Rabbit Trails

 

It's easy to get lost, so why not get lost in good things?

Rabbit trails.

Not “here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail.”

I’m talking when you get away from what you originally started reading or looking up because you found something related that distracted you, which caused you to start looking into that distraction, which led to another interesting tidbit that you just had to look up, which led to …you know.

I have very frequently fallen victim to rabbit trails. I am a fan of Alex Kershaw’s books, particularly his World War II books. I recently read Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II, a fascinating story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II, all members of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which produced four Medal of Honor winners: Maurice “Footsie” Britt, Michael Daly, Keith Ware, and Audie Murphy.

Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in World War II, who returned home and became an actor. I’d grown up watching Murphy in cowboy movies, and even as a child knew he was not a great actor by any means – he was short, didn’t have a lot of expression, and a voice that didn’t exactly command attention the way John Wayne’s voice did.

But reading about Murphy’s heroism led me to check out a book on Murphy, to read about his life. Which in turn led me to look up and watch some of his movies, particularly the one where he played himself in the movie To Hell and Back, based on his 1949 memoirs of the same name.

But in reading about Murphy, I got sidetracked into other actors who’d fought in World War II, like Lee Marvin, who was in a movie called Donovan’s Reef, which my father and I watched what felt like 100 times because it seemed like every time we turned the TV on, Donovan’s Reef was playing. It became a running joke between us, a memory I treasure.

But that led me to other movies with Marvin. The Dirty Dozen, of course, but also Cat Ballou, for which Marvin won an Oscar as Best Actor, although in his acceptance speech he gave credit to his horse, Smokey, who may well have been the best actor in the whole movie – the horse played drunk better than Marvin did.

Which led me to wondering why horses seem to ‘act’ so well in so many movies and TV shows … well, you get the idea.

Welcome to the Rabbit Trail.

This came up the other day when I was reading an article that referenced a 2023 study by music psychologist Dr. Michael Bonshor from the University of Sheffield (England) that determined the “Happiest song of all time.”

Dr Bonshor found that the most uplifting songs contain a tempo of 137 beats per minute (bpm) and an ordinary verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure. However, what makes human beings latch onto a song is an unpredictable element like a key change or a “seventh chord.”

“Previous studies have found songs are perceived as happy if they are in a major key, with a sweet spot of approximately 137 beats per minute,” Bonshor is quoted as saying. “We like ‘7th chords’ as they add interest – regular chords use three notes, whereas ‘seventh chords’ add an extra note which provides a sense of musical ‘tension’ and ‘relief.’”

The happiest song of all time? The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

Others on the list included some classic from my era, like “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by the Godfather of Soul, James Brown; “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire; “YMCA” by the Village People.

Can’t argue with science, right?

I grew up around music. My family knows that when I find something I like – music, a book, a movie – I’ll run it in the ground. If you listen to my kids, you’d think I played nothing but Hall and Oates when they were little. Even now, when I’m fixing Saturday morning breakfast for the family my soundtrack of choice for years has been Al Jarreau, or lately the Gypsy Kings.

I can listen to the music of Acoustic Alchemy any time, particularly the early stuff before original founder Nick Webb died. I could go on and on, because I have been told I have an eclectic taste in music.

The point is that I don’t seem to get tired of the stuff that I enjoy.

On the other hand – still on that rabbit trail – I came across another study, “The Effects of Different Types of Music on Mood, Tension, and Mental Clarity,’’ a 1998 paper in Alternative Methods of Health and Therapy. A total of 144 subjects completed a psychological profile before and after listening for 15 minutes to four types of music (grunge rock, classical, New Age, and designer).

With grunge rock music, “significant increases were found in hostility, sadness, tension, and fatigue, and significant reductions were observed in caring, relaxation, mental clarity, and vigor.” According to one definition of Grunge Rock, the music features “distorted electric guitar” and lyrics that are “typically angst-filled and introspective, often addressing themes such as social alienation, self-doubt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, social and emotional isolation, addiction, psychological trauma, and a desire for freedom.”

I admit I have not listened to a lot of – if any – grunge rock. According to Wikipedia (take if for what it’s worth), bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains – bands I have heard of – made grunge rock “the most popular form of hard rock music during the 1990s” (the period when I was apparently listening to nothing but Hall and Oates or Acoustic Alchemy).

It’s art, so it’s hard to say why one type of music, or even one particular song, moves one person and not another. My wife loves art - the picture and sculpture kind - and I have learned to appreciate it more as I have shared in her love of it. We spend a lot of time in galleries when we travel, particularly in New Orleans. But even after these many years together, she will love a piece of art that I look at and see nothing but colors on a canvas.

That’s the thing about art and music, about beauty: it’s hard to articulate. But it definitely affects us. I go back to music, and it actually makes me feel good to listen to a song I really like, no matter how many times I’ve heard it.

Researchers have found that people experience greater life satisfaction when they enjoy beauty, be it art on the wall or music or just seen while standing in a valley looking at nature.

It makes me thing of a verse in the book of Philippians that says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Paul could have gone on and on and listed some specific things, no doubt. But I don’t think the point is to be that strict. The point is to simply find the things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable and make that a part of your life.

Think about them, enjoy them, and try to stay away from the stuff that is not.

That’s the kind of rabbit trail that’s worth going down.

Screen time

 

The worst moment of my week is when I get that screen time report

I was having lunch with a young man who – it just occurred to me, as I write this – is half my age! He’s in his 30s, married, kids, successful career, but is starting to question some things he hadn’t really thought about before. We always have a good conversation.

Somehow as we talked, we drifted into how much time we spend on our phones. He was telling me how he was in an airport recently and it just shocked him how everyone was just sitting there, heads buried in screen time. I told him I noticed the same thing, that doctors’ offices use to have old magazines for people to look through in the waiting room but no longer do, because everyone is scrolling and (I started to say reading, but that’s not necessarily true) looking.

Then I told him the worst moment of my week is invariably when I get that report generated by my phone that tells me my average time spent on my phone per day. It’s always a shock – most recently, something just over four hours per day. That’s not all in one sitting, of course; it’s cumulative, which shows how often I am doing something on my phone every day.

My friend said his number was worse, because of his job. Sometimes it could even be seven to eight hours.

What makes it worse is when you think that you spend, typically, eight hours a day at your job (if you have one), and eight hours a night sleeping (if you can), then the rest of that time is basically screen time – although much of the screen time is also part of those eight hours at work, or for some of us part of the eight hours of sleep if we wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get right back to sleep.

Still, he said, “when you realize that time is our most precious commodity, one thing we can’t get back or recreate, and we’re spending that much of it looking at a screen …” He shook his head. “It really bothers me,’’ he said.

It should. And it is shocking. Trevor Wheelwright, in an article on cell phone addiction (“Cell Phone Usage Stats 2025”), reported that Americans check their cell phones at average 205 times per day and spend, on average, more than five hours a day of active screen time.

Now, I can defend some of that. Instead of reading newspapers (which we don’t have anymore), I get and read most of my news from websites that I view on my cell phone. And there are emails and text messages that are often important.

But still, most of us spend more time interacting with our cell phones than we do with the people we live or work with. If you are single and live alone, work remotely, it’s very possible you might not see anyone “real” for days at a time.

Cultural critic Ted Giola, in his article “The State of Culture 2024,” (published in The Honest Broker), said we’ve moved from playing sports outside with friends to computer gaming; from reading newspapers to scrolling clickbait; from watching full stories on film to scanning reels; from writing letters to cranking out disappearing short texts; from sweetly suffering romantic courtship to swiping right.

There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Pamela Paul with the title, “I Went to a Silent Retreat for Five Days. It Nearly Broke My Brain.” In it, she discovered that a silent, no-phones retreat revealed how disorienting it can be when the mind is cut off from constant digital input.

I realize this is nothing you haven’t heard before. And whether we want to admit it or not, almost all of us know we spend too much time looking at screens. Almost all of us know, deep down, that it’s probably not healthy. But it’s also how life is done now. It’s not just playing games or visiting simulated other worlds (although there is a lot of that), it’s also, as I said, reading the news and checking mail and paying bills and how we get everything from car tags to passports renewed; it’s how we check in to doctors offices now, how we order food at a restaurant (I never realized there are restaurants that have done away with physical menus and now you scan a QR code to see what’s offered).

But really – 200 times a day? An average of more than five hours in a 24-hour day?

It happens so easily. You’re bored, so you scroll. You find a funny video or joke or read a post that interests you. The next time you’re bored, you remember that you weren’t bored when you went on the internet, so you do it again. Only this time you have to look longer to find something that entertains you. And the cycle starts and is repeated. It’s exactly the pattern of any addiction.

We have more information at our fingertips than any generation in the history of the world; but we’re also being lied to more than any generation in the history of the world.

What do we do? The writer of Hebrews says (in chapter 2), “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.”

We like to talk about the evils of what is on the internet, but really, I think the battle is actually not so much good vs. bad as it is volume. Saturation. There is much good to be gained with screen time; it’s not all bad by any means.

The real concern is whether the sheer volume of information we carry in the palm of our hands draws our attention and interest away from what really matters. It might be taking us a way from family, from friends, and ultimately – if you’re a Believer – from Christ. And if we do that, we can lose our direction and find ourselves wondering where the meaning in life went.

We can choose to spend less time looking at our screens. I’m not saying it’s easy; beating addiction (even if you don’t want to call it that) never is.

But if you use the time you gain wisely, it seems to me it will be infinitely better.

I recently read a book on fasting. It wasn’t all about fasting from food, but just the principle of fasting – denying yourself something that you think you can’t live without in order to spend that time focusing on God. It’s a way of saying that thing that you have chosen to abstain from – food, TV, your phone, whatever – is not essential to my happiness; God is.

Because we use those things like food (staying with the fasting analogy) in the correct way when God is at the center of our lives. We use our phones in a healthier way when we make sure God is at the center of our lives.

As Ms. Paul writes about the end of her silent retreat, “In the days that followed, I felt calmer and less reactive. I did not get anywhere close to enlightenment and likely never will. But I believe in trying.”

Amen.

Not a fan

Maybe you should be

Back in 2016, I bought a book called “Not A Fan” by Kyle Idleman. I’d read some of his other books and really enjoyed his perspective, I appreciated his message in this particular book.

In it, Idleman basically asks whether someone is a true follower of Jesus or just a “fan.” He suggests that many churches in America have gone from sanctuaries of worship where people come to be changed, to becoming like stadiums where “fans” go to watch, to cheer on others who are doing the work, and being entertained.

It’s a good book and makes a good point. I recommend it.

However, it also ignores the real-life benefits of fandom.

In the book “Fans Have More Friends,’’ authors Ben Valenta and David Sikorjak say studies show that fans who have favorite teams are twice as likely to be “very happy” compared with nonfans; are far more likely to feel known; and, in general, seem to live happier, more involved and active lives.

Being a fan acts as a social catalyst. Strangers become friends while watching games together or by attending concerts. Sharing your enthusiasm for something seems to overcome social, economic and even racial differences and creates bonds that otherwise would never have existed.

But does such connection last beyond the final horn or last encore? A 2021 study, “Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People Like More Sports,” published by the Journal of Sports Economics, found “a positive correlation between sports participation and reported life satisfaction.”

Arthur Brooks is a professor at Harvard University (among other things) who has made a specialty of researching happiness. He cites a 2017 study published by the American Psychological Institute that said “team identification makes life feel more meaningful by creating a sense of belonging.”

The nonprofit More in Common study on “Fans, Politics, and the Power of Sports” produced data that says sports fans are much better citizens. Compared to nonfans, fans are on average more likely to be registered to vote (92 percent vs. 75 percent), participate in local elections (64 percent vs. 35 percent), support democratic norms (73 percent vs. 53 percent), donate blood (29 percent vs. 12 percent), and donate to a place of worship (43 percent vs. 18 percent).

Looking at those studies, Brooks asks, “But friendship based on something as trivial as a shared identification with a sports team? Yes, according to no less an authority than Aristotle, who argued in his Nicomachean Ethics that deep friendship generally requires a shared activity motivated not by self-interest, but by a pure and innocent desire to enjoy the activity in communion. “Some men,” he wrote, “drink together, others gamble, others join in gymnastic exercises or hunting, others study philosophy together: in each case spending their days together in that which they like best of all things in life.” If Aristotle were alive today, I like to think he’d also include some men texting each other about shared spiritual concerns….”

Todd Rogers, another Harvard guy, has research previewed by Brooks where Rogers and co-author Audrey Feldman “conducted experiments on strangers who shared sports fandom but differed politically. They found that a common sports allegiance typically brings people together across ideological differences more effectively than shared race, religion, region of residence, or socioeconomic status,” Brooks said.

Ok, but what about those fans who riot after championships? The violence that too often breaks out after a big win? After the New York Knicks won the teams’ first NBA championship in 50-plus years, school buses were set on fire, several people were shot or stabbed, ten police officers were injured, and dozens of people were arrested. Brooks said in his studies, “we would call these instances empirical irregularities,” defined as a “deviation or anomaly in a pattern, process, or outcome that can be observed, measured, or verified through direct experience or experimentation — rather than being explained solely by theory or abstract reasoning (according to my quick Google search). In other words, these are the exceptions that get more attention rather than the rule.

More often, if you witness celebrations after a championship or interactions between people on their way out of concerts, you see a lack of political factions and religious division. It’s just people, watching their team or artist do something great, and causing people to interact and celebrate together and actually “like” each other.

It’s community.

I wonder what would happen if people who went to church – the people Idleman refers to as “fans” – actually became these kinds of fans. It’s not just wearing the t-shirt (plenty of Christians do that) or having bumper stickers on the car (again, I see that), but actively out there talking to each other, interacting with other people; people from other churches, finding what they have in common and overlooking differences in order to celebrate the commonalities.

I met a Black guy (I mention his race only because I’m white, an obvious potential barrier in a relationship) at a conference I attended who was from a city in another state, who it turned out we had very little in common from a social or even political perspective, but he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “If God is your father, you are my brother.” And we found that to be true, that our “sonship” overcame other differences.

Beyond that, the involvement that apparently goes along with being a fan - being registered to vote, voting, participating in local government, giving generously – are all things that Christians in any country should do, to the extent they can.

Actually, according to Worldmetrics, weekly churchgoers are 25% more likely to vote than those who attend monthly or less, with 64% of Christian voters saying they feel more accountable to their faith community when they vote, and 81% supporting political role that reflects Christian values (there is no definition on how these voters define “Christian values”). Christian voters are 18% more likely to volunteer for a political campaign than the general population, according to a 2023 Bipartisan Policy Center study.

And as for generosity, giving to religious organizations (congregations, denominations, missionary societies, and religious media) remains America’s largest recipient of charitable giving. Overall, about 10 million tithers in the US donate $50 billion yearly to church and non-profits, according to Nonprofits Source in a 2021 report.

That being said, the statistical difference in being a fan of sports and a fan of church is not that far off.

Where I do agree with Idleman is wanting to see fans’ hearts change. He challenges Christians to stop cheering for Jesus and get in the game—to pursue an intimate, fully-committed relationship with Jesus with everything they have. That’s the real line between “fans” and “believers.”

But the real lesson here may be something else: when people get involved in something outside themselves, they are happier, more actively engaged, better friends and neighbors and citizens. Psychology Today has had reams of articles on this, how what they call “collective effervescence” – people uniting in a common purpose – fosters a sense of unity. It’s been proven to calm nervous systems and strengthen bonds, reducing feelings of personal discrimination and feelings of isolation.

I’m not talking eternal destiny here. Certainly, I believe an active, seeking relationship with God is far healthier than going to a bar with a bunch of Bears’ fans and cheering on the team. (Although I can see how some might say the bar is more fun).

But I am in favor of people getting involved in something outside themselves, what Brooks called “a shared activity motivated not by self-interest, but by a pure and innocent desire to enjoy the activity in communion.” Anything that brings healthy interaction with others, creating a sense of belonging and reducing isolation, is a great antidote for one of the major problems in society today. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness and social isolation an epidemic, highlighting that it is far more than a mere emotional state — it poses significant health risks for individuals and society at large. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Harvard University research paper, about half of American adults reported experiencing loneliness, and the pandemic further intensified social disconnection.

The best solution? Intentional social connection.

A good start might just be by becoming a fan.