The Rhythm of Years

Three weeks into 2011, with an early spring, there already are a few tender green shoots in my garden. There are also a few slender tendrils upstairs of hope that this year may be one of recovery, gains and new hopes.

Normally, when years turn over, I like to review the past one before moving into the new one. This time around, in the transition from 2010 to 2011, I was simply unable to do so.

First, let's back up. I've seen a lot of years turn over; decades worth now. For most of that time, I kept a private journal. There's a box somewhere filled with that old-fashioned way of my attempts of recording what mattered to me in a year. That box knew no self-censorship.

But, since April 2006, I've transferred my modest attempt to record life as I see it, as I live it, to this blog. In the process, I've had to navigate extremely sensitive and difficult terrain.

How to tell enough of my story while preserving the essential privacy of everyone else involved in my life?

How to tell my story in a way that others, who inevitably will read it, will find something of use here?

How to balance these needs within the larger context that we are all living in real time, i.e., the emergence of what Kevin Kelly calls the "technium," which is rapidly becoming the living equivalent of human intelligence let loose in the universe.

(Apologies to Kevin if I have misrepresented his insights.)

I have not yet resolved how these contradictions conflict with my urge to write with a sense of the emotional truth I have witnessed, participated in, and felt.

***

The best I have to offer about last year is a fragmentary emotional history. Just around the time the person closest to me removed herself from my life, other things and people I care about entered into the newly created void.

As trivial as this may sound to some, one "thing" was the baseball team in my hometown, the San Francisco Giants. This is my adopted team. I grew up in Michigan, and my inherited favorite baseball team is the Detroit Tigers.

But, as it turned out, 2010 was not the Tigers' year; it was the Giants' year. All during the late summer and fall my emotional life partly focused on the unlikely drive by this team, for the first time in 52 years, to the pinnacle --winners of the World Series, champions of all baseball.

So one of the very important ways I survived the loss of my best friend was by consoling myself, day by almost every day, following that team's progress.

Another thing that occupied my emotional space was the unlikely and spectacular trajectory of a certain public high school soccer team here in San Francisco toward the city championships for the first time in three decades.

My son is on that team.

So, as it turns out, I had two very significant ways to avoid confronting reality.

Once these two ways reached their conclusion, I had no further way to avoid it, and that explains my posts over the last two months of last year, little of which exists any longer "in print."

This raises a number of questions -- how is it, exactly, that a man can be distracted by an athletic event from his deeper feelings? I have to suspect this goes back a long, long way in our evolutionary past.

My second distraction is less mysterious -- what parent doesn't relish the chance to see his or her offspring thrive? In this case, my son not only thrived he emerged as a star in only his second year of high school soccer.

But why, even with this, did I maintain emotional silence with myself about who and what also mattered, in a deeply personal way, to my sense of well-being?

Why?

Story-telling may be my professional skill, though it rarely pays well these days. But the story-teller always has an untold story as well. And like all stories, told or untold, it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

As 2010 evaporated, I contemplated this particular story-teller's end on a number of levels. The most relevant here was a decision to close this blog, and retreat to the world of paper journals again.

But somehow I couldn't do that. Maybe, as in many other ways, we are not wired to go backwards in this life; maybe it is non-linear but progressive. What is a blog anyway? Will it last any better over time than paper?

The answer to the last answer, so far, is no. We do not have any technology, currently, to preserve digital content. Just as paper yellows and crumbles, all known storage devices for digital content (discs, etc.) have a very short shelf life.

Which means the only possible significance of what we are doing, you and I, writer and reader, is occurring right here and right now.

Hopes Inch Higher

First Lady Michelle Obama clearly is not a publicity hound, so when she appears in public there's a good chance something significant has occurred. This week's announcement by Walmart that it is going to adopt strict new food standards is one of those occasions.

Some 140 million people, or almost half of all Americans, shop at Walmart, making it the largest grocery store chain in the land, among other things. Now that the super store is committed to reducing salt and sugar in processed foods, and to getting more fresh produce into its stores, the entire supply chain will be affected -- in positive ways.

This builds on other efforts -- most notably by the British chef Jamie Oliver -- to improve the quality of school lunches for the millions of American children, many of them poor and obese.

The First Lady has been vocal on the obesity crisis and she appears to be making headway in her campaign to improve Americans' diet and therefore our health.

***

This was a week of striking developments. In Michigan, the auto companies are back in the black, and Buick is now the leading brand among new cars being purchased. It would be a shame if the city of Detroit died, which some analysts have predicted, and in personal terms, I'd hate to see my birth city become a wasteland any worse than it has already been for decades. Maybe the resurgent auto industry will help pull Detroit back up into an urban destination, rather than a site of desolation.

We ( U.S. citizens) apparently going to get all of the money our government sank into the insurance giant AIG, according to news reports.

***

Around here, the news is small and local. The weather is spectacular as our version of an early spring continues. New ideas are starting to sprout among entrepreneurs after the dormancy of winter + recession. It's possible to start feeling vaguely optimistic again about the economy.

I've long been a big fan of small businesses. They drive the economy, provide most employment opportunity, and (despite the Walmart item above) are the source of most of the good ideas that emerge in the American economy.

We are in many ways a nation of small business owners, and that ecosystem is, IMHO, the healthiest aspect of our global, interlocking, sluggish national economy.

Here in California we have aggressive new political leadership, so some of this huge state's huge problems (like staying solvent, or attaining an annual budget) may now finally be solved by the Governor and his team.

Me, I spent some more time as a babysitter to the precocious two-year-old who instructs me how to take care of him. As only a two-year-old can do.

-30-

Such Misery

When it is all said and done, this is the song that best expresses what it is like for a man to discover that the woman he loves isn't who he thought she was.



When a man loves a woman, he can't keep his mind on nothing else
He'll trade the world for the good thing he's found
If she is bad, he can't see it, she can do no wrong
Turn his back on his best friend if he put her down

When a man loves a woman, spend his very last dime
Tryin' to hold on to what he needs
He'd give up all his comforts, sleep out in the rain
If she said that's the way it ought to be

Well, this man loves a woman
I gave you everything I had
Tryin' to hold on to your precious love
Baby, please don't treat me bad

When a man loves a woman, down deep in his soul
She can bring him such misery
If she played him for a fool, he's the last one to know
Lovin' eyes can't ever see

When a man loves a woman, he can do her no wrong
He can never own some other girl
Yes, when a man loves a woman I know exactly how he feels
'Cause baby, baby, baby, you're my world

When a man loves a woman I know exactly how he feels...

-30-

"All Grown Up"

(Note: This post was unintentionally deleted at the end of last year. So I am re-posting it now.)

That's what everyone said to me tonight at the annual holiday performance by the choir at my little girl's school, and I suppose they are right.

She constantly amazes me, my youngest child.

Tonight, as the single father of a lovely little girl singing her heart out at a holiday party -- in Yiddish, German, Spanish, English, and other languages -- I got outside of my shell for a bit and it felt good.

The rains greeted me when I returned home, alone, as always these days and these nights. But tonight I didn't feel lonely, because her music came home with me. As much as I wish I had someone to share that with, I do have fingers that type letters, and therefore I am sharing it, finally, with you.

Happy holidays, everybody.

Congratulations to The Defender

(Note: This post was unintentionally deleted at the end of last year. It originally appeared last Nov. 19th, and the only way I can preserve this content now is to re-post it tonight.)

The Weir Family is extremely proud to announce that Aidan has been chosen to the ACADEMIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION/CIF SAN FRANCISCO SECTION BOYS SOCCER ALL-CITY 2010-11 SECOND TEAM, as the sophomore starting right back on the Balboa High School Varsity Team.

The Balboa team has made two straight trips to the playoffs, ending a 28-year-drought. Their combined regular season record has been 20 wins, 9 losses, and 3 ties, after decades of losing teams.

The defense has certainly done its part, giving up an average of only 1.25 goals per game. Two other Balboa players made Second Team, as did three seniors to the First Team. Congratulations to all those honored:

SECOND TEAM ALL-CITY
Lucas Decena, Lowell
Max Pollard, Lowell
Avery Fisher, Lowell
Ankhbayar Begzsuren, Balboa
Eduardo Herrera, Balboa
Aidan Weir, Balboa
Josue Rosales, Mission
Manuel Cruz ,Mission
William Chinchilla, O’Connell
Allan Cortez, O’Connell
Christian Martinez, Jordan
Enrique Coronado, Lincoln
Manuel Antunez, Washington
Kyaw Thet Mon, Galileo
Eduardo Villanueva, Marshall
Jeffrey Yu, Wallenberg
Alexandru Dodon, ISA
Diego Hernandez, Burton

-30-

Singular Moments

On a tulip tree, a lone tulip. There always has to be a first one -- that is the way of all life. The first bloom is replicating the first moment of life for all of us, for the universe, for whatever greater environment that may exist out beyond our consciousness or ability to perceive.

Do you know what are some of my favorite moments? When my mind, and memory go blank; I'm not thinking backwards or forwards, I'm just existing like any other collection of atoms, molecules, and DNA.

Buddhists would identify this as living in the moment, but for me, what's best is when the moment too is a blank slate.

Know why?

That's where my imagination lives. In the silence and the emptiness of a single moment. Like the first moment of all new life, and in a way it is, from a writing perspective.

The challenge, for writers, is how to balance the essential aloneness of our craft or art with the also critical social component of being a human being. How to be alone and together with others at the same time?

There may be no individuals more attuned to the nuances of aloneness than writers. Most artists have something concrete, either other people or other senses to work with -- a living model, human or not (painters, sculptors), sound (musicians), motion (dancers).

But those of us who write have absolutely nothing to work with, and therefore nothing or no one to keep us company.

That is the why of how we also need people, I believe, and have always believed. It's not that we are somehow weaker or less capable of being alone than others -- that is a ridiculous notion.

We are the only artists who work entirely alone, with no other living form, stationary object or sensory companion to help us do our work. Most of us become exhausted at some point, whether after one hour, six hours or eight hours or more varies by individual, and it is at that point that we seek connection with the flesh and blood of others to remember that we exist outside of the realm of words; that there are those who see and value us, and who will hold us and love us just like normal people.

Because make no mistake about it. A writer is not a normal person. A writer is, by definition, among the loneliest workers on this planet.

Perhaps that is why we can identify so fiercely with a single bloom on a single tree in a single yard on a single street in a single town in a single state in a single country somewhere on this globe.

-30-

Times Like These

Rounding a corner in my neighborhood, I encountered two Central American women who looked terrified. When I asked what was wrong, one of them explained how a man had jumped out from behind a parked car and tried to rip the gold necklace from her neck.

The necklace broke (she was holding it in her hand) and the stranger disappeared. But she was still shaking with a combination of shock and rage. I asked whether they wanted me to summon the police, but they said no, what's the point?

I offered to walk them to where they were going, but after a few moments of hesitation, they thanked me for the offer and moved on.

Neither woman spoke English (nor, apparently, did the little boy with them), and they seemed in that moment to very much be strangers in a strange land. The woman whose necklace had been broken was holding a bouquet of flowers -- the kind women sell in the Mission for $5 -- and the flowers were still shaking as I watched them walk away.

In multi-cultural neighborhoods like mine, daily life is segmented into separate cultural experiences. Latinos are generally out on the street more, or on their porches, often as not playing with their children. Often there's music playing somewhere in the background, and just as often some savory food cooking nearby.

The whites are usually on bikes or walking alone or in pairs -- young, hip, and connected by technology -- either texting on cell phones or surfing the Internet on iPhones, or working on laptops in the cafes that serve cappuccinos, salads and croissants.

The Asians often seem to be running businesses out of their homes, either small machine shops in the back or 24/7 garage sales out front. The street language pyramid is Spanish, then English, then Cantonese/Mandarin. There is also a smattering of Tagalog, French, German, Japanese, and rap.

As the recession continues, petty crime incidents like the one I encountered today seem to be becoming more common, and the number of homeless people become more numerous as well. It's a big city, this is a bad economy, and the rest pretty much is predictable in times like these.

-30-

The Wisdom of Youth

There's a full moon tonight; beware of your dreams on a night like this.

The sky turned pink at sunset; January is always the time of lovely sunsets here on the northern coast.

Earlier today, I stood in the garden, looking at this beauty. Since the more we know scientifically, the more we realize that all life is related, I'm starting to sympathize ever more with those who try to live life lightly.

But the truth is that modern humans in developed societies acquire, discard, and waste so many resources that future historians may well classify this era "the time of excess."

Even small steps toward sustainable, low-waste lifestyles have an inherent appeal to almost all of us. Those of us who are parents often are confronted by our young children about habits that could be changed in ways that would eliminate or at least recycle more waste than we have been doing up until now.

Here's one reason to listen to your children when they bring up "environmental" issues. It's their future that is at stake here, not yours. They are going to have to deal with the repercussions of "the time of excess" one way or another, so you might think of their voices as voices from the future.

Twelve-year-olds, for instance, see the world with a startling clarity. Besides the fact that they see all the way through you, their parent, as if you were transparent, they have acquired the intellectual tools to independently assess things like which foods to buy, how best to minimize waste, and what kind of value system to use going forward in a world of excess.

It's funny. A friend of mine talks about the time he met my oldest daughter when she was around this age and he always mentions something she told him -- that children should be able to vote.

Without taking a position on that issue, I'll say this. We could do worse than to listen to our twelve-year-olds. Much worse.

And we often have.

-30-

The Last Speech

The "I Have a Dream" speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered is considered his greatest moment, of course. But, to me, there was a much greater and much more painful speech, the one he gave on the last night of his life.

As it happens, I was there in Memphis in the days before he delivered these words. I was there both as a journalist and an activist.

His assassination the day following this speech was no surprise to me, though it was a shock. Many whites I interviewed in the week before his shooting told me they wanted to kill Dr. King.

That was then. Today, if you go to Memphis, you will find a different culture, one in which whites and blacks live together in a state of relative harmony hardly imaginable back in April 1968.

Then, we had to have "safe houses" to congregate. Now we have the memory of probably the greatest man of the 20th century, and his words in the final message he ever got to deliver to us, the survivors.

Listen carefully and if what he said that last night of his life doesn't make your skin crawl, well, I'm not sure anything ever will.

-30-

Stories Go On...

Having been accused on a number of occasions of being a hopeless romantic, I'd prefer to re-categorize myself as someone who notices details, remembers details, and ascribes meaning to the details of ordinary life as I live it with those I love.

Thus today, for the first time in a while, I started teaching a new student how to drive a car. The car we used was my car, which may not have been the wisest choice, given how its clutch responded to the workout.

Back down to Illinois Street, a relatively quiet patch of the city east of the old Dogpatch neighborhood, through a narrow industrial strip lining San Francisco Bay, we drove, as my 16-year-old practiced shifting gears, turning corners, and navigating his way through light traffic.

It may be that there is nothing intuitive about learning to drive; I'm not sure, but finding the way to simultaneously lift your foot off of the clutch while depressing the accelerator is a skill that takes practice.

He stalled out a number of times in a row before I realized he was pressing down on the brake, as opposed to the accelerator when trying to take off. My bad -- I forgot to show him clearly that there are three pedals in a standard transmission car, not two as in the one other car he has driven to date.

Not being in a particularly nostalgic mood today, I didn't linger on memories of my last driving student -- plus there is a certain level of terror involved in being a driving instructor. so this isn't one of the experiences I have been looking forward to repeating, presumably three more times at least before everyone I'm responsible for can make their own way safely through traffic.

Besides, it's a marvelous spring weather that has descended on our city, sweeping in feelings of rebirth and change, as opposed to the backward-focus of winter, all cold and lonely.

I've always loved spring and here it can start very early, as my appointment calendar indicates, since today is apparently the 17th of January, two months before the season officially changes.

Still, for one flickering moment down on Illinois Street, I admit that my mind took me backwards in time. All of us may come and go, but the physical layout of the city largely remains intact. If it could talk, it would play our tales back to us, but it cannot, so that is left to our story-tellers.

People who notice details, remember details, and ascribe meaning to them as part of keeping our stories alive.

-30-

No Word for Love

It's amazing and tragic to realize that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been only 82 today had he lived; an assassin cut him down at the tender age of 39.

Younger readers might start at my use of "only" and "tender" as modifiers for the two ages mentioned, but this is the perspective one develops over time.

As I suggested yesterday, people continue to develop their mental and emotional capacities as they age; this is precisely why we have the stereotype that old people are wise.

Old people are in fact wise in a number of ways critical for the survival of our species. "Grandparents are the conduits of culture, and without them culture stagnates," notes Kevin Kelly in What Technology Wants. One of the key reasons that after millenia of sameness human society developed rapidly and recently into the powerful force it is, is that we developed the capacity to live longer.

But there is nothing inevitable about humans continuing to exist on this planet. Most species go extinct, and if the parts of our world now experiencing negative population growth (Japan and Europe), prove to be the dominant model, after a finite number of generations, humans, too, will disappear.

We are insulated from realizing this in the U.S., because this is the place everyone wants to be. In my lifetime, the population has increased by two and a half times what it was when I was born. But the bulk of that is due to immigration, to such an extent that today we have "illegal immigration" as one of those irksome political issues that divide us bitterly.

***

The seafaring Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Japan, in 1542, where they encountered a people with a language that only captured some of what the visitors considered needed to be said; thus, modern Japanese contains many words of Portuguese origin*. They include the words for alcohol (アルコール), velvet (ビロード / 天鵞絨), swing (ブランコ), button (ボタン / 釦 / 鈕), raincoat (合羽), and bread (パン).

As modern cultures have mixed, our languages are in many ways becoming more and more alike, although the traditional forms, where preserved, continue to divide up reality into different chunks, leaving many things spoken of in one tongue unspoken in the other.

In ares like math or science, languages translate effectively, for the most part. In the emotional realm, however, these cross-cultural gaps become particularly noticeable.

I first became aware of this as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Afghanistan once I was fluent in dari. Encountering a friend on the street, I would unleash a torrent of affection that simply would sound ludicrous in English. ("How is your heart; How is your body?", etc.)

Western cultures celebrate romantic love; the mighty cultures at the eastern end of Asia are still developing that notion. Try to get someone from one of those great countries to say "love" and you'll see what I mean.

Whether the word or the tradition exists or not, once they migrate to the West, Chinese and Japanese people are confronted with a tradition of romance that almost seems alien, because historically, it basically is.

This is just one of many ways that the mixing of peoples reveals contradictions, based in our languages and cultures. Even as the world becomes much more integrated, courtesy of the Internet, we human beings change at a slower pace, it seems.

-30-

* Thank you to my friend S for leading me to this information.

Breaking On Through to the Other Side

The other day, for the very first time, our little two-year-old artist drew a face -- a round head (circles are new this week too), two dots for eyes, a line for the mouth and some "hair" up top. He drew it on an etch-a-sketch, so a moment later he erased it, a la the famous De Kooning moment in abstract expressionist art history.

It left me thinking about all the things that come and go in our lives, existing for only a brief moment in time, before disappearing forever.

Some of these things are mere glimpses out of the corner of your eye, perhaps as you drive your car or ride on a bus. Other things, like letters and pictures, might get thrown away or lost.

But it is the coming and going of people that is by far the most complex form of the temporary nature of our lives. Think about, where were you and who were you with a year ago? Five years ago? Ten?

Those of us with families are fortunate in that under most circumstances, we can count on that form of stability through time, although families can grow more distant at times as well.

Others, without siblings or children, have to rely on their social skills to create networks of friends who will populate their days and some of their nights. They have to be very good at being alone, as well.

A lot is made of friendship in our culture, but friends often come and go fairly quickly too. Maybe a life on Facebook is as good as it gets, where you can share the type of information friends have always shared with a large community of virtual friends.

***

Another thing my grandson's accomplishment caused me to reflect about is how scientists have demonstrated that we continue to develop mentally throughout our lives -- it doesn't end when we achieve adulthood.

While we are all aware of the stages of development that babies and young children display, most of us pay less attention to how the adults around us continue to move through new intellectual stages of growth almost continuously.

Beyond that thought is the question of how and whether we continue to develop emotionally as we age. This, I think, is a more complex question. While it is clear that our bodies age, and the best evidence indicates our brains keep developing, it is less clear whether we continue to grow emotionally.

Maybe the best way to gauge this is to look at people's patterns of social engagement, including their most intimate relationships. There also is a strong cultural element here, in that some cultures promote emotional growth through therapy and self-help books, while others ignore the topic and even suppress the concept altogether.

People from the latter type of culture face a challenge adapting to the norms here in North America, where it is not considered a sign of emotional maturity for a person to keep repeating the same types of behavior that are not socially acceptable; nor is it broadly considered to be a positive quality if a person goes through partners in a serial fashion, hitting the same wall again and again, but never being able to break through to the next stage.

I'd better clarify something before continuing with this line of thought. As my own worst critic, and the person most acutely aware of my own many flaws as an individual, I do not consider myself an expert on this topic; nor do I believe my own life is a shining example of emotional growth through time.

But this much is true: for over 20 years I have been striving to become more self-aware of what I am feeling and to find the ways to express those feelings to other people, especially my partners. I don't think I've been repeating past mistakes very often when I'm partnered; in fact, I think each relationship has led me into new ground, emotionally speaking, and I hope I continue to grow in the future.

Apart from me, I've noticed others hit that old wall of intimacy and turn away. It is common, more among men than women but with some women too.  Each person has to be willing to take the next tentative step in the direction of tearing down the walls we all instinctively build for self-protection if they are going to deepen intimacy at some stage of each relationship they enter into.

The saddest imbalance between two people is when one is ready to commit to greater intimacy and the other isn't. Yet it happens every day, and sociologists and some therapists simply dismiss this as another relationship falls as the inevitable result of two people being at "different stages of growth."

Great, one more thing to post on your online dating profile. "Hoping to find a person equally committed to intimacy as I am when the point is reached we have to break through to the other side."

Fleeing from uncomfortable feelings is natural. But you can't keep running away all of your life. At some point, you have to stop, look into the mirror for a long time, and ask why you flee when things get tough.

Or not. Many people, in my observation, just keep running, partner to partner. Whenever they hit the wall, they turn away and go back to "Go."

So it is a choice. Emotional growth is not for everybody. And if I am any kind of example, the amount of pain you will suffer if you do try to forge deeper intimacy with people unwilling to go there with you may make the entire venture inadvisable.

As I said, what do I know? Quite certainly, not much.

-30-

Romper a través hacia el otro lado

El otro día, por primera vez, nuestro artista pequeña de dos años de edad, señaló a una cara - una cabeza redonda (círculos son nuevos esta semana también), dos puntos para los ojos, una línea de la boca y algunos "pelo" encima de la tapa. Él se inspiró en un grabado de pistas, un dibujo, por lo que un momento después lo borra, al estilo de la famosa Kooning momento en la historia del arte abstracto expresionista.


Me dejó pensando en todas las cosas que van y vienen en nuestras vidas, que existe sólo por un breve momento en el tiempo, antes de desaparecer para siempre.


Algunas de estas cosas son sólo destellos con el rabillo del ojo, tal vez como usted conduce su coche o montar en un autobús. Otras cosas, como cartas y fotos, puedes ser desechados o perdidos.


Pero es el ir y venir de gente que es de lejos la forma más compleja de la naturaleza temporal de nuestras vidas. Piense, ¿dónde estabas y que se le hace un año? Hace cinco años? Diez?


Aquellos de nosotros con las familias de la suerte de que en la mayoría de circunstancias, podemos contar con esa forma de estabilidad a través del tiempo, aunque las familias pueden crecer más distantes, a veces también.


Otros, sin hermanos o hijos, tienen que confiar en sus habilidades sociales para crear redes de amigos que pueblan sus días y algunas de sus noches. Tienen que ser muy bueno en estar solo, también.


Mucho se hace de la amistad en nuestra cultura, pero los amigos van y vienen bastante rápido también. Tal vez una vida en Facebook es tan bueno como se pone, donde se puede compartir el tipo de los amigos de información siempre han compartido con una gran comunidad de amigos virtuales.


***


Otra cosa que la realización de mi nieto me hizo reflexionar es cómo los científicos han demostrado que seguimos desarrollando mentalmente durante toda la vida - que no termina cuando alcanzamos la edad adulta.


Si bien todos somos conscientes de las etapas de desarrollo que los bebés y niños pequeños pantalla, la mayoría de nosotros prestar menos atención a cómo los adultos que nos rodean continúan moviéndose a través de nuevas etapas de crecimiento intelectual de manera casi continua.


Más allá de que el pensamiento es la cuestión de cómo y si continuamos desarrollando emocionalmente a medida que envejecemos. Esto, creo, es una cuestión más compleja. Si bien es claro que nuestro cuerpo, y la mejor evidencia indica que el cerebro mantenga en desarrollo, es menos claro si seguimos creciendo emocionalmente.


Tal vez la mejor manera de medir esto es mirar los patrones de la gente de compromiso social, incluyendo sus relaciones más íntimas. También hay un fuerte elemento cultural en nuestro país, en algunas culturas que promueven el crecimiento emocional a través de los libros de terapia y autoayuda, mientras que otros ignoran el tema, e incluso suprimir el concepto por completo.


La gente de este último tipo de cultura se enfrentan a un reto de adaptación a las normas aquí en América del Norte, donde no se considera un signo de madurez emocional de una persona a seguir repitiendo el mismo tipo de comportamiento que no son socialmente aceptables, ni es ampliamente considerada como una cualidad positiva si una persona pasa a través de socios en serie, golpeando la pared una y otra vez, pero nunca ser capaz de abrirse paso hacia la siguiente etapa.


Será mejor que aclarar algo antes de continuar con esta línea de pensamiento. Como mi peor crítico, y la persona más agudamente consciente de mis propios defectos muchos como individuo, yo no me considero un experto en este tema, ni creo que mi propia vida es un ejemplo brillante de crecimiento emocional a través del tiempo.


Pero esto es verdad: por más de 20 años he estado tratando de ser más auto-consciente de lo que estoy sintiendo y para encontrar las maneras de expresar los sentimientos de otras personas, especialmente a mis compañeros. No creo que he estado repitiendo los errores del pasado muy a menudo cuando estoy asociado, de hecho, creo que cada relación me ha llevado a nuevos caminos, emocionalmente hablando, y espero seguir creciendo en el futuro.


Aparte de mí, me he dado cuenta de que los demás afectados antigua muralla de la intimidad y la espalda. Es común, más los hombres que en mujeres, pero con algunas mujeres también. Cada persona tiene que estar dispuesto a dar el siguiente paso provisional en la dirección de derribar los muros que todos instintivamente construir para protegerse si se va a profundizar la intimidad en algún momento de cada relación que firmen.


Lo más triste desequilibrio entre dos personas es cuando uno está listo para comprometerse a una mayor intimidad y el otro no lo es. Sin embargo, sucede todos los días, y los sociólogos y terapeutas algunos simplemente descartar esto como otra relación disminuye a medida que el resultado inevitable de las dos personas están en "diferentes etapas de crecimiento."


Grande, una cosa más para publicar en su perfil de citas en línea. "Con la esperanza de encontrar a una persona igualmente comprometidos a la intimidad como yo cuando se llega al punto que tenemos que atravesar al otro lado."


Huyendo de sentimientos incómodos es natural. Pero no se puede seguir huyendo toda su vida. En algún momento, usted tiene que parar, mirar en el espejo durante mucho tiempo, y preguntarle por qué huir cuando las cosas se ponen difíciles.


O no. Mucha gente, en mi observación, sólo sigue funcionando, una pareja a otra. Cada vez que chocan contra la pared, vuelven la espalda y volver a pasar. "


Por lo tanto, es una elección. el crecimiento emocional no es para todos. Y si soy ningún tipo de ejemplo, la cantidad de dolor que sufrirán si se tratan de forjar una intimidad más profunda con la gente dispuesta a ir con usted puede hacer la empresa en todo desaconsejable.


Como ya he dicho, ¿qué sé yo? Con toda seguridad, no mucho.

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