Psychotherapist, Author, Estrangement Specialist
Walking through my local city park this morning, I noticed one else was there. ‘There’s no one in the park right now,’ I thought to myself. But then I remembered that I was in the park. So there was someone in the park after all. Small, spontaneous perspective shifts like this remind me that a change in perspective is always possible. As Daniel Kahneman said in Thinking, Fast and Slow, what we see is not …
Every time I talk about forgiveness, I run into disagreement. When I make the statement, “Forgiveness is not a choice,” I always get pushback from people who think I’m saying something else. What they think I’m saying is, “Hey, you know what would be fun? Why don’t you hang on to your hurt on purpose and refuse to forgive the person who hurt you, even though you so totally could forgive them if you wanted to? Doesn’t that sound great?” For the …
I saw a video on Facebook. Two drivers, apparently contesting a parking space, were ramming each other’s cars. They were using their vehicles like bumper cars at an amusement park. But there was nothing amusing about the video. Below the video, people had left thousands of comments. Many decried the stupidity of the combatants. I don’t think low intelligence had anything to do with it. I saw rage. And I’ve been there. I’ve never rammed someone …
When my partner, Mike, first heard the Christmas carol The 12 Days of Christmas as a child, he thought the “partridge in a pear tree” was something about a “juniper tree.” I’m impressed that he knew the word “juniper” before he ever heard of a partridge. My own experience with The 12 Days of Christmas is that, as much as I respect holiday traditions, this is one that’s fun to monkey with. You can sing …