Anxiety and Adaptation to Artificial Intelligence

A Future in Flux: Careers and Fears

I encounter many people who are beginning or entering their careers and who face very different societal and economic issues than I did when I started mine. I was just in conversation with a couple in their early thirties. They were thinking of getting married but were grappling with the insecurities of finding the right careers and achieving financial security. They had both trained in tech and information-related technologies as undergraduates and then earned graduate degrees. Each had interned at different companies heavily invested in artificial intelligence to expand their customer base and grow their businesses, helping them remain competitive and sustainable. Sometimes people approach me for collaboration or to talk about career choices. In this situation, I was glad it was just a casual conversation, and I expected it would be quite challenging for them, given the current developments and rapid changes in our society, to plan or make the optimal choice. This couple had the same sort of interests and goals that I perhaps had when I was first dating my wife and preparing for my career in the medical field, which also involved a lot of insecurity for me. From our discussions, what came to mind was that in the past, there was also a time of great worry when major societal changes, including wars and other catastrophic events, threatened to destabilize society and basic security.

Mindfulness, CBT, and Holistic Strategies for Lasting Mental Wellness

The chill of winter, the news, and politics

It was midwinter, with a chill in the air and sleet and snow steadily falling, coating the roads enough to form a treacherous layer of black ice and making travel precarious. Those of us caught indoors often turned on the TV to get the latest weather report, searching for how long our forced winter hibernation would last. On TV, news reports featured recurring stories about outlandish things the president or his party representatives were doing to upset the applecart of democracy. The more dramatic the reporting of threatening changes to the status quo of established institutions and our way of life, the greater the weight on our minds and emotions. Our emotions balanced between worry, fear, and some anger. As the final reports grew more ominous, they predicted more frigid weather, icy rain and sleet, impassable roads, and the closing of businesses and events. My wife lingered to catch the final news and reports. Still, I scurried away to enjoy my nighttime herbal tea and routine of yoga and meditation to shake off the negativity and emotional burden of my earlier exposure to network news, some articles I’d read, and the reported climatic changes, both environmental and political.

A call to remembrance and words from a survivor, the poet Iren Steier, that bring the reality of the past to inform the present

My Family’s Journey Through Loss, Reunion, and Remembrance

I recall a poignant personal story I wrote about my reunion with an aged cousin of my mother during a visit to Israel, who was believed lost in a Nazi death camp. Her location was revealed through a letter my mother gave me before her death. The realization now is that it was the deepest and darkest proximity I’ve experienced to the heart of tragedy, human cruelty, and the depravity of others toward humanity, the evilest side of humankind, inflicted on vulnerable people by one of the most sinister forces in the history of our civilization. It also shows the resilience and the beaming forth of the human spirit, and our greatest strength and power to reach the highest state of enlightenment and pure spirit.

As a child in the late 1940s, my mother took me to a local shoe repair shop on Upshur Street in Washington, DC. The shop was near the row-house community where we lived. The struggling shoemaker, among his buzzing machines, appeared to be a quiet, humble man, his face worn by years of struggle and hardship. He had an unfamiliar accent. My mother knew he was from Hungary, where her parents had lived before migrating to this country in the late 1800s. My mother showed him letters she had recently received from a cousin, Iren, her age, whom she had visited as a small child with her mother while seeing their family in Hungary before the war years. I understood that a terrible war had occurred in Eastern Europe, and it was over with the German defeat.