Fruitful Detours
One can be lonely in the middle of a crowd. Or one can choose to be alone. I had a teacher in high school, Mrs. Miller, who was on vacation and saw a man eating alone, much like the photograph above. It bothered her so much that she invited him to come join her family […]
I recently read Jon Mooallem’s book Serious Face (which I highly recommend), and one of his essays got me thinking about clouds. I’ve always loved looking at them and imagining that their shapes looked like something (“That one’s a bear.” “No, it’s a dog.”), but I haven’t been one of those folks who could look […]
When I ask people who have come to therapy “What do you want?” inevitably, they will say, “I want to be happy.” But it turns out that this is a little more complicated than we want to believe. A study at the University of Denver showed that people who placed a high value on happiness […]
When my parents died, I received hundreds of condolence cards, and gifts of homemade dinners for more than two weeks. I felt overwhelmed by the kindness that I felt. Somehow we forget how kind people are. When the governor of Florida recently thought he would make a political statement by sending a planeload of immigrants […]
There are days when I feel like there are no possibilities. This seems crazy, I know, but I still feel it at times. On those days it feels like everything is already planned out, and there is nothing I can do to change it. On those days I feel out of control, like I am […]