advice

June 7, 2026

Regret and the “Could Have Been” Man

At some point in my young life, my mother said, “Regret is a painkiller for fools.”

I don’t recall asking her to explain herself, but I believe she referred to two possible responses to one’s past.

First, there is the sadness and lingering wish that comes with mistakes or missed opportunities.

Second, the regretful apology some offer after injuring you.

Whatever mom intended, her choice of words and the way she spoke them revealed bitterness—even contempt—for those who allowed themselves to be preoccupied with the unchangeable past.

The guidance implicit in those six words described her attitude toward life. There was no looking back at the days gone by, except as a complicated experience. Instead, she lived in the present.

Beyond defending her family, Jeanette Stein offered intolerance and unforgiveness to those who injured her, writing them out of her life without the possibility of reconsideration or return.

—–

We can grieve losses and mistakes. Often, we can apologize. In the absence of direct communication with the injured party, confession is available. Both therapy and some religions encourage it.

Yet long past disappointments must be approached differently. The “if only” quality of self-blame and lost time is often addressed by recognizing at least three things.

Life does not permit the fulfillment of every wish, and chance can change everything.

People tend to exaggerate the perfection and transformative virtue of the road not taken. The avenue not pursued often towers over everything else we accomplished. It shimmers in our idealizing imagination. The path we chose, in contrast, is imperfect: the wrong choice, so we believe.

One must make the most of what the world offers in the moment, accepting our imperfect wisdom and limited ability to predict the future.

Recognizing the remaining possibilities is the essential next step.

Add to this formula Rilke’s poetic reminder of what to do:

You must change your life.

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, offered similar advice:

Waste no more time arguing  (with yourself) what a good man should be. Be one.

Now on to a gentleman named James. The YouTube video below offers a six-minute example of a wistfully regretful life, but not a desperate one. This chap describes his history and what disappoints him about himself as he reflects upon the darkness and shadows of his past.

Despite James’s self-denigration, I hope you notice a tiny spark of possibility. More about this after the video.

James wears his Scot bonnet tam with a flair. It reinforces his impeccable taste. This Irishman lived on three continents and moved from his country to London. At the same time, he tells the interviewer that he is “the greatest failure who ever walked the planet earth.”

Another might say his tale is more than usually interesting.

Our hero’s list of failures includes no profession, no money, no wife, and no friends. He is the “could have been” man.

With enough money to be stylish, the care he takes in using the photographer’s name, and the gift of making people laugh, James is not without talents.

His biggest problem might be a preoccupation with what could have been, himself, his loneliness, and a belief that his story is over.

Over or yet to be?

As Rilke and Marcus tell us, the ink is not dry, and blank pages in the book of our lives stare back at us, waiting.

Write.

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The top image is a 1916 self-portrait of Egon Schiele. 

May 31, 2026

Who Lives Inside of Us?

Who lives inside of us?

Those we love, for sure.

The ones who supervised us and taught us, and those we trained and took under our wing.

Those we dislike? Some, for a time or for years. It would be best if we could vanquish the fire within ourselves and place the disliked inhabitants in a safer, quieter location.

To do otherwise means to hold anger and burn away the days of our lives. We are distracted and sleepless, and think of how to return the hate in kind.

The old saying goes that if you want revenge, dig two graves. The second will be your own, since the wrath leaves a scorched earth and continual unhappiness. The flames rob us of the world’s beauty, a chance to grow, and the emotional room for fraternity and love.

One other group of those who live inside.

The departed, some living, others not. They include the recalled faces of youth and the years past. Add the corner grocer, the third-grade friend who moved away (Joel Lee), the neighbors who offered kindness, and our favorite teachers.

I am thinking of myself in this and those around me a while ago.

Not least, relatives played a part in my life. The way they hugged, put an arm on my shoulder, and smiled or winked, as if the two of us had a secret.

Include the grandmother who gave me a coin each time she came to our house. Add Steve Henikoff’s mom, too. Mrs. H. introduced me to Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies. They were so delicious, I wouldn’t have traded them for a trip to heaven!

Nor have I forgotten the neighborhood cutie (Susie D.) who always smiled at me, as if waiting for me to wake up and spend time with her. 

She died too soon.

A 5th-grade girl named Marilyn lost a parent. Heart disease felled the breadwinners in family after family in those days. So it appeared to me.

Polio terrified parents, too, until Jonas Salk developed a vaccine in the mid-50s. Few recall that Dr. Salk tried the vaccine on himself during his experiments.

Think of it.

In fifth grade, I discovered girls. Female classmates had been masquerading as males, but wearing long hair and dresses, until the day everything changed. 

My eyes, on their own, traveled to Sharon’s underpinnings. Limbs, my eyes reported, didn’t just prop you up and help you to walk.

Sharon and I were invited to a boys’ and girls’ party and participated in a game of Spin the Bottle. A minute later, she and I found ourselves in a dark room alone. 

“Gerry, do you know that the most beautiful girl in the world is deaf?”

No, I answered. 

“What did you say?”

Good legs and funny!

That was many years ago. I wonder if the charmer is still alive. A witty young woman.

I remember Bob Hanel’s father, a tall man with a small dog—chatty and kind. The man, not the dog.

Mrs. Schallmoser emigrated from Germany and babysat for my brothers and me. One day, sometime later, I asked her about Hitler. The family left Germany before he took over, she said. A gentle woman.

Mr. Sharon, no relation to my girlfriend, owned a candy store. The kind man called me “son.” He and I talked about the Chicago Cubs, our favorite, hometown team.

Jerry S. moved into the neighborhood as a seventh grader, a year older than me. Jerry and I attached a long string to two empty cans and kept the string straight across and above the alley separating his house from mine. Of course, we didn’t displace Thomas Edison’s work, but we talked a bit about our creation.

Kenny Shively, another friend who lived nearby, played the accordion. Johnny Costea, a year or two ahead in school, introduced me to swearing instead of Ken’s squeeze boxes.

Johnny was a fan of Batman, the comic book hero who later made it to the movies. To John, Batman’s town wasn’t Gotham City but “Goddamn City.” 

Imagine a time when the brazenness of those words packed a whallop.

Much of what I am talking about happened in the alley between Washtenaw and Talman, the 5700 block, in Chicago. The city’s residential blocks are full of those alleys, about 90% of them. Along with empty lots, the alleys were like a second home for boys who lived for softball in the summertime.

These concrete playing fields included garbage cans, telephone poles, and the malodorous deposits left by the dogs their owners walked.

The poet Carl Sandburg called Chicago the “City of the Big Shoulders.” Bruised one’s, too, if you ran into the closed garage doors that governed each side of your alley or lost your balance and said a hard hello to the concrete beneath you.

Please allow me to leave you with this.

Let me start with an old saying about memories and the people we recall. The words take many forms, but the essence is this. We don’t die until the last time someone who remembers us mentions our name.

But here is a sunnier version of the importance of carrying another with us and in us. The punctuation below the YouTube reading is the poet’s:

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

By E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
 
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
 
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
===========
The top photo includes Materials Used During the “Claiming Our Memories” Session at GLAM Wikii in Montevideo, Uruguay by Pribellini. The second photo is Election Night in Barcelona by Marc Lozano. Both were sourced from Wikimedia Commons. 
May 17, 2026

“I Wouldn’t Have Done That.” Our Search for Certainty and Control

I imagine you have either said or heard someone say, “I wouldn’t have done that.“

Perhaps you were right; you wouldn’t have.

I have a question, though.

Were you ever in the same situation as the person who took the wrong step?

Perhaps the circumstance under scrutiny is a catastrophic financial loss due to a risky investment.

Another example: a married person cheats on their spouse with a notorious new, young partner.

Finally, you read about a Jewish man who chose to stay in Germany before the worst of what the Nazis were capable of.

Again, the comment offered by many is, “I wouldn’t have done that.” Moreover, along with it comes the judgment of those who made a choice we assert was wrong, foolish, or immoral.

How do we maintain certainty — holding a position of no doubt about what we would do — if we never lived the experience?

Take the Holocaust for just a moment more. We look back on this epoch as history, and most of us possess only surface knowledge from school, movies, and books. Those who endured the cataclysm could not find a description of the upcoming horror in textbooks not yet written.

Almost no one at the time thought the most civilized nation in the world could be the birthplace of the unspeakable.  Germany was a place of scientific discovery, superb musicians, and towering visual artists. The genocidal murder of six million was planned there, with the intent of killing still more.

Or consider this. An old relative who lived as one of the homeless left a nephew $600,000, though he had been cold to her for years. The other surviving family members, some of whom showed her kindness, received nothing.

What would you have done if you were the beneficiary of the windfall? What would you have done if you were one of those who received nothing?

Keep reading, and I will describe what happened in one such family.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” and similar beliefs offer an imaginary certainty. Ancient Greek philosophers, however, recognized that one must be tested to know oneself.

Certainty of how we would face the future is related to control. The fabrication of a desirable future supports a positive self-image of moral rectitude. Some who assume they would act well envision personal nobility under pressure. They resist temptation and make sacrifices to help others.

Some do not think the problem through, but quickly default to the belief in their basic decency. They are therefore less troubled than they might otherwise be. This is accomplished by telescoping their vision of themselves to a place where they possess mastery, resist desire, display bravery, or show uncommon generosity.

Are they moral men and women, or people of high standards they have not met except in their mirror?

Conviction in our responses to hypothetical questions predicts command — the capacity to bend conditions when needed and impact the world rather than becoming its plaything. Of course, the only way anyone can discover tomorrow’s reality is to face a situation that is neither part of our past nor our present.

Put another way, we have made sure our magic mirror tells us we are the fairest of them all, or, at least, better and wiser than the person who made the mistake.

This is comforting. To avoid unsettling ourselves, there is value in believing a few things for which we have limited evidence or experience.

To manage our lives and protect ourselves, we think we can handle most of what might come our way.

And yet, there is much we don’t fathom, and much disappointment never happens. Resting easy is a decent strategy. Most of us sleep better that way.

I am no enemy of optimism and try not to claim a heroism I have not earned. Here is an incomplete list of things about which I have some knowledge and others about which I do not. Note the incompleteness of my lived experience:

  • I am not a woman and do not claim to have full comprehension of the many internal and external aspects of life encountered by women.
  • I would say the same of gay men, since I am not gay.
  • I treated a majority of women.
  • I have endured surgical mistakes.
  • I listened to thousands of stories in the course of my career.
  • I am a fine storyteller, omitting details that might identify former patients.
  • I was raised by a mother of broken emotions and a father who worked multiple jobs outside the home.
  • Acquaintance with aging has taught me about age. I tolerate significant and continuing chronic pain.
  • I enjoy the Midwest and the East Coast and have lived in both, but have spent no time living in the South.
  • I have visited several foreign countries, but not resided in any of them.
  • I love to laugh, I laughed with many of my clients, and have a wonderful time with lifelong friends, one of whom I met in 5th grade.
  • I have loved, and I have lost. Love is better when reciprocated with enthusiasm.
  • Most of my patients were Christian. Though I claim no faith, religion enabled some of them to lead better (and sometimes remarkable) lives. I also witnessed this magic elsewhere, including within the Orthodox Jewish community. The faithful celebrate life’s joys and search for the light, especially in times of darkness.
  • I have never faced my death, though I am comfortable talking about mortality as an abstraction.
  • I served as an expert witness and underwent cross-examination multiple times.
  • I have never been divorced, but treated a multitude of souls who were.
  • I’d have liked to have been in the body of Willie Mays for one game in the prime of his baseball career, just to enjoy what it was like.
  • I was consulted by the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team as a sports psychologist for one season. They didn’t want me back.
  • I was the beneficiary of my aunt’s $600,000 estate. Upon learning this, my wife and I decided to divide the total equally among my two brothers, two cousins, and myself.

We were the nieces and nephews of my aunt. I gave a small portion to the Zeolite Scholarship Fund, a philanthropy that I began with my old high school buddies.

Despite my values, I cannot promise or foresee how I will behave in many situations and can only guess what the future will evoke in me.

Memory tells me how I felt and acted at the ages I was and in the places I happened to be.

I shall discover what unveils itself the rest of the way.

==========

The first painting is an Untitled, 1950 work by Franz Kline. Next comes a Towering Cumulus, 3/3/2020, East Valentine, Nebraska, by Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. Finally, Sunflower, by Gustav Klimt.

May 14, 2026

How to Avoid Defeating Ourselves

“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that things are difficult.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Consider making two lists. The first includes all the troubles you have endured, as well as your successes, joys, and triumphs. Number the times you acted as Eleanor Roosevelt advised:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Add the fears and anxieties you have overcome, including those expected disasters that never arrived in full force except in your imagination.

The second list is different. Include the risks you never lived, but for thoughts and nightmares, defeating you before you took them on.

These are the inert, self-created monsters of intimidation, like the diving platform of infinite height at which you stare, from which you never jump.

Internal fear factories create predetermined defeats. The failed advisors masquerade as wise instructors, but mislead us and diminish our confidence.

Do you remember the poor advice and anticipation sufficient to undo us?

  • Avoiding doctors because of the dread of a digital rectal exam.
  • Dodging or giving up on a rope climb to the gym ceiling because of predicted embarrassment or injury.
  • Never stepping into the elevator headed for the top of a skyscraper.
  • The terror of making public speeches. You expect paralysis of your vocal cords to the point of speechlessness, and rivers of perspiration enough to drown in. So you think.
  • Deciding to ride in a car, but not a plane.
  • Staying away from injections of any kind.
  • Going to a restaurant with a companion, but not alone.

Living a full life is a matter of quiet daring.

Not tomorrow, not after you do the dishes or mow the lawn, not waiting until you read a book to prepare yourself.

Not ’till then, you say. But soon there are no more thens ahead, only the irretrievable time behind you.

Throw yourself in, make mistakes, and jump back in the game. Now.

We needn’t announce our brave plans the same way we count all the steps back we’ve taken. Our indecisions and hesitations build one upon another.

That is the real risk: to be crushed under the weight of what we don’t do now and never did before. Heavy, immovable legs fix us in a position of unfreedom.

Do not remain a prisoner of fear and indecision. Liberate yourself. Cognitive Behavioral therapy can help.

A jail break or a lifetime in the slammer are in your hands.

It is time.

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The photo at the top is Beauty Salons by Mostafameraji. It is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

May 10, 2026

Where Do We Find Intensity?

Boredom is not just a word but a state of being. The condition is amplified by the world’s various forms of entertainment and by all the watching we do.

Intensity requires preparing ourselves inside, ready for action. Often, we peer at what is outside more passively.

Gawking, we are bored. Not much fun and not necessary.

Think television, radio, YouTube, theater, concerts, and attending sports contests. Computer games, too, but especially time in front of the desktop. Add sitting with your phone in your hand and your eyes riveted to the screen.

Yes, all these can provide excitement, but we often sit and see, and sit and respond, or sit and listen. Passivity leads to passivity.

I have been excited by those experiences and the venues I have listed. All can be wonderful, but a full basket of beheld events or sounds overheard can be an addictive trap without participation.

The weariness of working life, unless your job excites you and charges your mental batteries, makes the snare desirable. Too much routine back home pushes us in the same direction. 

We move less than our ancestors. Their lives included walking, running, lifting, pushing, and climbing, not sitting and steering a car.

For most of human history, labor meant working under the sun, creating and using implements, and planting and harvesting crops like wheat and tomatoes. 

Yes, alcohol, distracting and addicting, claimed many of our predecessors. Still, their entertainment involved dancing, playing card games, target practice, acting in community theater, drawing, writing letters, interacting within inches of another person, and playing sports.

People made music together in their homes. In Germany, friends and family joined for Hausmusik—music at home.

Kids still show the way to a life of intensity. They run like crazy,  live for a ball game, tackle each other, dig in the mud, jump on a trampoline, push their siblings, and ride bikes. They build, with or without the encouragement of toys.

Youngsters are active, and their actions overflow with inner churning, demonstrable ups and downs, laughter, and tears. They act out the videos they see and pour imagination like sweet syrup onto everyday play.

One of my grad school professors, Lee Secrest, used to say, “Don’t dress up because the event is exceptional; you dress up to make it exceptional.”

Put another way, we can alter the emotions and skills sleeping inside of us, and change the way we experience life.

Kids won’t tell us, but there are times we would do well to become more like them. Artful teachers, too, can make learning exciting and fun. Intense in the most joyous way.

Children learn every day. Do we?

Somewhere, for many but not all of us, the passing days become a march without much delight.

Here’s something different if it fits the space of your life and your needs.

  • Test yourself. Do the things you have never tried or have given up. Sometimes this means school, with regular testing as a part of formal education.
  • Perhaps it’s time for a career change.
  • Try word games and unfamiliar expressions. Practice a speech and deliver it to yourself in the audience of your mirror. Record it, listen to it, and study the tempo, variation of soft and loud, humor, and how to build up to a climax.
  • Terrified? Repeat. Watch, hear, and scrutinize commanding speakers on YouTube or TED Talks. Attempt it in front of a few people or a crowd.
  • Consider joining Toastmasters International. It helps participants speak with confidence and wit.
  • Memorize a favorite poem.
  • Sing alone or in a group.
  • Learn to play chess.
  • Dance.
  • Enjoy sex with someone you love and with whom you are in love.
  • As you walk along a peopled street, spend time moving your eyes away from your phone. Survey your fellow men and women with care. How are they dressed? What is their mood?
  • One of the faces might be a future lover if you act in the moment. Another might be a waiting soul hoping for someone’s hello.
  • Notice the clouds overhead and, one hopes, the deep blue in the sky. If the sky is gray, travel elsewhere to find the color of yesteryear.
  • Bathe in the architectural differences of buildings, recent and old, and find the beauty and graceful lines in the best of them. Seek the trees, birds, and flowers.
  • Plant something and make it beautiful and lasting.
  • Visit an unfamiliar neighborhood, museum, part of your country, or another land.
  • Read books you don’t tend to choose. Better to pore over the classics before 65, the age at which their old world became new to me.
  • Swim.
  • If you suffer from skin hunger, purchase a pet. Dogs want to be touched and love to lick. We return the favor except for the licking. At least, I hope so.
  • Again, do what is hard, scary, risky, challenging, in small steps or leviathan leaps. A Stoic philosopher offered this observation:

I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you. — Seneca, On Providence.

Do you view life as a performance and fear the crowd’s judgment? Then consider this. Most forget your miscues within hours or days. They are busy thinking about their own lives, not so much about yours.

Regarding tests, the oral exams of a graduate education might be more amusing than you think.

Laughter isn’t typical, I admit. Rather, it can be a grueling process of grilling questions by three professors who evaluate you and your written work, offer possible criticisms, and demand major changes to your thesis.

Oral exams tend to generate much anxiety in the examinee, and I was no exception to this. 

The examining committee first meets by themselves, then calls you into the room to join them. After exchanging greetings, the chairman (your advisor) opens the gathering to queries from the other participants.

And so eyes turned to Dr. Philip Brickman, who asked me the first question in my defense of my Master’s Thesis:

There is a very serious problem with this thesis.

Dead silence ensued. My anxiety level went up 400%. I began to imagine my future taking a wrong turn into three lanes of oncoming traffic.

Then, after a pause that lasted for ages, Dr. Brickman pointed to the Acknowledgments section of the thesis and said:

Philip is spelled with one “L.”

I had spelled his name Phillip, with two Ls. The memory of what happened next is gone, except for the relief.

Soon, I received a Master’s Degree, and later a Ph.D., after another oral exam.

Think of this as one item out of your own catalog of difficult moments—a leap you believe is beyond your talent. You anticipate an Olympic high-hurdle competition.

Reality is different. Once you are over and past the barriers, they shrink. 

The hard stuff now in front of you gets easier. Looking back, if the event required courage, you recognize a change in who you are.

You have enlarged yourself within yourself. A life of wider possibility awaits. 

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Disney World, the work of KlipschFan, is the top photo. Next is Haus der Musik Vienna, Austria, which is attributed to Joseolgon. Finally, In the Box by Mary Cassatt, 1879. The first two are sourced from Wikimedia Commons, the last from Wikiart.org/

May 3, 2026

Why the Clock is Essential in Therapy (and Relationships)

Therapists do not eye the clock only to avoid disrupting their schedules. They also monitor it for therapeutic reasons. Without the counselor’s awareness of a rising emotional temperature within the person he is trying to help, his client can fall into a trap.

It is best if the weightiest issues are brought into the discussion well before the conversation must cease. Psychologists should remember the individual’s history and the concerns that have been in play within his recent past. Absent that knowledge, inadvertent damage to the treatment process and the client’s trust in him are possible.

The clinician needs a sense of how much intensity and additional raw emotion might tip the patient over. Unexpected feelings evoked late in the 50-minute hour may leave him vulnerable. Moreover, the client might wonder why his time with the therapist upsets him. Rage, anguish, sleeplessness, or sadness may cause him to question why departure from the office leaves him with an open wound.

None of the above suggests that a therapist will never extend the appointment duration or plan to meet more often. Even so, sometimes it is useful for the psychologist and patient to discuss how to approach tender issues. There are major differences among clients in developing the strength to delve into them.

Therapy can be like a dance, and at its best, the partners move together as if choreographed, not out of sync. The same is true of pairs out in the world, whether they are friends or lovers. Unless they have plenty of time to handle a heavy conversation, the wise refrain from talking about such things late in the day.

Be mindful of the time and who you are with. We all forget the passing minutes on occasion.

None of us wants to begin or end things on the wrong foot. The solution is not to be found in a shoe store or a podiatrist’s office either.

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The image is called Red Staff by Rudolf Bauer, 1937. It comes from Wikiart.org/

April 19, 2026

How Much is Enough?

Some say that people in the USA never think they have enough. An old friend once suggested an answer:

Too much is enough.

More money, up to a point, is enough, in theory, but we don’t fashion our lives in theory. We endure with jealousy, laughter, desire, hope, anxiety, joy, cheers, boos, toasts, dismissal, handsome and gorgeous companions, routine, exotic vacations, boring jobs, joblessness, and more.

The Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, said:

To be happy, you must eliminate two things. The fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past.

He urged us to live in the only other available mental and emotional state: the moment, meaning this moment and every other one to come.

One can sometimes find peace by staying in the present. Perhaps this occurs in the stillness of meditation or when your mind is caught up in the flow of a task, a movie, a book, or a roller coaster ride.

The philosopher points out that we cannot change what is behind us. We therefore ought not to punish ourselves with the whip called regret, forever reliving the flogging of yesteryear.

A commitment not to repeat the mistake is essential before we place the strap in a strongbox to render it harmless.

The unknowable time ahead is the domain of Seneca’s other piece of advice. The future, he argues, creates more consternation than it deserves.

Nonetheless, the time ahead is inhabited by the catastrophizing balloon man who inflates our less serious concerns to the point of bursting.

A brief recollection of the many fears that did not come to pass can help reduce feverish, false, painful anticipation. An equal recall of having survived worrisome challenges offers the remembrance of endurance, a capacity still within us.

Another enemy of contentment is the sense that we are worth less than those we admire, leading us to compare ourselves to their achievements or the past and departed triumphs of our younger selves.

The road before us always forks, leaving one or more paths untraveled. Once down the chosen highway far enough, we come to recognize its imperfections.

The direction not taken survives, however, in an idealized form, existing in a fantastic unreality, fueling our lamentation over a decision impossible to undo.

We are left without enough, without the fulfillment our dreams urge us to realize. A necessary sober discovery informs us that the unchosen alternative is similar to the Christmas gift of which we would have tired within a few days.

Aging schedules a one-sided, unrequested meeting, delivering a progressive loss of capacities. We are not the hardy, risk-taking, fast-moving, limber, energetic, quick-thinking wizards of the early days.

The best solution is to maintain as many of our abilities as we can, accept what we cannot recover, and commit to what remains enjoyable and fulfilling.

The ghost of our past self must be dismissed, lest it rob us of our well-being in an unwinnable competition.

The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell said this about expecting too much of life in our endless hunt for more, no matter what we already have:

The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible.

The man who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, the Council of Trent, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness.”

Russell tells us to escape ourselves—diminish our self-preoccupation. As noted at the top of the page, many of us are born into expectations of success and the pursuit of it.

We need to move beyond the billboarded reminders of material things, palatial homes, the goal of writing books still read in 300 years, and wealth to place us in the 1%.

Better to listen for the quieter prompts to mend, contribute, and provide for what is needed elsewhere. Human and animal suffering remind us of those who are needier than we are.

A portion of what contributes to having enough is the beauty around us: the art, nature, painting, theater, ballet, poetry, and music.

Friends provide their own benefit, no less essential to a satisfying life.

Think too of the random smiles, those who serve us when we shop, the souls who cut our grass, and the graceful display of a young body swinging a baseball bat.

Don’t forget chocolate. There is never enough of that!

Kurt Vonnegut, the award-winning novelist, wrote the following poem on the subject of this essay, using his late friend, the famous writer Joseph Heller, to illustrate his point:

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer

now dead,

and I were at a party given by a billionaire

on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Not bad! Rest in peace!

==========

At the top of the page is King Midas from Wonder Book, the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Arthur Rackham, 1922. It is followed by a Photo of an Old and Young Woman in Traditional Ukrainian Clothes, by Mikhail Kapychka. Both of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons. A picture of Kurt Vonnegut comes just before a discussion of his poem in memory of Joseph Heller.

April 12, 2026

How Well Are You Living — A Scorecard

Most of us are grateful that the daily newsfeed doesn’t report our personal failures. You don’t get graded, as in school. Nor do your hits and misses become an object of attention as they do for professional athletes.

In my day, all Major League Baseball trading cards included a picture on the front and the player’s career statistics on the back. A slab of bubblegum inside the pack you purchased was a bonus.

Imagine such cards for all of humanity, and ratings of each individual’s life performance updated once a year:

  •      Dating Success    C+
  •      Kindness               B
  •      Work Success       D+
  •      Mood                    C
  •      Parenting              B+
  •      Weight                  A-
  •      Attractiveness       B
  •      Wealth                  C-

Sorry. No bubblegum.

Would you want to know how your fellow humans rate you?

Would you like to be informed of your marks on a challenging test?

An old friend didn’t.

When his SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) results arrived in the mail (before the internet), he tore the envelope and its contents into small pieces and threw them away without reading the scores.

I was there.

He was admitted to Northwestern University.

Each person could provide their own categories and ratings, but they wouldn’t align with the rest of the world’s categories and ratings. It’s a necessary thing, isn’t it, that others keep their beliefs about you secret most of the time.

When might you find out such things, assuming you do?

Perhaps when your parents tell you what your teacher said about you. Annual performance reviews at your job insist on communicating whether you fit. When your friend, neighbor, or spouse is angry, you might hear it in their voice.

None of these consists of the full, detailed, and unimpeachable truth.

The validity of the information depends, more or less, on its application to one situation or another, and on the other’s diplomacy, affection, disappointment, and projection of their own problems onto you.

How would you deal with the alleged exactness of a negative report? Not everyone allows themselves to admit the dirtiest bits, the most contemptible indictments.

Beyond that, you might refer to your truth as “my truth.”

Here is a thoughtful comment on the “My Truth” movement from Hungry for Authenticity

By not having a precise definition, the “my truth” movement is being true to itself. Let me explain. The whole concept of “my truth” is that everyone’s truth is relative, as in, it’s personal to them. Therefore, “my truth” is in direct opposition to objective or absolute truth. To have a clear definition would put an objective truth label on the “my truth” movement. This is contrary to what it stands for! If there were a precise definition, it would defeat the whole purpose of “my truth.” The beauty of the “my truth” movement is that it can be whatever you or I want it to be.

Is it possible to combine all the details you receive from outside and inside into perfect autobiographical accuracy?

The completion of such an endeavor, inclusive of the owner’s evolving self-perception as he ages, recasts and refines his being as a person in motion.

An identity can be understood and recognized for a time, but as time goes on, man adapts, experiences more of life, and changes, whether he recognizes the modifications as they happen.

The best that you can do is to recognize some, but not all, of those shifts and revisions.

The truth of what one is can only be approximated. Unless you have been tested in situations that require courage, taking on danger, or enlarged self-sacrifice or generosity, you have not yet explored all your possibilities.

Where does that leave most of humanity? Your friends have their own opinions, but their frankness and honesty are not always on offer.

Your superiors have theirs, but the annual review is based on a single evaluator, possibly including a small number of additional voices, and, as a result, offers a limited perspective.

Your therapist? The professional wants you to feel secure and trust him. He tries to believe in you.

His observations occur only in the office or on a screen. The shrink’s clinical experience, you hope, generates insight.

If you are fortunate, he sees you as you wish to be seen and helps you create a possible future, including a fresh, modified version of yourself.

Your spouse and children? They witness more of you than most, but not necessarily the best of you.

Who are you, then? You might only come closest to fathoming that at the end of your life.

An additional, essential question, while you still have time, is who do you want to be, and how will you recreate yourself? The answers depend, in part, on your honesty about who you are.

Self-awareness grows from the important and wise opinions of those who know you at home, from truthful friends, and from the necessity of finding work and doing it. At your best, you try to acknowledge and remedy the flaws you struggle with and build on your strengths.

And you must be aware that time is short. No one can accomplish everything; not all roads lead where you want them to. As Steve Schmidt wrote yesterday on Substack:

The use of time is highly personal.

Its apportionment is foundational to happiness, and the decisions around with whom to spend it are keystones of life.”

If you are satisfied in the end, your scorecard doesn’t count for much. The record books, full of others’ opinions and ratings of your performances, have been noted.

As to the rest, dispose of them, albeit a little later than my friend’s SAT scores.

Here is Edmund Vance Cook’s entertaining position on all of this and more. A misleading title, but otherwise to the point:

 

Did you tackle the trouble that came your way

With a resolute heart and cheerful?

Or hide your face from the light of day

With a craven soul and fearful?

 

Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,

Or a trouble is what you make it,

And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,

But only how did you take it?

 

You are beaten to earth?

Well, well, what’s that!

Come up with a smiling face.

It’s nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there-that’s disgrace.

 

The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce

Be proud of your blackened eye!

It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;

It’s how did you fight-and why?

 

And though you be done to the death, what then?

If you battled the best you could,

If you played your part in the world of men,

Why, the Critic will call it good.

 

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,

And whether he’s slow or spry,

It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,

But only how did you die?

==========

The first image is Blurred Flowers Taken From Train at Beer Heights Light Railway by The Wub, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Next comes Gustav Klimt’s Hymn to Joy (detail) from the Beethoven Frieze of 1902. It is sourced from Wikiart.

Finally, Children Playing on the Water Playground in Front of the Tegetthoff-Denkmal at Praterstern by Metinkalkan, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

April 5, 2026

Beware, Especially of Bad Advice

The best advice about advice is to consider the source. One might do better to read from a blank sheet of paper than listen to an advisor with a track record of endless mistakes.

People do well to ignore the guidance of anyone who has not lived the kind of life they are shooting for, troubles and all.

Rather than giving you a list of what to do, here are a few mistakes therapists observe or discourage.

  • Avoid, avoid. Dodge everything. Take no new chances. Hide. Tell yourself you are too young, too old, too worried, too traumatized, or too insecure to take action.
  • If you are afraid of rejection, say no first. You will be alone for eternity, but you will never sustain the wound of spurning or abandonment. Your only possible buddies will be those who hide behind larger rocks than the ones you use.
  • Rationalize. Never admit fault. Regret nothing. Give reasons to yourself for what you did or are going to do. Take no responsibility. Blame others. Harm them because, in your mind, they deserve it.
  • Never be a Mensch. According to Wikipedia, Mensch is a Yiddish word that figuratively means “a person of integrity and honor.” Leo Rosten characterized a Mensch as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real Mensch‘ is nothing less than … rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, and decorous.”
  • Make promises at the same time you formulate multiple excuses for not keeping them. Seek the absurd high ground of unreliability. Your friends will depart soon enough.
  • Cheat. Steal marbles as a kid for some early life practice. Tell yourself you will never get caught, because you are charming and more intelligent than all the suckers in the world. Consider it a calling.
  • When someone provides you with a service in a store or elsewhere, never say thanks. They are getting paid by their employer, aren’t they?
  • Never think about the condition of the democracy. Someone else will do the worrying for you. Persuade yourself of an excuse for inaction. Ignore the famous saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
  • You owe the world no help, even though the world needs repair. Carpentry might hurt your hands.
  • Become the thing you hate. Consider your parents, siblings, spouses, and your boss. They are among the most suitable candidates for the list of the undesirables who ruined your life. Then become as much like them as possible, the better to ruin someone else.
  • Lie. Keep track of your lies for a possible introduction to your autobiography, and enjoy escaping the limitations honesty imposes. Yes, your kids and spouse will learn from you and be better at it. They might even teach you new tricks.
  • Don’t read books. They will destroy your innocence.
  • I had an aunt who was a grifter. She found used objects by dumpster-diving and resold them. Florence placed free ads in the Chicago Reader, mischaracterizing the loot. A man paid her top dollar for what appeared to be excellent audio equipment. When the stuff didn’t work, the buyer called to request a refund. Ever ready, Florence stated, “Who do you think you are dealing with, the CEO of Macy’s?”
  • Live like the world owes you fairness and complain when it doesn’t. Think of yourself as the most unfortunate soul on the planet.
  • Rank order all the injustices you endured during your lifetime. Wear a favorite t-shirt with the word MARTYR on the front. At day’s end, you will discover someone stole it, perhaps your spouse.
  • Think of all the ways you can go wrong. Bedtime is perfect for this, since it will destroy your sleep. Read articles about unexpected and unavoidable catastrophes. Give in to fear.
  • Let the days pass you by without realizing you are mortal. The horror of your discovery of a wasted life will descend upon you too late. Time is unrecoverable.
  • Make a bucket list and imagine the distant days ahead when you will do the things you have always hoped to do. Better than knowing you might be a different person by then, or deceased.

  • On the question of whether you are metaphorically alive, bury the thought. If the idea recurs, confuse yourself by eating blueberries while upside down. As an added bonus, eat enough junk food to gain weight.
  • Forgive no one. Holding grudges will improve your digestion. As the old saying goes, if you want revenge, dig two graves. Pay in advance.
  • Keep the TV, radio, or movies on all day, every day. Check your phone as much as possible, waiting for the job or mate you’ve always hoped for.
  • Seek the kind of work or play you can do without exerting yourself. The time spent on mindless inactivity crowds out other possibilities. If the environment is noisy, the sound will impair your capacity to think about what is important and how to change yourself.
  • Depend on others. Believe they will always be there to take care of you. Dependency means others can take advantage of you or rage at the helpless burden you have become. Ignore the signs that you are undesirable company.
  • Stay at home, collect things rather than experiences. Empty beer cans count.
  • “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” These are the words of Satchel Paige, the Hall of Fame pitcher.
  • Live with shame and embarrassment, making these feelings a regular part of your day.
  • Hide who you are. Never be real, genuine, or authentic. If someone dislikes you, you will thereby avoid awareness that it is you who is detested rather than the role you play.
  • Appearance is everything. Your clothes are everything. Shopping for the latter is everything. Cosmetic surgery will fix what your wardrobe can’t disguise. Live a life with little human contact, but lots of selfies.
  • Don’t display interest in others. Don’t recognize their discomfort or fragility. Keep thinking of only what you need. Others are irrelevant, whether they are homeless or your relatives.
  • Stay at home and do not travel. Shun the human race. They are not worth your time.
  • Glare down on everyone, as if you are royalty and they are vassals. Take a last, long look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you are the top dog in a dog-eat-dog world.
  • Steal dog food from old people just for fun, and, if necessary, even from your dog.

==========

The top photo was Laura Hedien’s entry to the Royal Meteorological Society’s “Storm Hour Photo of the Week.” The image is an Old School Bus during an active aurora night in Coldfoot, Alaska. The next photo is a Sunrise in Utah, August, 2024.

Thanks to Laura for her permission to display these marvelous pictures: Laura Hedien Official Website.

March 29, 2026

“In Defeat, Defiance:” Suicide and the Danger of Giving Up Too Soon

Is suicide ever justified? Is it permissible to give in to the despair and hopelessness that life can bring, to “end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks”* of an unlucky life?

Under what conditions?

Before you answer, a cautionary tale.

The little girl was born in approximately 1889. She was five years old when her parents died in a home fire. Two older brothers, themselves only in their late teens, were now heads of a household without a home.

The farming community in which they lived in Lithuania (then a part of Russia) offered few vocational prospects and certainly no way for them to support their two younger siblings.

A neighboring family made them an offer. In return for the promised work services of the five-year-old and the slightly older sister for the next seven years, the head of that family would advance the two boys enough money for passage to the USA. By then, it was hoped, the brothers would have sufficient funds to arrange the overseas transport of their little sisters.

And thus, this poor little five-year-old, already having lost her parents, was separated from the older brothers she loved.

What is seven years to a five-year-old?

Eternity.

But the family with whom these children lived was good to them, and the brothers made good on their promise. They kept in contact by writing letters to their sisters and, after seven years, had enough money to arrange for a reunion in the USA.

—

The now 12-year-old girl was named Johanna. And it was not too terribly long after, when she was 16, that she met the man who was to be her husband.

Her brothers had been supporting her, as well as their own young families. It was time for her to marry, she was told.

She had to choose among the suitors available in their small town of LaSalle, Illinois.

The man she chose was 16 years her senior, 32 years old. A coal miner. Farming and coal mining were the chief vocations at that time and place.

Johanna had the first of her five children when she was 18. Life was relatively peaceful, and she made the best of the marriage that her brothers had required of her.

In her 37th year, things changed. Johanna felt less than her best. At first, she thought little of the fatigue and shortness of breath. Others noticed her pallor. Meanwhile, her appetite diminished, and she suffered from diarrhea.

Eventually, the symptoms could not be ignored. The local physician diagnosed her as having pernicious anemia, a disturbance in the formation of normal red blood cells.

There was no cure. Johanna’s doctor estimated that she might live for one year.

LaSalle, Illinois, was a small community. And in that place, at the same time that Johanna received her death sentence, so did another young woman, a mother and neighbor.

That person became profoundly depressed and hung herself.

Johanna did not. She did not want to leave her children and her husband in such a fashion. There were things yet to do for her children, messages to impart, care to deliver.

And then there was love to bestow upon all of them. The love she missed once her parents died and her brothers left the country.

Johanna informed her children that she was going to die before long. She instructed them on what they needed to know to take over her household duties and become independent.

This woman also told them they would almost certainly have a stepmother eventually, and to welcome her as if she were their own mother.

—

In 1926, the year of her preparation for death, Johanna Grigalunas could not know that there would be a second World War 13 years in the future and that the country of her birth would be consumed by it.

She might have heard of Winston Churchill, the man who became Prime Minister of England for most of that conflict. But she would not have been aware that Churchill battled depression himself.**

Things were particularly dark for England in 1940. All of continental Europe had been conquered by the Nazis, and night after night, the great cities of that island nation were bombed by the Luftwaffe, Hitler’s air force.

The British Empire stood alone against the Third Reich and expected an invasion of its land. The United States had not yet entered the War, and there was no certainty that it would.

In October of 1941, Churchill was asked to speak to the students of Harrow School, an independent boarding school that was his alma mater. Most of his words that day are now forgotten. But his job was to rally and inspire a nation, as well as the young men to whom he said:

“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in…”

Virtually no one thought England would survive. But Churchill did, and the Nazis were defeated.

—

Just as she could not know of the geopolitical events ahead for the world, Johanna did not know that two separate research teams, one in England and one in the USA, were searching for a cure for the disease that afflicted her.

Thus, in 1926, George Richards Minot and William Perry Murphy fed large amounts of beef liver to their patients with pernicious anemia, building on the pioneering work of George Whipple, who had demonstrated that red blood cell production in dogs could be enhanced by this method.

It was determined that a daily diet rich in liver would prolong the life of those with this disease. All three scientists received the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Eventually, the crucial healing component in the liver, vitamin B12, became available by injection.

—

Johanna Grigalunas lived to be 93, more than a half-century beyond the medical death sentence that she received in the 1920s.

Now, you might ask: how do I know this story?

I met Johanna Grigalunas, almost blind but full of life, when she was over 90.

You see, Johanna was my wife’s grandmother.

==========

This essay was originally published on September 2, 2010. The present version has been revised.

*The quotation is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The top image is Winston Churchill. The quotation in the title is from Churchill himself: “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.”

The image beneath Churchill is a 1964 untitled painting of Paul Rego.

**Churchill is reported to have suffered from depression off and on throughout his life. He referred to it as his “black dog.” On the subject of suicide, he said the following:

I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.