Scott Cawelti

12/15/78

I remember clearly the night I decided to drop out of my social fraternity.

I had been "active" for one semester. I had gone to most of the meetings, parties, pinnings, rehearsals, dinners, and so on, and I was beginning to wonder — just slightly — if there was anything in my world besides Alphas and Omegas.

Anyway, it was a nice fall night, and I was busy trying to study some music for my classes (I was a music major at the time), when I had to quit for a "pinning."

A "pinning" was not just a wrestling term in 1962; in the fraternities, it was a ceremony where the fraternity honored one of its Actives who had given his frat pin to his sweetie. This signaled hands off to campus droolies who might have been after the sweety. .

Anyway, the proud Active and his pre-fiancee dressed up and stood on the stairs of her dorm while all the members (dressed up too, of course) gathered in formation and sang bad music like "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" and "Halls of Ivy," and maybe (if they were lucky) "Tell Me Why." The brick walls echoed with fraternal harmonies, at least when we sang on key.

Then we would file by the couple and shake hands with him and smooch her and that meant they were officially "pinned." It was romantic but time-consuming.

These pinnings, counting rehearsals, ceremony, and handshake-smooch always took over an hour, and we had an average of one a week all fall. And you had to be there, or be fined.

That particular night I was restless, and so were some of my brothers. We began giggling and chortling on the way to the dorms, making loud cracks and animal noises, just to let off steam, you know. It got a little out of hand, and the song leader went red and yelled, "C'mon you guys, act like Chi's!" ("Chi" was part of our Greek name.)

That got me. "Act like a Chi," I thought. "What the hell does that mean?" Immediately I knew what it meant: act like a good boy, don't make trouble, don't raise any questions. Just play your Mortimer Snerd dummy role and fit in.

With somewhat of a jolt, I realized that I wasn't really a "Chi" at all; that I never had been. I didn't fit in because most of the functions bored me to tears, the pledge activities were silly if not barbaric, the conversations we had and even the friendships we formed were wafer-thin. It was time to quit.

So I got out, first by going inactive, then by completely disaffiliating.

And my life got better immediately. I was somewhat wealthier for not having to pay dues and fines. I grew smarter because my circle of friends began to include non-Greek questioners.

And I got back to some more fundamental college activities like thinking, reading, and writing.

This is not to say I didn't have fun or became a bookish hermit. Far from it; I remained active in a professional fraternity. This was a group whose main purpose was to help its members grow competent in a specific professional field. This was an extremely helpful organization whose social functions offered plenty for me.

That was entirely different from the social fraternity, whose major purpose was self-perpetuation at whatever cost (it seemed) to individual members.

From what I have saw, fraternities and sororities still remain expensive makers of dummies: the Mortimer Snerds and Charlie McCarthys of America. Lovable, laughable, harmless — and dumb.

This 34 year-old-column speaks to anyone who struggles with an overstressed life, I think.  Back in 1978, I was overwhelmed with my life--finishing an advanced degree, struggling with a fledging teaching career, newly divorced, etc. etc.  

TM, or Transcendental Meditation, worked for me then--and I STILL meditate now, twice a day.  I think it's added years to my life, honestly.  

Any kind of meditation works if undertaken conscientiously, but TM (mantra meditation) was among the easiest and most relaxing.   

5/19/78

Everyone has a favorite social problem. Some say racism is rampant and deserves constant attention; others insist that capitalism is the root of all evil, with money running a close second. Still others favor drugs, pollution, television, nuclear proliferation, over-population; the list of social problems goes on.

My favorite problem is stress. Like pride used to be the No. 1 all-time Deadly Sin, Stress is the No. 1 all-time social problem. (We've exchanged social problems for sin here, but that's another column.)

Just a glance around any roomful of adults will reveal the effects of stress. People are overweight, overdrunk, overtired, oversick, overworked, overdrugged, and too soon underground. Literally everyone I know has some problem with stress. Their work, their schedules, the pressures they feel, the incredible changes they've seen (men have been on and off the moon for almost a decade now!) all make for a definite need to find some effective, healthy way to release stress.

Sleep, of course, is the one of the best stress-relievers. So is laughing and crying. So if we could sleep, laugh and cry enough we could release most of our daily stresses and feel quite good. Show me someone who can't sleep, laugh or cry, and I'll show you an unhappy soul.

Other ways of releasing stress are less effective, though probably more attractive: drinking, sex, dancing, (not necessarily in that order) participation in physical sports, and talking with shrinks. Some of these have the side advantage of being fun, too. But the problem with all of these stress-releasers is that they provide highs that are almost inevitably followed by lows that create even more stress. So unless you like roller coasters, these stress-releasers are best avoided, except for the side advantages.

The only way, I must say, that I have found that really does release stress is meditation. Now wait: I don't mean thinking about something intensely for a long time, nor concentrating on an object like a candle or a belly-button. I'm speaking of Transcendental Meditation, or TM.

TM is a form of meditation that requires almost no effort, is completely relaxing, and it has actually made me feel less and less stress in my life. I'm getting to the point where I feel relaxed almost all the time. And not glassy-eyed passive relaxed, but simply released from those stresses that kept me from enjoying myself. (Consider: has mental tension ever helped anyone enjoy anything?) My old neurotic highs and lows have been replaced by a deep sense of well being that is itself a high, but is not subject to the lows.

The TM meditation technique seems to give me two restful twenty-minute breaks everyday, without the fuzzy-eyed hangovers that daytime naps can bring on. Thus I get deep rest that relieves more stresses than sleeping—or crying and laughing, for that matter.

I would never say that TM is the only way to release stress. It is simply the only way I've found that works for me. Besides, it helped get me off cigarettes, and I had tried to quit for eight years.

Now I know all the objections to TM—I had them myself. It's expensive, it's a religion, it's the MacDonald's of meditation, highs and lows are part of a creative life. Most of these objections are from people who really haven't bothered to look into TM. I find that just about everyone who actually tries it for awhile knows that it works; stresses begin to disappear.

In other words, after years of going around all stressed up, TM truly helps people finally get unstressed.  

It's both energizing and liberating.