This blog is intended to provoke thought, smiles, perhaps even the occasional chuckle. It is composed of quotes, poems, articles, and pictures that I find thought-provoking, encouraging, or informative. They may or may not reflect my personal experience or, necessarily, my views. Nonetheless, I found them interesting and hope you will as well. I believe an intentional life requires awareness, introspection, compassion, and effort to exercise the freedom to choose. These are some of my navigational beacons for psychotherapy.

March 3, 2019
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​Reported on goodnewsnetwork.org on February 19, 2019:

​Hearing impairment can often serve as a social barrier for those who don’t know how to speak sign language – but in this little Massachusetts town, sign language has actually brought the community together. 2-year-old Samantha Savitz is deaf, but that doesn’t stop her from being an outgoing little toddler. Whenever Samantha is out with her parents in their town of Newton, she tries to chat up everyone she meets.

As the youngster got older, she continuously tried to befriend her neighbors – and they were all heartbroken when they were unable to respond because they did not know sign language.

​Rather than giving up, the entire community started attending sign language classes so they could communicate with Samantha.

February 24, 2019

“A man receives only what he is ready to receive… We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and traveling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now.” Henry David Thoreau

Here is an eloquent expression of what I see as a source of much pain - our tendency as human beings to perceive that which is consistent with what we expect to see in others, the world, and ourselves while not giving our attention to that which might suggest an alternate theory about our experience or existence. Shaping reality to confirm expectations or beliefs that are painful or shameful pales before the fear of reconfiguring what we think we know or what we predict to be true. I believe that part of the stones that form the path to making life better is exposing those beliefs and expectation to the light of day, then to draw on our courage to test them.