Bob Brody on LinkedIn: My Poppa was the baseball fan I wanted my dad to be | GUEST COMMENTARY (2024)

If you feel guilty about anything -- and let's face it: you know you do -- you might check out my latest health article in The Washington Post. It's titled "Feeling good about feeling bad, or how guilt can make you better" and appears here abbreviated.I’ve long since rendered the verdict on myself: I’m guilty. Yes, guilty as charged, guilty in the first degree, guilty on all counts. All my life I’ve felt every inch the guilty party. I’ve even managed to feel guilty about feeling guilty.It’s amply documented that guilt, especially if excessive and left to persist unchecked, can produce problems ranging from the physical, such as headaches, indigestion and muscle tension, to the mental, chiefly stress, anxiety and depression.But research also increasingly shows that guilt is a complex, multifaceted emotion, long miscast as little more than nagging neurosis. Despite its reputation, guilt — once properly harnessed and leveraged — can be more positive than negative.Yes, guilt can be good for you, which is why at long last, I’ve come to feel good about, well, sometimes feeling bad.The American Psychological Association defines guilt as “a self-conscious emotion characterized by a painful appraisal of having done (or thought) something that is wrong and often by a readiness to take action designed to undo or mitigate this wrong.”In the best case, guilt signals that we’ve come up short of the standards of behavior that we set for ourselves, as well as those of our culture and society.Guilt is often experienced not only psychologically but also physically in the moment.We humans have no difficulty finding satisfactory rationales for our guilt. A 2022 study identified 1,515 reasons that adults gave for feeling guilty.I’ve personally never lacked for reasons to feel guilty. Growing up, I felt guilty because my mother had been stricken with spinal meningitis in infancy that left her profoundly deaf. It seemed unjust that I could hear. All through boyhood, guilt also gnawed at me for misbehaving in school, getting poor grades and being insufficiently athletic.Into my mid-30s, I faulted myself for my failures to work harder, earn or save enough money, establish my independence sooner and take my family responsibilities more seriously.But I now see guilt as inherently instructive, tangible proof that I’ve learned from my misdeeds.But this attitude is far from easy to achieve. But how do we best acknowledge, address and channel our guilt?Healthy guilt is realistic and justified, a self-correction that promotes personal development, whereas unhealthy guilt is distorted and festers, eating into our self-respect and stunting our growthFor starters, accept responsibility for your guilt rather than try to deny its existence. Give yourself credit for holding yourself accountable. Learn from your mistakes, make amends accordingly and, above all, forgive yourself.

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In case you feel guilty about anything -- and let's face it, you know you do -- you might give this a read, my latest piece for The Washington Post.https://lnkd.in/dVUgEUdu

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My friend Lisa Sepulveda at Edelman wrote an amazing essay about her mother and her two daughters that appeared yesterday in The Washington Post. Here's an abbreviated version:Just before I graduated from high school, my mom gathered my two younger brothers, my dad and me. “I have something I need to share,” she said. Then she told us she had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. She was 39 and I was only 17.For the next two years, I shifted my focus from partying with my friends to spending time with my mom. I cherished her every word and clung to every moment with her, though I still believed she would be with me forever.My 18 months later, time ran out before she could answer the questions I desperately wanted to ask her: What was I like as a toddler? Was I rambunctious or tranquil? Was I a good big sister? What was it like to be my mom?Nothing caused me to miss my mother more than when my husband, Andrew, and I welcomed our first daughter, Sara, in 1995. Right then I committed to capturing stories for and about Sara in a journal.I promised myself I would write in her journal for the next 21 years. I would cite her milestones, but I would also make sure I answered all the questions I wished I’d asked my mother and then some, preserving moments big and small. And, come her 21st birthday, I would give Sara the journals as a surprise.With the arrival of our second daughter, Megan, in 1997, I followed with the same commitment.I captured the funny and the sometimes sad, everything from birthday celebrations to the loss of treasured great-grandparents. For me, my journals for Sara and Megan bloomed into a passion project. It was an exercise both cathartic and joyful.With every journal entry, I felt my mom’s presence, as if she had never stopped guiding me. Then on my 47th birthday, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. Quickly I realized I would have to do for my daughters, then 15 and 16, what my mother had done for me, my dad and my brothers after her diagnosis. I had to channel her spirit and lift myself up. (I recovered, by the way, and today I’m great.)A few weeks later, I steeled my strength and wrote a journal entry that detailed how I felt. In that moment, I knew that these journals were more than just gifts for my daughters. They were a unique chance for us to savor our lives together.The day Sara turned 21, I wrote my final entry in her journal and burst into tears. I then gave her the four volumes I had compiled. Sixteen months later, I performed the same ritual, with another four volumes, for Meg.Sara and Megan read the journals again and again, sometimes by themselves, other times with all of us together. One day I hope my daughters, now 28 and 26, will read them to their own children.Last month I carried out an idea I had toyed with for years. I had “Be Happy” tattooed on my wrist. It’s my first tattoo and a forever reminder to savor every moment.

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Why is professional satisfaction or success usually so short-lived? And why does disappointment with failure, by contrast, invariably last so long? Rachel Feintzeig of The Wall Street Journal here explains what I've always thought but could never articulate. She also offers some welcome advice about what to do about it.

The 12-year-old girl who became my mother took weekly piano lessons. This happened along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx in the 1930s. She practiced at the keyboard until she could finally play a Strauss waltz straight through without a mistake. My mother also took tap dance lessons in a studio near her home. She would glide across a gleaming hardwood floor, clacking her heels away to some catchy melody. The first time I heard about this cultural education, it struck me as strange, largely because of a single inescapable fact. Aileen Roslyn Sheft was by then profoundly deaf. She was stricken with spinal meningitis, in an epidemic outbreak in 1929, shortly after she turned one year old. Why such theatrical lessons, I once asked my nana, her mother, the former Gertrude Goldberg. Why would my mother train to play piano and tap-dance despite being unable to hear music? It seemed farfetched, a bad joke, a charade close to cruel. Besides, how must my mother have felt, I wondered to myself. Why, mother? I imagined her asking herself. Why do you make me do this? “Aileen had no real interest in taking the lessons,” my nana explained to me. “But I wanted to give her the feeling that she was as good as all the hearing girls in the class.” “She once danced in a show and kept perfect step,” nana said. “She could feel the music vibrate through the floor underneath her feet. Afterwards, the teacher went on the stage and announced to the audience, ‘The little girl you just saw dance is deaf. She heard none of the music being played.’ “It made your mother feel very important to take those bows.” As my nana recounted this episode, she broke into tears. How must my grandmother have delighted in watching my mother play piano and dance, then, thrilled in the illusion thereby conjured of a daughter equipped with ears that functioned perfectly. My beautiful little daughter is as good as any of the other girls on the Grand Concourse, my nana must have told herself in those transcendent moments. No one even realizes she’s deaf. So it went with my nana. She saw to it that her first-born child, though disabled, was afforded every opportunity to grow up on a level playing field. My grandparents enrolled my mother, at age three, in New York City’s finest private institution for deaf people. Back then, in the depths of the Great Depression, being deaf still ranked as a stigma. Deaf people were almost automatically assumed to be stupid – hence the term “deaf and dumb.” My nana initiated a campaign to combat this potential alienation and prevent Aileen from growing up feeling inferior. She committed to doing everything in her power that she imagined would enable her daughter to feel normal. And so it was that years later, my mother played that Strauss waltz for me without missing a note. And I did what she could no longer do with any sound, much less music. I listened. --From tomorrow's Chicago Tribune

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“Are you taking care of your health?” my grandmother once asked me. The question came soon after I turned 40. “Yes,” I said. She looked skeptical. “I’ll even show you.” I got down on my hands and knees – my nana must immediately have wondered why – and cranked out 25 push-ups. Unfortunately, my attempt to demonstrate robust health dismayed rather than delighted my grandmother, then herself 85. “You’re 40 now, Robert,” she reminded me. Then came a reprimand. “You’re too old to be doing push-ups.” So it often went back then, more than 30 years ago, and well before. Once you reached a certain “advanced” age, whether 40, 60 or 80, you were no longer supposed to do A, B or C. But this self-stereotyping still goes on today, if less so. We all too often allow our chronological age to define – and sometimes even dictate – how we feel about our age, how old we should act and how much we can achieve. Research shows that how we perceive our age can help or hurt how we go about living our lives, and even affect our likely longevity. One study found that those with a positive view of getting older, compared to those with a negative view, lived an average of 7.6 years longer. It can lower your blood pressure and your risks of developing dementia; raise the likelihood that you’ll exercise regularly and enable you to recover more fullyfrom severe disability; and boost your sense of emotional well-being. Certainly my nana meant well with her advice to me back in 1992. But no sooner had I heard it than I disregarded it. In my 40s, I pursued a new profession that I practice to this day. In my 50s, I kicked off a sideline career that’s still going strong. In my late 60s, I started my own business. I also played pickup playground basketball until almost age 70. The upshot is that your age is just a number, Chronological age tells us only how long we’ve lived so far. But no one-size-fits-all formula can accuratelyassess our capabilities at any given age. Contrary to popular belief, though, your cup can runneth over at any age. For proof, just look at all the late bloomers who are learning chess at 50, playing soccer with grandchildren at 60 and starting to believe in God at 70.Experts in aging recommend we cultivate optimism about getting older. Recognize that age is largely a state of mind, and that mindset matters. Focus on how much you’re gaining with age – prowess at executive function and possibly even a hint of wisdom – rather than what you’re losing. I know this much at age 72: I’ll keep moving forward. I’m going all-out to take care of unfinished business. My age promotes a growing sense of urgency. I feel compelled to try to make up for some of the time I’ve lost or wasted. I’m now more greedy than ever for more – more peace, more love, more rewards both tangible and intangible. I have no intention of conceding even an inch to age – that is, unless I either want to or have to. It’s still too soon.

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I never contradicted my nana. Until now. Learn why in my piece below. It's about how our attitudes toward getting older affect how we live and work.

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