Frustrations and low-hanging fruits

It’s been a week of frustrations on many fronts, which means my reading has gone out of the window. And I’ve also done very little preparation for the board exam. It doesn’t help that the Health Professions Council are incompetent. What’s so difficult about accepting an internet payment rather than a direct deposit? Two other frustrations: the geyser burst at my house in Joburg and I found out that I need to take a work trip to the hot-as-hell and remote town of Upington. And then I also agreed to do a freelance piece for the Belgians.

But since my mantra is “one step at a time”, I am trying to follow it. Reminds me of some business advice I read once that we should pick the low-hanging fruits first. In other words, don’t try for the fancy stuff while there are simple tasks you can accomplish in the meantime. Simple, basic advice which I would do well to follow. So no considered blog posts from me for a while until I get some progress on the low-hanging fruits. If I could just find the orchard and the trees that is.

Very limited options on the job front and I haven’t sent off my applications to those limited options yet either. One of the frustrations is just getting people to act as a referee. The one academic that I want to be my referee is notoriously bad about responding to emails and I’m too scared to call her. I guess I could always send an SMS (text message) instead.

On the plus side, we saw Revolutionary Road yesterday and Kate W and Leo were very good. I liked the mental patient’s insights as well. The problems of 1950s couples seem quite dated nowadays (but also still relevant). But it’s interesting to see how women’s options have changed with the times. I thought the part about sanity and insanity was well done – and I see that the novel by Richard Yates got good reviews.

We also saw the promo for “Benjamin Button” and I wasn’t convinced but I could see that P would like to see this one anyway. “What did you think of Forest Gump?” I asked, remembering how much DoctorDi had hated it.
“I liked it,” she said. Hmmm. “Well then I guess you’ll like this one as well. I suppose there’s no harm in checking it out for ourselves.” I’m pretty sure I won’t like it – and the concept just seems daft to me (he gets younger rather than older) – but sometimes it’s good to have one’s misgivings confirmed. But maybe that’s a bit like seeing that you’re going to hit your head against a brick wall and going ahead with it anyway, just to confirm that it really is not pleasant to have a brick-induced headache.

Empathy at the movies

It’s Friday night and I’m off to a not-so-nearby couch for whatever P can rustle up on the VCR (yes, sadly her TV is not DVD-friendly). A quick search of my parents’ upstairs sitting room shows up some old cassettes – a few episodes of Rumpole, Tubby Custard Footprints and The Madness of King George. Being a conscientious empathy blogger, I feel the need to offer some related movie ideas. What would you suggest?

The first one that springs to mind is a film which my therapist told me go and see for homework. (Well it wasn’t exactly homework but she did recommend it.) As it is in Heaven is one of those movies that people rave about, and the reference to empathy is that the main character (a famous musician who returns to his childhood village) needs to empathise with himself and revisit his childhood (at least in his memories) in order to heal himself emotionally.

Movie No. 2 provides an excellent example of non-empathy in the figure of Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good as it Gets. It’s also a great film to watch if you like Helen Hunt, are interested in OCD (obessive-compulsive disorder) or just like cute dogs.

I’ll expand on this theme next Friday with some ideas about “chick-flicks” and other movies. I’m also trying to decide what I think around empathy and sex differences (women tend to have high empathy, men low empathy). For a start here is a quote from Helena Cronin from the Darwin Centre at the LSE:

Because, if you reproduce sexually, you must divide your reproductive efforts between competing for mates and caring for offspring.

Males specialise more in competing, females more in caring. So in humans, as in all other sexual species, males are shaped by all-out competing, females by committed caring – from brains to bodies to behaviour. So the question to ask about a species is never: are there evolved sex differences? The question is always: what exactly do the differences look like in this species?