advice

March 25, 2023

Choose Me! How Therapists Pick You

Much has been written about choosing the right therapist, but what about the other side of the question? 

The counselor also chooses you. 

You might be surprised by the reasons colleagues have shared with me.

Some of these are obvious and essential, while others are personal. I will offer you some of both:

  • You might not think of it, but not all forms of treatment take an equal amount of time. Some healers do their best work (and have been trained) with treatments extending for months or years, while many elect shorter periods from start to finish. For obvious reasons, insurance companies press for the latter.
  • In evaluating you on the phone, via email, in person, or through virtual means like Zoom, the psychologist assesses your expectations and whether you will put in the effort needed to form a well-functioning therapeutic alliance. The old joke goes this way: “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: One, but the bulb has to want to be changed.
  • The expert is not ready to remedy every injury to the body and soul. He is wise to set limits on opening the door to those he is unprepared for. It is impossible to keep up with the latest research on mending every medical or emotional malady known to mankind.
  • If the doctor is honest, he will almost always say he prefers some patients to others. Those with better-than-average verbal skills make the communication process easier for both parties.
  • Other qualities of the prospective client make him more or less appealing. These include intelligence, a sense of humor, respect for the counselor’s time by coming on time, limiting unnecessary emails or phone calls, and (for in-person visits) good hygiene. I knew a therapist who terminated his relationship with a long-term patient when she pooped on the couch in his waiting room. 

  • Professionals restrict their practice. A significant number of them will not treat people who require hospitalization. Other counselors avoid those at substantial risk of suicide. Outpatients exhibiting erratic and unstable mood or behavioral characteristics have made some healers hesitant to take them on. Borderline Personality Disorders and Dissociative Disorders tend to create such concerns. Alcohol and drug abuse can also cause challenges not every counselor wishes to address. Of course, all this depends on making a rapid and accurate evaluation.
  • Money is not an incidental consideration. Many come to the doc with little knowledge of their insurance coverage. They can be surprised and distressed when they discover their copay is unmanageable. Some therapists permit a sliding scale of charges depending on what the patient can afford. Busy doctors may decide not to accept third-party payers and take on only those individuals who pay the fee out of their pocket.
  • Younger psychotherapists are frequently less concerned with restricting who they will treat than those well-established in the profession. As their practice becomes full, that fact allows them to say no to certain of those seeking their consultation. Put differently, once a doctor creates an excellent reputation, his income becomes less dependent on taking all comers. In a time when the healing professions have long waiting lists, it is impossible for those who wish to take everyone to do so.

  • Those who consult a healer have a range of expectations. Many wish to be seen in the evening or on the weekend. Others might prefer lunchtime. I have heard experienced psychologists and psychiatric nurses refer to how exhausting it can be to treat people on the internet for hours. A portion of the individuals requesting virtual therapy do so because they are uncomfortable face-to-face. At that point, the doc must decide whether avoiding fear impedes the individual’s ability to overcome it. As Woody Allen said, “Ninety percent of life is (a matter of) showing up.”
  • Counselors are untrained in talents more often found in nonpsychiatric social workers. Most clinicians are not suited to deal with evictions from one’s residence, malnutrition, homelessness, etc. Life challenges can require stabilization before the work of psychotherapy begins.

Therapists have their range of likes and dislikes, preferences, and knowledge gained via experience. Patients are not equally suited to their counselor and vice versa. 

The period since the pandemic began has been unusually difficult for healthcare. Within some specialties, the shortage of physicians causes appointments to be booked six months or more in advance. Practitioners have burned out and left the field. Supply and demand create their own set of dilemmas in any part of the economy.

Ethical concerns also should prevent healthcare professionals from treating their brothers-in-law, business partners or romancing their clients.

Most therapists will do their best to match their skills to those seeking assistance. They will refer individuals when they cannot provide personal attention themselves.

We live in a challenging moment on several fronts. The National Alliance on Mental Illness offers the following:

1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year
1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year
1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year
50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10-14 

The widespread societal distress implicated by these numbers impacts both the clients and those who choose to serve them. When you consider the practitioner’s strengths, weaknesses, the limitations on who they can capably treat, and the recent increase in emotional suffering, remember this. They live in the same world with many of the same pressures as everyone else, but only they are expected to work magic.

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The top image is A Psychologist Treating a Patient by Jty33, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

The remaining photos are the work of Laura Hedien, with her generous permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. The first of these is Sunflare, Ottawa State Park, Wisconsin from earlier this year. The last is Illinois Sunset, College of Lake County, Fall 2022.

March 19, 2023

Steps to a More Peaceful Life

You need no reminder of how much our current moment is filled and fueled by public and private disrespect. Instead, I shall offer guidance to a life less vulnerable to giving and receiving discourtesy and help you make it so.

Small steps within your power. Though modest, they can be life-enhancing.

Such changes present the chance to enlarge our humanity and agency while reducing the sense of isolation, fear, and distrust.

Reflections on How You Feel and Behave:

Consider the pace and pressure of life. If we pile up our existence with a tower of obligations, errands, and responsibilities, our much-desired calm, thoughtfulness, and room for others become elusive. Yes, we have inescapable demands, but most realize we also occupy ourselves with inessentials.

Perhaps it is worth reflecting on what is necessary and what is superfluous. We can free ourselves from the shackled and abnormal routine that has become the norm: texting, emailing, tweeting, and looking into the pixels of our attachment to the computer god. We observe its icons on our desks and in our hands.

Will triple scoops of virtual contact with people a thousand miles away leave a lick of the ice cream cone for those we love or might discover nearby?

Prepare for Respecting Others by Respecting Yourself:

Do we eat well, exercise, or trust that our bodies will quietly accept years of ill-tending and inattention?

The sun-gifted glories of the natural world wait for us, but the computer deity shades our lives as an autocrat might. He cares not whether we will be touch-starved, with only a memory of human sighs, breath, fragrance, and torsos extending beneath our line of sight. Are we practicing to be cave dwellers? 

Remember that our lanternless ancestors lived by the hours of the sun and invested in the earth with cooperative others who were not chained to a desk.

Might we reorganize who we have become and are becoming? No one ever offered these last words: “I should have spent more time in my home office — like the best years of my life.” Nor does anyone define shopping as leading to anything resembling the richness possible in our brief time here.

Calming and Centering Yourself: 

Treating ourselves with respect and kindness opens the possibility of service and duty to another. In time, this can become a prioritized source of mutual joy.

Before we can have benign emotions, we must recognize what is impeding us, what gnaws, irritates, or angers us. Think of a stone pitched into a placid lake, spreading ripples lasting well beyond the time required to make the toss.

Those who analyze their day may find it helpful to think about mood-changing moments. Where, when, why, and how did the sky darken or the clouds part? With whom? Doing what?

Therapists ask patients about the patterns of their lives — disappointments and repetitive relationship challenges. They wish to understand the kind of people one chooses to spend time with and those with whom one falls in love. When our mistakes persist, the critical question to us becomes, what does that cost you?

The knots into which we tie ourselves restrict our capacity to embrace those who might appreciate us and wish for our friendship, laughter, and romance. Tied to a rope of our invention, we are prisoners who desire freedom but offer ourselves to enslavement.

Civility and concern beyond our own troubles become more burdensome in a body and brain tightened and twisted into a coil, like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box. 

We need hands to hold and a friend to embrace. Consider the dour cashier at the end of an endless grocery checkout lane. What do a smile and a thoughtful word of thanks to this person cost? Smiling and speaking another’s name enrich the human joint bank account, where withdrawals only add to the wealth of all involved in the transaction.

Social Life and Conversation:

Especially when parts of the world outside are in conflict, we must do our best to avoid abrasiveness and inconsideration elsewhere. Take lunch. What happens when we fail to prefer the sight of our partner or friend to the latest intrusion of the phone? Do we reach for the phone, or does the phone reach for us? Hard to tell.

Still, no couple reserves a table for three or four, where the inanimate placeholders get their feelings hurt.

When a get-together begins, do we become impatient to speak? Waiting allows us to hear the voice, watch the expression, and listen to the ideas of a person of value. Few are pleased to be cut off, cut short, and talked over, unseen and unknown.

We can find better ways to express affection and interest in a companion’s well-being, emotional life, and opinions. Dismissing the other’s words leads to the poverty of our intellect — the assumption we needn’t understand one more thing or one more of our fellow women or men.

Slowing the conversation is a paradoxical alternative. A silent interval when your partner expects an audible response can exert control over the moment and create an opportunity to interject the thought, “where are we going?” Two people working together can reimagine and change what happens.

It is within our power to ask the counterpart politely whether he is ready to listen and what would be a mutually satisfying interchange. It is OK to express the desire to talk about something important and ask that he remain attentive.

No one wishes to be just another checkmark on the daily to-do list.

Seeing Yourself in the Other: 

We categorize and rate everything. Race, religion, nationality, homes, jobs, salaries, etc. We see too much that is different and too little that we share.

An unreflective mind starts at home, where he recognizes people he loves and steps past the homeless to return as if they are as inhuman as the cardboard boxes in which some of them live. Recent fMRI research tells us that they register in our brains like furniture.

We fight over differences. In lands where individuality is encouraged, one person can be at odds with most of humanity, trying to be #1. All others be damned, sometimes literally.

The planetary situation finds wealth accumulation on one side and child malnutrition and disease on the other. Finger-pointing leaves the unfortunate judged for their misfortune. It also leaves the wealthy vilified for their good luck.

We conclude the other does not believe in the right god or any god; they are immoral, culturally or genetically inferior, and poor managers of themselves.

Meanwhile, we keep our closets well-stocked with towels to wash our hands of responsibility, silently repeating Pontius Pilate’s words, “I am innocent of the blood of this person.” Or perhaps, our hand washing resembles Lady Macbeth without her sleeplessness and guilt.

If we focus only on what we do not like in those who are different, what will become of us in a world of shorter supply, insufficient clean water, climate change, and the reduced availability of liveable spaces?

Consider whether we, in the most encompassing sense, would be better off seeing ourselves in the other and recognizing our capacity to embrace the shared responsibility of well-being for our children, our fellows, and every creature Noah was told deserved a place in the ark. 

God did not say, “those living beings are on their own.”

If we can, might we try to see that even the resentment and desperation of people are sometimes justified? They, too, wish for more than blame, disregard, mistreatment, and self-righteous indignation.

If we cannot, we are lost. 

Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, ends this way: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

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The first image is a photo of Dave Garroway, the original anchor of the Today Show on NBC. According to Wikipedia, Garroway’s “easygoing and relaxing style belied a lifelong battle with depression.” In 1960, reviewer Richard F. Shepard of The New York Times wrote, “He does not crash into the home with the false jollity and thunderous witticisms of a backslapper. He is pleasant, serious, scholarly looking, and not obtrusively convivial.” As the picture displays, Garroway’s signoff included the word peace and his upraised palm.

The second picture is the Offering of a Handshake, created by Pixabay. Finally, the sculpture by Ian Capper is called Embracing the Sea. All of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

March 5, 2023

Overcoming Suffering and Our Fear of Change

Suffering, both physical and psychological, cannot be escaped. We can, however, minimize it by not adding to our discomfort.

For Buddhists, much suffering comes from our desire for permanence. In the West, we often refer to this as difficulty adapting to change.

It is hard to think of anything that doesn’t change. The weather, our relationships, and life itself are all temporary. We age and die. Our children grow, create their own families, and become independent — a double-edged modification necessary for their well-being and requiring an adjustment that, at times, is painful for us.

One’s effort to establish a vice-like grip over all the “temporaries” we hold dear can only fail. Our attempts to freeze-dry and maintain ideal moments of perfection are fruitless.

Those who believe in an afterlife often imagine the best parts of this one and hope the future will contain some glorious, magnified, blissful version of these moments. Many believe there will be permanence, for example, in their joyous reunion with departed loved ones.

Others run from thoughts of inevitable loss or nightmare difficulties ahead of them in this life. They seek TV, music, alcohol, drug abuse, or other distractions from such possibilities.

What if we could become impervious to suffering using a magic potion? Imagine further that the rest of the world stayed as it is.

Without any sense of loss, we would become indifferent to the misfortune of others. We would lose ourselves, become unrecognizable, and be unable to understand anyone else’s hardships.

Without the capacity to sustain personal injuries, our lives might be described as robotic, wooden, and hardened — indeed unchangeable. No new learning would be possible.

Doesn’t love require compassion and understanding, put out of reach by the magical drink? Would we even wish for love, be moved by a tender film, beautiful music, or art? Why might such an individual read fiction without caring what happened to the characters? Nor could he capably raise children to become decent human beings.

Given that the suffering connected with an impermanent human state is inescapable, we must come to terms with our lack of control and inability to achieve more than a temporary evasion of external stressors. 

A worthwhile alternative is the transformation of ourselves into creatures who, recognizing life’s inevitable difficulties, hold our knowledge of human transitoriness gently.

Rather than gnashing our teeth over the uncountable unfairnesses befalling the human race, there are alternatives. One might do better to recognize that we pay for love, the appreciation of beauty, and the blissful moments of exhilaration with the suffering and change that make up the other side of the coin of existence.

We can learn to give up the struggle for control of everything except that which is in our power. We can accept the pain and the shortness of our lives and learn how to live with them.

One step is to recognize we will not achieve permanent happiness in an ongoing process of craving much of what we believe will make us happy. We tend to react to purchasing a dream home or finding a desirable mate as if they are Christmas toys: short-lived sources of joy. We take them for granted before long, at least to some degree. As the English author Wordsworth reminds us, “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.”

Homo sapiens do better to shift their focus from the complexity and lack of ease in any life by focusing on self-care, kindness, gratitude, displaying compassion, and listening to and recognizing the true nature of our friends and acquaintances.

We can ask those we care about whether they believe we understand them. And if they say no, tell them we want to do better. An essential feature of such attempts to improve relationships involves working on ourselves and diminishing whatever anger might lead us to hurt them.

Self-knowledge and meditation may lead us along this path. The latter also allows us to live more often in moments of tranquility.

The Buddha told a story about “the second arrow.” The arrows he described referred to the pain from events outside us. Of course, when the first arrow strikes, we feel anguish. We are advised, however, not to wrestle with it. Instead, begin by recognizing it.

One can come to an acceptance of the harm by releasing the tension and embracing our distress. Gentleness with ourselves, meditation, and ensuring not to enlarge our suffering allows the injury to heal to the extent possible.

The agony will grow if we keep struggling with the wound and remain preoccupied with the affliction and how it occurred. As the Buddha tells us, worrying over our pain is like a second arrow we shoot at ourselves.

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Both of the images come from Wikimedia Commons. The first is Meditation at Empty Cloud by Rikki. The second is the Buddha.

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.

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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.

February 5, 2023

Who Will You be in Twenty Years?

Once we reach adulthood, most of us believe we possess a permanent essence. We are not identical to others but unique and different, expecting to remain much as we are. 

Holding this belief, we plan for the future, assuming our happiness will depend on whether we achieve our twenty-something goals.

Ah, but goals change, at least for many. Moreover, the exact form of our transformations can’t be predicted. Here is a simple example:

As a boy, I loved vanilla ice cream, chocolate less, strawberry never.

Surprise!

In middle age, I discovered I fancied the strawberry flavor, like my father, and now, as my oldest grandson does.

My first awareness of such possible alterations began in 1971 when I listened to a radio broadcast of the Mahler Symphony #2 given the year before at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. Leonard Bernstein (LB) conducted.

The 80-minute Resurrection Symphony (as it is called) moved me to make myself a promise. If I ever had enough money to take a trip to wherever LB performed it again, I’d do so.

Time passed. I completed school, and my professional life began. Bernstein continued his own.

After more than 15 years, I read the announcement I’d been waiting for. The New York Philharmonic would offer the music under Lenny’s baton in April 1987. I made the trip.

You could say I expected too much. Perhaps. But veteran music lovers recognize no two performances are identical, even within the same few days. The rendition was fine, but the rocket to the celestial realm failed to arrive.

Why?

The simple answer was this: Lenny and I were more than a decade older. Before the downbeat, I’d attended a few live presentations of the same work, caught many recordings of the composition, and lived a fistful of years.

That slice of my existence contained numerous shake-ups, shake-offs, amendments, revisions, complications, joys of the heart, and tweaks of all kinds. Tempests arrived and departed, fears were faced and faded, and triumphs and defeats lived in and through.

I imagine the conductor would have said something similar, though he came in an older body, one he was wearing out.

In its entire nature, the aging process can’t be anticipated. We cannot predict who we will become, no matter what we believe.

We understand mortality not at all unless a near-death experience has convincingly threatened us. Our knowledge of personal death is otherwise abstract, neither gripping nor complete.

Just so, imagining the fullness of the career I enjoyed was unknown, nor how my children and patients would transform me.

Does your crystal ball foresee what doors will open to you, what people you will encounter, the accidents ahead, or the betrayals of your body by your body? 

Who can predict the lucky breaks, world events to be written in history books, the kind and unkind people around the corner, or the impact of a thousand other things?

Neither your brain nor your physical makeup is a stationary entity. 

According to the April 1, 2021 issue of Scientific American*, “In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion (cells) will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.” The automated process will reinvent you to some degree regardless of your best efforts in exercise and diet.

Trust me, you will not be the same and shouldn’t be the same, given the tuition-free experience of a lifetime.

Were you to meet your older self on the street, you might perceive the resemblance but not the full character of the fellow.

I’d venture that most of us believe the wisdom of the old is the gift of self-awareness and experience rather than changes to the operation of our brain and body. If the common man is correct, how do we account for the extraordinary intensity of emotion we observe in an active child?

He did not learn this.

In our teens, we continue to possess a similar intensity, perhaps more on occasion. Still, it begins to decline so that many unwise, unthinking, non-self-reflective souls often appear sedate and thoughtful before their end.

Rather than supposing such a one grew from increasing mastery and reconsideration of his mistakes, I’d venture his body often took the lead in the mellowness and acceptance the years delivered.

In Plato’s Republic, the author recalls a conversation between Socrates and an aged friend:

Socrates: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.

And this is a question I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’: Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

Cephalus: I will tell you, Socrates, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says, and at our meetings the complaint of my acquaintances commonly is, ‘I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away; there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.’

Some complain of the slights put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly how many evils their old age is the cause.

But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really at fault. For if old age were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.

How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles. He was asked, ‘How does love suit with age, Sophocles? Are you still the man you were?’ He replied, ‘Peace! Most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.

Four points should be emphasized:

  1. Socrates was about 71 at the time of his death.
  2. Years before, he could not have forecast that he would be sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens by encouraging in them the thoughtful questioning he practiced.
  3. A reduction in sex drive is standard in aged men, many of whom are at relative peace with it. No man in his prime would find the decline or the acceptance imaginable. Of those who maintain an active sex life in old age, few say the experience is as mindblowing as during their sexual heyday.
  4. There is much to enjoy for curious seniors who maintain adequate but imperfect health, good luck, and enough money to meet their needs without significant concern. Other advantages include a sense of calm, freedom from many worries and responsibilities, self-acceptance, and gratitude for what remains. Of course, the present is not identical to their past life. Much of their joy comes from friendship, children, and grandchildren, not heroic achievements.

Shakespeare, among others, noted we are “time’s fool,” meaning that time plays with us as ancient kings did with their court jesters (also called fools), kept nearby to entertain the monarch.

We do not know how much time we have and who we will be as we progress through whatever allotment comes our way. Nor is the breathtaking acceleration of the day’s pace conceivable until we find each 24 hours speeding ahead.

Best to fulfill your hopes early, especially if their fulfillment requires the energy, enthusiasm, and intensity a young body was made for.

Bucket lists come without guarantees. If it is unlikely that you can grasp the experience of mid-life and old age ahead of time, the list may need unexpected revision.

Those much older folks look strange, don’t they?

You see, I am time’s fool, as well.

I laugh more than ever in playing my part.

If “all the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare said, I have been well cast.

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*The authors of the Scientific American article are Mark Fischetti and Jen Christiansen. 

All of the images above are sourced from Wikiart.org/ In order from the top, they are Futuristic Woman, 1911, by David Burliuk, Flight to the Future by Wojciech Siudmak, Teiresias Foretells the Future of Odysseus by Henry Fuseli, ca. 1800, and Future, 1943, by Agnes Lawrence Pelton.

January 15, 2023

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Say

Some people talk too soon, some too late, some too much, and some too little. Others pile up the sentences so fast you’d think they have to catch a train. Some talk too loud, soft, or close (in your face).

One of the most common regrets I heard in my clinical practice was from patients who believed they lacked the right word at the right time. Something had happened. Perhaps an offensive comment had been made, and they didn’t know how to respond.

The right words arrived by United Parcel Service (UPS) about three hours later. Others couldn’t imagine a good repost even after three weeks.

There are too many ways to go wrong in everyday conversation and even more in a public presentation if you don’t have much to contribute. Adlai Stevenson II told the following story.

It seems that a young and none-too-impressive new member of the British House of Commons approached his party leader and Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli:

“Now, Mr. Prime Minister, I’ve just come to the House; do you think it would be well if I participated in debate?” And the Prime Minister looked at him appraisingly for a moment and said, “No, I think it would be better if you did not. I think it would be better if the House wondered why you didn’t speak rather than why you did!”

Even though we don’t have the benefit of Disraeli’s advice, many of us have thought of ourselves as Disraeli did of the young member of Parliament: that we’d cause embarrassment by opening our mouths.

Well, sometimes we will, and indeed, all of us have done it before. Few will remember our blunders, however, and there is no chance of making an impression that is clever, thoughtful, kind, or enlightened without moving our lips.

No amount of potential eloquence does us any good if we forever have the mute button on.

Discussão.png

I’ve made some unfortunate comments myself.

In my teens, I visited a cousin whose mother had died after a long and grueling struggle with cancer. I extended my condolences, and, as often happens during such visits, we discussed other things.

Indeed, I forgot the sad occasion for a moment and mentioned a recent minor mishap, characterizing it as a “fate worse than death.”

Oops.

Too late to suck it back in. No way to un-ring the bell.

I apologized, of course, and my kind relative forgave my mistake. She was dealing with the real thing, death itself, not something trivial and stupid such as my comment. Years later, she couldn’t recall it.

Tactless remarks arise, as uncomfortable as they are. As I said earlier, we often wonder why we didn’t know what to say.

For a lucky few, their command of language comes as a genetic gift. They also have the confidence to deliver a line that others might keep to themselves.

While I can’t give you natural eloquence, I have a few suggestions to increase the possibility of saying the right thing and avoiding the wrong one:

  1. Make a recording of yourself as if you were chatting. There is nothing like hearing how you sound to discover what might be imperfect about how you converse. Yes, it could fuel your self-consciousness temporarily. But the project of self-improvement rarely comes without courage and pain.
  2. Have at l least one joke in hand that isn’t dirty or politically incorrect.
  3. Cut out “stance adverbs” and participles when beginning to talk or as interjections. I’m speaking of “uh,” “um,” “like,” “so,” and “you know.” Limit how often you say “awesome.” And never put these words altogether: “So, uh, you know, like, um, it was awesome!” Don’t say “fail” when you mean “failure” and “reveal” when you should use “revelation.” You will sound 20% more intelligent once all this is accomplished.
  4. Wait a bit before answering, at least sometimes, to create the opportunity to formulate what you have to say. The conversation isn’t a race to hit the buzzer on a TV game show.
  5. Part of the reason for waiting is to grasp what your partner means, display respect, and understand his point of view. Repeating what has been said to you can be helpful. Identifying and acknowledging his ideas is essential if you wish to have friends and loving companions. Fewer disagreements will be one of the benefits.
  6. If you expect a wise guy to put you down (because of your history or his), prepare some comebacks in advance. There are books on this sort of thing, so you don’t have to be original. Don’t forget, however, that sometimes the best put down is to ignore the barb, and ending the relationship occasionally is necessary.
  7. Try to sound au courant (a French expression meaning “up to date” or “fully informed”). A good start would be to read something other than an internet story on the life of the Kardashians.
  8. Discover some new words. Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary has been around since 1942 and is a worthy place to begin.
  9. Don’t circumambulate (circle the idea you are trying to express). Get to the point so as not to lose your listeners.
  10. If you are in the habit of employing lots of pronouns, be sure the pronoun comes right after the formal name of whoever the “he” or “she” you are referring to is. If you don’t, the listener might think you are talking about someone else.
  11. In general, especially in public utterances, wait until you have the attention of others. Trying to talk over people is frustrating, and those who specialize in preventing you from completing your thought are rude.
  12. Asking dinner partners to stop texting should happen much more often than it does. It is not impolite to tell them you will wait until they are finished.
  13. Most people who are nervous tend to rush what they have to say. Instead, think of your oral communication as a landscape painting, where the words become the foreground, and the silence becomes the background. It will help if you allow seconds of quiet to put your words into relief.
  14. Consider going to Toastmasters. It is an organization whose meetings (also online) are “learn-by-doing” workshops “in which participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a no-pressure atmosphere.” And they’ve been doing it since 1924.
  15. Unless you are gifted in delivering an unrehearsed speech in front of an audience, try to memorize your address or at least bring an outline.
  16. One last piece of advice comes from an anonymous author:

Be careful of the words you say,

Keep them short and sweet.

You never know, from day to day,

Which ones you’ll have to eat.

========

The revised edition of Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary was published in 2022.

The second image is a 1630 self-portrait of Rembrandt, sourced from the National Gallery of Art. The cartoon is called Conversation by Richard Melo da Silva, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 8, 2023

At the End of the Day, Do Personal Accomplishments Matter?

When I attended my 20th high school reunion, it looked as if status and appearance mattered greatly to the assembled throng. Friends came to an identical conclusion. It could have been called a “Festival to Impress.”

I wasn’t that impressed.

The 50th reunion was different. No one cared about what you’d done professionally or were still doing. Friends, old and new, were pleased to talk, get to know you in some depth, and share the light and dark sides of distant memories.

If you’d achieved something worthwhile, you were now at ease with yourself. Everyone seemed grateful they were still in decent health, pleased to laugh with each other, and happy most of those they cared about were alive.

Of course, some who didn’t attend felt ashamed of their place in the world or how they looked. Others, also absent, felt no large attachment to the school or their classmates. They moved on, as the saying goes. Nor did embittered souls want to remind themselves of longstanding anger or sadness. Perhaps they recalled their time at Mather High School as an accumulation of humiliating experiences.

All of this raises questions about what is of value in any life. I can’t offer you a personal prescription, but I can relate a little about myself and what I know of those closest to me. Here goes a short version of what is important to me now and what isn’t.

Having lived almost 10 years since retirement, I’ve become rather indifferent about the kinds of items you put on resumes. My ego is still helpful for taking a stand about things, but I don’t spend too much time pulled back by my history or driven to look far ahead.

That is not to say I have no idea what is ahead, though I’m not expecting to vanish soon if you get my meaning.

I have a minimal selection of regrets and recently reduced that number by apologizing to an old friend to whom I was unkind years ago. He said he’d been thinking about me and hoping I’d do just that.

I have very little in my life worth hiding, and I tend to talk about anything you want to hear from me.

I want to keep learning, which means reading and engaging with people. An instructor in a Shakespeare course I just began said he would not only question each of us orally during class but hoped to make us a bit uncomfortable when he required us to justify our conclusions; the better for our understanding to grow.

When I heard that, I felt like jumping for joy. Seriously.

I care deeply about the well-being of loved ones and friends. I am at the stage when the latter are swept away without fanfare.

Everyone I know my age must deal with one malady or another, and all with aches and pains. In general, these are uncomfortable conditions rather than mortal ones so far. We all adapt.

As an old, retired psychologist, I won’t tell the young what is ahead of them if they live as long as I have. They’d neither understand it nor believe it. Young people cannot imagine the physical changes ahead, and I don’t want to be the guy to tell them. Better they just assume it is all either magic or bad luck.

When I became a new father, I hoped my children would achieve something meaningful. But, you may discover for yourself that regardless of what they accomplish, in the end, you care about their health and happiness. Your approach to your grandchildren is much the same.

Woody Allen commented about the value of accomplishment in a conversation with Dick Cavett just after Groucho Marx died in 1977:

He had achieved everything I wanted to achieve as a comedian but he still got old and he still aged, and nothing special was going to happen because he had achieved this enormous artistic accomplishment.

What did it mean anyhow — that he was going to get a long obituary?

I tend to agree with Woody on this point.

I have little interest in what is said about me, and I don’t expect, need, or deserve anyone cutting down part of a tree to produce the paper needed to enhance my posthumous reputation in the printed news. All who survive me, whenever that happens, will be far better off with the tree.

One piece of advice I shall leave my kids is that it’s OK to tell jokes about me and to imagine I’m laughing with them. No hallucinations of me allowed, however.

Speaking of jokes, I laugh more than I ever have. If you must choose between viewing life as a tragedy or a comedy, I just told you how I prefer to vote. Not everything should be taken with grave severity.

Being a “good” person is not as easy as being kind, though kindness is necessary. It is also a matter of what you do to help repair the world. That means some combination of effort and giving away money unless you are down to your last dollar.

And yet, I don’t want you to think I would leave it at that upon “taking off.” Don’t assume the humans you care about know how you feel about them. Considering it is nice, repeat it to make sure, and keep doing so. Endlessly.

With my kids and grandchildren, the last thing I say on the way out the door after every weekly visit is, “I love you.” We hug at the same time, too. So it has been and will be.

What would be better than to offer those three final words and a hug?

OK, maybe a kiss, too.

==========

Greg Williams drew and uploaded the caricature of comedian and movie star Groucho Marx to Wikimedia Commons. With her generous permission, the second image is Laura Hedien’s photograph of the Chicago River at the End of December 2022: Laura Hedien Official Website.

January 2, 2023

What We Miss Too Easily in Life (And Where to Find It)

We often overlook opportunities because we are unaware of their value or rarity. Most of us wait for fanfare arrivals, but many invitations keep their secrets unless one notices a quiet entry. 

Think back. The ship of chance moved close and asked if you wanted a ride.

You said, “No.”

Sometimes we are too young to understand a world beyond imagining will never come our way again.

Let me tell you about one and what I learned about missed chances from Evgéniya Konstantinovna Leontóvich.

My aunt Nettie lived in the same apartment building as Eugenie Leontovich; the name had been Americanized a bit by then. She preferred to be called Madame by her students as an Artist in Residence with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. 

I was 21.

Born in old Russia in 1900, her father and three brothers, all officers in the Imperial Army, were murdered by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

The then-young lady escaped to the USA, arriving in 1922. Her assent in the performing arts was swift. Soon she became a Broadway star. Subsequently, Madame appeared in T.V. and movies in subordinate roles and wrote for the stage.

I’d have known all this if Google existed 54 years ago. Nor did Nettie have any awareness of the lady’s fame, including her lead in Grand Hotel, a hit at its 1930 opening in New York. 

Two years later, when the play became a magnificent movie, Greta Garbo took over the part Evgéniya Konstantinovna Leontóvich created. 

The circumstance of my encounter with the extraordinary lady was unusual. She could find no one to accompany her to the Lyric Opera. My aunt also turned her down, suggesting I might wish to go.

We met near the box office, where I noticed a slender, short, 68-year-old woman of ordinary appearance standing alone. 

My “date!” 

We were soon seated in the center of the main floor’s second row for Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. I knew little about opera but attended Chicago Symphony performances, so we talked about music. I’d read only a few plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Eugene O’Neil, so I was ignorant of the theatre  — her domain.

The intermission passed in pleasant but unremarkable conversation. My reserved companion never mentioned her stunning past. Other than among her acting apprentices and fellow professionals, she had outlived her grandest days.

This reminds me of a poem by A.E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young. In this excerpt, the author attempts to console the deceased hero:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honors out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.   

Certainly, the Madame’s honors were mostly worn. Her renown was outrunning her, except for a diminishing number of people with long memories.   

For my part, I wish I’d been aware of all of the above and more. I’m sorry I’d not mastered the history of the Bolshevik Revolution and Tsarist Russia before WWI, the country she’d been born in.   

But more, she participated in and witnessed a lost dimension. When anyone who lived through the dictatorship of the Tsar, a world war, and civil bloodshed departed this life, their experience vanished with them. 

As David Jones wrote in his preface to In Parenthesis, his WWI memoir tried to describe the indescribable for his readers, including “the complex of sights, sounds, fears, hopes, apprehensions, smells, things exterior and interior, the landscape and paraphernalia of that singular time and of those particular men.”

He knew, and I now know, one must live some experiences lest one fool oneself about what knowing really is.

What it meant to exist in what we think of as history is erased, but for stories and yellowed accounts that fail to capture the moments’ scent, taste, sound, passion, and color.   

I saw one more opera with this gracious lady and never again.   

Today, I suppose some get a second life in selfies or triumphant moments like those of Eugenie Leontovich. Even if one survives with their celebrity intact, only those like Shakespeare obtain lasting respect.   

My missed opportunities with the grand, diminutive woman and other older generations caused me to imagine a different life. Several, actually.

  

If I could, I would go back to the period of Socrates and blend in with his students as he questioned them to make them think beyond conventional, easy answers.   

Given a set of days in ancient Rome, a menial job as a servant to Marcus Aurelius — the celebrated Roman ruler and Stoic philosopher — shouldn’t be out of reach. A little boldness might put me close enough to watch and hear him interact with others.   

Foolish or wise, you’d find me eating in the days before toothpaste, living before regular bathing, discovering love ahead of contraception, and competing in the sports of the day.   

Closer in time, I’d hope curiosity could drop me near the conversations on how best to form a new nation with the likes of Jefferson, James Monroe, and Ben Franklin.   

In a change of direction, I might join the ranks of those living and narrowly surviving the Bubonic Plague, enough to suffer the horror and desperation.

In another unreachable chance, you’d observe me as a black man on a Southern plantation, enduring the humiliation and abuse of the entitled white “masters.”   

But my experience would not all be passing through hardship and horror or learning from and about famous men. 

More desirable than all the other experiences, I’d join my father and his soldier buddies on leave in Paris and enjoy the first Bastille Day after its liberation from the Nazis. 

To see him again, this time as a young man …

I think many of us fool ourselves about life. We don’t realize all that generations past can still teach us as they play out the days remaining. 

We can’t know how a trip to a foreign land might yet change us unless we go. Our photoshopped selfies explain only our preoccupation with the impression we are trying to make in a lesser world, pitching its own images back at us.   

The mirror can only teach so much.   

There are worlds elsewhere for us to live in and many to discover from those who are almost done living them.   

I have had a wonderful life, partly because my profession required speaking with strangers who became my patients, uncovering the lives they experienced, including some who were thrown into life before my time.

The ship of chance continues to move for everyone. Whether it comes near you or you approach it, the question lingers:   

Do you want a ride?   

Say “Yes!”           

==========

The top photo is of the original production of Grand Hotel in 1930, Act I, Scene 7. The cast from left to right: Henry Hull (Baron von Gaigern), William Nunn (Meierheim), Eugenie Leontovich (Grusinskaia), Lester Alden (Witte), Rafaela Ottiano (Suzanne).

The second photo includes Eugenie Leontovich alone from the same performance.

Below it is Greta Garbo, as photographed by Clarence Bull in 1931.

Beneath that is Fritz Erler’s 1898 decoration of the book, Slavery. Like the Garbo photo, it was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, my father. The drawing was created on February 28, 1945, almost certainly made by a street artist. You can see the date and a small image of the Eiffel Tower in the lower right corner. Dad sent it to his wife, my soon-to-be mother Jeanette, while he was still in Europe.

Paris had been freed on August 25, 1944, six months before. World War II ended in Europe on May 8, 1945.

My dad obtained leave to attend the first Bastille Day after the liberation of France: July 14, 1945. U.S. troops continued to occupy Europe for some time. My father returned to Chicago in early 1946.

December 18, 2022

Our Hunger for Praise

The opinions of others sway in the breeze, plus to minus, minus to plus. A leafy green on our sunny days — brown, crinkly, and fallen on the rest.

Many adults are as preoccupied with being evaluated as they were in school. Since we cannot escape all those who would judge us, the crucial question is what to do with their appraisals.

Our species always needed to keep the favor of those around them. When dangerous animals, enemies, or an absence of food came into play, a team enabled survival.

Men and women desired a place of shelter with a group, more achievable if the newcomers proved of practical value to the bunch. Nor did it hurt to be understood and consoled, while offering the same encouragement to companions. Helpful advice was sought and shared.

We still hope our needs are cared about and cared for by folks we know, though governments take up some slack. Survival depended on friends, lovers, and comrades in our prehistory (before written records). Indeed, we feel adrift and lonely without them today.

Nonetheless, too often, we think  “The Three Stooges” captured the state of current circumstances when they said,

All for one! One for all! Every man for himself!

Given our hunger for glory and fear of disgrace or abandonment, happiness requires a strategy for reaching a proper place in society.

Even among the most prominent souls, one discovers performers and athletes desperate to command the stage after they should have left it. The glorious singing voice may be gone, but the desire for continuing adulation often trumps reason.

The larger the craving, the larger our risk of becoming the object of flattery: insincere or excessive kudos, unearned applause, or cheers. Some who rise to the top cannot bear the inevitable fall.

Equally dangerous is dependency on a lover for unflagging attention. Insecurity will cause some to make sexual advances to secure their place as desirable and necessary, even beyond what the partner enjoys.

One might consider an excessive effort to receive smiling notice an addiction of sorts. When the mate tires of overwhelming craving, the worry over anticipated loss produces the rejection that was feared. Consider this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Marcus Aurelius knew well the world of popularity, reputation, and false compliments. This Emperor of Rome wrote:

Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time swallows it all. 

The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region (in which) it takes place. The whole earth, (is) a (mere) point in space – and most of it uninhabited.

Goethe, the German genius of words and thoughts, put our transitory nature this way:

Names are like sound and smoke.

Stated differently, we don’t last much beyond the time it takes sound to become silent and the vapor to vanish.

Marcus Aurelius learned to tell the difference between those who offered help and consideration for him and those whose presence was self-interested. At the beginning of his Meditations, he lists 17 of those who aided him in valuing personal virtue and understanding the human universe and his place in it.

Knowing oneself and discovering how to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit are the first steps to becoming less vulnerable to changeable opinions.

Congratulations and blame will come, but convictions must remain despite the crowd’s cheers or boos. Win the self-confidence you wish by setting and testing an internal standard that is reachable and worth reaching.

As the Russian writer, Pushkin wrote:

To praise and slander (both) be nonchalant and cool.

Demand no laureate’s wreath, think nothing of abuse,

And never argue with a fool.*

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

*Translated by A.Z. Foreman from Pushkin’s Exegi Monumentum.

The statue is Edward Onslow Ford’s Applause, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The painting is Time, Death and Judgement by George Frederick Watts, courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada.

December 11, 2022

Our Difficulty with Quiet

Spending time alone with our thoughts sounds easy, but isn’t. In my therapy practice, it wasn’t unusual for patients to leave a session — especially early in our relationship — and have difficulty recalling what had been discussed. Once by themselves, the mist of forgetting gripped them.

Many of us use our brains like a piece of white bread on top of a sandwich, covering the indigestible meat of pain. At least, it distracts from the crunching, too-chewy, weighty thing underneath. We don’t want to contemplate but rather cancel ideas, memories, and dystopian futures.

The remarkable author David Foster Wallace (DFW) mentioned the potential anxiety of being alone without switching off the brain. Perhaps we imagine missing out on what friends deem worthwhile activities (so they’d like us to believe). We assume our chums have the favor of other buddies that the stay-at-home souls (you and me) might not possess.

Thinking is difficult, as DFW and others have noted. No one is well-trained in how to do it, instead assuming it flows as a natural gift.

Thinking through, peering into — not over or above the storm — that’s what people don’t want to talk about or wrestle with if those twin ponderings can be avoided.

The Hebrew Bible speaks of such useful wrestling as happened between Jacob and an angel:

The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had.

And Jacob was left alone.

And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

And he said to him, “What is your name?”

And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Genesis 32: 22-32*

Perhaps our angel waits to be found, hoping we will wrestle with the difficulties we try to set beyond our reach. Is deep reading in silence an invitation to such matters? Jacob, after all, sent his family away before the angel appeared.

One of the less elevating uses of visual entertainment occurs when it becomes a stand-in for thoughtfulness and reveals a passive passageway to escape. We dread boredom for its vulnerability to gloom and look for a way to block it out. When added to self-doubt and fears of our future, many of us take flight from ourselves, preferring TV or movies and a focus on the lives of others.

The crowd we belong to tells us what is of value. Without independent ideas, our role becomes one of receiving their borrowed thoughts, like a postal delivery of a puzzle. We open the box and find a large, ill-shaped puzzle piece to fit into ourselves and pretend all is well.

Nor do we believe our episodic sourness is acceptable to the group. They, too, want to persuade themselves their dark times and places are few. The laughter and pleasantness they display are taken by us as the entirety of their lives, suggesting they have mastered human existence as we have not.

We are ambivalent about where we went wrong. We want to find the answer but are afraid to get near it. When did our lives turn? How did we get where we are? Better not to ponder such things.

If the silence of these private ideas cannot be escaped, the lack of satisfying answers screams at us. 

Too many people sprint into the night away from the sound when walking toward it might calm the terror. The scream is ours, inescapable until we listen and understand the messages.

Greta Garbo might have been a similarly troubled individual. Her dialogue in the 1932 movie Grand Hotel, “I want to be alone,” told much about her-offscreen existence. Garbo retired early and led a life of astonishing solitude and self-willed isolation. Just before her 60th birthday, she told a friend:

In a few days, it will be the anniversary of the sorrow that never leaves me, that will never leave me for the rest of my life.”

Some of the brightest people avoid serious and lengthy books. True, we have more possible activities available to us than ever. Lives can be swept away by an infinity of choices, all leading to fog and forgetting. 

Can avoidance of an 800-page masterpiece be due to its soul-searching challenge beyond the lack of time we claim is the barrier? Does such immensity threaten to overwhelm our capacity and inform us what we are not and what we must do to improve?

To do that requires change and the endurance of strange expressions. The faces offer the wordless attempts of friends to discover why we are reading that. An unsettled feeling follows inside, telling us of the possible loss of our tenuous hold on our spot in the social network.

Part of the difficulty of understanding the best books is that they require courage. Many of us read them and make an inward and automatic declaration that the story’s characters made the kinds of mistakes we’d never make. 

Some bravery is needed to realize we are no better, no wiser, and have no more forethought than those characters, real or imagined.

As Kafka said,

A book is like an ax to break the frozen sea within us.

If we are to surpass our current life and the troubles it brings, we can do worse than follow Abraham Lincoln’s words:

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves …

Are we prepared to unmake and recreate the person we are? 

If we do, one day, for the first time, it’s possible we’d look into the mirror, say hello to whoever has always been there, and smile.

==========

*The painting after David Foster Wallace’s brief comments is Gustav Dore’s Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Is the creature an angel or God? Scholars of different religions are invited to inform me.

It is followed by The Pensive Reader by Mary Cassatt, 1896, sourced from Wikiart.org/

Next comes a 1925 photo by Arnold Genthe of Greta Garbo from History Daily.

The last image is a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is sourced from Wikimedia.com/

The Lincoln quotation was part of an annual speech made to the assembled Congress on December 1, 1862. His reference is to the ongoing Civil War.