Webs of Belief

I was reading the March 13 New Yorker Magazine Tuesday evening. I was working from home during the snowstorm on Tuesday, and I treated myself to curling up with the actual magazine with a nice glass of red wine.

I’m one of those people who start at the very beginning. I read the cover. I read the Table of Contents. I note the contributors.  Then I read The Mail.

One piece of mail struck me as interesting. It was commentary on an article written by Elizabeth Kolbert, a psychologist, who had discussed three psychology books on the limits of human reasoning – in this instance, she was referring to the human ability to deny the efficacy of proven if those facts don’t support a person’s worldview.

Worlds Collide

The commentary was made by a philosophy professor, who was annoyed that these ideas were being claimed as psychological ideas, because, in her view, philosophy had been exploring these same ideas for decades prior.

The commentary, made by Sharon Schwarze, elegantly explained Willard Van Orman Quine’s idea, the “web of belief.” As in a spider’s web, the strands holding the beliefs together are more concentrated at the center, and therefore, more “entrenched.” Those ideas at the center move together – they are more entwined, and therefore, reliant upon one another’s integrity. If a fact comes along to disprove one or many of these central ideas, people will discard the fact because it doesn’t support the narrative of the central belief.

Do We Own Ideas?

It seemed she was trying to reclaim these ideas away from psychology and put them squarely in the philosophical camp – and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they can’t be in both camps.  Philosophers explore observed events that lead to philosophical conclusions; psychologists tests these conclusions to verify their voracity.

But a psychologist can come up with the idea, too.  Just as a storyteller might, or as a scientist, or a poet, or an artist, or a musician might.

Humans Have Ideas. Sometimes The Same Ideas.

These are human ideas. We are all living a human experience; we are bound to notice the same ideas. We explore these ideas in our own way. When we do, we have multiple expressions of a single idea, and therefore a fuller, richer understanding of these ideas.

We do not own ideas. We borrow them, we play with them, and show the world what we’ve done with them.

Many Approaches to The Central Idea of Healing

The different aspects of healthcare, I believe, are the same thing.  The premise of all branches of healthcare want the same thing: the health and wellbeing of the public. When different doctors or professions try to deny the efficacy of the other professions and claim ownership of this central idea, it is a form of this dissonance of which Schwarze spoke, and Quine espoused.

I hope that Schwarze one day sees the irony of falling squarely in the middle of Quine’s web.

I hope docs who think they corner the market on healing step out of their center into a larger world.

Patient Fabulous was freshly back from her trip to South America. She is an independent health consultant in Brooklyn, and has been for some six or seven years.

The last six or seven years have not been easy on Fabulous. Despite her passion and expertise, she has struggled with financial solubility for most of her professional career. She finds it difficult to sell health here in New York, and even more difficult to charge an amount that would help her pay herself after expenses.

The stress has taken its toll on Fabulous. Her anxiety level is sky high. She has little day-to-day enjoyment anymore because her neighborhood is gentrifying. All the artistic haunts and mom and pop stores have disappeared.  Her friends have departed for other cities one by one, and she finds herself lonely and frightened.

Fabulous came to me because of the pain in her neck (see Dr. Claire).

For six months, Fabulous was having trouble turning her neck. The pain woke her at night and made her days increasingly unbearable.  She felt like her head was too heavy for her neck; just lifting herself off of her pillow in the morning was a chore.

Sometimes We Need Help

She tried every way she knew to take care of herself. She did all the stretches she knew of, strengthening exercises, meditation, yoga, supplements, eating right, but none of her expertise was helping her get rid of this pain in her neck.

The went to acupuncture, had massage, physical therapy, and finally she decided to try chiropractic. Fabulous is early in treatment, but she is already starting to respond.

The pain in her neck is subsiding, and its function is returning.  Which are all good side-effects of chiropractic.

But they are not chiropractic.

Chiropractic is something else — something else entirely.

And Fabulous is learning what chiropractic is.

With every adjustment, Fabulous is getting more and more clear.

The real jewel of chiropractic is removing interference between the mind and the body. By clearing interference to the nervous system, chiropractic helps turn your life force potential on. It helps you get clear. It brings light to your life and clarity to your world.

So your body heals, but so does your mind.

Fabulous is getting clear.

Fabulous set a health retreat in South America, and had just enough participants from New York to cover her expenses. While conducting the retreat, she met people from Canada, Europe, Brazil, Ecuador, Columbia, and many other places, who responded to her message, became excited by her work, and got on her mailing list.

Fabulous was in my office, fresh from South America, bubbling over with excitement. The people she met from around the world have invited her to come to their countries and teach their clients her wisdom.

But that would mean shutting down her practice here.

Now Fabulous has a choice to make. She is grappling with the question: is it wrong to quit what she is doing in order to chase brand new opportunities?

One part of her, a major part, feels that if she quits doing what she’s doing, she will be a failure in her own eyes to herself, and in the eyes of her peers.

The other is excited that her work is valued by a whole other set of people who she never even considered were a possible audience for her work, a set of people whom  she never would have met had she not first taken a chance to host a program in South America — a move that was already outside of her own comfort zone.

She asked me my opinion, the answer to which is the point of this blog post:

Sometimes Quitting Is An Option

Quitting, and all that it connotes, is not necessarily unhealthy. Sometimes you have to look at your situation, the struggle you are putting into it, and be honest about the outcomes, or lack thereof.

Sometimes a good idea is ill-timed or ill-placed. Sometimes what seems like a good idea just isn’t. Some commitments should never have been made.

The sooner you can recognize you’ve made a mistake, the sooner you and your loved ones can recover from that mistake.

I’m not talking about flightiness, or starting one thing, finding it takes work, and then chasing another thing because its bright and shiny. In these cases, the way to success is to push through the boring and frustrating day-to-day details that make a worthwhile endeavor work, whether that endeavor is a business, a relationship, or a health program.

I’m talking about putting your heart and soul into something and running into brick walls all the time, not seeing that there is a door and an open window right behind you.

When one is on the right track, things seem to materialize to help that person stay on that path; similarly, when one is following an incorrect course of action, no amount of effort will help it materialize. It seems like the universe closes doors in every direction of effort.

What is Clarity?

Clarity means being able to step back and know the difference between an effort that simply requires tenaciousness and an effort that will end in futility no matter what you do.

There is no shame in quitting these latter scenarios. Indeed, it is a measure of strength to be able to realize when it is time to pivot and take a new direction.

It is a measure of spiritual health, which ultimately feeds your emotional and physical health.

That is how chiropractic helps. It connects one’s body and mind with the spiritual through the health of the nervous system.

It is why Fabulous knows now that she has a choice, which is why her neck is feeling better and stronger. Her neck health reflects the scope of vision she now has, and her ability to choose her path. She has the ability to choose now.

So do you.

It was the most awkward moment in the history of the Oscar Ceremonies. Two minutes of elaborate thank yous in, the cast of La La Land was semi-ceremoniously pushed aside for the actual Best Picture award winners, the cast of Moonlight.

The crazy thing is, I almost never watch these things. I usually find out the result of these awards the next day or two. I can’t believe I was present to witness this bit of pop culture history unfold before me in real time.

You can watch the whole painful episode here.

“They’re Joking, Right?”

It was deadly painful to watch.  It seemed like a scene, ironically, from a movie. I, like you (I assume), was empathetically embarrassed for everybody involved.

And why didn’t someone run out immediately to correct the mistake? How could the cast and producers of La La Land be allowed to continue their acceptance speech for THAT long – over two minutes — before the mistake was corrected?

So, today, I did a cursory Google search to see if anyone knows how Warren Beaty ended up with the wrong envelope; the best answer is that it was an honest mistake.

Behold. The Power of Honest Mistakes.

It is not so easy to own up to honest mistakes once they are discovered. But, as last evening demonstrated so powerfully, it is crucial we do so as soon as possible – for everybody involved!

How many times have you realized you were going in the wrong direction, only to continue that wrong direction because the inner turmoil of owning the mistake seemed too devastating to bear?  What mistakes have you made, big or small, to which you have had difficulty owning?

We all have them. Some are minor, like regifting a gift back to the original giver (this is true, and the original giver was me!); others are huge marrying the wrong person, or staying in a job that is sucking the life force out of you like a giant vacuum.

So when is the time? Now.

The best time to correct a mistake is the moment it happens. The second-best time is right now.

Thankfully, the 2017 Oscar kerfuffle was, ultimately, a minor mistake that has the ultimately positive side-affect in that it will go down in the history of American pop culture.  No one is hurt, and everyone who witnessed the event has a great story to tell.

May all our mistakes be so fortunate.