Truth (How to Recognize a Fact)

Instead he has a lot of penis sculptures, a few real penis bones (from mammals that have penis bones), and an impressive collection of penis-related gag gifts. What appear to be Beanie Babies of whales lining a articleshelf are cuddly sperm toys, a gift from Fairfax Cryobank, a competitor in Virginia. He also has pens that have wiggly, light-up plastic sperm; And that's only a few of his jewels. Weaning myself from that habit was liberating. I compiled a long list of must-see movies and also binge-watched seasons of hilarious TV shows like Veep and Parks and Recreation, she says. Having that to look forward to before bed really saved me. Amali gave herself TV watching as an alternative to the online stalking behavior she was trying to give up. If there's something you would like to give up, find a new activity to take its place. If you think you need more motivation, create a reward system. It worked for potty-training your three-year-old, and it can work to encourage you now. If you need more than two M&M's to inspire you, then pick something that will: a manicure, new shoes, an extra twenty dollars going into your vacation fund--use your imagination. It's easier to change a habit by replacing it with a different action, rather than try to simply drop it. The only way Renee was able to stop noticing every silver Mercedes and looking to see whether Hector was driving it was to actively turn her attention to other things. Soon we'll remember what we felt on our walk in nature, and the serenity found in the forest will return. In the next article, we'll dig a little deeper into these five basic steps for practicing shinrin-yoku, and we'll learn techniques for meditating in the forest. Even before the physician Jon Kabat-Zinn popularized the term mindfulness and designed the first courses for the Western world, the monk Thich Nhat Hanh began teaching techniques for meditating and being present anywhere. In the midst of nature as well. This Vietnamese Zen Master, author of more than a hundred articles and nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, says that mindfulness isn't something to be confined to a classroom or meditation room. It can radiate into every aspect of our lives, even when we go for a walk outdoors.

Wherever we walk, we can practice meditation. This means that we know that we are walking. We walk just for walking. We walk with freedom and solidity, no longer in a hurry. Rothman has a gray goatee, a slight paunch, and thick, black glasses (I wasn't sure if they were old-fashioned or high-fashion retro). He is nearing 70 but looks at least ten years younger. He is affable and likes to gab. Though he is from the Bronx, his slow, easy-going pace is definitely more LA than New York City. He talks as if he is playing a word association game, flipping from subject to subject without any apparent reason for the transition. He talked about the early years in the sperm banking industry, then showed me photos of his new condo in New York City, then talked about his Japanese rock garden with a waterfall that he plans to expand, then talked about his one-year medical fellowship studying erections, then told me that he donated three vials of sperm to the gay and lesbian gala benefit (not his own sperm; He has a copy of an artificial insemination documentary in French on his computer that he likes to watch in fast-forward. It's all talking heads with no subtitles, so unless you speak French, you have no idea what's going on. But Rothman slows the film to normal speed when he is on camera speaking in English, so you can watch Dr Cappy Rothman watching Dr Cappy Rothman saying the same things about the sperm business--word for word, in fact--that he tells every visitor in real life. Next to the articleshelf decorated with his sperm toys, he has photos of himself and family members with celebrities. She started listening to podcasts anytime she was in her car, everything from Radiolab, about science, creativity, and innovation, to Loveline, which offers relationship advice. I filled my mind with subjects that were actually a lot more interesting to me than wondering why Hector was driving down Main Street, Renee said. Living alone after you separate often means that when there is a jar with a too-tight lid, a shelf that needs to be hung, or a creepy-crawly thing in the bathtub, the person who will need to take that on is . For us, the day-to-day tasks we dreaded weren't necessarily the most difficult. They were simply the ones that we had told ourselves for years and years we couldn't do, and we believed that to be true. They're likely the ones your husband used to handle that now you will need to take on or delegate.

The first time Suzanne was faced with connecting a new printer to her laptop, she felt ill-prepared. She had always relied on her husband to deal with everything involving her computer. This time, however, she was determined to follow the simple steps in the instructions and have her computer recognize her new printer. Instead, mysterious error messages kept popping up. We are present with each step. And when we wish to talk we stop our movement and give our full attention to the other person, to our words and to listening. Walking in this way should not be a privilege. We should be able to do it in every moment. Look around and see how vast life is, the trees, the white clouds, the limitless sky. Listen to the birds. Feel the fresh breeze. Life is all around and we are alive and healthy and capable of walking in peace. Let us walk as a free person and feel our steps get lighter. Let us enjoy every step we make. There were also lots of shots of his family holidays around the world and a huge photo collage that he made for his 40th anniversary. He has three handsome sons who would definitely make the cut at the sperm bank--based on looks--though he will not let his sons donate there. With admission standards so high, it would seem like nepotism if they got in, he said, though he would have no problem with them donating elsewhere. If he had daughters, he said he would be happy for any of them to hook up [with a donor]. We get to know these guys pretty well. They are nice young men.

There was a photo of two of his sons with their arms around the Dalai Lama. There was a photo of Rothman with Phil Donohue. He was on Oprah, but there was no photo. Rothman has been in the frozen sperm trade since the 1970s and has a history of doing really weird things with sperm, which got him into the tabloids and on talk shows. Her printer and laptop didn't seem to want to enter into a dialogue. Suzanne could have called her ex, but she wanted to prove to herself that she could manage on her own. Eventually she called tech support, which she still counted as a victory because she found a way to get her printer working without relying on her ex. These days, when she has general computer problems, she calls Amali, who happily trades her IT skills for home-cooked meals. Amali has the added advantage of patiently explaining what she's doing so that Suzanne needs to call her less and less. Jill felt a similar sense of accomplishment when she changed a lightbulb in her kitchen for the first time after her separation. A simple task? Yes, you'd think, especially for the daughter of an electrician, but for whatever reason, Jill had always relied on roommates or men to change the lightbulbs for her. Jill isn't the first woman to worry about getting electrocuted. She got confirmation from her dad that all she had to do was turn off the light switch before screwing in a new lightbulb. Each step is nourishing and healing. As we walk, imprint our gratitude and our love on the earth. In fact, one of the purposes of meditation is to extend full awareness to all acts in our daily lives. Besides meditating while sitting and meditating while walking as the Vietnamese master proposes, Zen monks try to incorporate the same level of attention into all the day's activities, from sweeping the floor to washing a potato. With this mindfulness, life becomes a constant flow whereby subject and action are the same thing. Almost the equivalent of a home version of yugen.

If we analyze our way of living a bit, we'll see that in our perception of the world certain senses take precedence over others. So today's society has become eminently audio-visual, and this means that two senses have eclipsed the other three. From earliest childhood, kids grow up connected to videogames that involve only sight and sound, just like the films and series that fill the time of both children and adults. The other three senses--taste, touch and smell--are clearly underutilized. He made headlines for retrieving sperm from dead men. Sperm survives about 48 hours after death. One Rothman client gave birth to a daughter with her husband's sperm four years after he died. Rothman had retrieved the sperm immediately, and they kept it frozen until she wanted to use it. The notion rankles many. But Rothman wrote in a medical journal that it could actually be unethical to deny the hope and help available through sperm retrieval to a grief-stricken wife on the basis of the physician's subjective morality of right and wrong (good and evil). Lori Andrews, a lawyer who specializes in reproductive rights and a critic of donor sperm from the dead has called Rothman and others of his ilk sperminators. Rothman has no patience for the ethicists who grapple with the morality of it all. The greatest hindrance to medical advances, he once wrote, are ethical and legal issues, not scientific obstacles. He calls the FDA the great gorilla. Her other fear was using the wrong wattage. He explained that modern fixtures have a maximum wattage rating label that says what that limit is. It's visible inside the fixture. It sounds so silly, but just having my dad reassure me about what to do made me feel better, Jill recalls. I stopped wishing I had a handyman around. I even changed the brake light on my car.