Is this really what I do for a living?

So no job is perfect.  It took me some trials and tribulations to reach this conclusion, which is partially why I experimented with a number of different careers during my ‘youth’. I look back on these experiences now from the ripe old age of 31, and I’m glad that I took the opportunity to try a few different things.

My current career as a biologist is by no means totally ideal: working in academia comes with the usual rat-race feeling associated with most careers.  There are many, many people who attain their PhDs, and very few jobs available at the end of the road.  This means that there is a lot of pressure to work long hours, to publish as many papers as possible, and to manipulate one’s way through the social and political network of potential employers and funding agencies.  As a post-doc, I’ve had to be willing to pack up my gear and move continents to take advantage of whatever opportunity comes my way (…okay, perhaps in my case this goes in the ‘plus’ column instead of the ‘minus’ column). Also, a PhD in ecology and evolution isn’t really transferable to many other fields, save perhaps biotechnology or international development, and even then, a shift of professional focus wouldn’t be easy.

For me, it’s been necessary to weigh the pros and cons, and to decide what I need to get out of work, and what sorts of disadvantages I can live with. I like the intellectual freedom associated with my job, as well as the opportunity to express my creativity, and often to set my own work schedule.  For now, these benefits (and others) outweigh the frustrations associated with the pressure, diplomatic maneuvering, and lack of job security.

And then there are those moments when you really can’t believe that you have the good fortune to be doing your own job.  Last week I spent several days in the south of France, in the limestone hills just north of Montpellier. I was collecting flowers from an orchid species that I will work on when I start my new job at the University of Zürich in July. I stayed with a colleague at a small hotel in the countryside, and spent every day walking through meadows and forests, and passing through historic medieval villages filled with chateaus, abbeys, and Templar monuments. Although they are few and far between, there are some moments in which it feels as though work, and life in general, could be perfect after all. 

Happiness is a solid, joy is a liquid

Somebody gave me a very nice gift earlier this week.  A cup with a quote by Oscar Wilde written on it: “follies are the only things you never regret”. The line comes from the book A Picture of Dorian Gray.  During a lunch party, one of the main characters flippantly asserts that “to get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies,” and that people “discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”  I’m not so sure that I agree, but anyhow…

The box that the cup came in had a list of ingredients on it.  I put the box in the recycling, and I’m starting to regret that folly, since the list of ingredients was just as interesting as the cup.  If I recall correctly, the cup is made of 50% happiness, 10% joy, and a mixture of other emotions.  Which led me to wonder: what is the difference is between happiness and joy? So naturally I did a Google search, and also asked my good friend Miriam-Webster.  MW didn’t help me out very much, seeing as her definitions of both words were quite similar:

Happiness: a state of well-being and contentment

Joy: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires

I found a number website that discussed joy and happiness, although most of them were religious ones that argue that happiness comes from our worldly surroundings, while joy comes from God (give me a break!).  I think the best distinction between joy and happiness comes from a quote by J. D. Salinger, who once said:

“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”

(It’s a funny coincidence that both Wilde and Salinger state that we understand regret/happiness/joy only when it’s too late)

So joy is something that flows around you and through you, while happiness is derived from more concrete objects, like your new big-screen t.v. or your Mercedes.  Happiness is external, while joy is internal.  Hmmm. I also came across a video segment run by the news program 20/20, in which they reported on the science of happiness http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video?id=4132819.  In fact I think they were confused, and were actually investigating the science of joy.  Nonetheless, they concluded that genes account for about 50% of a person’s happiness, circumstances 10%, and attitude the remaining 40%.  Which means that external circumstances (e.g. wealth, job, etc.) count for only a little, while your outlook on life accounts for a big chunk of your happiness.  And happiness is something that you can practice!  One researcher showed that if a person spends 30 minutes per day thinking about compassion and happiness, his or her brain shows changes in the areas associated with happiness within two weeks.

Anyway, for no particular reason, I’d like to leave you with two music videos that brought me a bit of joy this week.  Both, coincidentally, produced by Icelandic artists.  And the full effect comes from the cinematography, not just the music, so you’ll have to pay attention with your eyes as well as your ears.  Together they take less than nine minutes to watch, which means you’ll have to come up with an extra 21 minutes of joy today on your own

Can social status really impact physical health?

Is it possible that our social interactions with other people can have large effects on our health?  Does having a good support network of family and friends actually make us healthier, as well as happier?  This week I read an interesting paper¹ that was published in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was based on the premise that for human and non-human primates, social environment can play an important role in health and survival, and has direct impacts on disease susceptibility and fertility.  In other words, the authors of the study wanted to know whether an individual’s social environment could directly impact their physiology.

The authors tested this proposition using groups of rhesus macaques.  They were able to manipulate the social status of female monkeys by introducing them in different orders to small groups.  Females that were introduced later to a new social group had a lower dominance rank, and therefore experienced more social stress.  The authors then extracted blood samples from the monkeys, and measured the expression of a large number of genes in the blood.  Surprisingly, they found large and consistent differences in gene expression according to social rank.  Many of the genes that were expressed differently in high-ranked females compared to low-ranked females are involved in immune system function, which suggests that social status in a group can affect the immune system, at least in macaques.

These findings don’t necessarily translate to humans directly, and it’s much harder to test for correlations between social status and health in human societies, partly because there are so many confounding factors.  It has been shown, for example, that people of lower socio-economic status have relatively poor health, but this might easily be tied to unbalanced diets relating to low incomes, or to poor lifestyle choices resulting from inadequate education.  However, there are health benefits associated with long-term romantic relationships for example², and similar benefits probably derive from other kinds of positive social relationships, like friendships, as well. These benefits likely result from the joyful experiences that come with interacting with loved-ones, as well as the stress reducing effects of having social support. A number of disease groups are considered to be stress related, including cardiovascular diseases, psychological disorders, and even some immune disorders.

Even if there is little scientific evidence to show it, it’s fairly intuitive that cultivating good friendships and family relationships can improve your feelings of well-being, and reduce your risk of stress-related disease. It’s also pretty cool that neuroscientists and molecular biologists are now starting to be able to really grasp the physiological mechanisms responsible for the beneficial effects of love, friendship, and social status.

So, who wants to hang out this evening, purely for the benefits to our health?

¹Tung J. et al. 2012. Social environment is associated with gene regulatory variation in the rhesus macaque immune system. PNAS: published ahead of print April 9, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1202734109

²Esch T. and Stefano G.B. 2005. Love promotes health. Neuro Endocrinol Lett 26:264–267.

 

I like scientists who play the drums

I am a postdoc in biology, and one source of irritation in my job is the misguided idea prevalent in academia that scientists should devote most or all of their spare time to professional activities.  After all, it’s a competitive world, many people are grappling for a small number of jobs, and… well… natural selection rules.  You will only be successful if you work an hour longer than the guy who is sweating over his computer in the next office.  Humbug! The idea that we should put work above all else is counter-productive and unsatisfying.  I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading lately: some popular science stuff, journal articles, news, and fiction.  And as a result I’ve acquired some new role models. I admire people who cross disciplines, which makes them more interesting and creative thinkers, and probably more fulfilled human beings as well.

For example, Mark Twain is a novelist from the 19th and early 20th century, best known for writing the novels Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both of which I read as a teenager. But he was also a humorist, and wrote a variety of clever and witty essays such as this one (http://german.about.com/library/blmtwain01.htm).  The latter essay is particularly poignant for me at the moment, as I struggle to acquire some knowledge of the German language, albeit the simpler Swiss German dialect.  The essay had me laughing out loud in my office, and when I sent it around by email to my German-speaking colleagues, I think it led to a marked decrease in productivity in our research group for at least half an hour.  Timeless humor, preserved across the chasm of more than 100 years.  Twain was also interested in science, and spent time with his close friend Nikola Tessla, the electrical engineer who invented the alternating current (AC) electrical supply system.

Richard Feynman, playing the drums

Another interesting character is Richard Feynman, an American physicist who jointly won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his research in quantum mechanics, and is known for his participation in the development of the atomic bomb.  He was also deeply interested in biology, and wrote a number of popular science books on physics from a humorous, semi-autobiographical point of view.  Feynman is also well known because he played the drums, which I am especially enthusiastic about, because I also play a drum.  A djembe, though I’m not claiming to play well.  But here is a video clip of Feynman playing the bongos, rather impressively I might add, shortly before he died of cancer at the age of 69:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWabhnt91Uc

So, I’m going to cheerily enjoy my drumming and salsa-dancing sessions, which I’m certain will lend some inspiration to my scientific work.  And I’m not even going to mention the positive effects that my blogging sessions are likely having on my research.  I pity my colleagues who will be working well into the late hours of the evening in the next office.  Bye for now.  I’m going to the spa.

Street art comes for free

Sunshine comes for free.  Indeed.  I read that line in a work of fiction that I polished off over the weekend.  Lots of other things come for free too.  But often we only stop to appreciate the things we pay for (or work for?).  Maybe some of the best things in life come for free… wildflowers, mountain tops, wiggling your toes in the lake during the summer, kissing, friendships (but you have to work for those…).  And street art.  I spent Easter weekend in Paris, a city that has more than 100 museums, two of which are the most visited museums in the world (the Louvre and the Pompidou Center).  On previous trips to Paris, I visited a number of museums, and, well… did other things that tourists are “supposed” to do in Paris.  Not this time.  I spent the last few days getting off the Metro at randomly selected stops, and simply wandering here and there, stopping now and then for a coffee, a glass of wine, or something good to eat at some neighborhood café.  And I discovered that Paris is full of art.  Free art.  Often in unexpected places. 

There is one street artist, a native Frenchman known by the moniker “invader” (website here http://www.space-invaders.com/som.html), who strategically tags public spaces with mosaics of aliens based on the characters from the 1980’s video game Space Invaders.  He started in Paris in the late 1990s, but has since “invaded” at least 35 other cities globally.  There were a couple of other repeated themes that popped up in various spots: stenciled brown Indian heads on the corners of buildings, and huge ornate “x’s and o’s” painted in high up spots that seemed to me impossible for a street artist to reach.  And of course the more original and creative spray-painted and hand-painted murals on the sides of buildings and on the walls of hidden alleys. 

Space Invader in Paris

 

Alas, not everything comes for free, and I’m sure I spent the money that I saved from visiting museums on the copious amounts of French cheese, pastries, and wine that I consumed.  Oh well, this time I’m satisfied by my strategic investments, and I’m consoled by the knowledge that the many calories that I consumed were balanced by the dozens of kilometers I strolled through the city streets.

Vicarious Embarrassment

There are words in every language that are difficult or impossible to translate to another language. I lived in Holland for several years, and I had a few Dutch favorites.  The word ‘gezellig’ in Dutch, for example, roughly translates into ‘cozy’ in English, but has its own distinct meaning.  It has something to do with the atmosphere of a place, but also somehow relates to the effort that a person invests in creating a ‘cozy’ atmosphere, and so reflects a sort of community or social feeling.  German has a similar word (‘gemütlich’), but I haven’t figured out yet whether the word has the same connotation as the Dutch translation.  A special German word that I like is ‘sympathische’, which (despite what Google Translate says), does not translate to ‘sympathetic’ in English.  If a person is described as ‘sympathische’, it means that they are nice, and that it is easy to feel compassion for them. So it’s a compliment to be described as ‘sympathische’ (it doesn’t mean that everybody should feel sorry for you).

I think that my all-time favorite Dutch phrase is ‘plaatsvervande schaamde’, which I was unable to come up with a translation for, until recently. Sometimes it happens that somebody does something in your presence, which makes you feel as though you would like to crawl into a small dark hole on their behalf, because you are so ashamed for them. For example, I went to a conference recently, and I was having lunch with two professors who are relatively well known in their respective fields.  During lunch, a student came over and interrupted the conversation, to ask whether he could have his picture taken with them.  The two profs hurriedly and awkwardly finished their mouthfuls of food, and the smiling student stood between the two ‘celebrities’ to have the moment recorded on film for posterity. Although he was completely oblivious to the faux pas, I felt rather embarrassed on his behalf.

I’ve sometimes lamented that there is no equivalent term in English for this feeling of shame on behalf of another person, but at a recent dinner with colleagues, somebody came up with the perfect solution: vicarious embarrassment!  I hardly ever think to use the word vicarious in conversation, but what a fantastic word! It means: to experience something by imagining the experience of experience somebody else.   I think I would normally only use the word in relation to travelling.  If a friend were to head off to some particularly exciting and unusual travel destination, I might say: “I’m going to live vicariously through you for a while…”, in which case I would mean that I’m going to use their travel stories and photos to imagine that it’s me who is on the road (no no, I’m not really sitting in my office behind the computer…).  So be forewarned: I’m planning to introduce the term vicarious embarrassment to common English usage.  Next time I run into you on the street, I hope you remember what I mean…

And now I would like to make a suggestion.  I propose that you leave a comment that either 1) provides your favorite word from a foreign language that doesn’t have a good English translation, or 2) delivers an entertaining story of a time when you have experienced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ for someone else.  I’m looking forward to some vicarious entertainment…

Wild animals and exotic invaders roaming the streets of Switzerland

The book ‘The Life of Pi’ has been on my reading list for a long time, and I finally got around to it while on my recent holiday.  I found a copy while browsing the airport bookstore in Bangalore, while I was waiting for my domestic flight to leave for Mumbai.   It was the perfect book for me to read in India, since it connected the three apexes of my existence at that moment, in a peculiar way; the book tells the story of a South Indian who travels, in a harrowing and utterly original manner, to Toronto (my home town, or close to it, anyway).  And it contains some nice anecdotes about the history of the Zürich zoo… coincidentally my current place of residence.

I visited the Zürich zoo for the first time last weekend…  not because of the book, but at the invitation of a friend.  The visit brought some of the book’s anecdotes about the zoo back to the forefront of my mind, and I was curious about whether they were fact or fiction.  And it turns out that the author did his research.  Apparently a leopard did indeed escape from the zoo during the winter of 1933.  It managed two survive for two months in mountainous winter conditions, sustained by wild deer and livestock kills, before it was shot a number of kilometers away from the city.  This is a bit of a digression, but I also discovered (while cruising around the internet on my research mission) that more recently (in 2010), an elephant escaped from a circus in Zürich, and cooled itself off in the lake, before wandering down Bahnhofstrasse (one of Zürich’s main streets)… I wish I had been here for that!

When I started perusing through information about the zoo’s history, I found an even more surprising tidbit of information:  the zoo featured an exhibit of 65 “exotic” (i.e. Moroccan) people to attract visitors as recently as 1935.  Wow!  Ethnocentric division at its finest!

So based on the elephant story, we’ve already established that wild animals still sometimes wander the streets of Swiss cities.  And no, I don’t mean the men… Swiss men are very civil.  How is the attitude toward ‘exotics’ these days though?  I can’t really comment based on my status as an outsider, since I think I camouflage myself pretty well as a native (except for the language), and so don’t feel much like an “exotic” myself.   But I have a personal anecdote about a person I met on the train last weekend.

I was coming back from a trip to the ski hill, and a man sat down on the seat across from me.  My brain was half frozen from a day of exposure to sub-zero temperatures, and my body felt as though it had been battered by a thousand icicles.  I looked determinedly out of the window, and tried not to make eye contact with my neighbor.  But he started talking to me anyway.  His English was broken, and he spoke using a mixture of English, French, and hand gestures, but somehow he managed to get his message across.  He was from Niger originally, but had been living in Libya for the past several years.  When the revolution started, bombs were falling all around him, and he fled to Italy, where he stayed for five months.  He had to leave Italy eventually, and he’d been in Switzerland for three months (I’m guessing illegally).  He said he’d lost all of his family, and had no money, but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t have to be afraid all the time, and his heart was free.

Eventually he got up an left the train, and I’ve been wondering ever since: why didn’t I make a greater effort to reach out to this poor fellow who poured out his whole sorrowful story to some foreign, perhaps sympathetic-looking woman on the train.  I don’t consider myself xenophobic by any means… I have friends of many nationalities and skin colors.  But still I wonder whether it was my tiredness after a day of physical exercise, or some small intrinsic fear of the “exotic” that kept me from extending myself in return.  In any case, I’ll try to do better next time.