love

September 17, 2023

Rarely Mentioned Marital Mistakes

The unexpected things a patient says in therapy change the counselor’s understanding of why his client chose partner A instead of B.

We usually think desire is fueled by physical attraction, the wish to be cared for, a sense of humor, strength of character, and emotional or financial security. Having children, too. There are more motives, but I will add three you might not have considered.

1. Feeling Sorry for the Other:

Several women said they married because they felt sorry for the potential mate. The sorrow might have been due to illness on one side or emotional torment on another. The second wife of George Orwell gave in to her ambivalence about the author of 1984 because of his desperate sickness, for example.

Some of the ladies in question perceived their future husband as socially clumsy and gave in to his proposal because of his childlike nature — his lack of finesse and awareness of quite what to say or do. He seemed earnest but not suave, or perhaps unsophisticated and innocent.

According to Mari Ruti, the late feminist philosopher, society conveys the message that a woman’s job is to adapt to and repair a man. She is expected to be empathic, work around his flaws, and fill the relationship’s empty or broken spaces.

This “cruel optimism” too often leaves a wife taking the blame for what her husband lacks or what remains difficult to tolerate and manage as a couple. Ruti suggests the result will not only be the woman’s self-blame and sense of failure but a waste of years when her assessment of what is possible is too hopeful. The emotional drain on her robs life of its possibilities.

2. Persistence:

Some men will not let go. They are tireless. Female patients often told me they were not attracted to their future spouses when they first met. With time, his display of kindness, generosity, intellect, sensitivity to her vulnerability, and decency convinced them of what had been missed on first acquaintance.

A less desirable outcome also exists. The excellent, hidden characteristics noted above do not always appear. Instead, the fellow wears down the woman’s ability to resist because of insensitivity, bullying, or controlling qualities. She might also persuade herself that time will remedy the difficulties.

If she is tired of dating, hears her biological clock ticking off its remaining seconds, and can think of no other desirable man she has recently encountered, the white flag of surrender might be raised.

3. Searching for the Opposite: 

Many single individuals create a list of qualities they seek in a relationship. It sometimes happens, however, that the most essential quality determining their choice is the unhappiness they experienced in a past relationship. In addition to avoidance of a similar person, the searcher may hope to stay away from anyone with traits identical to a parent.

Imagine a former abusive lover. Of course, one wishes to avoid one more. But will the choice of someone different yield an individual who is weak, too deferential, without the capacity to assert himself, or the expectation that his partner will provide most of the strength of character for them to take on the world?

Looking for the opposite isn’t limited to unkindness of a physical or verbal kind. If your father could not financially support his family, seeking someone preoccupied with making money but otherwise emotionally unavailable generates a different type of problem.

Imagine a former partner who had no religious faith and ridiculed your own. If this issue dominates your exploration for someone else, your new romantic interest could be more extreme in his attachment to his faith than you are.

I also heard more than a few who told me their dad was lazy. The result was marriage to a person who ate work for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. After that, the one who sought someone different than the father was consumed by loneliness.

Since no one has complete self-awareness, choosing a lover is complicated. Finding a well-matched partner when the unconscious casts a secret ballot makes the task even more difficult. Then, of course, there are hormones to consider and passion that sweeps away all doubts about the choice.

None of the above is intended to discourage you from enchantment, fulfillment of desire, or the comfort of one who understands you and whose thoughtfulness and loyalty are priceless. Instead, consider this essay a reminder of the need to look inside yourself and observe caution to the extent possible.

As the Knight Templar in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said, “Choose wisely.”

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The above images are all the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and are sourced from Wikiart.org/ They represent three of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, and Winter.

August 27, 2023

What Might There Be … After Life?

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Never having been there, I am short of first-hand knowledge of the afterlife. Nonetheless, my focus here is to treat this topic as a thought experiment, including what I and others have imagined about life in the hereafter. 

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When I was a kid, an athlete who hit a home run or scored a touchdown didn’t make an enormous deal of it. Today, a significant number point to the sky, presumably to heaven, to give thanks.

In some cases, this represents a “Gott mit uns” attitude, a tribal view some countries adopt in and out of war-time: “God on our side.”

Other jocks state they are expressing gratitude for the gift of health and talent they received from God. This assumes one’s definition of an omnipotent deity includes distributing individualized skills to humans.

A casual conversation about heaven often includes the hope that our parents are looking after us from beyond the grave.

Of course, the thought is lovely. But what implications follow if paradise consists of people concerned about what is going on back home?

One such question this raises is how interest in our sometimes problematic lives might interfere with their never-ending happiness once they have entered the great beyond? Witnessing a child’s continuing hardships, accidents, injuries, and disappointments is heartbreaking and challenging enough when you live here.

Who among us wishes for emotional suffering to be written in the playbook of life after death?

Instead, let’s assume “the dead don’t care,” a refrain in Thomas Lynch’s book Undertakings. Lynch is a published poet and a professional undertaker, so his vantage point is unique. If our parents and loved ones no longer care about us (assuming they reside in heaven), they must be different creatures than those we knew on Earth.

Consistent with Lynch, when the actress Farrah Fawcett died in 2009, Michael Jackson’s nearly simultaneous demise overshadowed her life’s conclusion. A few of my patients expressed sadness that the media didn’t attend more to her passing. As Thomas Lynch envisions it, however, Farrah wasn’t bothered.

Again, “not caring” appears outside our customary belief about the nature of the hereafter. The petty jealousies of life, the hunger, the (at least) occasional insomnia, the worry, and so forth do not fit most heavenly visions.

If indifference to what occurs on our planet is characteristic of the afterworld, I doubt we would recognize celestial inhabitants as similar to their earthly incarnations. Moreover, I imagine one would be so transformed in conveyance to heaven as to have difficulty recognizing oneself.

A change of that sort might point to a different explanation of how heavenly life would be untroubled among deceased Christian parents who hold on to the attachment to their kids past the death that usually precedes that of their child. Romans 8: 28 offers these words:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.

———-

After Life is an intriguing Japanese movie from 1998. Recently, deceased countrymen assemble at a transit station to the “beyond.” Each is given several days to decide on their version of eternity. They would then live forever in whatever brief interval they choose from their just-ended time on Earth.

The wayfarers are assigned a counselor to assist them in choosing. To live “in the moment,” that is, a particular moment forever, necessitates relinquishing the ability to think back and remember the past, as well as gaze forward and anticipate the future. 

Experiencing the most precious happening one can recall involves sensations and feelings attached only to a sliver of time. The dead then would no longer have access to thought, analysis, worry, reflection, or concentration on other things, including positive experiences and events.

Because of that limitation on their future, the people in the waystation struggle with giving up all other recollections and relationships in return for eternity within a single juncture in time with a singular focus.

From the outside, once past the choice point, eternal bliss sounds like a heaven worth wishing for, assuming one chose a joyous, exciting, or touching event from one’s life. It also raises an interesting question: What moment would one choose?

Another possible future after death might be to reside beside a righteous, all-knowing, all-mighty being so dazzling as to render all imperfections and doubts mute, allowing us to share in his glory and shining presence.

Yet most of us fear our ending, the act of dying, or both. Why?

Shakespeare’s Hamlet fears a terrifying afterlife. As you learned in school, his famous soliloquy begins, “To be or not to be …” Hamlet is considering whether to kill himself: “not to be.” The King of Denmark, his father, has been murdered, and his mother unwittingly married the murderer, his uncle.

At first, this young man imagines a post-worldly existence consisting of eternal, restful sleep. But what of the possible nightmares, the Prince of Denmark wonders?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. …

Another film on life and the afterlife is Defending Your Life. Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep star as two forty-something deceased yuppies who meet in a beautiful metropolis after expiring, a place of ease for those who have just departed life. In a few days, they fall in love.

During their stay in Judgement City, as their temporary location is called, they are subjected to a three-person tribunal determining whether they will go to a higher level of existence, something like heaven.

Streep’s character was a heroic, generous, and loving woman in her lifetime. A better future seems certain for her. For the Brooks persona, however, things aren’t looking up. He never overcame his many fears and always played it safe. As a result, he risks being returned to his home planet, never again embracing the woman he loves. The future remains in doubt.

No spoilers. The story is a funny, entertaining, and wise take on the need to grow in wisdom and courage throughout our lives: to be brave in facing whatever comes.

Next stop, Judgement City? Not too soon, I hope.

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The top image is Stratoculuili from German Wikipedia, September 2004 by de: Benutzer. Living Shadow.

It is followed by four glorious 2022 photographs by Laura Hedien with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. The first two are pictures of the Sunset in the Italian Dolomites. Next comes a Great Plains Summertime Sunset and, finally, an Italian Dolomites Sunrise.

August 6, 2023

Last Words: Be Careful What You Say

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg/500px-Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg

We tend to think of last words in terms of famous quotations. On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein (no relation to me) was asked, “What is the answer (to the meaning of life)?” Her matter-of-fact response was, “What is the question?”

John Adams, our second President, alternately rival and friend of Thomas Jefferson, found some relief and gratitude in the belief that “Thomas Jefferson still survives” as he (Adams) lay dying. What he did not know in the pre-electronic year of 1826 was that Jefferson had, in fact, predeceased him by a few hours. Nor did either appear to reflect on the irony that these founding fathers both expired on July 4.

On a less ironic note, students of American history will recall the story of Nathan Hale, captured and convicted of spying on the British during the Revolutionary War. “I only regret that I have but one life to give my country,” uttered Hale before his execution.

More locally, Chicagoans might have heard of Giuseppe Zangara, an anarchist who took aim at President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as he and the Mayor of Chicago shook hands in Miami’s Bayfront Park on February 15, 1933. The bullet hit Mayor Anton Cermak, who reportedly told FDR, “I’m glad it was me instead of you.” Cermak died soon after and is memorialized to this day with a Chicago street that bears his name.

There are other kinds of last words, of course. The father of legendary musician and conductor Carlo Maria Giulini gathered his family around his deathbed to remind them that the word love, “amore,” should guide their thought and conduct throughout their lives. And one can only imagine how many times the word “love,” the words “I love you,” have been on the lips of the dying and their survivors at the end of earthly things. The religiously faithful have been heard to add, “See you on the other side.”

The last words of our parents tend to linger in our memory. We are often cautioned to part from loved ones on a high note, not a dissonant one, lest someone is left with the recollection and pain of a final disagreement or the regret of injuring a loved one in what proves to be their last possible moment.

Two unfortunate examples from my clinical practice come to mind in this regard. One woman, whose mother had died many years before, struggled to shake her mother’s last-minute assertion, “You’re an ass, Jenny (not her real name).” It is not the only example I can recall hearing from one or another of my patients. But the all-time cake-taker, the grand prize winner in an imaginary Hall of Shame of ill-timed and venomously expressed invective, are the words of a rebellious teenager to his severely taxed father.

A long history of mutual destructiveness typified their relationship. It seems that the Pater familias was inept and self-interested in raising his son, and the son repaid his parent’s cruelty and clumsiness with as much drug use and petty crime as he could muster. Nor did it help that the family was under financial pressure and that the two adults in the home were a poorly matched pair.

The father had only recently sustained a heart attack when the school reported to him and his wife that the son had been suspended again. The “mother-of-all” shouting matches ensued between the middle-aged man and his first-born disappointment. And then, the last words: “You’re going to kill me.” And the reply, “You deserve to die.”

Not 24 hours later, the words were realized. Deserved or not, the father was dead. And even though one could easily make a convincing rational argument that his death was not produced by his son’s words (or, at least, that the killing heart attack was waiting for whatever the next stressor was and would have happened very soon even without the argument as a trigger), it is easy to imagine that the sense of guilt would be lasting.

I’m not opposed to standing up to people who have injured you, including your parents. To say, “I know what you did (even if you deny it or justify it), and I won’t let you do it anymore,” is sometimes perfectly appropriate. That self-assertion can be therapeutic, even though it is usually not essential.

You can recover from childhood mistreatment without facing the offender. Witness those individuals who do so when their abusive parents are dead and therefore unavailable for real-life discussion. What is essential, however, is to make sure that the mistreatment stops. This usually means that you, the now adult child, must stop it: walk away, say “no,” or hang up the phone — whatever is required.

If you aim to change the offender instead, be prepared to be disappointed. Most won’t change or even admit that they did anything wrong. But if you wish to overcome your fear and master the situation, that mastery, at least, is possible.

It was better to live as Giulini’s family lived, with love at the center of their being. I’m told that the old Italian expression for this is “volersi bene” or “voler bene:” an untranslatable sentiment indicating that you cannot be happy without the happiness of the other. Yes, much better this way.

Perhaps it is no mistake that the words for life and love are so close in English and German. Change the word “live” by one letter, and you have “love.” In German, change the word “leben” (to live) by adding one letter, and you have “lieben” (to love).

Not just last words or Giulini’s father’s last words, but words to live (and love) by.

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The 1935 photo of Gertrude Stein is the work of Carl Van Vechten, from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The second image is Carlo Maria Giulini. The final photograph comes from The Lonely, a 1959 episode of the original Twilight Zone TV series. Jack Warden and Jean Marsh are pictured.

July 30, 2023

I’d Like You To Meet My Deceased Father … Sort Of

When you meet someone new, you try to catch up to the life he lived before the moment of your arrival. Who were you before? Where did you live? Who did you love? What were your parents like?

Maybe you don’t ask. Perhaps you think the backstory doesn’t matter. After all, it’s who this person is now that counts, you say to yourself.

But I’m a psychologist by nature, training, and experience, so I’m the sort of person who asks. My wife’s dad, Thomas Henek, died a couple years before we met. He had his issues, but he survived battle in World War II, something he volunteered for despite being too old to be drafted.

Mr. H. had many friends, the kind of men who knew Tom would stand with them if the chips were down. They came in droves to his wake and funeral, and, at a time when men weren’t supposed to, they wept for his loss.

We sometimes miss knowing people by inches. Think of performers who passed away or retired before we had a chance to see them.

Yes, they leave recordings behind, but the communal experience of sharing the concert hall with others is rarely reproduced fully by electronics. Thus, the opportunity for a state approaching intimacy is gone forever.

Face to faceness becomes impossible.

Several years ago, however, I was prompted to rethink all this. Maybe there was a way to “meet” someone deceased, short of retrieving her from Hades, as Orpheus tried with Eurydice.

This brings my favorite uncle, Sam Fabian, to mind. My brother Jack acquired some old soundless movie film that had been transferred to DVD and gave a copy to me as a gift of sorts. Sam had been filmed by his wife almost 75 years ago while he played golf, probably on his honeymoon.

My uncle died when he was 50 in 1972. The silent film reminded me of his antic quality and the imposing 6’4″ animated presence that made him irresistible to almost everybody. He was a big man with big ideas and towering, thick-wristed strength; you had to look up to him.

The film recreated and enlarged my memory of Sam, something that stories about him or still photographs never do with anyone. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie film is worth far more.

Mr. Fabian moved, and the movement was both touching and delightful. You had to watch him move, or you could not know him any more than you can grasp the measure of a gifted athlete without seeing him play or a magnificent orator without hearing his voice.

Think of all the people we missed because cinema came so late in human history. Women and men like Joan of Arc, Plato, Harriet Tubman, Moses, Jesus, Jane Austen, the Buddha, Pocahontas, Marcus Aurelius, Caesar, Cleopatra, George Washington, and more.

But the title of this essay suggests I might “introduce” my late father in a palpable way, a man who is forgotten by history except for those who loved him. Impossible in the conventional fashion because he died 23 years ago.

Ah, but he lives on in audio recordings and a four-hour oral history video I made of him almost 40 years ago.

Were you and I friends or mates to whom fathers mattered, you might want to know him, the better to know me. If you wished to understand how I came to be as I am today, you’d learn how he spoke, the way his mind worked, the manner in which he told stories, and the values he communicated to his three sons: myself, Eddie, and Jack.

You might look into his eyes.

I made that video because I knew there would come a day when Dad would vanish, as we all do. I made it because he could speak to the generations of his descendants and allow them to learn where they came from and the goodness of his being.

I made it because I loved him.

The past is valuable if we learn from it, just as books and films are essential to our self-understanding. To my mind, they are of desperate importance, now as much as ever.

Maybe more.

One piece of advice. If you ever meet someone who means the world to you, don’t forget to “introduce” her to your deceased parents or ask to meet her own. They still have something to say, to influence, and to reveal.

No matter what you believe, they are not done with you yet. Or with those you meet along the way.

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The top profile of Milton Stein, my father, was made in Paris in 1945 during World War II. The city had been liberated from the Nazis six months before.

The second image is Thomas Henek at the time of his confirmation in 1923.

The photograph of my Uncle Sam, probably taken in the 1940s, is uncharacteristically somber. His family was desperately poor during most of the 1930s. You can interpret the few dollars he placed on his body as you wish. The photo on the dresser displays a picture of himself.

July 16, 2023

The Take and Give and Forth and Back of Love


When we think of love, do we wish to give or receive? The answer is personal and includes both, but not always.

Let’s begin with reception. We wish to be loved, to feel it, and recognize the other’s patience and fixed attention.

Who doesn’t want to be heard, known, and understood? No one.

We dream of three words. Many wish they could speak the exact phrase unafraid: to utter “I love you” while holding the hand of the beloved and viewing eyes full of color, luster, and lust only for you. There is freedom and risk in this; a tightrope walk to a fuller life or a shattered heart.

We hope to be taken seriously, beyond appearance, to the recognition of our wholeness — neither objectified nor commodified. Sex, yes, but more. Tenderness, concern, sacrifice, poetry, and astonishment, too.

Flowers and candy are desirable but don’t necessarily convey much thought.

Which flowers? What kind of candy? Do you know her favorites? 

The best gift tells of a search for what will bring tears to this person and no other because such a present comes from insight, awareness, and comprehension of a non-generic heart.

Love is the unmarked path from complexity to simplicity — intense but easeful in the end, alive with smiles, humor, and touch. 

You extend yourself not to create indebtedness but because you wish your partner joy, and her joyfulness pleases you.

As the French call it, amour exists in the space before and after scent and sensuality. It lives between seeing and hearing, words spoken and those unsaid. There is a back and forth to it, a fullness inside to the point of bursting.

To be in love seeks no replacement part or participant. Someone new is unnecessary. It does not wait for a more fitting other, more dazzling magic, a trade of this for that as if dealing in stocks and bonds.

There are always possible substitutes, but the lover does not seek them like next year’s cellphone, with new features and claims of more than you imagined.

The nature of “the one” creates beauty lasting in the eye even when other heads no longer turn in her direction. You see her image afresh, permanently as she was.

Bonded hearts contain shared challenges and friendship, as well as intellectual admiration. The sensation is like an anesthetic trance you wish to last forever. The appreciation of the other fills your hours and fuels the want to say “yes” and give until the waterfall crests. 

Some important advice: do not take this wondrous state for granted. You must renew its lease. 

A living, loving romance is playfulness and laughter. Youthful when aged, the grateful amazement and contradiction of excitement amidst stillness. Secure because you are not alone and as close to oneness as possible.

How do you know it isn’t an illusion? You don’t, not yet, maybe never, though it helps to share histories and hardships, your separate worlds before you joined them.

Here is an unreal reality worth seeking. That at least once, when together, the world will disappear. Then, no women or men shall exist but the two of you. Call yourselves Adam and Eve, or whatever names and genders apply.

And when you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will know who stands before you as if for the first time.

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The photo is the 1898 work of Frank Eugene, initially published in Camera Work. It is called Adam and Eve, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

May 23, 2023

Waiting for Your Love’s Return

Before the idea of sex captured you, what did you wait for? It was the stuff of children, you included, crossing out the calendar’s Sundays and Mondays leading to birthdays, holidays, and visits to the amusement park.

The anticipation of gifts filled the time, coupled with the unimaginable prospect of 365 more days until the celebration came back for an encore performance.

Expectations made one irritable, restless, and eager, like a race runner on the starting blocks and ready to go.

Despite awareness of the long delay, the concrete, oversized bricks of time stuck to their slow slog toward whatever fulfillment lay ahead.

As I grew up, other matters became worth knowing, meaningful and necessary in a very different way.

The knowledge of how I arrived in this world was among them.

I asked my dad; of course.

Yes, the sex question.

He responded:

I planted the seed.

That’s a quote, by the way. Four words. Fake news of a sort carrying an indecipherable truth. 

Thrown by the answer, I pictured corn and beans and all sorts of vegetables grown by farmers. Did a family farmer produce me too? I thought my dad worked at the Post Office!

Did his children arrive in the mail, sent with a spear of asparagus?

It took me a while to recover from this confusion, delaying my sexual development by a decade.

Love came, but I also learned about how it can disappear.

Affairs of the heart sometimes grow stale with routine. Just as the psychologist tries to make each session new, the passion of the early days of romance demands renewal. It is best sustained when the couple works to keep the enchantment fresh, a bliss that makes us smile.

My folks didn’t have that problem. They knew what it meant to be separated.

They experienced an interrupted honeymoon phase of their relationship when my father was drafted into the army after less than three years of marriage. Two and a half years passed before his return from the war in Europe.

Dad made a recording for my mother while away, and his recorded voice aches with tenderness and desire. His letters, too, carried those emotions.

He rushed from the dock when he returned with a boatload of troops from France to New York City. His first call was to her, the one.

Such stories of war, waiting, and reunion repeat the tale of Odysseus, the inventor of the Trojan Horse. After ten years of fighting to breach the walls of Troy, it took him another ten to reach his kingdom of Ithica and his wife, Penelope.

She remained faithful, putting off the pursuit of many suitors for her affection and riches.

Milton Stein told me about his own Odyssey in 1986, 40 years after he heard Jeanette Stein’s telephonic voice, his speech breaking with a wave of feeling as overwhelming and alive as it had been on March 6, 1946 — as alive as they prayed he would be.

He had waited for her in every sense, every part of him, as did she wait for him.

Most of us have homecomings of one fashion or another, seeing again those friends or relatives we missed. Sometimes it is our hometown or country itself we have longed for.

Do we know how much we miss anything — until we miss it; how much we love anyone until we are separated and in doubt?

The time we hold our breath has its way with us unless we transform it and squeeze tight the foreshadowed vision that makes us wait. Whether for Christmas, the amusement park, our family of origin, or an endlessly delayed reunion with the love of our life, we hope for this, we live for this: the never-guaranteed next time.

Just as a gifted therapist works to defeat the routine to which weekly meetings are susceptible, we all have the opportunity to make life’s fleeting moments special.

Learn patience, and bridge the terrible time and distance while dreaming of the gifts those efforts reward. They will fuel your ardency and gratitude.

My dad never gave me a clear answer to my childhood question of how I came to be.

I didn’t realize he would do better much later.

The tears in his eyes in 1986 told me all there is to know about love.

May 14, 2023

Of Love, Hate and the Love-filled Joy of Children

My grandson got married, but I wasn’t invited.

Amazing, isn’t it? All I did was show him love and buy him things. OK, he just turned four years old, and his parents weren’t invited either. Nor, from what I hear, were the parents of the bride.

I’ve seen photos of him holding hands with his “wife,” even in preschool.

Shameless!

Who knows what they do when no one is around?

But if this is how love starts, I approve. Fill your hearts full, children, because life will drain them, too — then, with luck, refill them again. Kind of like going to the gas or petrol station.

As to anger, let me say a little about that.

Anger is like a multi-blade knife with blades sharpened to a keen edge, mindless of who it cuts and capable of slicing both ways.

Where does such intense dislike come from?

First comes love, then rejection, then reaction to the dismissal from the life of another. A whisper saying you’re fired, no matter how delicate the voice.

Or, perhaps the starting point of antagonism is a failure to win respect, approval, and acknowledgment. Loathing can grow from the absence of caring parents or the simple difficulty of achieving success, however you define it.

Therapists have all heard the conventional wisdom that depression is anger turned inward. Don’t forget, however, that anger can result from disappointment in life turned outward.

We live in a competitive world, including competition for mates. Someday these two kids will seek consolation for a broken heart.

Someone will say, “Oh, you are better off without him,” or “He isn’t right for you,” but such statements rarely console.

Neither do they provide solace when the words are, “Oh, you are better off without that job — it wasn’t right for you.” Of course, both the young ones are far from the job market.

As we witness a world with more than its share of anger beyond romantic and professional disappointment, many of us are triggered by something less tender than lost love.

Some feel displaced from their spot in the world, their previous role as a worthy breadwinner, or as a person known for giving good advice and helping a neighbor fix his car.

Populist politicians and their allies play on this sense of injury, fomenting anger upon anger like a giant test tube full of bile with daily inflammatory statements, addictive but strangely validating.

Yeah! He gets it. It’s not my fault. I’ve been screwed! It’s THOSE people. They don’t look like us, don’t believe in our god, and steal our birthright.

My grandson and the love of his life don’t know about any of this. They only know about respect, affection, friends, and toys. Maybe an occasional “enemy,” meaning a minor league bully or two, but nothing serious.

We all want love, don’t we? We all hope for applause, a job that pays well enough, status, and an appreciative mate. We all hope to be well thought of, praised, and admired by those to whom we are close. 

In a different world perhaps this wouldn’t be much to ask for, but these days we are too often replacement parts that have been replaced.

Confronting a sense of disappointment in life, too many hunger to pay back those they think are responsible. They only need a model and some encouragement. When all the guys are whining, somehow whining is OK, not as shameful as it used to be.

Still, we search for someone loveable. If politics enters that pursuit, it can be contaminated by opinions that tend to be unloving.

We are not as companionable as we were a few years back. Now we grind our teeth or laugh at the ones “ruining” our country, whoever they are, however preposterous the claim.

We lack the innocence of my grandson and his companion. Indeed, when she was ill and away from school for a week, he missed her and worried about her, dear boy.

Lucky for them, they are not on the internet, an occasionally monstrous place. Many of our interactions with fellow humans come electronically, where plenty of anonymous hatred can be found.

Despite all its wonders, metaphorical bombs are easily thrown by those who are literally out of sight.

If one imbibes the toxic message of anger now widely distributed, I doubt one will become more tender or charming. The four-year-olds have innate wisdom and sweetness, qualities not characteristic of those addicted to TV’s political anger-fests.

Nor will the Rageaholics have much reason to approach those of different races, nationalities, ethnicities, or religions, perhaps even those who pray to no god.

Trust me — one of them might be “the one.” Or, at least, a friend not so different from you as you thought.

We live in a time of loneliness, the anonymity of cities, and the solitary pursuit of “being your own person,” however worthwhile that may be.

Though the small ones don’t know it yet, the time of our lives walks and whistles quickly past the clock, especially if one desires to be loved.

Companionship begins with a decision to pursue it, knowing armorless vulnerability places the heart at risk. The kids haven’t learned that yet, either.

Bless them.

The second decision is this one, made by a wise man over 2500 years ago:

I don’t have time to hate people who hate me because I am too busy loving people who love me.*

An ancient Chinese man said this, but the kids I’m talking about live it.

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*Laozi, also known as Lau Tzu (the “Old Master”) born in 604 B.C.

The first image is a 1957 photo of Two Children Holding Hands by Irvin Peithman, sourced from Wikiart.com. 

May 7, 2023

When There is Nothing More to Say to Your Lover

At a certain point, there is nothing more to say. You can repeat yourself, of course, but if you have not been heard the first thousand times, the next 250 probably won’t matter anyway.

They will grind up your insides and do the same to the one who is tired of your pleas, complaints, and sadness. The logic and reasons you spray at him are like the water in a hose over grass already drenched, changing nothing.

You live together. That’s the sad thing. You are touch starved amid thousands of opportunities for touch. You used to try. Now you’ve given up, but still, the topic arises. The one you are with doesn’t listen but interrupts while you ask why. He gives no answers and doesn’t seem to have them.

He looks at you, hears you, and has no idea what you are talking about.

The man lives in a world of books and television, work and buddies, small bets on football, and hobbies. The rest of the world, the life you shared, the youthful passion — all that was — is unremembered and unthought. Oh yeah, it was like that, wasn’t it? It all happened in the time of cavemen, a now-distant epoch that seems to have vanished. I’m not a caveman, he says. Is that who you want? Uhhhh…

But he’s an excellent provider; there’s that. And a swell father and you do your part more than ever. Taking care of the social end of the family, helping with homework, and much more.

Does that matter, or is it assumed, you wonder? He never says.

Your integrity falls into the category of qualities taken for granted. You would never cheat anyone, never lie, never be unfaithful. You are honorable, though sometimes unkind when the frustration and loneliness, the craving can’t be ignored.

He won’t go to marital therapy. His life satisfies him.

Sometimes you feel like a male honey bee — very strange since you are female. But the male — the drone — mates and then dies. At times you sense you are dying inside.

How was it for you? You asked the insect. You wanted to know.

Let’s just say we drones mate once for less than five seconds. Heard enough?

The tiny fellow expired before he could say more.

Yet you love him, the man in your life, and know he loves you — in his way. You have grown out of sync.

Was Tolstoy right when he wrote about families in Anna Karenina?

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Nobody’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault, you tell yourself. I shouldn’t complain, you say; look at all that is fine. But, just to check things out, you speak to your dearest friend. 

For the first time, to anyone.

You want her assurance that your life is good, even though there are things it lacks in the department of the heart. So you speak, and when you finish…

You: Everything is ok, right?

(Silence).

Right?

(More silence).

RIGHT?

More silence, then…

AHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

—————————-

Both paintings are works of Joan (pronounced Juan) Miro. The first is The Escape Ladder (1940). The second is  Persons Haunted by a Bird (1938).

April 29, 2023

What Would You Give Up To Make a Relationship Work?

Can you have everything in a relationship? For those who can, if it lasts well beyond the honeymoon, you deserve more than applause. Cheers and hugs all around. 

For all other satisfied twosomes, your mate will fall short of scoring 100%, and so will you.

Perhaps those who succeed in living with the imperfect are the couples we should praise. They will work for their happiness, including the effort to recognize what should be changed and what can be lived with — accepted without recrimination.

Given that, try to peer through the springtime bloom of new encounters, those glorious moments of newborn bliss. Here is a two-sided list of qualities in your present or future lover to consider waiting for, insisting upon, or setting aside.

Which of these do you want? Name the items you can’t live without. Perhaps make a separate list of the qualities sure to bring unhappiness and discontent.

Evaluate for yourself the benefits and the costs.

  • Does your mate give you the freedom you want or try to limit you?
  • Are his parents wonderful to you and each other? Study the model he’s had for how relationships work. That might be your future.
  • If the one you love doesn’t modify some of his characteristics, would you be able to accept that? Which might be deal-breakers?
  • Is he playful, unsmiling, or both?
  • Does he treat people with kindness, including acquaintances and strangers, regardless of rank? Does he display generosity of attitude and temperament?
  • How much unsolicited judgment and criticism is sent your way?

  • Are necessary and sincere apologies offered? Will this individual then reflect upon himself and change, trying not to repeat the errors? There will be errors, you know.
  • Sexual compatibility, anyone?
  • Are you in-sync and accepting of his hobbies, friends, money management, musical affections, sports, and fitness? How about pets, travel, and hopes for the future? If you assume rather than search for the answers to what the other is like, you might be wrong.
  • How self-aware is your romantic partner? Many people believe they know themselves despite enormous blindspots. If the intimate friend cannot now recognize his dark side, you may find yourself in the dark.
  • Do you agree about taking chances versus choosing the safe path? Do your preferences for deliberation or speed and patience or impatience match?
  • What about sharing a sense of humor?
  •  Have the two of you created a workable division of housekeeping, managing finances, doing the laundry, and other life tasks? Do you coincide in terms of tidiness and messiness?
  • Is he sensitive to you? Does he listen and provide comfort or point to solutions you didn’t request when you desire an attentive ear and consolation?
  • Are differences resolved with words, careful listening, compromise, apology, change, and recovery without blinding rage? Do your hands touch in tenderness?
  • Will the spouse defend you with family, friends, and children?
  • Consider learning about his history of friends and lovers. If he hasn’t made them last, why not? He might not see any pattern, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
  • Would he discuss such a list of questions as this and honor the reasons for the request?
  • Do you share a vision of childrearing?
  • Are you attractive to each other and satisfyingly attentive to scent, attire, and appearance?
  • What about lies, towering or tiny, deceit, and fidelity?
  • How do you mesh in being direct or indirect, confident, and assertive?
  • Where do you stand on religious faith or its absence? Is the other accepting of any difference in this domain? Does he fathom why the two of you might not agree and accept it?
  • Are your ideas respected?

  • Couples often say they were first drawn together by the fun and the physical in the early stages of their relationship. Is there anything else that recommends the other now?
  • Does he expect you to read his mind or tell you about his dissatisfaction?
  • Will he fix his eyes on yours and love the soul beneath the beauty, recognizing what makes you unique and that which is necessary to fill your heart?
  • While reading this list and considering concerns about your partner, have you recognized them in yourself?
  • Does he know you as you wish to be known? Have you shown him who you are?

Any questioning of this sort could go on. Add whatever you wish.

Such queries are often not answerable by asking your lover but by shared interaction, observing him, and looking in the mirror at yourself.

I suspect that if we lived until the end of time, most of us wouldn’t be listing our accomplishments. I’m guessing the money we earned, the episodic urgency of vacuuming the rug and thinking of our best vacation wouldn’t matter much.

We’d think instead of love — or better — embrace it and the ones we care about. What else justifies our gratitude more than all the other good fortune we might have had, the trophies and awards we’d won or lost, and status high or low?

Sharing our hearts in generosity, protection, respect, laughter, and kindness, would be the most telling source of fulfillment, even in exciting and successful lives. So it seems to me. After all…

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” *

=========================

*The words of William Bruce Cameron, 1963, not Einstein, as often assumed.

The top photo is Sunrise Coming into Miami in November 2022 by Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. 

It is followed by two works by Mark Rothko. The first is No. 13, White and Red on Yellow, 1958, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The second is Untitled, No. 11, 1963 from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

I have chosen these paintings because the late works of Rothko can be best appreciated if you take some time to look at them.

I’d suggest you begin with the large, fluffy white, gray, and yellow rectangle in the first Rothko mural. Focus on the center and wait. You won’t have to wait long.

You will find this work of art changing its qualities the longer you do. So do people, including those you love or hope to love.

February 19, 2023

A Message to Future Generations

Here is a thought experiment for you:

Imagine you are famous. Because of your renown, you are given a chance to leave a message every future human will receive in 1000 years.

What would you say?

You have two minutes to say it, but as much time as you want to choose your words.

I’d suggest you make it short. You do have some competition in this department — from Bertrand Russell.

Lord Russell (1872 – 1970) was one of those impossibly famous people. Just to name a few aspects of his remarkable life, he was a British philosopher, mathematician, logician, and public intellectual. He even did a small amount of time in Brixton Prison because of his pacifist opposition to England’s involvement in World War I.

Talk about making a principled stand!

Not to be broken by the experience, Russell made his time in confinement useful:

I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, ‘Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy’… and began the work for ‘The Analysis of Mind’. I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence as was shown by their having been caught.

Russell was a man who turned a defeat into opportunity and found humor in it.

On the BBC TV interview show Face to Face in 1959, Russell was asked the question I posed to you.

His two-minute message to the future was in two parts: intellectual and moral. Now you can leave whatever message you wish in whatever format.

Take courage, my friends! I’m here to listen and might even take a crack at coming up with my own answer to the big question.

But even now, I’d say this:

If our species doesn’t make it 1000 years, it will be because we didn’t take the great man’s advice.

=====

P.S. I’d add a brief bit to Russell, with apologies to his ghost and with thanks to those who have or will have given his words some thought.

For centuries, the world has had in mind a very lofty goal — to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” As Freud suggested, this might ask too much of us, a dream we’ve failed to achieve. But perhaps we should shoot for something more modest: to respect our neighbor, be kind, and hold back our judgment and anger until we put ourselves in his shoes.

One more thing. Property and material objects have limits in their ability to produce the happiness everyone wants. We have been persuaded that more is better while our fellowmen go hungry and homeless.

We will do better to the extent we think of ourselves as custodians of physical objects and the planet we call our home. Material things will break down, but we mustn’t treat the earth the same way. We have it on loan.

Like curators of fine art, we must treat it gently and work to return it and our environment to the state best disposed to allow our ancestors and all the world’s flora and fauna to live. Without life, there can be no “after” life.