The People’s Cortisol

“You can testify, but you can’t win because I’m here to tell you, you’re guilty as sin.” –the Right Honorable Samuel Davis Jr.

So, how did I get to be this old?

Just lucky, I guess. No, no guesswork, I’m lucky as hell, and it’s about time I acknowledged that fact.

I turned 67 years on Friday and, as mentioned many times before, I share a birthday with Bob Dylan, Patti LaBelle and the Brooklyn. I’m younger than all three but not by much.

I had a fabulous birthday celebration on Saturday with my sister and auntie, where we spent the day in Central Park before having dinner at Guantanamera, a Cuban restaurant on Eighth Avenue.

I’d rather not think about my intake cholesterol during this particular meal, but, hell, it was my birthday and my cardiologist said I can go off the trail every now and then. This one should hold me for a while.

I’ve been focusing on the gratitude more lately in a bid to free myself from this knee-jerk misery that sneaks up on me if I’m not careful.

Anger has always been a big problem with me, and I’ve come up with—and blogged about—a slew of techniques, concepts and prayers to combat this toxic trait.

They can be effective—so long as I choose to deploy them. (Yeah, there’s that.) And I recently came up with yet another one.

I was reading about the health implications of the “fight or flight” response if you constantly lose your noodle.

Cortisol is the primary stress hormone of the body and unhealthy anger can really mess with your cortisol levels, which, in turn, can inflict all sorts and misery upon your heart and your brain.

And it can also cut down on your birthdays.

I started playing around the word cortisol, making up lame puns like “Cortisol is in session,” “Disorder in the cortisol,” “The People’s Cortisol.”

Very interesting…

This, in turn, somehow triggered a memory of Sammy Davis Jr. appearing on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” some time around 1968.

In the sketch, Davis is wearing a judge’s robe, a ridiculously large wig and delivering rhyming one-liners--like "When the judge looks mean, there’s devil to pay, everybody going to jail today"--before exiting the stage while singing, “Here comes da judge, here comes da judge.”

I was about 11 years old at the time, and I remember laughing like a lunatic when I first saw this bit. I thought the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

The bit is a bit creaky now, but I’ve been replaying that happy memory when I feel the anger kicking in.

I’ll start chanting “here come the judge, here comes the judge” and I’ll make myself laugh, thus dissipating the anger.

But I know that this all my other anger management techniques are only stop-gap measures to address an immediate flare up.

Real change will only happen when I go beneath the surface and address the causes for this hostility.

To put it bluntly, what makes me so goddamn angry?

Delivering on my promises is a good start, since action is one of the best antidotes to anger. My New Year’s resolutions haven’t changed much over the years, and this only cranks up the frustration.

Mindfulness is also an effective way to tone down the anger. I meditate every morning, and while I enjoy it, I tend to slip back into my old thought patterns once the timer goes off.

Today I practiced being completely in the moment and while those moments were much too brief, they felt quite liberating. My immediate plan is to enjoy my holiday weekend. I’m taking Tuesday off as well, so I'll have more time to work on my To Do list.

Cortisol is adjourned.