“How on earth are you not a quivering mass on the floor unable to function in the world?” That is a composite of the feeling I was having as I listened to one of my clients pour out his life story to me. Trauma was an everyday thing to him growing up. Horrific...
Apparently, a good number of you have had angry encounters with people lately. At least that’s what I surmised based on the reactions I received from my last post about a confrontation with an irritated pedestrian in the Kroger parking lot. Those events can be...
A few weeks ago I was making a quick run to the grocery store. As I pulled into the lot, I noticed a man walking off to my right turn, face me and gesture something that was full of contempt and rage. I wasn’t going too fast. I think I was just in his way. He...
“Dude, back off!” is what I thought as I glanced at my rear view mirror this morning while driving downtown. Turns out “dude” was a lady in a hurry, tailgating me for blocks while I stewed and mini-raged. That is, until I had the sudden sinking realization that I,...
2 boys. 2 stories. Several weeks ago, my four-year-old grandson Henry and I were watching the Disney movie The Good Dinosaur, one of his favorites. At the climax of the action in the movie, Henry jumped off the couch with a roar and began running around the room...
Three years ago, yesterday, I entered into my “third being”. OK, that’s a bit dramatic but it really is true. My “first being” was through age 20 growing up and attending college in western Pennsylvania. My “second being” began when I moved to Chicago to begin...
We are hurtling through life. At least that’s what it feels like to me. I find myself constantly shocked that we are halfway through a month or at another change of seasons or I realize that I am more than two thirds through my life. (Three fourths?!) It’s not that I...
“He is a man without love.” That was how a friend referred to a well-known public figure in America today. My friend was actually repeating what he was told by someone who knows this public figure well. This man-without-love is a very successful leader with an...
Wow…it’s been a while since I have written! I’ve got a pretty good excuse. For much of the month of March I was not well. Not until I had been suffering for a bunch of weeks, did we discover through a CT scan that I had a large kidney stone lodged in my body that...
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Herbert Stein, economist That makes sense in a general “duh” sort of way. But what if that also includes your professional success? Your relevance will not go on forever. It will stop. Social scientist Albert Brooks...
