Welcome to a Peaceful New Year!

Well, that may be too much to expect. No matter how much peace and goodwill we create in our lives and among our family, friends, and associates, external forces (such as corporations and politicians) do their best to disrupt us. Because those forces keep us desperate, we will buy whatever the corporations want to sell and go along with whatever the politicians want to foist on us. The classic example is the family with two breadwinners and three jobs that does not have enough time to eat healthy or to work for social and economic change. Corporations, and governments that support those corporations with tax dollars, are happy to supply the unhealthy food.

But the more peace we can have in our own lives, (1) the happier and healthier we will be despite our circumstances, and (2) the more independent we will be of the dominant forces of society as well. To find inner peace, we do not have to subscribe to a specific spiritual doctrine or purchase a special kind of health food. All we have to do, as much as possible, is to find a regular balance in all the things we do in life, all of them in moderation. If we can, that is.

By balance I refer mainly to keeping a regular schedule with your biological clock. More or less regular times for getting up and going to sleep, for eating, and seeking mindful relaxation. One of the worst things we can do—I say from the experience of having done them and then quit—is to let other people control our minds and create tension, mostly from television. Unsubscribe, folks, and save yourselves a lot of money. I quit cable in 2002 and since that time I have saved $10,000. Not sure where that money went, but it didn’t go to cable. Learn to cherish silence. Worked for me. Instead, I read and write. Usually in silence.

We become most aware of the disruption of our biological clocks when we experience jet lag. Everything seems to go out of balance, not just our cycles of sleep and wakefulness. But it is not just jet lag but poor daily time management that can disrupt our biological clocks.

Medical assistance may be necessary. If you have sleep apnea, as I did, surgery or a ventilation device may be helpful. Get rid of apnea and you will get your life back. At least I did. I also have sleep onset myoclonus, which is a kind of torture that even Dick Cheney never thought of: at the moment of sleep onset, my muscles contract just enough to wake me up. Maybe just a little muscle, maybe a lot of big ones. Over and over and over and over. Medication brought this under control. There is heavy-duty medication, but hemp oil may work just as well. I used to take regular naps; now, maybe three times a year.

An article was published in the November 25 issue of Science in 2016 (volume 354, pages 1008-1015): “Circadian physiology of metabolism,” by Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute in La Jolla. This link takes you to the summary; full articles are available only to AAAS members. In this article, the author summarized the many different disorders that can result from disruption of the biological clock:

• Obesity
• Insulin resistance
• Disruption of gut microbes
• Cardiovascular problems
• Chronic inflammation
• Liver disease
• Increased cancer risk
• High cholesterol
• Sleep disorders
• Compromised muscle function

What a list! All of these physiological effects are interrelated, and related to the biological clock. Disrupted sleep can make you fat, give you diabetes, make your intestines sick, and increase the risk of other problems. I was astonished to see this list. I have some of these problems in small measure; what a walking sicko I would be if I did not seek to live in harmony with my biological clock.

I have found that, by mindfully seeking inner peace and following a regular schedule, I am seldom tired. For this, I must also thank certain medications. But we must enable such medications to work by seeking regularity and balance. Even when I have no work to do, I find myself reading and writing—I am on vacation right now—because they are not, for me, stressful. I rest the way the heart muscle rests: between each beat.

Was Ben Franklin right? Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Seems too simple. But if Franklin read that Science article, he would have claimed vindication.

I posted the above on my science blog. For this blog, I would like to add that, in this particular sense, modern science is in line with traditional religious practice. One example is from the beginning of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3:

1 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

If you do not remember this from the Bible, you may (depending on how old you are) remember the song by The Byrds.

And Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount to not worry about things. Of course, you have to plan ahead about things in order to not worry about them. I have lists and lists and lists, and as a result I do not have to worry about whether something is escaping my attention. Here is the French translation of some of what he said (Behold the lilies of the field…).

Observer les lis sauvages! Ils poussent sans se fatiguer à tisser des vêtements. Pourtant, je vous l’assure, le roi Salomon lui-même, dans toute sa gloire, n’a jamais été aussi bien vêtu que l’un d’eux! Si Dieu habille avec tant d’élégance la petite plant des champs qui est là aujourd’hui et qui demain sera jetée au feu, à plus forte raison ne vous vêtira-t-il pas vous-mêmes?

Isn’t that beautiful? A more or less literal translation is:

Observe the wild lilies! They grow without fatiguing themselves to weave clothes. But I assure you King Solomon himself, in all his glory, was never as well clothed as one of them! If God clothes with such elegance the little plant of the fields which is there today and which tomorrow will be thrown into the fire, how much more reason will he not clothe you yourselves?

We are accustomed to finding conflict between science and religion. But when we do find agreement, it is a time for celebration.