NEVER UNDER-ESTIMATE THE POWER OF A GREAT NOVEL
“A novel is like the bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.” Stendhal When was the last time you read a great novel? I just finished one yesterday, and it’s still with me—viscerally, like pressure in my throat and chest. Stirring emotion and uncovering a longing that lives in melancholy and doesn’t want to be soothed. Each time I open to the first page of a new book, there is…
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Why I Wish My Parents Had Known the Enneagram
I grew up as the oldest of four children to very young parents. Let me say from the outset that if I had had children at the age of 20, I would have ruined them, for sure. There is much goodness that comes from youth, but self-awareness isn’t always at the top of that list. And, frankly, there were very few people who had ever heard of the Enneagram in the 1970s. The Enneagram is an ancient wisdom…
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A Case for Gentleness
“…do it as an act of love of deep warm friendship to yourself, in this way there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement [or] the endless guilt of not doing enough.” Bob Sharples There is a decent amount of buzz about self-care these days, though I would argue that at least in the U.S., we think of self-care more like self-improvement. In the quote above, Bob Sharples is talking about doing…
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When You Find Yourself Lost
“In the universe, there are things that are known and things that are unknown and in between them, there are doors.” William Blake Philosophically, I love the idea of liminal space. The in-between time. Not quite the ending, but certainly not the beginning. From the safety of the mind, I can look at liminality as a frontier of possibilities—something new on the horizon. And, yet, landing in the middle of it can be disorienting. There are no clear signposts on…
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