You have been taught to expect your happy chemicals to flow all the time. You think others enjoy this, so you must have you have a disorder if you don’t. You think a professional can fix your brain the way a mechanic fixes a car.

Let’s rethink this.

The chemicals that make us feel good are inherited from earlier mammals. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin evolved to do a job, not to flow all the time for no reason. Our happy chemicals are controlled by brain structures that all mammals have in common, like the the amygdala, hippocampus, and other structures collectively known as the limbic system.

The animal part of your brain cannot process language, so it cannot tell you in words why it releases a chemical. The verbal brain struggles to explain these ups and downs. But our fancy talk can’t trigger happy chemical in healthy ways.

Lets see what triggers these chemicals in monkeys. Then we can get understand the real job of each chemical because monkeys don’t mask their impulses with sophisticated theories.

Dopamine rewards a monkey when it finds food. The good feeling stops as soon as the monkey gets the food. But soon it’s hungry again, and dopamine will motivate it took look for new rewards. The good feeling is released when a monkey sees a way to meet a need and steps toward it. You have inherited a brain that constantly seeks strives to meet needs because dopamine makes it feel good. When you see a new opportunity to meet a need and approach it, your brain rewards you with the joy of dopamine.

Oxytocin rewards a monkey when it finds social support. A monkey troop has lots of conflict so a critter wants to keep its distance sometimes. But an isolated mammal is easily picked off by predators, so the brain rewards a mammal with the nice face feeling of oxytocin when it returns to the herd.

Serotonin rewards a monkey when it gains the one-up position. A monkey gets bitten if it grabs food or mating opportunity in the presence of a bigger monkey. It has to find a position of strength in order to meet its needs. So it compares itself to others constantly. Stress chemicals are released when it sees itself in the position of weakness and that motivates it to pull back. Serotonin is released when a mammal sees itself in the position of strength and the good feeling motivates it to assert itself. We have inherited a brain that constantly compares itself to others and looks for ways to stimulate the calm confidence of serotonin. We don’t like to see this in ourselves, but we easily see it in others.

Neurons connect when happy chemicals flow, and that wires you to repeat behaviors that stimulated them in your unique individual past. Old pathways have power because the electricity in your brain flows like water in a storm, finding the paths of least resistance. This is why we repeat old behaviors without consciously intending to. Our verbal brain is not consciously aware of our old pathways, so it’s hard to understand why we do the things we do.

Our brain evolved to promote survival, not to make you happy. Any happy chemical you manage to trigger is quickly metabolized, so you always have to do more to get more. This is how our brain works. Don’t believe that other people have endless happy chemicals because they do not.

Fortunately, you can blaze a new trail through your jungle of neurons. Unfortunately, it’s hard. It takes a lot of repetition after the peak neuroplasticity of adolescence. 

To complicate life further, unhappy chemicals pave extra-large pathways in your brain. Cortisol is released when you see a threat or obstacle to meeting your survival needs. That wires you to release cortisol faster the next time you see something similar. Small obstacles feels like big survival threats when you are safe from actual predators because we’ve inherited a brain that scans constantly for potential threats. A monkey only thinks about predators when it senses one, but the human cortex is big enough to imagine threats when they’re not present. We end up with a lot of cortisol! 

Nothing is wrong with you! Nothing is wrong with us! We are mammals with extra neurons. You can rebuild your neural pathways to respond to the world without constant stress. But no one can do it for you, and you cannot do it for someone else.

You have power over your happy brain chemicals. You can rethink the way you use that power.

All the information you need to do that is at the Inner Mammal Institute. You’ll find books, videos, postcasts, slideshows, and even a training program. You can make peace with your inner mammal!

LRT’s Cary Harrison puts LRT’s “Awareness” model to good use today when the famed KPFK.fm partnered with the national charity, RIP Medical Debt, to abolish one million dollars in unpayable medical debt currently burdening LA county.

It’s even more aggressive than that. 

Between the hour of 5-6 p.m. PST today, Cary’s one-man/one-hour telethon intends to bring in enough donations from KPFK listeners and RIP fans IN ONE HOUR to accomplish that goal.

“In Los Angeles and around the country, KPFK fans have supported our work over the years,” Harrison says. “RIP is already famous for having to date abolished over $5 BILLION in medical debt and has a great fan base. These two organizations are committed to seeing $1,000,000 in hospital bills across Los Angeles – right up the the Pacific Ocean –wiped out.”

“We think that we can do that in one hour if we get the support from listeners that we believe we will,” he adds emphatically. “Since each dollar in donation can purchase $50 - $100 in medical debt, raising from $5-$10,000 is possible. It’s just not been done before.

Let’s Rethink This has more than a casual interest in seeing this campaign be successful. Jerry Ashton, who founded LRT, is also the co-founder of RIP Medical Debt (and now retired to the board.) He and Cary, LRT’s Broadcast Director, conceived the idea several months ago and had no trouble enlisting RIP and KPFK into this first ever public-radio/public charity venture. 

KPFK provides the southern California awareness; RIP provides the debt forgiveness platform which enables it to pinpoint Angelenos needing this help. LRT provides talent to both organizations.

So, set your clocks to 5 p.m. PST today, 11/11/2021, and tune in to KPFK here. Don’t forget to bring an open purse along with your open heart.

Let’s Rethink This is proud to be added to this woman’s list of “Firsts.” In LRT’s case, she is our first comedian and first Muslim-American woman to hold this post.

 She is the first South Asian/Middle Eastern Female Comedian to perform for over 60,000 people in any country, first Pakistani female comedian to be selected for the Laugh’s Factory “funniest person in the world” competition and made history by becoming the first Pakistani female comedian to headline Hollywood Improv.

 Does this provide a few clues as to the “impact” this lady has made and is making in awakening our world to the messages she brings to us about race, gender and social (in)equality?

 That militism certainly caught the attention of the famed Hollywood Reporter which recently featured Mona in an article titled “Why #MeToo Hasn’t Transformed the Stand Up Scene.” The article describes the challenges of comedian women – and especially women of color – being disrespected. Misogynism prevails, and Mona and the women she has attracted under her feisty umbrella of Minority Reportz intend to change that.

 At other times, the impact she makes is more personal, as with the Benefit show she and Afghanistan-American friend comic, Neelab Sarabi, put on last month to raise money for Afghan people who are now under the control of the Taliban. Proceeds from “Comedians Fire Back at the Taliban” were directed to Hope B-Lit, a Los Angeles volunteer nonprofit that helps people internationally. 

I could tell you more, but first – let’s hear it directly from Mona. Interview below:

Thakur Prasad Mishra – known as “TP” professionally, in media, and among his friends, has a past few of Our Newspaper’s readers would have chosen willingly even though it has a happy outcome. One of those is being selected as one of our “rethink” heroes.

This is likely the first in our series where the supporting article’s value is only that of providing the details. The cartoon by Let’s Rethink This artist Vic Guiza tells the story quite well.

So, the background.

Have you ever heard of the South Asian nation of Bhutan, supposedly known to the outside world as one of the happiest nations on the planet? Or of the brutal regime that drove TP’s people to flee that country? Did you know the rise of the dictatorship was driven by the 1988 census?

When the ruling “Ngalop” population learned that they were on the way to becoming the minority, they instituted their cultural traditions like the "National Norm" to preserve their culture and marginalize non-natives. They went so far as to require the national dress code of their culture to be worn during business hours and even removed Nepali as a language of instruction in schools to preserve theirs as the national language.

The resultant “one nation, one people” policy, made ethnic pluralism an impossibility.

The horrors began, and TP’s family felt all of them. Escaping the country and living in refugee camps was the only choice left if they wanted themselves and their families to live.

A refugee’s long road to resettlement

The stories of these dispossessed people caught the attention of a New York Times reporter in December 2010, and TP – then 26 years old and having survived almost two decades of refugee camps – was interviewed in Raleigh, N.C.

“It’s a tough decision, trying to move from one place to another,” he said then. “But obviously when you compare the life, it’s better.” Today, ten years further on, he is married and the father of a daughter he touchingly welcomes to her first day of school in this article he penned for Let’s Rethink This’s, Our Newspaper. 

Culture shock, lack of English language skills, and the challenge of navigating the subways in New York City were all, very difficult. Although he had worked as a journalist back in Nepal, he was happy to take manual jobs.

About that journalism…

It was by the grace of an Australian contingent that visited TP’s refugee camp which singled him out for his writing skills and gave him an award – that’s all it took to confirm for TP that journalism was a way to bring attention to the plight of those whose lands had been stripped from them.

TP studied up to the tenth grade inside refugee-camp-based schools run by a non-profit organization called the CARITAS-Nepal. Classrooms were crowded and lessons were often taught by unskilled teachers with minimal training. There were no libraries, computers, or labs in camp schools.

But, that is in the past. Where are his interests now?

Who stands with Bhutanese refugees in Nepal?

“It is not too late to repatriate the remaining 7,000 Bhutan nationals still in camps in eastern Nepal,” he says…reaching for his computer keyboard to expand on a story he published in the Nepali Times in 2019.

Because that’s what heroes do.

Dear Chhori (Daughter):

Congratulations on starting a long and exciting journey by officially beginning kindergarten today! It was lovely to see you so excited and enthusiastic when we dropped you off at your school. I hope the same level of excitement lasts throughout your school journey. 

My excitement is a little subdued due to my concern about the Covid-19 pandemic and whether you would be safe. I know you'll feel uncomfortable wearing that damn mask, but it will help reduce the risk of you and those around you contracting the virus. Of course, you might see your classmates and others without masks. But as a responsible individual, I want you to follow the recommendations of the Center for Disease Control and local health officials. And please make sure you continue to wash your hands thoroughly from time to time during the school day, whenever possible.  

Little champ, when I dropped you off, I was reminded of how I started my educational journey. 

The environment and circumstances were so different from what you're going through today. My schooling began in 1990 in the remotest village Indrachowk, Dagana, Bhutan. Probably due to a lack of awareness about the importance of education, my parents chose not to enroll six of my elder siblings in school. Instead, they all stayed at home to help with the daily chores so that there would be 'food on the table' for everyone - technically, we used to sit on the floor to eat, and we did not have a table. So, although I was young, I too had a role in feeding Tikay, the family dog. 

Things took a positive turn after my parents decided to enroll one of my older brothers in the Dokap Primary School in Dagana, Bhutan. He was a third-grader when my father also managed to enroll me in the same school. My eldest brother, who never had the opportunity to go to school, carried me on his shoulders during the monsoon season. He walked with me, downhill, for 30 minutes, and uphill for 45 minutes, across rough terrain, to get me to the school and back home. I would hold on tight with my hands wrapped around his head. As my brother pushed his way through shrubs and bushes during the monsoon season, leeches would cling to my head and suck my blood. It sometimes took me several minutes to pluck them off my body, often with the help of a pinch of salt, once we got to school. Our parents taught me that leeches are sensitive to salt. So, during the monsoon season, we always carried pouches of salt in our backpacks. 

Kids your age who haven't seen the rest of the world might take many things for granted. 

However, many children are still experiencing extreme poverty, hunger, and deprivation, similar to what I experienced. Thankfully, you have an air-conditioned school bus that pulls up outside our home, ready to take you to your school, which is within easy walking distance.

While I attended elementary school, some of the Bhutanese teachers treated me harshly. I struggled to learn Dzongkha, the national language. Sometimes abuse arrived by being beaten with sticks by the teachers and made to stand on one foot with the other foot resting across the knee. For the class duration, the teacher would demand that I catch my ears with both hands. As I struggled to carry out the punishments, classmates were encouraged to laugh at me. I am glad you'll be studying in a supportive environment without this type of trauma.

In 1991, when the Bhutanese regime evicted my family, we were forced to make our home on the bank of the holy Kankaimai river in Nepal. Many children and adults lost their lives following an outbreak of malaria and other diseases. Two from my own family couldn't make it; I'll share those details as you grow older and are mature enough to hear such stories. Later we moved to the Beldangi-II refugee camp, not very far from the riverbank. After arriving at the Beldangi-II refugee camp, both your mother and I somehow continued our schooling. When we first settled in the refugee camp, we attended classes in open spaces, mainly under the shadows of large trees and sometimes even during unfavorable weather conditions.  

One day, around the time I was in grade three, a heavy wind blew a large solid-wood blackboard off the tree where it had been hanging, and it fell on my head. I received treatment from the nearest primary health unit. Fortunately, the injury was not too bad. However, before returning to lessons, I was mandated to rest for a few days.

Physical punishments were part of daily life in the refugee camp schools. Not that those teachers' intentions towards their students were terrible. It was how the whole educational institutions functioned during that time. Even today, I cannot understand why some teachers were harsher than others during my school days, both in Bhutan and in the refugee camp in Nepal.   

We didn't have electricity in the refugee camp. I am glad you won't have to do your homework in the light of a kerosene lamp in the evenings like I did while living in the camp. The size of our tent-like hut was slightly bigger than your bedroom at home. The roof leaked, and we often got soaked during rainy days. Our large family lived in such conditions for almost 20 years before being resettled in 2009. I hope you'll continue to appreciate what you have without being judgemental. This is because life is full of ups and downs and it often involves a lot of ‘rethinking’, as I did over the years,  to make it work; Take one step at a time and I am sure you’ll be fine.   

The current system of education here is entirely different from when I was a schoolboy back in Bhutan and Nepal. 

We used to have lots of homework. We had to remember long paragraphs at home and then recite them when we were in the classroom the following day. We didn't have practical lessons like you will enjoy. 

As a young student, I didn't have shoes because my family couldn't afford them. Flip-flops were a bit affordable, and that's what I depended on even in extreme weather conditions. You should be proud that you've enough pairs of shoes. But always remember that it's not what you wear on your feet that takes your steps further. It's your inner willingness and the motivation that provides the magic.

As a new American, you have a place to call home – the United States of America—the beacon of hope and opportunities. You should always be thankful for this country which is your birthplace. In addition, this place gave your parents the chance to build new lives so that you, too, can enjoy freedoms, lacking in so many parts of the world. 

I hope you'll learn to be a responsible resident.

Please keep in mind that freedom does not mean that you are free from obligations and responsibilities. Never take your freedoms or possibilities for granted. But, unlike your parents when we were your age, you will always have a roof over your head. You will always have enough food, including your favorite, chocolate ice cream, to eat when you return home. 

Continue to share what you have with others. 

You might never know if one of your classmates' families might be having a hard time. It might be that one of your new friends can't afford lunch. A classmate might be a resettled refugee going through the process of attempting to heal the wounds of past traumas. Your compassion and love will give such a friend purpose in life. So always consider sharing what you have if necessary. But be careful not to humiliate the person with your generosity. 

Giving has to be done with sensitivity. 

Now that you are in the outside world, you will probably see things from different perspectives. That's completely normal. I hope you'll soon learn to take a stand if you or your friends face the attacks of bullies. But, please, never put yourself, or them, at risk. Sadly, bullying is common. Keep in mind that both your mother and I do not want you to bully others or be involved with gangs of those who bully others, even if you think it will make you safe. 

Never discriminate against those around you because of the color of their skin, caste, creed, or any particular physical differences or disabilities that sets them apart. You've started school at a time when in many parts of the world, for instance, the current situation in Afghanistan, women's fundamental rights, including the right to education, are under threat. As sad as I feel about that situation, I hope you'll soon learn to become a voice and strength for those who cannot speak up for themselves. So, again, never put yourself at risk, but use logic and reason rather than insults or harsh words to try to diffuse situations. 

Being bilingual or multilingual is a strength, not a weakness. 

I hope you'll continue to promote our language and culture up to a reasonable standard. We'll have the same language rule: Nepali at home and English at school. Culturally, we treat teachers as our second parents; I hope you'll carry on that legacy.

During the migration process newer generations often tend to forget their roots; don’t be one of them. 

As you grow older, I hope things will change, drastically, in my home country Bhutan, so we could go back to trace our ancestral history. I hope you'll grow up mature enough to understand that it is essential to learn our history because it shapes your future. When we fled Bhutan, I left behind a stash of my school supplies wrapped in a plastic bag hidden inside our house because my mother promised we would return home soon. Unfortunately, 30 years have passed and, so far, we have been unable to return home. When I lived in the refugee camp, I learned that the regime burned down our house in Bhutan. I was saddened when I realized that my stash of school supplies had turned into ashes. Notably, that realization became part of my motivation to continue my education further. I am excited that you'll never have to go through a similar situation in your home country.    

I am sharing these stories from our past for one reason only. I want you to know that you will continue to have more than is needed to excel and succeed academically and socially as a person. 

"I will be fine," you assured us right before we dropped you off at your school today. We, too, hope that you'll be just fine. Keep rolling, girl; We can't wait to hug you upon your return from school today!  

With unconditional love, 

Your Baba (Dad)