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28

Apr

In a World of Worry?

by Joyce McGreevy on April 28, 2020

A wall with a small opening reminds the author that cross-cultural tips for care can help you stay calm, even when the world is in crisis. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

When we feel walled off and overwhelmed, we can still find an opening for calm.
© Joyce McGreevy

10 Cross-Cultural Tips for Staying Calm

As sheltering in place continues and some news proves more stress-inducing than helpful, staying calm is not always easy. Happily, there’s a world of ways to maintain equilibrium. Oh, I see: Wherever you live, cross-cultural tips like these can help restore your inner balance.

1. Begin Where East Meets West—Meditation

Meditation’s stress-reduction benefits are backed up by science. While silent meditation works wonders for some,  others may prefer guided meditation. The app Ten Percent Happier is geared to skeptics, first timers, and the downright fidgety.

TIP:  To help people cope with lockdown, co-founder Dan Harris launched Ten Percent Happier Live, a free daily “sanity break,” available through the app or on YouTube. Join Harris and meditation teachers across cultures as they stream from their homes to homes around the world.

Dan Harris, meditating in Times Square, offers cross-cultural tips for staying calm through the app Ten Percent Happier. (Image © Samuel Johns/ 10% Happier)

Pre-2020, TenPercent.com founder Dan Harris finds calm in NYC’s Times Square.
© Samuel Johns/10% Happier

2. Travel from Nepal to . . . Dreamland

Is anxiety triggering insomnia? On the app Calm, cross-cultural “sleep stories” transport you to Chitwan National Park in Nepal, lavender fields in Provence and so on, while helping you wind down.

TIP: Calm‘s blog currently offers a wealth of premium content free—no jet lag, no travel restrictions.

3. Emulate the Japanese—Celebrate Imperfection

As Meredith Mullins explains elsewhere on OIC Moments, wabi sabi is a Japanese aesthetic . . that treasures how we are rather than how we should be.”

TIP: Dare to see the beauty in something imperfect—like your children’s messy bedroom, which also means your kids are healthy and active.

A dog looking amused by an owner’s silly Christmas slippers reminds the author that a sense of humor is a cross-cultural tool for staying calm during a crisis. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Spring wardrobe a bit outdated? Relax, the fashion police aren’t stopping by.
© Joyce McGreevy

4. Do Indian-Inspired Yoga

It began in the Indus-Sarasvati region of India 5,000 years ago—today, it’s popular across most cultures. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S. alone, 1 in 7 adults and 1 in 12 children practice yoga. During the COVID-19 crisis, many rely on yoga to stay calm.

TIP: It’s no stretch to find good resources. From Mindbody’s illustrated list of calming poses, videos like “Yoga to Calm Your Nerves,” and the app Kids Yogaverse, the options for wellness are well within reach.

5. Cope American-Style—Commune with Your Pet

Researchers say ours is a pet-obsessed culture. America spends more per pet than anywhere else in the world. But all our pets really want us to “spend” is more time with them. So cuddle that cat, roll over with Rover, talk to your turtle, and partner up for yoga.

 

If video does not display, see the whole new take on “downward facing dog” here.

TIP: Do consult with your dog first if you intend to do “cat pose” . . . .

6. Dance Around the House, Nigerian Style 

Afrobeats is proof that you can calm yourself down by revving yourself up with great music.

TIP: Unfamliar with Afrobeats? View this marvelous 8-minute history, which includes recommendations.

Irish chickens drinking water from a trough remind the author that, across all cultures, staying hydrated is helpful tool for staying calm during a crisis. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

DO: shake your tail feathers. DO: stay hydrated. DON’T: get in a flap.
© Joyce McGreevy

7. Savor Swedish “Fika”

Sweden’s calming ritual centers around coffee, but fika is even more about setting aside a moment and savoring it. Traditionally, it’s sociable.  In Swedish workplaces being “too busy” for fikarast (coffee break)  is unthinkable. But whether you’re Zoom-ing with co-workers, cocooning with loved ones, or sheltering solo, take time to feel the fika.

TIP: Short on Swedish pastries?  Make cinnamon toast.

A toy dog sharing Swedish fika shows that a sense of play and cross-cultural tips help one stay calm when sheltering in place during the pandemic. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Bedford joins me for fikarast.
© Joyce McGreevy

8. Do Something Irish—Read a Poem

Ireland is one of those rare countries where almost everyone appreciates poetry. In hard times across cultures, poetry is a ready source of comfort. And when a poet expresses the seemingly inexpressible, it crosses over into magic.

TIP: Read one of  Ireland’s most popular poems, Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Your heart will thank you.

Flowers in a field remind the author that, across cultures, appreciating nature’s beauty is a helpful tool for staying calm during a crisis. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

What is fragile can  flourish.
© Joyce McGreevy

9. Discover an Italian Art

 

 Il dolce fare niente—”the sweetness of doing nothing”

Sure, you could turn lockdown into Self-Improvement Boot Camp and become a Productivity Powerhouse. But why? Consider occasionally doing nothing at all.

TIP: How to “do” nothing? Any way you want. Stand barefoot in grass, doze in your favorite chair, watch clouds the way you did as a child.

A collage of a dog sleeping reminds the author that rest is a cross-cultural tool for staying calm during a crisis. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

We’re gonna rest, rest, rest around the clock tonight!
© Joyce McGreevy

10. Do the World Some Good

According to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, doing good for others is good for you, too.  Altruism reduces stress, which has ripple-effect benefits for your health. Whether you adopt a global mindset or keep it local, what matters is doing or giving what you can,

TIP: Find a guide to helping during the crisis here.

A World of Support

Working from home, sheltering in place, waiting to return “Out There”—each carries its own pressures. These cross-cultural tips for staying calm are just a sampling of the world’s wisdom and creativity. What cultural calming rituals can you share with readers of OIC Moments?

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

 

Clever Ideas/Crossing Cultures/Worldwide Sites

06

Jan

Travel Hacks for 2020

by Joyce McGreevy on January 6, 2020

A mountain climber taking in the view from a peak reminds the author that 20/20 hindsight can actually be a valuable travel hack. (Public domain image by Skeeze/Pixabay)

Seen in hindsight, a travel challenge may prove to be a peak experience.
Image by Skeeze/Pixabay

Take a Fresh Look at 20/20 Hindsight

What’s your travel vision for 2020? Now that we’ve journeyed to a new decade, it’s tempting to focus forward. But don’t overlook the vision that’s always 20/20—hindsight.

Hindsight has a bad rep. No critic ever praised anyone for being “hindsightful.” If hindsight were a character, she’d be the younger sibling of over-achievers. As in, “Why can’t you be like your brother Foresight, always thinking ahead? Or your sister Insight, who brings home one A+ after another?”

Hindsight also gets characterized as Woulda, Shoulda, and Coulda—that terrible trio who show up too late to offer assistance, then stand around shaming us for mishaps we cannot undo.  Yet hindsight can help us debrief, and more.

Focus backward for a moment, and you’ll see how hindsight can be a travel hack.

A purse left behind on a dirt road exemplifies the travel mishaps that trigger 20/20 hindsight yet also inspire travel hacks. (Public domain image by Needpix)

In travel as in life, experience has a cost. Hindsight’s wisdom may not come cheap.
Image by Needpix

Travel Hack 1: See Hindsight as Signpost, not Setback.

In travel, mishaps abound: The wrong train. The faux pas. The theft or scam. The analog camera dropped into the scenic waterfall.

But hindsight, positioned farther along in the journey, knows something we don’t. Maybe the “wrong” train averts the strike that stalls the “right” train. Perhaps the faux pas breaks the ice, turning strangers into friends. The sting of dishonesty is salved by gratitude for countless times when honesty saved the day.

And the camera? Sometimes you must wait to see what develops.

Oh, I see: While clarity may not be “instamatic,” there’s much more to hindsight than meets the eye.

Travel Hack 2: Use Hindsight to Learn a Language.

A sand sculpture of people borne aloft by balloons that resemble brains symbolizes the brain’s power to use hindsight to boost our ability to learn a language. (Public domain image by FotoEmotions/Pixabay)

The brain uses hindsight to improve language learning, better preparing us to travel.
Image by FotoEmotions/Pixabay

Hindsight is a surprisingly efficient teacher, good news for travelers who want to learn a second language. Numerous scientific studies show that a mechanism in the brain reacts in just 0.1 seconds to things that have resulted in us making errors in the past.

Errors like using inviter in French the same way “invite” is often used in the U.S. In France, you “invite” someone to dinner only if you are planning to pay.

Making mistakes in the language classroom may occasion chagrin, but the hindsight factor compensates by helping us avoid errors in the future—and in Michelin-starred restaurants.

Travel Hack 3: Read a Great Travel Memoir.

If only I’d known, we travelers fret, I would have done things differently. Yet it isn’t “things” we mean, but only that one little thing—the single, precipitating misstep or omission—which we then fixate on to the exclusion of everything that enriched our experience beforehand.

For some, that’s all hindsight is, a useless obsession, and many dictionaries support this negative reduction. I prefer Merriam-Webster’s more contemplative wording: “the perception of the nature of an event after it has happened.”

To discover how unflinching and invaluable hindsight can be, treat yourself to Fifty-Fifty: The Clarity of Hindsight (Strategic Book Publishing), my favorite travel memoir of 2019. The author, “Vagabond Lawyer” Julie L. Kessler, has traveled to 107 countries and counting.

Julie L. Kessler, travel ninja and “Vagabond Lawyer”, is the author of the travel memoir Fifty-Fifty: The Clarity of Hindsight and writes “The Traveling Life,” a popular column for the San Francisco Examiner. (Image © Julie L. Kessler)

You probably already know Kessler’s popular column, “The Traveling Life” in The San Francisco Examiner (#SFExaminer).
© Julie L. Kessler

In Fifty-Fifty, a must-read collection of 50 essays, Kessler beautifully demonstrates that hindsight is a many-faceted thing. Yes, it can be painful, but it can also be hilarious, practical, and empathetic.

The book cover for Fifty-Fifty: The Clarity of Hindsight, a travel memoir by Julie L.Kessler, a.k.a., “Vagabond Lawyer,” depicts a travel ninja who travels the globe.

Kessler’s travel memoir won accolades at the London, New York, and Paris Book Festivals. © Julie L. Kessler

In Kessler’s compelling prose, travel hindsight becomes profound, illuminating in ways that go beyond mere “20/20” corrective.

In one unforgettable chapter, the very act of misplacing a passport ushers Kessler into a whole new world of insight.  As she notes:

“Every single destination, even if unintended, holds the chance of something miraculous.”

I don’t want to spoil the revelatory moment that results—after nightfall, in the middle of nowhere, raw with grief and stranded among strangers—but the way Kessler finds the miracle within the mishap proves that sometimes nothing less than the rich context of hindsight can guide us onward.

Travel Hack 4: See the Future of Traveling to the Past.

Could time travel obviate hindsight altogether? According to unidentified sources at The Time Travel Mart, “We’ve been here since the beginning of time so no matter the era, we have just the thing to help you through your travels. Whenever you are, we’re already then.”

A signboard reading “The Mar Vista Time Travel Mart” hints that time travel ninjas have the ultimate hack for turning 20/20 hindsight into a perfect past experience. (Photo © and courtesy of 826LA)

Made a mistake on life’s journey? Time travel offers a (re)vision of a perfect past.
Photo courtesy of 826LA

Wait—The Time Travel Mart?

This online store, which also has two brick-and-mortar locations in Los Angeles, sells what every time-travel ninja needs—a Pastport, (essential for entry to Pangaea),  time travel tickets, a Time Scouts Handbook, and a Victorian iPad that allows you to write your thoughts and then share them “with everyone who passes by.”

A “Pastport” for the armchair travel ninja is a popular item at The Time Travel Mart, a Los Angeles based online store that supports the free literacy programs of 826LA. (Photo © and courtesy of 826LA)

Don’t delay! Get your Pastport . . . yesterday!
Photo courtesy of 826LA

Will these products really blast you into the past? Only time will tell.  But they bode well for young people traveling into the future.

That’s because all proceeds help support free literacy programs at 826LA. If your 2020 travels are of the armchair variety, this travel hack’s for you. Visit The Time Travel Mart and help launch a young person’s journey of discovery into a bright future.

The Future of Hindsight

From my current perspective, I don’t know how 2020’s travels will lead to 20/20 hindsight. But thanks to travel hacks like activating the brain’s linguistic hindsight, following Kessler’s travels, and becoming a time-travel ninja, I’m unafraid to find out.

What has 20/20 hindsight revealed to you about past travels? How might this inform your travels in 2020?

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

 

Clever Ideas/Life Lessons/Travels to the Past/Worldwide Sites

11

Nov

Green Grow the Alleys, O!

by Joyce McGreevy on November 11, 2019

A ruelle verte, or green alley, in Montréal, Canada reflects creative problem-solving that helps the planet. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

THIS is a public alley? In Montréal, a ruelle verte (“green alley”) basks in autumn’s glow.
© Joyce McGreevy

Creative Problem-Solving, One Alley at a Time

What does the word alley bring to mind? Most likely someplace gray and utilitarian, a narrow passageway behind buildings. Perhaps it evokes unpleasantness, even menace, as in something “you wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley.”

But what if alleys reflected creative problem-solving? In a growing number of cities, they do. Presenting the “green alley,” an urban oasis created from what was once a concrete desert.

The seeds of this eco-friendly concept were sown in Montréal, where green alleys are known as ruelles vertes. 

Two ruelles vertes in Montréal, Canada show how creative problem-solving helps transforms desolate alleys into urban oases. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Over 80% of Montréal residents surveyed have said “Oui!” to the Ruelle Verte project.
© Joyce McGreevy

From No-Go to Where Flowers Grow

How did gray alleys first go green? The road from urban crisis to urban oasis was long, winding, and pot-holed with missteps.

In the 1840s, Montréal’s first alleyways emerged as farmlands were subdivided into small properties. By the 1960s, 300 miles of asphalt alley snaked along the margins of the densely massed buildings. As in most cities, Montréal’s alleys were dreary corridors by day and desolate no-go zones by night.

An urban alley cluttered with trash cans and utilities is a far cry from the green alleys and show the need for creative problem-solving. (Image © Alex Borland)

This is what most of us picture when we hear the word alley.
© Alex Borland [License: CC0 Public Domain]

A Road Paved with Good Intentions

In 1968, five Canadian architecture students with utopian visions set off for an alley in an impoverished Montréal neighborhood. They would install a flowerbed! Paint the walls! Inspire residents to sustain the makeover!

Alas, like the proverbial road paved with good intentions, the results were less than heavenly.

A 1969 documentary film, Les fleurs c’est pour Rosemont, captures the social and class tensions between privileged outsiders who meant well and hardworking locals who were focused on meeting primary needs, not adding primary colors.

Without grassroots engagement, the goal of green alleys had hit a dead end.

Or had it?

Autumn leaves covering a city street humorously suggest that nature’s presence is a reminder to apply creative problem-solving to urban spaces. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

In Montréal, nature has a way of making its presence known  . . .
© Joyce McGreevy

A Grassroots Response

With every showing, Jacques Giraldeau’s documentary raised the topic anew, prompting lively discussion and engaging diverse perspectives.

Over time, this inspired a more considered approach at a grassroots level. Residents of the same block began talking things over. Who knew better than they the problems and potential of their alleys?

A group of people carrying flowering plants to a city street evokes our need to apply creative problem-solving to urban spaces. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

As neighbors met, ideas began to flower.
© Joyce McGreevy

Together, they came up with proposals and secured the support of city officials. Together, they pooled their resources to turn creative thinking into practical magic.

In 1995, Montréal’s first official ruelle verte opened.

Today, Montréal has 350 green alleys—urban oases where children play, neighbors gather, and visitors find inspiration.

And just as the wind scatters seeds to create new growth, the Montréal model spread to cities around the world.

A collage of plants from a ruelle verte in Montréal, Canada shows how creative problem-solving through green alleys supports wildlife and biodiversity. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Green alleys bring biodiversity into tight urban spaces.
© Joyce McGreevy

More than a Pretty Space

The reasons to revitalize urban alleys go way beyond “outdoor décor.” Green alleys replace asphalt with permeable paving and organic materials. So along with beautification, green alleys make city life better by

  • reducing the “heat island” effect
  • allowing storm water to filter back into the ground
  • improving air quality
  • increasing plant biodiversity
  • providing habitat for birds and insects
  • reinvigorating pedestrian activity
  • encouraging bicycling
  • reducing traffic
  • providing places for children to play
  • fostering increased sociability
  • supporting urban agriculture, one of the factors in erasing “food deserts,” areas where it is difficult to buy affordable, fresh food
  • improving a city’s global livability rating
A collage of children’s toys and invitations to come play, seen on a ruelle verte in Montréal, Canada show how creative problem-solving through green alleys improves children's quality of life. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Hand-painted signs in a ruelle verte invite neighborhood kids to come and play.
© Joyce McGreevy

Green Alley, U.S.A.

In the United States, Michigan is home to one of the most remarkable green-alley transformations. Detroit’s Green Alley, created in 2008-2010 as the city was emerging from bankruptcy, turned a desolate “stretch of pavement, dumpsters, and dreams that had long since broken down” into an oasis that brings together people, nature, and the arts.

Several other cities are following suit—among them Chicago, Los Angeles, Omaha, Austin, and Nashville.  You can see a Los Angeles neighborhood “green team” in action here.

Colorful laundry in a ruelle verte, or green alley, in Montréal, Canada reflects creative problem-solving that makes everyday life better. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The goal of green alleys is not to gentrify, but to make life better citywide.
© Joyce McGreevy

Seeds of Possibility

Given the vastness of public lands and waterways, how important is it to make better use of alleys? By 2050, 75 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities.

How much of an impact could green alleys make? Consider that Chicago alone has 1,900 miles of alleyway to work with. Now factor in that nearly every city in the world (with notable exceptions) is crisscrossed with alleyways.

Yes, cities still need somewhere to put out the garbage. More to the point, say urban environmentalists, we need to reduce waste itself. This has become another focus of creative problem-solving.

According to Daniel Toole, author of Tight Urbanism, Alley Architecture in the U.S., Australia, and Japan, “As waste collection becomes more effective . . . [alleys] present a ridiculous amount of space to be used simply for waste conveyance.”

Oh, I see: For Earth’s sake, even an alley is too precious to waste.

An old metal tub used as a planter and a wall of painted bricks on a ruelle verte in Montréal, Canada show how creative problem-solving through green alleys promotes recycling. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Found objects & recycled resources dress up an alley.
© Joyce McGreevy

Is there a “green alley” near you? Have you seen green alleys in your travels? Have you and your neighbors ever worked together to transform a common outdoor area into a greener, more inviting public space? If so, please share your experiences with our readers!

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

 

Canada/Clever Ideas/Making a Difference/Nature Discovery

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