These past few days I’ve buried myself in three books – the printed on paper sort or books. I am reading ”The Land of Sweet Forever,” by Harper Lee, “The Burgess Boys,” by Elizabeth Strout, and “We Did OK, Kid,” by Anthony Hopkins.

I have discovered, over the years, I prefer to read two, sometimes three, books at a time. The variety, the quietness of the exercise, I find appealing. With this current selection, the memoir gives me a window into the life of a respected actor and movie star. Harper Lee’s early works evidence her warming up to pen “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Strout’s work of fiction unravels an acute family drama. The author illustrates her deep knowledge of the inner-workings of complex families – something almost all readers find familiar if we are willing to look. 

I like the unhurriedness of reading real paper books. I can take notes, watch for the authors’ unique styles, learn about writing and learn new words.

Anthony Hopkins describes a woman as “zaftig” and I was amused and a little sad that I’d never heard the word before. 

Had I known “zaftig” I would certainly have used it many times.

It takes a while, or I should say it took me a while, to learn that others don’t always see the world as you or I may expect.

People tend to make assumptions about each other and situations and outcomes based on their own contexts and experiences. 

And be wildly wrong.  

Loss of a loved one, a life-partner,  must equal grief – is a fairly safe assumption.

Or so I thought.

A woman in her 70s sat near me in a coffee-shop. There were a few indications that she’d engage in light conversation. After a little small talk and talk about her family and some reflections on her recent travels she told me her husband of 50-plus years had recently died. 

I expressed my condolences. 

“It’s a relief, really,” she said, “I’d tried for years to get out of that marriage. He was a very difficult man.”

I have frequently witnessed parents who lean toward obsessive, indulgent parenting.

It is, in my limited experience, a Western phenomenon, visible in more wealthy counties. 

While it sounds heretical I have encouraged many parents to have a life outside of their children. I promote the idea that children were never intended to be a parent’s reason to live (something I have often heard). Think of how much pressure that is for any child to shoulder. Children will crumble or rebel under the pressure of indulgence and worship. 

Divided attention (“I’ve got other things I have to do.”) is probably better for children than undivided attention (“I instantly drop everything when my children need me.”). 

I suggest parents pursue friendships with other adults and chase interest in the things they are good at like art, music, literature.

A healthy parent engages in activities that have nothing to do with his or her children or with parenting.

This usually enhances parenting and does not detract from it.

Nothing in the above suggests the promotion of child neglect. 

Far from it.

I’d suggest child indulgence is itself a form of neglect. 

Self-neglect will do your children no good at all, especially if the energy you do not spend on yourself is spent on over-caring (indulging) for your children.

The power of moving from Entitlement to Gratitude

Entitlement focusses on what you lack or think ought to be yours and what is not happening for you. Gratitude highlights the people who enrich your life and the things that enrich your life and are yours even beyond your deserving.

Entitlement enlarges you (usually only in your own head) and who you think you think you are, and what you need and what you imagine or believe you deserve. Entitlement distorts. Gratitude helps you to see you are part of a whole (a family, a community) and allows the needs and conditions of others to enter your awareness and your experience. Gratitude modifies and delivers you to a beautiful size. 

Entitlement may increase your self-importance in your own mind and in the way some people treat you (it can be very subtle) but it will also alienate you (it can also be very subtle) from those who want to know you and befriend you. Entitlement leads to being stand-offish. Gratitude will make you warmer, easier to approach and befriend.

Entitlement may, for a time, get you what you think you want. It may have others treat you in ways you think you deserve. Gratitude will transform you into who you are unaware you could be. 

Loving yourself is a rather good idea.

It’s your longest relationship.

You might as well enjoy it. 

Given that you are “fearfully and wonderfully made” what’s NOT to love? You are a highly complex and powerful person, capable of so much. 

Besides, rejecting yourself is draining, tiresome work, naturally flows into rejecting others. 

Love all-round rejuvenates all-round.

Loving yourself gives others a fighting chance to love you. Someone has to lead the way. Besides, if you don’t love who you are, how can you possibly expect others to? Loving yourself makes you easier to be with, it’s more fun to be around a self-assured, self-aware person. 

Loving yourself makes you safe. Self-loathing people are short fused, quickly triggered, lash-out kind of people.

One benefit of loving yourself is being able to see others more clearly, especially your immediate and extended family. Your family traits, urges, passions, will become clearer to you, easier to accept and embrace them, rather than resist. Self-love helps you to see how terrifically beautiful all other people really are. 

Self-love transforms your every perception and how you treat everyone and everything. 

Inner conditions are contagious. 

Others reap the benefits or feel the sting of what’s going on inside you.  

Loving yourself is a prerequisite for loving anyone and anything.

My siblings and I enjoyed each other and a local park….. just prior to my son’s wedding

I’m always on the lookout for illustrations of how different families build different family cultures.

Your “normal” in your family was probably quite different from other families regarded as “normal.”

A young man raised his hand in a class I was teaching recently. He said he had an illustration of exactly what I was talking about. He told of being invited to spend the night with a new friend from school. 

The two boys were playing video games in a room designed for that purpose and the plan was to be up late and sleep in the next morning.

“My new friend’s dad came into the games room very late and hugged my friend and kissed him on the forehead and told him he loved him and that he’d see him in the morning and to have a great night playing games. When his dad left, he also said goodnight to me, I thought someone in the family had died. I asked my new friend if everything was ok. He could not understand my question. I told him that if my dad came and hugged me and said goodnight and that he loved me I would think there was really something bad going on.”

“My dad does that every night,” my new friend said.  

Today is the day to live completely.

It is of this day, of this week, and of this month that you will say in years to come “those were the days” and look back with longing and nostalgia. 

Open your eyes to the beauty around you. See that even in the problems, even in the hardships, even in the brokenness, there is an intricate beauty. 

Possibilities abound.

Potential untapped surrounds you on every side. 

Life itself waits for your involvement, and your involvement trips cogs into action, and action on your part brings forth insight, and the insight, when linked with courage and commitment, ushers in a deep appreciation making a future worth wanting. 

Life’s beautiful for the person who can see his own beauty.

This is not some act of self-admiration but an acknowledgement that the miraculous lives within us all. 

Want no trivial self-indulgence, for it leads only to a darker pit. Instead, lift you sights to the needs of others, to the joy of children in your life and to the beauty that hides within each and every one of life’s challenges. 

This is the day, the week, the month, you will remember if it’s filled with appreciation, courage and adventure.

When parents (married or single) are fulfilled, pursuing careers and interests they love, and are offering meaningful service to their community, it makes a remarkable difference to their children. Under these (admittedly) ideal conditions, childhood can be fully childhood. It can be carefree, safe, and free of the anxieties that come rushing into a child (which sometimes never abate) when a parent refuses to meet the adult demands of his or her role.

It is an overburdened child who must do all he or she can to keep mom sober or keep dad at work  — who must do all he or she can to make mom or dad into an adult. It is the anxious child who must take on parental responsibilities, who must function on a parent’s behalf when the parent abdicates the role.

Childhood is appropriately prolonged (as opposed to inappropriately truncated) when mother or father takes adulthood with the dedication adulthood deserves.

When parents take full responsibility for themselves, dedicating themselves to exercising their skills and callings within their greater community, and pursuing and enjoying mutual, respectful, and equal relationships with other adults, childhood, for the children of such adults, can run it full span, and the children can be appropriately oblivious to the pressures of life in the adult world.

My sons racing on the street outside our home —– beautiful times

Seek someone who considers himself or herself to be a fellow learner and who is exploring his or her own life and family.

Seek someone who will challenge you to find your true Self which you may have lost in marriage, or parenting, or career. He or she will challenge you to be your appropriate size which you may have compromised to fit in or beloved and accepted. He or she may have to help you to trim down your size after you expanded into bullying behavior during periods of self-doubt. 

Seek someone who knows therapy sessions are about process, about  reactivity, rigidity, fusions, cut-offs, triangulations, over-functioning, under-functioning and not content. 

Seek someone who helps you identify and clarify your helpful and unhelpful attitudes and behaviors so you may gain clarity and self-awareness, pathways to personal responsibility, blame avoidance, greater maturity.

Seek someone who is an expert in the Art of Listening, someone who is curious about you and your life but is not inquisitive about it. Someone who knows the difference between empathy & anxiety, love & worry, thinking & feeling, asking questions & being inquisitive and intrusive. 

Seek someone who can engage you and be an advocate for your health and strength and who believes you know what is good and healthy for yourself. He or she will get out of your way, avoid trying to read your mind, and avoid offering you insights and interpretations that  you are fully equipped to discover and uncover for yourself.