  I’m serious? Warm and clean from the dryer, all that was expected of you was to lift a handful, set this down and one at a time make the neat, even folds until the diapers are all piled up, then place the neat pile in a drawer. So easy yet productive a task. Has anything since compared with the combined relaxation and usefulness of the enterprise?

Oh, never mind the preliminaries; the poop is a mere splash in the pan, a toss in the washer then off to of the dryer and your receptive hands. The warm comfort of the process as you fold the clean cloth melds with the singular thought since giving birth that never totally left you for a moment: the chubby, gurgling recipient who wears this wardrobe, limbs dancing in air as you pin around the dancing limbs with safety pins.

Those were halcyon days indeed! How we ever gave the soft fluffy things over to plastic, I will never know.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

We don’t go to bed angry, that was a rule with the kids. It was to temper eruptions between a child and me or a feud between siblings. Rules work well, a kind of structural exterior to steady the quivering emotions inside. We don’t go to bed angry, we wait until morning; that’s the other half of it. I wonder why we never employed this with the grownups of the house. Well, because the rule would be difficult. Experienced sparring partners have learned where the soft spots are, how to get in there for a jab, maybe enjoy the conflict, the energy of it. Still, the rule is not a bad idea to try.

Here’s how the rule went down once with my 12-year old daughter and me although I can’t remember the argument: possibly her unacceptable behavior and my refusal to acknowledge her advanced maturity, evident in that it was she who invoked the rule to me. I sat on the edge of the bed where she lay squashed by a menagerie of stuffed beasts. I had no choice but to agree to hold off our argument until morning (reluctantly, feeling I was the more aggrieved party). Our dispute ended for the night and we gave a little hug goodnight. In truth, one of us probably hugged more than the other, but lumpy or limp the hug reinforced the rule.

A curious thing about hugs. The contact of bodies, the embrace of arms, touch of a cool cheek accomplishes something just by the doing. Physical touch quiets the inner tension and tends to mitigate the conflicts, those out in the open and the deeper ones festering within. A touch can make a woman feel beautiful, a man feel virile and both feel loved. The rule not going to bed angry—angry as you are—can be the adult in the room taking charge.

The transition of bedtime between the dramatic enactments of the day and the curtain closing on night, for all its seeming insignificance with so little happening, is time well spent if spent well. Reading books in all those forever years from childhood through dotage is time well spent. Agreeing not to go to bed angry is a purpose profitably committed to. The rule applies not only to the miss-speak or miss-deeds of others, but to anger addressed to yourself. For anger at yourself is the least forgiving.

The new day brings its own expected and unexpected doings, its angst, twists and turns, action and reactions to be met head on. The night’s sleep brings the rest in which dreams can work in peace to expel in their own wildly creative ways the trash that clutters the mind, clearing it enough to welcome the next day’s surprises. With a physical hug or simply a touch, the rule puts off until morning all that effortful anger, allowing dreams to roll in and do their work to exhume the stuff not needed and soften the biting hurts. To clear the way for embracing the day.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

Underlying myriad cultural shifts in gender relationships, I sense there still exists a Me Tarzan/Me Jane mentality. At least for Tarzan.  Having been catchers and slayers of wild beasts, let alone principal bread winners for decades, a feeling of accomplishment for bringing home the bacon is in men’s DNA. Women for similar decades relied on accomplishment in cooking baking, parenting and cleaning up after everyone in whatever cave they called home. They ventured out for pay primarily as secretaries and teachers and cleaner-upper of others. The money was never substantial enough to be a criterion of success. Instead, women sensed a measure of power. They were appreciated by men for these motley tasks; smiled at, made love to with various rationalizations as to its meaning, fed in the cave and later at Chez Pierre.

But money in the rest of the workplace, which men occupied, did become the principal criterion of success. That the element of money occupies this superior hierarchical position of status today cannot be denied by any Tarzan or Jane. Now, whether bored into women by DNA or by cultural change, there is a hole in our psyche, a hollow place. The place needs to be filled with an occasional (sincere) dollop of praise: good job, Kiddo, for a deed done wherever.

The fact that we relied for all these decades on our looks and still do, is well documented (well maybe not standing over the fire in our deerskin whatsis with shaggy hair in our face); but the self-consciousness imposed upon us by the criterion of having to maintain good looks contributes to the vacuum.  Men are hooked into this criterion and naturally use it, in too varied ways to account for here without veering too far off topic, just to say that good looks—the  offering and the  taking often appear as a game in play with changing rules.

So what is the difference in modern times why men might find it difficult to offer praise for accomplishment to their feminine partners? Yes, the playing field offering venues for accomplishment have changed: the kitchen holds more prepared food brought in super markets  to all but put on the table, diners offer portions and prices hard to meet and women stay too late at work to plan and host dinner parties where their artistry can be admired. Men can no longer announce “Honey I’m home,” and sweep eager kiddies in their arms when honey is not yet home and kiddies are at play dates.

What has quietly, stealthily intervened between partners, often without either being aware, is competition. This, sadly, is the reason some of us, men as well as women, become stingy with praise. If you feel you don’t have a lot to spare you are conservative with spending and keep close to the vest what little there is. When you are wealthy, you might just feel the same, if you view the dispensing as charity and not a required expense.

I remember in the old days, my parents said, We didn’t know we were poor. I think it helped those old folks get through those tough years together. Men and women work as hard and harder today, albeit in multifarious ways and with different rewards. We are also rich in spirit and smart enough to recognize how needed is the support of a close partner. Good job, kiddo. How sweetly it rolls off the tongue.

Judith Peck, Ed.D.

A feeling of happiness begins not from a state of mind but an impression of the senses. From sight, sound, taste, smell or touch first, and only later, the mind’s awareness. Nature affords this nutrition for the senses, which is just as necessary for a state of well being as the nutrients of food and drink for the body. I first understood this when I was in a position to feel all five of these remarkable ingredients and in those moments became aware of the sensation, I am happy.

Sitting in a comfortable chair in an exquisite room decorated by the wife, an artist, sipping a glass of excellent red wine, home-made by the husband, while music by Prokovioff surged from the piano, I was effused with a sensation of complete happiness. I realized suddenly that this state of being, so complete in its lack of tension or negativity came as a result of the fulfillment of all five senses at once.

Why should it come as a surprise that nature requires us to feed the senses just as we understand we must feed the body?  That this plentiful bounty is provided in nature, just as it is provided in nature’s resources of food and water should equally come as no surprise.

Sitting outside, if there are no unsightly distractions, abrasive sounds, offensive smells,  too cold or too hot or too rough sensations to the body, you can feast on nature. There is so much to take in: the shapes of tree branches, the infinite varieties of the color green, the changing color and temperament of the sky, the sight of a squirrel performing hi-wire tricks without a net, the sound of the wind through the trees, the caress of the breeze, the smell of flowers.

Of course, just as in every other excess in which we humans involve ourselves, we can over-do each of these sensations. Engage in too much sight-indulgence watching TV or addiction to digital devices; listen too steadily and abrasively to music excessively loud and noise-related; eat too much and drink too much; caress too much, sniff too much, all of which take us further away from the world we inhabit that holds more riches to ever be able to consume. The arts—each of them: dance, drama, visual art, music—depend on their audience’s sensual consumption.

Being aware of the nutrients needed for healthy happiness is a start. Finding the plentitude all around is easy, just look, listen, taste, pick up the scent, feel the touch and you’ve got it.