Photo: Thinkstock

A few days ago my mother, who is not yet 60 years old, found out that the pain she's been feeling in her hands is arthritis. Her doctor told her that this type of basal thumb arthritis is very common in women over the age of 40, and indeed, it affects women 6 times more often than men. And while no one is exactly sure why it affects women so much more -- hormonal and other physical factors may contribute -- her doctor said that it his impression that women just wore out their hands. Antecdotally speaking, it seems like the work that women do with their hands, from housework to yard work to everyday motions like picking up keys or say a child's sock 100 times a day for years on end, may actually wear out the cartilage in our bodies. As my mother said, "So there you have it. Ask for help. How much more of a reminder do you need?"

It's true, women are famous for not asking for help when we need it. We think we can do it all. We can do it all! But sometimes it's okay to ask someone else to open that jar of pickles. To help pick the weeds. And when you think about it, this is just a reminder of all the ways in which we wear ourselves out by doing too much. A reminder that bodies wear out. That we only make so much cartilage, have so much energy. So consider this your friendly non-doctor-blogger's prescription to you: if you're hurting, or even if it's just that you're tired, ask for help. Your hands, your whole entire self, will thank you when you're older.

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Photo: Angelica Dass

Here's a little-known fact: Crayola officially renamed the "flesh" color crayon "peach" in 1962, in response to the Civil Rights Movement. This was news to Mrs. Bacarella's suburban Kindergarden classroom a couple decades later, where the "skin color" crayon was much in demand -- until we got a stern talking-to by said Mrs. Bacarella about skin color and multi-culturalism.

Angelica Dass's ongoing project Humanae offers a thoughtful way of looking at this puzzle of skin color. She photographs a colorful array of humans and then matches their skin tones to the Pantone color system. And it's no exaggeration to say the results will reconfigure anyone's color-vision. Look how pink and peach and rose and beige and mahogany and coffee-colored we are! What's most surprising is the endless variety -- if color is supposed to be divisive, then the sunburned and the very pale must be going to war -- and how beautiful every single shade is.


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Each week, we'll be letting you know about new releases the editors of O and Oprah.com couldn't stop reading. This Monday, we're gearing up for Oprah and Cheryl Strayed's discussion of Wild this weekend on "Super Soul Sunday" by checking out Strayed's newest book, just published on July 10:

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
By Cheryl Strayed

While writing her best-selling memoir—and the first Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection—Wild, author Cheryl Strayed penned an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus. There, she worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readers suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience. To a livid woman whose husband cheated on her with her employee, she says, "Acceptance asks only that you embrace what's true." To a woman who suffers a late miscarriage, she says, "Don't listen to those people who suggest you should be over your daughter's death by now. ... They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died." She then shares, "I know because I've lived on a few planets that aren't Planet Earth myself." Later, she reveals stories about her own struggles with sexual abuse, divorce and marital infidelity (all of which create a much larger backstory for a reading of Wild). One of the most moving anecdotes in the book is a letter that a 22-year-old reader asks Strayed to write to her younger self: "One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are, when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have the right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do." And like most of the pronouncements in this collection, the subject of those last few sentences can—and should—be changed to "we." As in, we all have the right to such tiny beautiful things—both the purple balloon and the compassionate book it inspired.

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We've all heard it before: There are no new stories, but only new ways to tell them. Which is why when there is an actually new presentation of the Big Themes, it's completely arresting. This miniscule, minute-long movie, aptly named Tiny Story, pretty much says it all, with just a dot; it's basically instructions for living well. Begin. Dream. Listen. Learn. Wait. All you need to know to live a good life, in under a minute. There's nothing tiny about that.

Tiny Story from Sebas & Clim on Vimeo.

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I hate to admit it, but I am one of those people who can be sent into a tailspin by a nasty grocery store clerk. One bored teenager demurs to trade smiles, and for the rest of the day I’m haunted: Oh GOD why was she so MAD at me? That was so UNFAIR! What did I DO? As much as I try to talk myself out of it – this sort of hyper-active-sensitivity is a bad business for anyone who lives in a city, or, um, the world – now and then it strikes, and withers my mood: another attack of Bad-Customer-Service-Induced-Wasting-Syndrome.

The upside of this kind of mania is that it goes both ways. This weekend I had finally sailed to port at the end of a supermarket voyage, both kids in the cart – at least I think so, somewhere there under all the berry cartons and bunny crackers– my list clutched in my fist like a besmirched treasure map, all my energy devoted to willing the kids to stop wailing for cookies and freedom...and there it was, the final gauntlet. The Clerk. She held the future of our day in her hands. Would she glare at my mewling young, shout out my way-more-than-I’d-thought-total, even, expect me to bag my own groceries while also convincing my baby of the wisdom of silence?

No. No she did not. This woman, she gave my daughter a sticker. Then she carefully, methodically, jigsaw-puzzled my purchases into my disgusting, over-re-used bags, with an artistry I have never before seen. She worked quickly, but you could see the concentration on her face. In a few moments, she had, with the precision of an eyebrow threader, filled one bag with the frozen goods, one with the boxes, one with the perishables. Fruit was nestled safely in a protective fence engineered of cereal boxes. Each bag was easy to lift, not too heavy. Unpacking the groceries at home would be a breeze, for in organizing my bags she had also organized my kitchen.

"You’ve changed my life!” I said. She nodded, sagely. She knew.

The thing was, she’d dealt with my groceries, with her job, for which she is likely not paid enough and certainly not much celebrated in the public imagination, the way I’d hope to deal with every task, no matter how large or small: with care and attention, with thought and organization, without expectation of glory or acknowledgement; doing a small task the best way possible simply because it is possible to do it well. I thought of her later that day as I loaded the dishwasher and took an extra 30 seconds to actually line up the dishes properly; again as I sat down to respond to an email in a thoughtful, sane way, yes, even spelling out every single word.

I'm not suggesting that everyone has to love their job every second. But since, every second, we have jobs to do, why not do them as well as possible, with the ninja-like mindfulness of, you know, a store clerk?

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There's something so appealing about the simple act of keeping track. The world is a big place, and life is long, and it's easy for a human to get lost in the fray. There are those who swear by journaling, but for some it's just too much. Elise Nussbaum writes for The Billfold about why she loves, in lieu of journaling, tracking her spending through an old, clunky version of Quicken. "I don’t necessarily need to filter and examine every aspect of my life, but I do want to look back and have some idea of what I’ve been up to," she writes, and "Quicken asks you to confront, or at least remember, where the money went."

Nussbaum explains how the resulting charts Quicken creates help her to see a snapshot of her life, what she values, what she needs vs. what she wants, what matters to her and how she lives. There are financial planning benefits, sure -- she shares how Quicken changed the way she saves, for example -- but it also creates a snapshot of a life. Remember that deserty treat shared with a friend? Quicken does. How much of your resources do you devote to groceries? Lunches? Shopping? Mysterious CVS purchases? (As Nussbaum puts it, " I like to be detailed, except when the charge is from CVS, because I can never remember what the hell I went in there for.")

In other words, your banking is telling a story. The question is, what kind?

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We all have our problems that obsess us out of all proportion. I call mine: The paunch. It accompanies me, unfortunately, everywhere, although sometimes I notice more than others: when I buckle my seat belt, or put on my go-to pants from two summers ago, or do a sit up. (Just kidding, I never do a sit up!) It's my post-baby paunch, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. After the first baby it all just kind of melted away. And after the second baby, I don't know what went wrong. I mean, my diet is approximately 95% bagels, I don't get enough sleep, and I suffer the aforementioned sit-up allergy. And yet... there it stays, kind of cute but not exactly, just a bit extra, a soft little uninvited 10-lb pet.

The other day I was feeling bummed about the paunch, and was glumly considering my options.  I asked my neighbor, who's a personal trainer, where I should start. "Three minutes running, three minutes..." "Crying?" I guessed. "Um, no. Walking. No crying." A run in the 90 degree heat? Okay. I immediately went to air-conditioned cafe and the thing is they have these really special donuts.

Evening plans: shame spiral.

Then I was talking to my husband, and moaning about the paunch, and a thought struck me: I love this problem. Don't get me wrong, it's a problem. If there's one thing I hate more than working out, it's shopping for clothes, so never getting back to my normal size is out of the question. But I am so mindblowingly lucky that this is my problem. I mean, I'm not talking the-mom-in-What's-Eating-Glibert-Grape obesity here. And I'm not starving either. I mean: Hooray! It's just a non-delicious muffin top! That's not to say I want to keep it around, but it did occur to me that if I treated my problem with loving kindness, or more accurately, an amused detachment, it's possible that I would have less angst and more energy to combat it. Like, instead of feeling depleted by it, I should be thankful for it. Hey, baby weight! Wasn't that fun when you served a purpose? Guess what, buddy? The baby's out! The baby walks and talks! So, listen, you know what you might really enjoy, is this, it's called "salad"!  How lucky, to have this paunch around to convince me to exercise!

What's your paunch? -- that little problem annoying your subconscious all day? A small debt piling up on the Victoria's Secret credit card you refuse to believe you even have? A kitchen that seems to mess itself up when you're sleeping? A sense that your blah haircut is the key to all your life's inadequacies? Trust me, I know that there are big problems that are hard to love: bankruptcy, disease, bangs that refuse to grow out gracefully. But maybe if we can remember to treat our paunch-like problems with love, we can remember that it's actually kind of fun to, I don't know, run for three minutes.

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So, you're planning to tour the universe. First you'll want to sit down at your computer. Then you'll want to put on your headphones. For this "quick and dirty" tour, you can pack light. Don't worry, you'll be home before dinner.  This is a universe tour on grand scale. But also on a tiny scale. Actually, on every scale. As in, which is bigger, a human or a giant earthworm? The United States or Pluto? DNA or a carbon atom? You're about to find out. When you're ready to depart, just click here.

Kind of puts everything into perspective, doesn't it?

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Pablo Neruda's poetry collection Odes to Common Things should be required reading for anyone suffering a mundanity rut. Having one of those days when the kitchen counter's accumulation of misplaced objects threatens to undo you? Leave the thimbles, crayons, bobby pins, and coins unsorted and instead read "Ode to Things." Here's part of it: "I love/ all/ things,/ not because they are/ passionate/ or sweet-smelling/ but because,/ I don’t know,/ because/ this ocean is/ yours,/ and mine:/ these buttons/ and wheels/ and little/ forgotten/ treasures...all bear/ the trace/ of someone’s fingers/ on their handle or surface,/ the trace of a/ distant hand/ lost/ in the depths of forgetfulness." (The whole ecstatic poem appears in both English and Spanish at the blog Red Ravine.)

Seriously though, when you really consider the everyday things around you, they start to seem like tiny miracles. I had a minor freak-out yesterday about spoons. Who invented spoons? I'm so glad they did! Or, consider the button. Seems like a humble enough object, right? Have you ever given a button any thought more developed than, "Oh man, looks like I lost a button, darn" --?

Jude Stewart's illustrated history of buttons on Slate will have you in love with buttons before you can say, "I don't even know how to sew on a..." Stewart writes, "The button—with its self-contained roundness and infinite variability—has a quiet perfection to it." Of course! Haven't you always thought that, maybe without realizing you thought that? This essay is a must-read for its lush attention to buttons and all they reveal, including the racy side of buttons you may have never considered.  Apparently in medieval times buttons were displays of wealth; in the Renaissance smugglers hid stolen jewels in hollow buttons; an unbuttoned sleeve once signaled a love token from a lady. Today, buttons inhabit the virtual world as well, "promising to connect us to marvels with a single click," As Stewart writes. "Buttons, in short, offer everyday pleasures." Yes. Right. You bet your buttons.

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Most people believe you're either a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person. Right? And that brains are hard-wired a certain way, and by the time you're 3 or so, you've got your cerebral wrinkles in place and there you are: you. Well, the other day I was standing in my kitchen, knee-deep in dirty dishes and dinner detritus, ordering myself to look on the bleeping bright side or else...and what do you know, there, on the radio, was the dulcet voice of On Being's Krista Tippett, saying, "It seems to me also that a term that is very common also among lay people in our culture is this idea that we're hard-wired for things. I would say one of the things...you are suggesting in your research over time is that we can also rewire."

Hm? She was talking directly to my soul, obviously, but also to the neuroscientist Richard Davidson, who has studied the way we can change our brains. According to Davidson: "based upon everything we know about the brain in neuroscience... change is not only possible, but change is actually the rule rather than the exception. And it's really just a question of which influences we're going to choose for our brain. But our brain is wittingly or unwittingly being continuously shaped." (For more of the scientific nitty-gritty, listen to or read the entire interview here -- you will not be disappointed. Even if you are the type of person who is wired for disappointment.) Davidson explains that in his work studying the brains of meditating Buddhist monks (and more recently, preschool-age children), he's learned that happiness and serenity can be learned, and that after enough practice, brains can actually be changed for the better.  He says, "I think that's very important and I think that most people still don't think of qualities like happiness as being a skill rather than it's typically conceptualized as a fixed trait and some people have more of it; some people have less of it."

What works, according to Davidson, for Tibetan monks and preschoolers alike, is to practice meditation and mindfulness -- to cultivate self-awareness. I know that in my family we are having a lot of tantrums -- the preschooler; uh, her mother -- and  the idea that we can step back, examine our feelings, and teach our brains to deal with them in more productive ways is intensely appealing. Happiness is a skill we could all stand to develop. It's like the old maxim goes: You can never be too happy or too mindful. (That's how it goes, right?)

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