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Stop Worrying About Free Beer and Doughnuts. We’re in the Middle of a Pandemic.
... I thought of this recently when a stream of grumbling turned up in my Twitter feed over incentives that are being offered to encourage Americans to get a COVID-19 vaccine. These include money, beer, doughnuts, and (in a brief campaign called “Joints for Jabs”) weed. Tweeted one commentator: “A sense of decency and community isn’t enough to make people do what is right to preserve the lives of others. They have to be cajoled and bribed to do it.
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The Secret to Happiness? Thinking About Death.
Death has always been the most uncomfortable fact of life. And as modern medicine, comforts, and conveniences have given us more years, we’ve seemingly become less and less comfortable with life’s only guarantee. Roughly seven out of ten Westerners say they feel uncomfortable with death. Only half of people over 65 have considered how they want to die. After someone dies we’re encouraged to stay busy to take our mind off it.
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COVID Has Put the World at Risk of Prolonged Grief Disorder
The deaths of more than 586,000 people in the U.S. from COVID since the spring of 2020 have left many millions grieving. A sizable number of these bereaved individuals will find their anguish lasts an unusually long time, does not diminish and renders their life almost unbearable, mental health specialists say. People who sufferer this intense bereavement are frequently unable to keep their job, leave their home or care for other loved ones. Even those who are able to navigate some of everyday life describe their agonized existence as just waiting to die.
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What to Expect When You Reconnect With Friends in Person
Ready to see your friends again? The process may be more complicated than you think. Many of us haven’t seen even our closest friends for more than a year. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and it can be overwhelming to think about where to start. While we’re excited about these reunions, it helps to manage our expectations: Some friends may have had a harder year than we knew and may need support just as we’re ready to move on from the pandemic. We need to brace ourselves for conversations that may take significant mental energy, at a time when our emotional bandwidth is already running low. And we should be ready to address hurt feelings—“Where were you?”—on either side.
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It Might Be Time to Break Up Your Pandemic Pod
You’ve been vaccinated. You’ve joyfully ripped off your mask when outdoors. Now it’s time to pop your quarantine bubble, right? But finding a good moment to break up the pandemic pod can be tricky. Do you call a meeting? Send a group text to the “quaranteam”? Ceremoniously rip up a contract? Is it possible to ghost someone when they’re practically living in your house? It may get intense. The quarantine, said Margaret Clark, a psychology professor and director of the Clark Relationship Science Laboratory at Yale University, seemed to have served as a relationship magnifier. “If your relationships were already fraught, the quarantine made them more fraught.” ...
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You Don’t Have to Start Young to Be a Great Musician
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began his musical training at the tender age of three. By age five, he had already composed his first piece of music. As a child, he mastered the piano, along with several other instruments including the violin, organ and harpsichord. By all accounts, he was a child prodigy. But he was far from the only composer to have a head start: Ludwig van Beethoven, Martha Argerich, Vincenzo Bellini, Claudio Arrau, and many of history’s greatest musicians all began their training in early childhood and went on to wow the world. The success of these musicians raises the question: Do you need to start early to be great?
