Oct 28 / Simcha

It All Matters (L. McBride)

In her heart-wrenching novel narrated in four distinct voices, Laura McBride looks at the humanness behind, and the significance of, our every action. And she suggests that it all really does matter.

The book’s title — We Are Called to Rise — is drawn from the quote by poet Emily Dickenson: “We never know how high we are, Till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies.” The following two eloquent quotes capture the book’s essence.

Following the first selection, click on the black box to view the short video I prepared for my husband’s 70th birthday, using this text. He really, truly lives his life this way.

Jul 30 / Simcha

Weightlifting and Love

love_s — *Image: Ron Tanovitz (NPR, 7.30.12)*
*Click on image to view in full*

NPR invited poets from the far reaches of the globe to compose original works celebrating the Olympic Games. The verse below is by poet Ouyang Yu, who was born in China and moved to Australia in 1991. He is a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary translation and criticism in English and Chinese.

Aug 10 / Simcha

Are You There for Me?

Securely attached partners are better able to navigate the trials and tribulations that life has a habit of bringing our way. Knowing we have a safe and secure base from which we can draw sustenance and strength, and to which we can always return, allows us to go confidently out into the world.

This sort of secure attachment, teaches Susan Johnson (Emotional Focused Therapy), is shaped by mutual emotional accessibility and responsiveness. What may appear on the surface as fights about kids, money or sex, is really a fundamental challenge to whether the partner is emotional accessible and responsive. The underlying questions being asked in most such arguments are: Are you really there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you turn towards me and respond to me? How important am I to you?

Aug 10 / Simcha

What REALLY Turns People On?

A new book entitled A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire purports to have revealed profound differences between the sexual brains of men and women.

Two young cognitive neuroscientists who met as graduate students at Boston University, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam claim to have studied the secret sexual behavior of more than a hundred million men and women around the world by observing what people do within the anonymity of the Internet. Alfred Kinsey, by comparison, personally interviewed some 18,000 subjects (middle-class Caucasians) in the 1950s.