May 18, 2026

Watch The Timing

Posted by Dr. Bob under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
Comments Off on Watch The Timing 
Free Hourglass Clock photo and picture

A crying baby on a passenger plane creates stress for all-especially the baby. But otherwise infants are a beloved fascination for the astute adult. In truth, we might learn a few things from these blessed beings we all once were.

Notice, for example, how a baby in a crib reaches for and grabs a little light-blue rattle, then squeezes and shakes it in those delightfully random, repeated arcs, primary circular reactions. But then this little one spies a bright yellow and red caterpillar plush toy nearby: the sudden object of desire. Well, instead of rattle-release in favor of the plush toy, something quite strange happens. The more the child wants the caterpillar, the more they hold fast to the rattle in their grasp. Immense frustration follows, for there is no having the object of desire without releasing the object in hand.

Apoplectic cries and tears might follow. And maybe, a broad swipe with accidental grip-release, and the rattle flies; more tears, then eventual calming. Now, with the hand free to reach for that caterpillar, there is a squeeze (the toy makes a crinkle sound) and a baby’s sense of delight!

This lesson of when to hold on and when to let go is with us everyday of our lives.

Preschoolers are deeply concerned about pee and poop. And decisions on evacuation can stymie the best of them. When do I hold on? When do I let go? Mistakes have messy consequences and may invite the ire of big people. For all involved, these high stakes dances around the potty chair can lead to shame or to autonomy. After all, a good poop, holding on and then a proper letting go, is something to be proud of!

Young kids throwing a ball learn an optimal grip and release to achieve their target, and herald their competency. And life’s targets just keep on coming as teen and young adults continue to learn this lifelong lesson on enduring or giving up and in…and the pacing for each. Self-evident is the inarguable virtue of knowing when to pursue and when to let go of relationships, careers, poker hands and stocks in portfolios. Sometimes we must hold fast to what we have. But sometimes when we hold on to what we’ve got too hard and long, we are not so free to reach for something new. The Old Taoist Master said, “watch the timing”.

This wisdom rings true from our first day to our last; from our first breath to our last breath. This will be our final lesson. Our well-lived lives will inform those last breaths. For at the end, these may be erratic breaths, shallow breaths-all natural of course and not generally painful. But if we have built the knack for it, there is surrender to respirations however they come. These are our fleeting and precious holdings on and lettings go- to the last agonal breath.

What happens next has been a cause of wonderment for living creatures since our ancestors packed graves with tools and supplies for the afterlife. What comes next is the crux of the mystery. The great 18th Century German polymath wrote that “the highest state man can attain is wonder.”

Whether man, woman or child; whether facing life or facing death, wonder is a pretty good way to go.

 

May 5, 2026

Talkers, No Listeners

Posted by Dr. Bob under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
Comments Off on Talkers, No Listeners 
Free People Man photo and picture

We talk a lot and occasionally to good ends. Perhaps we do not appreciate our communicating gifts, in part because speech is so pervasive. And listening so scarce!

Grasshoppers hum out to their fellows with rapid strokes of antennae or wings. Ants deposit a pheromone trail for safekeeping: to guide, to elude predators, and to pursue food sources. Pheromones you may have heard are also pretty good for attracting mates! Safety, food and sex are high stakes for tiny creatures and big ones too. One wonders why insects are so good at communicating even as humans can be pretty darn bad at it. Perhaps, unlike us, grasshoppers truly hear the sounds of their sidekicks.

When did talking rise to the pinnacle of our social experience? When did listening descend to a postscript? Our world of Talkers seems to louden after each Tech advance from telephones, to the internet, to social media. Such cacophony! Now most everyone has a platform, demanding influence, likes and listeners. But with everyone expressing, no one is left to be receptive, to receive; to bear witness.

The Psychotherapy Room occupies a sacred space in this communication paradigm. It’s blessed like a Priest’s Confessional or the Sacred Circle of a Shaman or like going alone to the teacher in Dokusan. Special communications join there and knowledges exchange. Listening is integral. Clients in psychotherapy enjoy, muddle through, and struggle with these exchanges. But there prevails a special overarching experience: to be heard, to be witnessed. Some clients realize that whether by family or by friends or by colleagues they have never or only rarely been heard. Think of it! And then ponder about how increasingly normalized this tragedy has become in our world of Talkers.

Ironically, the deep desire to be heard elevates loquacity. The more we want to be heard the more we seem to speak. And the more conversations take place in vitro (lab of the mind) and not in vivo. Inner monologues and dialogs are fine only if they do not displace communicating with another: I-I versus I-Thou. Picture a world of neurotics mistaking interior me-to-me conversations for the real thing.

This delusion has exploded today across social media mirages. Ours has become an asocial and lonely world. Legions have turned away from their human counterparts only to nuzzle with human illusions transmitted on smart-phones. Many more will look to artificial intelligence and chatbots to try to nourish social and belonging needs. But there is no there there. Tiny pockets of society are already collapsing because of it…youngsters are more vulnerable but all are at risk. We are starving for each other.

Sometimes, when things fall apart, opportunity arises for something new. Perhaps we now arrive at such place and such a time; a time to be still and listen deeply; to gaze into the eyes of the other; to pause and feel the miracle of that other human life before us; and to watch the otherness disappear into our shared humanity.

 

August 13, 2025

No Excuses

Posted by Dr. Bob under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , |
Comments Off on No Excuses 
Free Pointing Gesture photo and picture

Children talk it up when seeking a path out of responsibility, post-infraction. There flows a river of forgetting, not-knowing (the rule), blaming others, and all manner of excuses based on “the dog ate my homework”. Our social order necessitates life lessons to ameliorate this universal shortcoming. Sometimes scoldings and punishment seem like the reasonable intervention. And sometimes they are.

But if we fail to kindly take the child’s side as we deliver a strong life lesson, the negative affect is retained and the lesson is lost. Think of it this way: loss of a driving privilege may be the ideal consequence for breaking curfew with the family car. But if delivered with parental anger and attitude, there is no learning except “my parents are jerks (or a more colorful expletive)”. Besides, when delivering an agreed upon (think “behavioral contract”) punishment, there is no better time to take the kid’s side: “I am sorry you got home so late: no driving this weekend but you get a fresh start next week and i know you can do better”. After all, in a family shouldn’t we all be on each others side?

Of course, too often we are crazed in opposition to each other. We over-ameliorate irresponsibility, this very human flaw.

Parents blame children for these derelictions. Think of it: a child blames a sibling, then a parent blames the child for wrongly blaming a sibling. The immature schema of blame is never replaced by its mature alternative, responsibility. The starting point of this essay.

When blame dominates a family system, self-blame is inevitable. Unkind punishments from without become self-attacks from within: I am bad, no good, unworthy, even worthless. Ruminations tear at us and tear down ego-structure. We develop mistrust, shame, doubt, guilt, inferiority, and overwhelming confusion. In this instance, personal responsibility fades into the distance as self-blame gobbles up the territory of our everyday life. Children (and adults) become self-piteous, powerless excuse-makers.

Instead, lessons of responsibility are better taught as empowerments: the ability to respond to circumstance. Those lessons run deep and deserve a family dialog that illuminates the causes and effects of our mistakes, even (and especially) those with harm done. No blame. After all, there are always reasons for human behavior and if we are to grow it is imperative to understand them.

Responsibility: Reasons, but no excuses!

 

March 7, 2025

The Me-Against-You Family

Posted by Dr. Bob under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
Comments Off on The Me-Against-You Family 
Free Geese Birds photo and picture

Across cultures and time, the family unit has delivered support, well-being, sustenance and security. More or less.


Much has been written about those positives and those negatives. Here, consider a particular negative quality and what might be done about it. Specifically and ironically let’s highlight that sometimes families less resemble the virtue of Sunday School and look more like like the antagonisms of Sunday Football.


That is to say, each family member becomes a team onto itself, competing against, even antagonizing the other: parent against parent, sibling fighting sib, children against parents and parents opposing their own kids. Strategies and alliances develop as one parent sides with one child against the other parent. Or the time honored tradition of a child splitting parental authority, going to Dad for some perks and Mom for others. Me-against-you is a model for the art of war, but not for the art of love.


What is going on? After all, should not the family be for the other members? Why do they so often (angrily) oppose one another? Let’s examine that question.


Imagine this: husband and wife, with a complete lack of humility, debate details of a shared responsibility (something monumental like who took out the garbage last). Each falsely believes that their own memory of the chore is a flawless video recoding of the event: It is definitely your turn! Research on memory suggests that while we are certain of our facts, all of us have a sometimes biased and often inaccurate recollection of events. Remembering that, partners could get a little less haughty, calm down a bit…and flip a coin. And by the way, it is never about the garbage!


We could pause any conflict and the earlier the better. Instead, we might give understanding a try. Not “dammit I don’t understand you” but with utmost sincerity, curiosity and kindness, “I really want to understand you”. Not just the words, but voice tone, countenance and breath. No huffing or puffing, just nice even breath. After all, there may be nothing more debilitating than to feel misunderstood by someone you love.


Parents teach their children everyday. There is modeling and instruction, sometimes softly and sometimes with a firm NO. Avoid creating a me- against-you moment. For example, not caring for the DVD collection could merit a required clean up and consequence: no videos today. But watch that delivery here too. Relax the frustration and edge, because children feel your feelings more than your words. Deliver these consequences with diplomacy and compassion: “no videos today, that will be hard…I hope you will do better tomorrow”. After all, when kids goof up, besides a lesson they need to know mom or dad is on their side.


Being a frustrated parent is hard but not an excuse to blow off steam at the expense of a child. That kind of catharsis is selfish- it might give a parent relief, but we have to do better. Instead, run around the block or chop wood or carry water. Invite the calm and then talk with your kid.


Parents could use the exercise.

 

June 19, 2024

Write. Right. Rite

Posted by Dr. Bob under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , |
Comments Off on Write. Right. Rite 

We scribble in our first efforts to express the basic need to lay pencil or crayon to surfaces of all kinds. We mark on paper and coloring books as well as on floors and walls and sometimes across the pages of hardcover classics (sorry, mom).


These child-arts foreshadow drawing and painting and symbol making and alphabet. We write.
And for some of us, writing may become more than a requirement of school or the workplace. For some of us, it channels an expressive need innate to our character. Some with exceptional talent create and publish poems and works of non-fiction and fiction. For others, less talented, but wholly committed, the journal beckons.


There is in the Buddhist Tradition a Path, with 8 overlapping divisions (no claims of expertise here). These are sometimes called “Right” as in “Right Understanding”. Not right in the sense of right-wrong so much as right in the sense of wise. To write is right in the latter sense; it is wise to make this effort (Another of the Eight, “Right Effort”). Sometimes words flow in the journaling process and sometimes they are painfully stuck, yet we stay with it.


These words, flowing or stuck, reflect and express our Thought (another of the Eight, “Right Thought”). And so it goes in this thought-to-word written process. Akin to effort, there is a discipline to it all beginning with the intention (“Right Intention”) to write, a vow to write. In a very real sense, writing could then become a ritual, a Rite. This is a practice that supports and is supported by concentration and mindfulness (two others of the Eight).


Write. Right. Rite.


Perhaps for the talented few mentioned earlier, it all could become “Right Livelihood” and a vocation. For the rest of us, a practice like journaling is its own magic. Digging deep, thought transformed by reframing negativities and underscoring our basic goodness brings a more honest and accurate quality to our never-ending storylines. We face and write down those oh so automatic negative thoughts… thoughts that feature our flaws, shames and traumas could be bravely confronted and released instead of repeated over and over again. And as we write, all the forgotten gifts, large or small, the hugs and winks and even the tiniest acts of kindness, given or received, could move to the foreground.

Thought slowly transformed has effects. It informs what we say and choose not to say (“Right Speech”). It informs what we do and choose not to do (“Right Action”). Unending, this practice is revelatory and timeless, unearthing joys and challenges in the ever-changing story of our past, present and future: The deep blessing of our one and only life.


Write. Right. Rite