relationships

November 8, 2026

When Someone Uses You

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Slot_machine.jpg/500px-Slot_machine.jpg

 

The people we think of as friends don’t always act that way.

In one case I recall, a patient of mine was in an intimate relationship with a cross-dressing man. She accepted his desire to use some of her clothes, but felt taken advantage of when he didn’t return them.

When you want those close to you who ask for your time, help, sex, grocery pickup, or loans they rarely repay, you may have a problem.

You fear losing them if you become noncompliant.

They only contact you when they need your services.

Finally, you are unsure of yourself—uncertain whether you are generous and kind rather than selfish.

Some folks treat you like a candy machine requiring no coins to deliver the product into their hands. You are thought of as reliable and uncomplaining.

Reciprocity is a word they do not understand.

Imagine you were to list their shortfalls. They might register disbelief and injury at what you said.

At your job, such Individuals might take credit for your work, blame you for their errors, and talk behind your back while smiling when they interact with you.

Sexual partners can come to expect you to make a living for them. This might involve their routine job losses, your having to supply their living expenses, and paying off failed investments.

Providing their post-high-school tuition, or their attempts to start another new, surefire, can’t-miss business that never works out, also add to the financial woes you’re expected to remedy.

Those on the losing end of similar predicaments ought first to reckon with what has kept them from standing up for themselves.

Therapists are used to encountering individuals who have long endured people who take advantage of them, perhaps since childhood.

When they begin to address these one-sided relationships, the results are complicated. They often don’t realize they will be tested as they try both to change the nature of the affiliation and keep it going on a less distressing level.

Maintaining the connection is not guaranteed.

Mark this down. Anyone making a brave, face-to-face effort to repair such relationships must prepare for the worst. Alleged friends may lean against the new version of yourself, hoping to reclaim your earlier, more docile and accommodating form.

Let’s assume you turn away from being the comrade’s private candy machine and become more like a slot machine.

The candy machine is dependable, reliable, and consistent. Every time your chum inserts his coins and makes his selection, he receives the item he chose. You are the prize he expects, not a chocolate bar.

He assumes you are at his service 24/7, without putting money into your pocket.

The slot machine is a different story.

Your thoughtless pal’s knowledge and life experience tell him that the machine’s failure to pay on one occasion doesn’t mean he won’t be a winner the next time or the time after that.

It might take him a long period of failure before he concludes that the machine is broken beyond repair. Broken from where he stands, but not for the now gifted human who refuses to be someone else’s sucker.

Do you want to be the one who waits on another when he makes a request?

Perhaps you have delivered the desired results on an intermittent (or inconsistent) reinforcement schedule. Reinforcing for someone else, not for you. Don’t do what the other asks intermittently. Doing so only encourages further requests and makes them harder to extinguish.

You used to show up and do your master’s bidding each time he asked. Now you only sometimes fulfill his needs, a choice that still works against you.

By giving him what he wants on occasion, he is likely to do two things:

  1. Try to charm you back into the dutiful individual you were.
  2. Tell you that you’ve changed for the worse, have become selfish and unlikeable, and tries to make you feel bad about yourself in the interest of your returning to duty.

Getting the picture?

If you become consistent and reliable (like the candy machine) in responding to another’s desires and pleadings, the other party will become aware that repeated requests will do no good: the answer shall be NO every time.

And once they have learned this (you will still have to hold your ground before he gives up), your peer makes fewer requests of you after the first.

But if he perceives you as similar to the slot machine, you’re in trouble! He keeps at you because he recognizes one failure at winning doesn’t mean the game is lost. Perhaps the second try will work, or the fifth, or the fiftieth.

This fellow grasps your nature better than you know yourself. He is aware that he has a good chance of wearing you down and pestering you until you are both long gone.

His assault includes threats to stop the friendship you have, so that you return to your previous butler-like self.

The message is simple. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do what you say you must do.

Every time you give in, it gets harder because you are reinforcing the kinds of behavior in your friend that you are trying to extinguish.

It will work only if you stay the course.

=========

The top image is a Slot Machine by Jeff Kubina from the Milky Way galaxy,

The next image shows Two Grotesque Heads Facing One Another in a Circle by Gaetano Piccini (1727). Both pictures are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

November 1, 2026

When Something Goes Wrong: Projection and Rationalization

512px-dust_bowl_oklahoma

Something goes wrong. That’s where it begins. Life turns, often in small ways, not as hoped for or expected.

As a child, you lose a game you hoped to win. The paper you handed in to your teacher received a poor grade. And then–oh no–you bombed a test.

Blame the game winner and say that he cheated? Tell yourself the instructor was a hard grader? Go home and curse the other guy under your breath? Claim the election was stolen?

There is some value to this. It makes you feel better and think better of yourself. If you tell your friends and your parents, perhaps they buy into your victimization.

Of course, sometimes life is unfair.

However, adults who cannot accept responsibility are not uncommon. They blame the other fellow, project their own flaws on him, and point to the man’s color or customs.

Those who encourage such feelings can stir another’s sense of unfairness to a boil:

At last someone understands me. He knows the problem is not mine; it’s those other guys.”

Great literature sometimes allows us to learn more about such defense mechanisms and transports us into the lives of others, while informing us about our own.

Take The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Tom Joad, the story’s hero, reframes cowardice into practicality, moves from fight to flight, and converts hesitation into wisdom; all with the help of a man who has already rationalized his own diminished life.

We rationalize because we must — to live comfortably with our motives and our choices.

We all do it sometimes, and some do it all the time.

Steinbeck’s novel is set in the Dust Bowl era of 1930s Oklahoma. Newly available machines enabled rapid, widespread plowing and cultivation of the native grass: an act of misguided surgery.

The grass was essential to bind the earth to the land. When drought came, not only were conditions insufferable, but crops died for lack of moisture. The earth became unmoored and blew away.

In some areas this “worst hard time” persisted for eight years.

Dust storms blackened the sky. The fine dark particles invaded farmhouses, killed animals, and impaired breathing. Visibility could be reduced to a few feet on a given day. The dust-occluded air produced occasional darkness as far away as New York City.

Tom Joad was a young man just released on parole after four years in McAlester prison. He killed a neighbor who attacked him in a bar fight. Tom and two acquaintances are on the land that once belonged to his family.

The Joads were evicted in a bank foreclosure. The men notice a police car coming to investigate.

Muley, one of Tom’s acquaintances, is an older man who experienced the merciless attitude of the bankers, their agents, and law enforcement officers as they evicted most everyone in the area while Tom was in prison.

The bankers and the police rationalize as well.

He and Tom talk about the vehicle heading in their direction:

TOM: We ain’t doin’ no harm. We’ll jus’ set here. We ain’t doin, nothin’.

MULEY: We’re doin’ somepin jus’ bein’ here. We’re tresspassin’. We can’t stay. They been tryin’ to catch me for two months. Now you look. If that’s a car comin’ we go out in the cotton an’ lay down.

TOM: What’s come over you, Muley. You was’nt never no run-an’-hide fella. You was mean.

Muley agrees with Tom that he is not the same man he was. Changing conditions changed him. He knows Tom’s nature is to fight, especially on the land where Tom grew up. Muley also reminds Tom of his parole. Any “trouble” and he will be sent back to prison.

TOM: You’re talkin’ sense. Ever’ word you say is sense. But, Jesus, I hate to get pushed around! I lots rather take a sock at Willy.

MULEY: He got a gun. … He’ll use it cause he’s a deputy. Then he either got to kill you or you got to get his gun away an’ kill him. Come on Tommy. You can easy tell yourself you’re foolin’ them lyin’ out (in the cotton) like that. An’ it all just amounts to what you tell yourself.

Landscape

Indeed. Tom follows Muley’s advice to hide from the police rather than confront anyone.

As with other (mostly unconscious) life strategies, the way we explain our behavior to ourselves can help or harm. Some of us automatically rationalize so many choices we lose touch with who we are and how we hurt ourselves and our fellow man.

Others reflexively come to unnecessary and unflattering conclusions about their deeds. They blame themselves and interpret events in a self-deprecating fashion.

In effect, each of us has our own internal “make-up” artist. It is the part of us who tries to put a “good face” on the reasons we do what we do, the better to look at ourselves in a friendly mirror: one not too revealing of uncomfortable defects.

Think of a situation in which you fail to achieve your goal. Many explanations are available:

  • I’m a loser. (Here you’ve taken a single disappointment and indicted your entire being and character).
  • It was his fault. He was unfair. (In this example, right or not, someone else is blamed).
  • This is a temporary setback.
  • Perhaps I need to approach situations like this differently. (Possible adaptation and learning come into play with this explanation).
  • I did the best I could. (Defeat is acknowledged, but there is also a self-comforting understanding of the event).
  • “Every knock is a boost.” (This was one of my dad’s expressions. He reinterpreted his defeats as exercises in strengthening his character.)

Many other examples might be offered. Cognitive-behavioral therapists help patients reframe their beliefs and assumptions about themselves and the world. They hope to free clients from self-damaging “self-talk.” CBT counselors encourage a reality-based yet adaptive approach to thinking about and explaining our behavior to ourselves.

You and I are left with the question that Muley raised in his conversation with Tom: what do we tell ourselves?

Something to think about.

—

The top photo is titled Dust Bowl, Oklahoma. It shows a “father and sons walking in the face of a Dust Bowl storm in Cimarron County, OK,” April 1936. The picture was taken by Arthur Rothstein. The second image is Dust Storm Near Beaver, Oklahoma; July, 14, 1935. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. If the Dust Bowl is of interest, you might want to watch The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 movie adaptation of the Steinbeck novel. Henry Fonda stars as Tom Joad. The film is widely considered one of the 100 greatest American films. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl is a terrific oral history of the period written by Timothy Egan. Finally, don’t miss Ken Burns’s documentary, The Dust Bowl.

October 25, 2026

Being Remembered

What might it be like to be a ghost? In addition to witnessing the future, you would discover what the living talk and write about. Not their legacy, but yours, once you are gone.

Will you be remembered? Did you leave a mark on the world? Did the impact of your existence last only as long as it took you to write your name on the ocean’s sandy shore, gone once the tide came in and erased it?

When we were both 16, a friend of mine hoped for more. “I want to do something great in my life,” he said. His time on earth did afford significant acclaim as a college professor who won awards for his teaching. Students thought the world of him, and he wrote a couple of books and many journal articles, though they were not widely read. In his eyes, none of this reached greatness. 

The importance he placed on lasting fame became a kind of self-torture, though he didn’t intend it to. 

While he focused on reaching the top of the ladder, his family, friends, loving wife, travel, and comfortable home were insufficient to free him from his fixation on an imaginary, unnamed achievement. 

What about you and me? Well, your children will remember you if you have them; your grandchildren too, if you are given enough life and the opportunity to connect. There will be videos and photos, but no guarantee that they will be perused. 

Many incidental traces of your existence might be put in a box or on a thumb drive. 

A lock of hair and the sound of your recorded voice will last, while the scent of your skin and the fragrance you applied to your body will fade, along with your embrace, and all the kisses, laughter, and smiles that enriched your being.

If you showed kindness and helped others, worked to repair the world, were a transformative leader, or pursued a helping profession, you will be remembered by some of those lucky enough to benefit from your talent and effort. Of course, expert teachers cause ripple effects that extend far beyond the students’ presence in their classes.

Past two generations? Unless you achieved lasting fame, time will likely render your name one of those little recalled. Nonetheless, you needn’t succeed to fashion a name that survives beyond you. Sinners as well as saints also make their mark. 

The drama of your story, the laughter, the pain, the tears, the joy, the gain, and the loss will vanish unless you write your autobiography. No formal scorecard of your life will exist unless you were a professional athlete or Olympic champion.

Ah, but there are exceptions. My friend, Tom Saler, wrote a book about the symphony and opera conductor Carlo Maria Giulini. It is still in press—the only English-language biography of the remarkable man whose life he described. But do note that it is Giulini’s life that is examined, while the writer’s life is not well known.

I expect Tom’s name to survive. That, by itself, is remarkable.

Many of us have created resumes or CVs (Curriculum Vitae). These offer an academic and professional history of a life, but are impersonal. They list one’s surface accomplishments such as university degrees, jobs held, honors, essays, and published research. Job applicants are expected to provide this to their prospective employer, typically a page or two.

Regarding books and the capture of how one moved and spoke, video interviews and memory compilations like Storyworth have become popular, often as gifts from adult children. The loved one chooses questions for the parent to answer, one per week in written or recorded form. After a year, a book is created. 

I have written one of these myself, 400 pages worth.

Why? 

For my children and grandchildren, no one else. 

This is not to keep anything from others. Beyond some of my blog followers and friends, however, I doubt anyone else will care about my thoughts on the time I lived in, the life I led, the things I accomplished, and where I found meaning as the days of my life dissolved. 

Much of what is in the book will not surprise my blog followers. The difference is that some of what I have written for my children and grandchildren is more personal.

None of this means I have dismissed the accomplishments of my working life. I am happy I achieved what I did and believe I have been a lucky man so far. Why “so far?” The ancient Greek sage Solon reminded Croesus, the wealthiest man in the world, that one should never call oneself fortunate until the very end.

I never anticipated the doors that opened for me, but I had the wisdom to walk through them and try to remold myself as I came to understand my weaknesses: what I didn’t like about myself. 

That is part of my story too, but the actual achievements are not much thought about by me. They are in the past, a place I do not now inhabit. 

In the present, I am more focused on the modest amount of time ahead and on what I can do to make the world a little better. Of course, I expect to maintain the relationships I’ve had for many years for as long as possible.

As you might have concluded by now, I am comfortable with the notion of fading away once I pass away. 

Never did I hope to become Napoleon or the aforementioned Giulini. What I have done is more than enough. 

From my perspective, I lived through the best moment in world history in the right country, a land of opportunity and safety, though, regrettably, not for people of color. 

My parents’ modest income was not an impediment to attending fine universities and a splendid graduate school. 

I made marvelous friends and held on to many of them for most of my lifetime. Love pursued me from an unexpected place, and within the family, my wife, children, and I fostered abiding affection. 

My life was crowned with the people I touched and who touched me. I evaluated close to 3,000 individuals and joined others in the shared effort to improve their lives. Some of these folks taught me more than a little about bravery and resilience. I was privileged to receive their emotional openness and trust. 

Over more than twenty years, I had the opportunity to record interviews with many of the men and women of the Chicago Symphony. Their voices and mine live in the Chicago Symphony archives. 

In the recent past, I have decided to say some things to friends—things I have not told them before. It is the why and how of my appreciation of them as we sit together at breakfast or lunch. 

None of us can predict when our end will come. Best to communicate to those we care about why they are precious. 

Were you to ask me what has been the most essential element in my life, I would say it without hesitation: time. The time to do the things I have done, to make mistakes and try again, and to encounter the people who made a difference to me. 

Beyond that necessity there is something more. Should you wish to hear what is most important in the life I have led and am leading, the answer is simple: love.

==========

The first image is “Coming into Miami Last November from Argentina “ by Laura Hedien, with her kind permission. The last is Mucha’s 1905 Madonna of the Lilies.

July 12, 2026

The Corrosive Nature of Disrespect

We live in the day of shouting, name-calling, and rudeness. Such things make it a proper day to discuss respect.

Interrupting speech, also called talking over the speaker, was once considered discourteous but is now acceptable.

Intolerant disagreement is frequent. Civility has been under pressure since the end of the last century, correlated with the rise of the Internet.

Children mimic the trend, dismissive and contemptuous of classmates, reducing them in size, and bringing them to despair.

People work from home, and some stay there except for errands, walking the dog, and other necessities.

Making friends and going outside the fortress of one’s residence carries a risk in a world perceived as toxic.

No wonder so many sense that they are unseen and uncared for, with little experience of belonging.

Humans have become replacement parts. Their placement on the dumpster pile replaces their voice with a thud.

When the castle’s inhabitants peer down from on high, the faceless crowd below can be counted and considered for their utility. The palace’s inhabitants cheer on the unthinkable, and a surprising number of those considered underlings join in the carnage.

Why?

Hannah Arendt, philosopher and historian, remarked:

Before you can do the unthinkable to people, you have to make them superfluous, stripped of any place in the world where their existence matters to anyone.

Think about the implications of such a statement. It can apply to both those who will be victims and those who terrorize the vulnerable.

Let’s examine the latter.

People who are shunned, considered uneducated, and who work modest jobs in unfamiliar towns often have their ideas dismissed as worthless.

If Arendt is correct, when we ignore, reject, or belittle them, they are more likely to seek validation and attach to those in high places who appear to take their side.

To Arendt, “a person in that condition will reach for anything that restores a sense of significance, any movement that says ‘You are not nothing. You are part of something vast, something that is going to remake the world.'”

—–

Listening, ever since the last century, has become an act of kindness, and of community. A receptive ear is a sort of restorative potion and elixir for our tribalism. At least one step toward a worthwhile end.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” wrote the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil.

In listening, we should observe our companion. Eye movements, tone of voice, changes in body position, smiles, tears, unstill hands and tremulous feet.

Weil offered suggestions on how best to listen.

Rather than an urgent preoccupation with what she would say to the one sitting near her, Weil tried to subtract herself, becoming both a sponge and mirror to absorb and reflect the other’s words and feelings.

She conveyed her regard for their value.

Mortals live to be afforded consideration as individuals of significance, not out of narcissism but out of necessity and the desire for companionship. Where this is lacking, they tend to welcome a place in any club that will applaud their membership—a spot for themselves.

Even better, to join a movement larger than life that offers self-esteem.

We search for logic in the troubling actions of others, assuming we are the logical ones. We call those who don’t side with us stupid, thinking them suckers when they cheer the grandiose and do their bidding.

Yet if the people one has depended on have failed you, perhaps it is not so illogical to believe in someone — anyone — who recognizes your pain. They offer you the attention you have longed for.

Hope supersedes despair. Being seen supersedes invisibility. Acceptance and stature supersede logic.

For many years, Industry and government have looked down their nose at those who cannot climb the lengthening rope up to the American Dream. The promise of a better life than their parents has been broken.

Ignored, they largely remained docile. Unquiet, the word “deplorables “ was attached to them by someone who should have known better. Others diminished the same group for clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”

We, the people of the United States of America, rendered judgment. We, the people who were doing better, distanced ourselves from those who were not.

Perhaps we have begun to realize this.

———-

The top photo is of Simone Weil at age 13 in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium, summer 1922. The final image is the logo of World Logic Day. It is the work of Jean-Yves Beziau. Both of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

June 21, 2026

When Our Mates Don’t See, Hear, or Remember

Blind Monks Examining an Elephant by Itcho Hanabusa.

Some of those closest to us are members of a particular club.

  • They fail to grasp something essential in human relationships, a deficiency that involves misunderstanding significant realities.
  • They listen to what you say but do not grasp your meaning.
  • Conversations of considerable seriousness, events you recall in detail, drift away from them, slipping out of reach like a bar of soap on a shower floor.

The person in question is not lacking intelligence. He lacks sensitivity because he doesn’t grasp vulnerability.

During my psychotherapy practice, some patients who had made every effort to achieve understanding from their mate asked what else they might do.

My response?

They don’t make mallets that big.

Those they love may be decent, helpful, and bright. Over time, however, comes the dawn of recognition about their companion:

They don’t get it, and never will.

While engaged in work, tennis, or computer gaming with relentless fervor, other concerns are absent and beyond cognizance. Ignoring diet, overlooking health, perhaps something goes missing. The needed human qualities exist elsewhere.

These souls are in denial and capable of dissociation. Their thoughts, feelings, memories, and actions sometimes detach from one another.

Since they are incapable of recognizing the tenderness of your nature and the pain they cause, pleading with them is like talking to a wall.

Leonardo da Vinci described the experience of seeing an artwork, not realizing he depicted the human tendency to slice off parts of the world too uncomfortable to grasp:

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

A parent with characteristics similar to those noted above may make home life challenging. Many children have no choice but to shut their eyes, cover their heads, stop their ears, and jump into a foxhole until the sights, sounds, and memories fade.

The years may be endurable, but the danger to the child is becoming a replica of the mom or dad whose presence led them to guard themselves against portions of the emotional world. Their capacity to understand those who offer intimacy and a broader spectrum of sentiments is compromised. 

Pain in another becomes imperceptible, unfelt; it is not ascertained or recollected. Expecting more than that resembles speaking to an alien from outer space. Language is inadequate to bridge the gap.

Despite this, those who choose this type of partner go through the early romance phase in a normal fashion. The triple burst of passion, newness, and the best behavior is attractive.

Later, life together settles into a routine: house cleaning, clashes like those in movies, and frank exhaustion while trying to be seen and understood. Hope and affection build patience, but unmentioned questions emerge:

Does he know me? Does he like me? Is he in love with me?

Desperate and unhappy spouses do well to take off their sunglasses, removing the blindness of love with them. Except, of course, when illusions are preferable.

———-

Blind Monks Examining an Elephant by Itcho Hanabusa was created in 1888. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons and comes from the Library of Congress.

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. 
October 12, 2025

Hot Pursuit: When You Scare Potential Lovers

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Blindfold_%28PSF%29.png/256px-Blindfold_%28PSF%29.png

I can’t wait. Three words that get us into a lot of trouble. Especially in the hot pursuit of love.

Waiting is difficult. Think of the doctor’s waiting room, or an unchanging traffic light. Or perhaps marking time for a job interview or hoped-for movement in the grocery store.

Zen practitioners remind us that these situations offer opportunities to learn patience, not evoke annoyance. Indeed, there is something worthwhile in their point of view if you are trying to win a potential lover.

Timing counts (pun intended). Lots of questions to answer: how often to call or text, when to display affection, and how to express feelings for the other.

Where is your heart?

I’m not talking about how soon to make love. As difficult as such decisions can be, many people are not troubled by outward physical acts. Instead, the issues I’m raising have to do with showing you care, a thing beyond sexuality.

Extremes of behavior tend to be dangerous. The anxious young admirer either holds back or rushes to reveal that the beloved is his starlit night sky and morning’s birdsong. Sometimes it causes the desired one to run screaming into a less magical night, as far from you as possible.

She is right to be scared if you betray her importance to you after spending two evenings with her! Pedestals are expensive, and your love may have a fear of heights! The faster you dash after her, the speedier she will sprint, without discovering anything worthwhile about you.

When the flood and drama of urgency begin, the full-throttle pressure to chase your freshly anointed favorite is almost unbearable.

It is hard to withhold what is oozing from your veins or betraying your emotions in some other way: candy, flowers, poetry, and endless compliments—all with a perpetually melting gaze, the type puppy dogs offer their mistresses.

You become so enamored of the other that your soul aches upon hearing her voice, and her smile at you makes you want to cheer.

Get a grip if you can—a big if, my friend. Some restraint might be necessary to give the relationship and mutual feelings time to develop.

How will you select the moment or manner of disclosing your desire? Sometimes, signs signal she shares your sentiments, at least a little, and wants you to proceed.

Unfortunately, green and red work perfectly only on traffic lights.

Confused?

If you are inclined to verbalize the premature “I adore you,” it is almost impossible to stop yourself.

Second, the intimations can be indecipherable without a lot of experience (and, on occasion, with it).

One needs practice in figuring out another person. Making a fool of yourself and having your heart broken are a part of growing up. When you are in love, your soul makes you do things your brain thinks unwise.

If you keep taking the first step and it always falls flat, it’s time to pursue therapy. The same would be true if you never take the risk. A bruised ego is part of your instruction.

Our hearts are not unbreakable. Romance can be a train wreck, but a dangerous ride is the only transport to a destination we long for. As Bart Giamatti wrote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Giamatti wrote this about baseball, but he might as well have been writing about falling in love or anything about which we care deeply.

Anything in which the dream of winning is unfulfilled.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

So voiced the redoubtable William Shakespeare.

Dreams of love are like flowers—they need planting and watering; some good weather and time to cultivate. Do not pick the just-opened bud too soon.

Do your best, but don’t expect to remake yourself. We humans are less than ideal at seeing into the soul of another. As terrible as it is, we all need some heartbreak—it helps you grow in maturity, understanding, and compassion.

Remember, almost everyone recovers.

Try again. Somewhere, somehow—someone may be waiting.

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The top image is called Blindfolded Boy Chasing Another, courtesy of Pearson Scott Foresman. It is followed by Holi: A Sacred Ancient Tradition of Hindus, by Shohrab Hossain Titu. Both pictures are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 21, 2025

Where Did All the Bullies Go?

When I was a kid, like all the boys who came before and after me, I learned to deal with bullies. Some fellows fled, others took them on.

One young man-mountain, who was tall and overweight, sat on me once. Another, whose fiery red hair matched the impression that I should stay away, had a beautiful girlfriend whose mother abused her.

She was drawn to such people.

No matter, I stood my ground in defense of one of my brothers and discovered it was worse to be a coward than to take a licking. A few lickings.

At my pugilistic best, I knocked the air out of a classmate named Ernie. It was terrifying to watch him on the ground, writhing and gasping for breath. There is no satisfaction in doing harm, no matter the justification.

As I got older, I discovered that I did better with words than fists. I didn’t always prevail, but I became the person I wanted to be over the course of years.

Matching wits in cross-examination as an expert witness is exhilarating and exhausting, but informs you who you are if you don’t already know. I excelled at it, though it wasn’t a large part of my practice.

Bullies are still present in the world, even though I am well past the point of a street brawl. And while I am not a joiner, you will find me at some rallies and marches. The cause is just, and the exhilaration of a courtroom joust is not so different than joining others for a worthy cause.

The photo above is somewhat like a man in an empty suit. He tries to scare you, but there is really not much to him.

Life is full of tough guys, and we all encounter frauds like the Wizard of Oz, but when you check behind the screen, the loud boasting reminds you of the kids who used to push you around if you let them.

I am old, and I got tired of being afraid some time ago.

As the Stoics of antiquity remind us, tests offer opportunities. Seneca wrote: 

Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.

Only then do we discover who we are. 

I am not very pleased to take on such contests. I wasn’t, either, as a kid, but it was necessary then, and it is needed now.

I have grandchildren, you know.

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The “Ghost Sculpture” was sourced from James Lucas on Substack. 

 

 

September 17, 2025

Get Ready!

Since I am well into the Social Security years, it seems entirely fitting that I should tell you what I have learned about aging. Some it it will be funny, some serious, and some both.

Put simply, I intend to offer guidance about how to survive aging (sort of).

If you read to the end of the upcoming post, you will be entered into a drawing to receive the only know autograph of Methuselah, who is said to have lived 969 years!

See, you are already on your way! 

Get ready and good luck!

August 24, 2025

Story Telling and Our Weakness for Misinformation

Think about stories. We have them and tell them, all of us. That has been true since the time of Stone Age Man. He tried to explain the world, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Add the plants, animals, and seasons, as well as how to make the best tools, and survive. 

If someone else had a better or more entertaining account of his circumstances, perhaps the first tale would have been altered or forgotten.

The stories that bound small groups together had an advantage over other, more disparate groups of Homo sapiens. The accounts of how to endure and prosper were useful. 

These ideas kept people secure, instructed them in the refinement of weapons, and more. It explained how and when to plant vegetables, communicated strategies for difficult times, and enabled teamwork in self-defense.

Groups that shared the same story prospered and got larger over time. They were made up of people who identified with each other, in part because they shared the same stories, practices, and beliefs. Yuval Harari,* the author of Nexus, provides a more extended view of the role of narratives that cemented various tribes to one another.

What does this have to do with misinformation?

Stories don’t have to be true. A leader who might offer incomplete or flawed knowledge, in some cases could be persuasive in leading followers and making beneficial decisions about peace and war. Tales about the leader’s strengths, the magnetism of his voice and appearance, and his benevolent nature might create a halo effect of confidence in his talents.

Think of how young ones believe in Santa Claus or Superman. Some stories win over adherents, in part, because parents, educators, or clergy encourage belief in them from an early age.

Adults find religious stories compelling for several reasons. Many explain how the world works, provide meaning, describe how best to live, promise a reward after death, and offer a like-minded community. Religions have both benefited mankind and done harm.

Ancient wisdom should not be dismissed with ease, no matter a sceptic’s perspective. Again, stories don’t have to be verifiable to persuade and benefit much of mankind, but sometimes set them against unbelievers, both spiritual and political.

Religion and faith have also enabled communities of worshipers to survive. Faith-based conviction has fueled the inspirational words and actions of leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Attractive and fluent influencers, as well as TV ads, promote alleged excellent products and themselves via brief stories. These performers often suggest that those who do as they do can become more like them. Direct or implied messages cause some of their viewers to model their decisions on what to wear and what to value.

A common phrase descriptive of free trumpeting of products goes, “If the product is free, you are the product.” You pay with loss of privacy, the capture of your attention, becoming the unaware object of persuasion, and perhaps losing your free will.

Humans are vulnerable. With some frequency, they buy into the merchandise promoted and sometimes the promise of little more than hope and a chance to fulfill their desires. 

Goods featured in commercials are touted by everyday folks who claim miraculous transformations. They tell of prior unhappiness. Not just physical distress, but a lack of confidence, sleep, and relationships. With this background, they indicate their lives have been transformed by the wondrous cosmetic, machine, or supplement being sold.

Algorithms determine what captures our attention, including those presenters, products, games, and politicians we find compelling. Recall Michael Jordan, a charismatic basketball star, who is associated with Air Jordan footwear, clothing, and the commercial slogan “Be like Mike.”

Yuval Harari emphasizes that fiction, inclusive of conspiracy theories, has two advantages over truth.

First, fiction can be made as simple as we like, whereas the truth tends to be complicated, because the reality it is supposed to represent is complicated.

Second, the truth is often painful and disturbing, and if we try to make it more comforting and flattering, it will no longer be the truth.

One example is trying to change the minds of those who believe man-made climate change is fake news. Persuasion might require a detailed explanation and a discussion of research methods and findings, which may be beyond the typical listener’s ability to follow. Such a presentation also risks humiliating the subject, returning him to the days of boring lectures by a know-it-all instructor.

There is more. In our troubled and untrusting world, many are not open to information that unsettles their well-being. They may look away due to the stress of the truth of what is happening.

A person’s worldview is often attached to other beliefs that would be undercut by changing such an opinion. It can be easier to believe in untruths and keep on the right side of one’s social circle. 

Painful knowledge that frays or ends relationships with friends and relatives, and loses the benefit of belonging, comes at a high cost. A hoax can be comforting on multiple levels.

The planet is a complicated place these days, but it offers rewards that require recognition of what is happening in it. The birds still sing, the sun still shines, and children still delight in an ice cream cone on a hot day. May they flourish.

We are the caretakers and defenders of such moments, and what astronomer Carl Sagan referred to as a “pale blue dot.”

Earth and all its living things.

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All of the photos are the work of Laura Hedien, presented with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

In order from the top, they include Elephant at Sunset in Amboseli, Kenya, Early November 2024. Next is a Supercell in Lubbock, Texas, in June 2025. Finally, Texas Sunset with Sunflare in June 2023.

*Here is the link to Yuval Harari’s Nexus, which served as a foundation for this essay.