Ever notice how close you feel about a date after seeing a movie that makes you cry? That is because scientists (1) have proven that when people watch emotional scenes together they sync up. Their brains meld and prompt feelings of closeness and community. Ironically, heart-wrenching films create a ‘feel good’ effect on you and the person you are with. You see this bonding in people who fight wars together, people who tackle an adversity together, or people who fight a disease together. It is why many people feel a close relationship with their therapist, their doctor or their clergy. The other party shares in the overflow of Oxytocin produced bonded feelings when they are unearthed and discharged from hidden fears.

In a squabble with a loved one? Go to see a sad movie together. Feeling lonesome, go see a sad movie.There is a reason that big blockbuster films have included sadness in the formula. It is not just to bring the audience members closer together. It is also for the audience to bond to the movie itself. It is especially bonding when the movie goes full circle from sad to happy and back again. It reinforces bonding. It is also no accident that the movies often use Mothers dying as a way to quickly create the Oxytocin bond in both children and adults. Think Bambi, Old Yeller, The Lion King as just a few who made the feeling of sadness pop up to remind us of the bond with our own Mother. Then, once Oxytocin drops the movie bonds both you and your Mother to the movie so that the movie will sell.

When a family member is dying and the family surrounds the loved one, they all share in the tears and the Oxytocin drop, thus bonding a family that has been at odds with each other in the past. It knits a family to cry together.

There is field of called Neurocinematic research where the neurological effect of movies on the brain is studied. They have found that our brains process information on basic plot and story line. We use both hemispheres of the brain by using our emotions to process the plot as well; the logical side and the emoting side.

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UNDER THE FLAG: CELEBRATING FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS
By Dr. Aviva Boxer, OMD

I can see all the thousands of American Flags grounded into the graves of hundreds of thousands of soldiers buried in the Arlington National Cemetery. What a glorious sight on this fourth of July: the birthday of our freedom. All those soldiers died for the idea of our freedom. Or did they? Is that all they died for, and is it all there was?

Maybe we say thank you in a prayer. Maybe we put flowers on their grave. Maybe we sing the National Anthem or fly our American Flag in front of our homes. But we are still missing the point. It is not only that these souls died for our freedom. Their legacy was so much more than freedom. And recently, that legacy is going to dust just as their bloodied, torn bones have. It is time to look beneath the flag, to unearth the real reasons those souls stood firm. Time to look beneath the overused sound bytes, stirring big patriotic music and crisp pretty pictures of our flag. It is time to look beneath the flag to the trail these soldier’s legacy really left for us to follow.

Our soldiers clearly understood what our forefathers meant when they wanted, “A land of the free.” And they heard that soft calling. They heard it just like priests hear their calling to the Lord; or the young woman hears the calling to have a family; or the Olympian hears the calling to see where excellence leads.

It is a calling.

The calling was a lot louder when our constitution was written. It was a lot louder duing WWII when it was an honor to be of service to country, not an obligation one must fill if drafted.

These soldiers heard not a whisper, they heard a command. A command to their hearts and souls, even if no one else heard it but them. And they were determined to follow. These soldiers leave a path that they blazed, where the command took them. They leave the trail of their legacy for us to follow.

The legacy of these fine, committed human beings is much more than Freedom. Freedom is only part of the legacy. These soldiers heard the language of character. They wanted to speak that language. They wanted to feel that language in their bones, whether they were understood or not. That language still vibrates in the disintegrated bones beneath the earth in those thousands of flag marked graves.

Those soldiers wanted to viscerally feel freedom, yes. But they also wanted to feel loyalty, integrity, commitment, generosity, appreciation, bravery, courageousness, daring, decisiveness, dependablity, determination, pride, skillfulness, trustworthiness, and the thrill of being adventuresome. And they wanted to be understood for those hard fought for expressions. They wanted to speak the language of character with more than their fellow soldiers. They wanted to speak it with us. They wanted the reasons they went to the front line of life and death to matter. It was all about character, the universal language. They wanted their families at home to feel what they felt and carry it on into their everyday lives.

These words listed are just some of the words used in the language of the intangibles. The language of the intangibles is the language of the soldier. To the soldier these words are not just dictionary words or words that sound good in a song. They are not traits that one can see, touch or hear. Medals on the chest, a perfectly folded triangle flag, or a bumper sticker with “Semper Fi” can’t even begin to express the true experience of what the soldiers felt living those character traits. That living, eating and breathing the language of the intangibles, the language of character is the legacy of the soldier.

It is when a veteran comes home from wartime and hears nothing but the superficial, mundane, trite and irrelevant concerns and actions of the everyday American that many soldiers go back for another tour of duty to again speak the language they spoke with others who speak it too. It is often why the soldier does not re-acclimate well to a society that just doesn’t get it, and very likely never will. And the soldier often feels the hoplessness of ever being understood or that the value of his/her legacy will ever really being honored in the language he/she knows is the real thing.

The flag is the symbol, perhaps, to remember to speak the soldiers language, that intangible language, with one another, or rather speak that language with ourselves when we look ourselves in the mirror. The soldier had to speak the language of the intangibles to him/herself every time he woke up, went to sleep, faced the unknown, helped a fellow soldier, survived past pain, grief and loss or injury.

He/she took these character traits with him everywhere he went. He kept them in the wallet of his heart next to the pictures of his loved ones. Everytime he looked at his dogtag he knew he had invested in the reputation of his soul, and spoke the language of truth everyday to himself and his fellow soldiers.

One of the reasons the “Great Generation” is considered great is that the language of the intangibles, of character and reputation with self, was also a common language among everyone. Because there were many, many more soldiers in WWII, and there were many more soldiers that understood what personal reputation meant over material needs, ambition, fame, greed and gratification. Because many returning soldiers all spoke the same language of the intangibles, and the enforcement of the golden rule was within oneself, not the job of police, teachers, clergy or the government, it was a gentler time. That is one reason we love the ‘great generation’. It is also why the times seemed simpler, easier, cleaner.

And so, if we look beneath the flag, past the obvious freedom, let us appreciate the true legacy of the soldier by speaking the forgotten language of the intangibles, the language of character. Let us speak it with eachother. More importantly, let us speak it with our own internal reputation, the Jimminy cricket of our soul.

Let us be grateful when we go to the church of our choice that a soldier made it so. Let us be humbled when we go to a polling place to make our opinions be heard, that a soldier made it so. Let us feel honored when we mow our lawns on a home we feel safe, that a soldier made it so.

And only then, will the fourth of July be more than barbeques, fireworks, a day off from work, or a day you take out and hang the dusty old flag. Try taking out a mirror. And look within to see just how often are you are speaking to yourself in the language of character so that the legacy of the soldier lives on in you, and you become the carrier of their legacy to your children and your grandchildren. Only then, the true symbol of the fourth of July will be more than the American Flag. It will be a mirror, or a reflection in a pool of water, a cup of tea, or a mug of beer. Then when we see our reflection. We can feel what the soldier felt living and speaking the language of intangibles, the language of character, and we will have truly thanked the soldier, the keeper of character, by living his legacy everyday.

DrAvivaBoxer.com, best selling author and online authority specializing in End of Life education, products and services that go beyond grief and loss to the pinnacle moment of passage.

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 Life Passages are all crossroads. Crossroads are a place where one choice ends and another begins, a fork in the road of life’s journey.

One of life passages is graduation from the academic world; where the student uses all the knowledge accumulated thus far, and puts it to use as they set off into the journey of their own life out of the walls of predictability and security and into the world of risk taking and even more choices. It is a journey into responsibility.

One always thinks graduation is all about joy and celebration. But for every life passage there is a loss and a death of a way of being too. Graduation has it’s loss and ending. It has a mini-death. We have all felt it. We have felt it when a school year has ended and summer is upon us. There is the call of excitement beckoning us forward and at the same time the yearning for the safety and certainty of home, the known and what comes next. It is a time of choosing. And with that choosing one choice dies. What is dying is the closeness of home.

Choices that in some way severe the closeness of the bond of familiarity have a price and consequence. After the choice is made, there is no going home. Graduation severs that feeling of home. It oftentimes is the ending of innocence, irresponsibility, dependence and the luxury of defining the world through the eyes of ‘me’ and only ‘me’. It is a venture into the world of ‘us’.

DrAvivaBoxer.com is an online authority on end of life education, products and services that go beyond grief and loss into the pinnacle moment of passing.  Graduation, in all it’s glory has joy, but it also has a mini-death. A choice not taken is a death of that choice. DrAvivaBoxer.com knows about death and dying. DrAvivaBoxer.com educates us on how to use the choices not taken and put them together like a puzzle to see just what is our everyday legacy?  What is the legacy that is the essence and architecture of our lives?

At every life passage it is time to take inventory of that legacy, whether 9 years old, 18 years old, or 82 years old. A good time to summarize a life is at life passages, not just at death in a eulogy for the deceased. Because the death of childhood innocence, of dependence, is a perfect time to symbolize an everyday relic of life lived thus far. Not a pen, or a cap and gown tassel, or a diploma. That is what is important to the world. But what is important to the soul? Was it traversing the labyrinth of friendship? Was it finding a gift or skill that creates a passion? Was it the defining of oneself apart from family and community? Was it about communication and expression?  If so, what is the symbol of you infused into the important experience of academia?

If you were a singer, was it the fact that you learned to express feeling through your voice so you could lead others to feel as well? If you were a writer, did you find the way words can trap you as well as free you from beliefs and ideas? If you were a craftsman, did you find that the object needing your skill had its own obstacles that caused you to yield to it’s limitations, so much so that it felt human?

From where you stand at a life’s passage, can you find a symbol that best reflects the experience of who you are thus far? Can you capture it?

Imagine being 82 yrs old with 6 tokens, relics or symbols that have represented you at all of life’s passages. Not the universal symbols like a wedding ring, a college ring, a hospital identification bracelet or a key to a home. No, something much more personal and relevant to your own growth. Those symbols of life passage define the life that you live. It is the tools in your’ life medicine pouch’ that you take everywhere you go. Imagine your loved ones opening that pouch once you’ve passed and symbolically know what you found important in life. And in so doing you can help to catapult them forward in their own lives with the insight you have garnered from your own experiences and wisdom.

Mini-deaths are life’s report card with a place for comments. They are celebrations and losses in the same moment. They are life passages. They are growth spurts. They are the time to take inventory and appreciate the courage it takes to live our own soul fully.

DrAvivaBoxer.com takes all the flesh off of the body of our lives to reveal the bones of the structure of who we are and what has been, as well as the most important things to us in our life.  Wander through the website, DrAvivaBoxer.com, online authority for end of life education, products and services that go beyond loss and grief through the pinnacle moment of passage. You just might find how to move effortlessly and gracefully through the mini-deaths, and thus gain strength and fortitude at the final moment in life passages enabling you to cartwheel across the pinnacle portal of passing.

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My birthday is this week.

Birthdays were always peak experiences and life passages in our family. We saved all year for their homespun extravagance. We brought all the 5 senses to the birthday. Willed my children, who are all grown up now, “Remember the fire hydrant party, the bee party, the unicorn party, the sky writer party, the chocolate party, the Goddess party, the Harley Davidson party and all the rest?” Will they delight in their wisdom and the marinating of their lives on their own birthdays?

I often wonder how my children will celebrate my birth once I am gone. Will they set an empty plate for me at their dinner table where I would have sat? Will they serve my favorite food? Will they play my favorite songs in the background? Will my daughters wear my favorite jewelry? Will they say my name throughout the day, loud for everyone to hear; “My Mother, Aviva, always said… That reminds me of something my Mother, Aviva, did…”

Will they remember that they called me Mommykins? Will they remember our ‘Mommy Mondays?’ Will they remember the rants on a soapbox about my philosophy of life as I held them captive in seat belts as I drove them to school? I am certain one of them rolled her eyes and the other one probably got a few more winks of sleep while I went on and on and on, hoping to imprint wisdom into their young minds? There may be something to be said about sleep learning after all.

Will they remember the smiles and words of encouragement, the under the radar sacrifices that made everything look easy and possible? Will they remember how to go deeper under the trappings of the shiny and the superficial? Will they remember that their character and their reputation are always within their control, but that they inevitably will have no control over what weathers their choices and drives them forward as life pushes on them? Life just is. Will they remember that consequences and the downsides are part of life and go hand in hand with the upside? It is the grace and the courage to take those consequences that make strong soul fibers?

Will they remember what my Mother taught me and I carried forward: “To thine own self be true, and they can be false to no man?” Will they remember to discern very carefully just what energies they want to come into their sphere be it relationships, food, environmental factors or information and be forever vigilant to have their will as the bouncer of what and who goes in or out of the door to their mind, heart and body?

Will they remember that if they are not making mistakes that they are not living big enough?

Will they remember, as my Father taught me? That “the meaning of the sentence of life needs spaces between the words” so not to fill all their senses and life so full with things and experiences so that God can fill the void they leave?

Will they remember to believe in miracles, because we have experienced them in full bloom in our family? Will they remember to roll with the punches because where there was a down there will be an up, just like my Mother said, “This too shall pass”?

Will they remember to dab one of the tears that falls off their eyelash into their mouth as a remedy from the collective sadness, from the oceans that purify all, to help them heal themselves? They know I have always told them that, as the great herbalist, Dr. Yudin said, “The answer is always in 25 miles of the problem.”

The healing nature of a taste of their own tears will allow them to click the ruby red slippers of their lives with the answer already there waiting for recognition from them.

Will they laugh? Will they create? Will they have fun? Will they be unsatiated in curiosity, especially about things they think they already know, and insist on looking again?

Will they appreciate the lepers, cast-offs and misunderstood in the world, and look within themselves at those parts of themselves they cast off? Will they stop yearning to be understood by others, and instead understand self first?

I hope they remember me for more than my public face of being named, “The Doris Day of Death”. I hope they remember me for the name my own Mother gave me, Aviva, “Breath of Spring”, and breathe ‘GO’ fearlessly into their lives.  And by doing so, they will have remembered my name, my legacy, my expression, and me. And I will be smiling through the ethers in bodiless form. The love I have for them will bombard their heart. And they will feel me, and I them, forever and a day.

And on this birthday as I am still in the process of creating the dash between my birth and my death, and it is a long dash, for the wish on my birthday cake candles, I want to have birth and death be bookends of light, hope and connection now and with all the soul bonds I have connected.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME. Today I thank my Mother and Father for the light and breath of my birth.

This was a story about the tears that become healing homeopathic remedies when you taste them on your cheek. I wrote this at 25 yrs. old. A gift to my children:

TEARS

By Aviva Boxer, 25 years old

A raindrop once lost its way upon my tear-laden cheeks. It dripped itself right into the pool of tears. The tears huddled in a whisper, “A new breed to join our ranks of sadness?” Not this aqua-bulb, as similar as it looked. Side by side they looked the same, raindrop and tear, and sounded the same as they dripped to the floor. But up close and with further investigation the cold, fresh raindrop held a ray of sunshine inside of it and had the metamorphosizing ingredients of a colorful prism of a rainbow. It had, the capability to wash away the ill thoughts and deeds with forgiveness and compassion, hope and transformation, as rainbow always do. Raindrops come from heaven, a smile from the Sun divine. Tears on the other hand stem from man’s earthly fears, self-pity, guilt and regret. Rainbows bloom from each raindrop as rain-buds producing an arc of colorful vibrancy.

So the raindrop appearing on my puffy cheek started to mingle and wildly kiss my tears laden so heavy and full. The tears swelled. They danced. They spread from their flowing stream. Then somehow my tears seemed sweetened, more opaque, more movable, and less dense. This errant raindrop, like an alien spaceship, had landed and was using the smile of sunshine from the heavens to heal the wounds and give breath back to my life. It dribbled into my mouth. I felt the corners of my lips curling into a smile, my lashes raised so my downcast eyes could look upward. I smiled. I breathed.  Now my soul could join the world again.

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