You Are Born With A

Attention Is The Cardinal Psychological Virtue. On It Depends Perhaps The Other Cardinal Virtues, For There Can Hardly Be Faith Nor Hope Nor Love For Anything Unless It First Receives Attention.

We're An Air Bag Society That Wants Guarantees On Everything That We Buy. We Want To Be Able To Take Everything Back And Get Another One. We Want A 401-k Plan And Social Security.

I Just Read About John Le Carre, The Great Spy Novelist. He Had An Absolutely Miserable Childhood. His Mother Deserted Him When He Was Young. His Father Was A Playboy And A Drunk. He Was Shifted Around To Many Different Homes. He Knew He Was A Writer When He Was About Nine, But He Was Dyslexic. So Here Was A Person With An Absolutely Messed-up Childhood And A Symptom That Prevented Him From Doing What He Wanted To Do Most. Yet That Very Symptom Was Part Of The Calling. It Forced Him To Go Deeper.

A Mother Should Have Some Fantasy About Her Child's Future. It Will Increase Her Interest In The Child, For One Thing. To Turn The Fantasy Into A Program To Make The Child Fly An Airplane Across The Country, For Example, Isn't The Point. That's The Fulfillment Of The Parent's Own Dreams. That's Different. Having A Fantasy - Which The Child Will Either Seek To Fulfill Or Rebel Against Furiously - At Least Gives A Child Some Expectation To Meet Or Reject.

You Know, People Come To Therapy Really For A Blessing. Not So Much To Fix What's Broken, But To Get What's Broken Blessed.