Viktor Frankl, one of the great psychiatrists of the twentieth century, survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. His little book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is one of those life-changing books that everyone should read, SEVERAL TIMES

Frankl once told the story of a woman who called him in the middle of the night to calmly inform him she was about to commit suicide. Frankl kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living. Finally she promised she would not take her life, and she kept her word.

When they later met, Frankl asked which reason had persuaded her to live?

“None of them”, she told him.

What then influenced her to go on living, he pressed?

Her answer was simple, it was Frankl’s willingness to listen to her in the middle of the night. A world in which there was someone ready to listen to another’s pain seemed to her a world in which it was worthwhile to live.

Often, it is not the brilliant argument that makes the difference. Sometimes the small act of listening is the greatest gift we can give.

WHEN YOU HOLD SOMEONE’S SPACE; when you unconditionally accept, listen, hear, validate, affirm, you just don’t hold their space, you hold something even more sacred: THEIR SOUL.           .            .
THEY have trusted you with their whole, wounded, vulnerable Soul for the price of your offering to A LISTENING they never before had but desperately needed.        .        .

“It’s true.” Replied Chaplin, “But your fame is even greater. The world admires you, when no one understands you.”
BEYOND RELATIVITY
is not BEING a Caring Catalyst.          .           .
IT IS MAKING SOMEONE FEEL LIKE
THEY ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF ONE
WITHOUT SAYING A WORD
OR FULLY UNDERSTANDING
HOW YOU CAN MAKE THE HAIR STAND UP ON THEIR ARMS
AND TINGLE LIKE IN NO OTHER WAY
just by how you treat them
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
NEWS FLASH
It
Ain’t
ROCKET SCIENCE
(It can readily be proven but seldom is.     .    .CHANGE THAT!)

SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY TO LOOK AHEAD
IS SEEING BEHIND.          .          .
There’s a reason why the
REAR VIEW MIRROR
is smaller than the
WINDSHIELD.          .          .
it’s not so much understanding
t          h          a         t
or knowing
I  T
as
ACTING
LIKE
IT
Don’t live your life in a
B  O  X
with a number in it
or worse.        .        .
A CALENDAR OF A DIFFERENT YEAR
.          .         .look back to see ahead
and keep your spark
bursting brightly
around you
for the
oohing and aahing
of
a l l

C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S
THIS IS YOUR DAY
not a personal
Christmas
Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Easter
Passover
Hanukkak
Kwanzaa
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
New Year’s
No, no. . .
It is YOUR INAUGURATION DAY
Y O U R S
THE DAY
you will begin to bring a phase of
U N I T Y
the likes
you or no one else has ever experienced,
YOU

The inaugural speech that will be given in just a few mere hours is likely to echo calls for unity that predecessors have invoked since the first time George Washington was sworn in.

“Unity has always been an aspiration,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “It seems like whenever we have foreign policy flare-ups, we use the word freedom. But when we have domestic turmoil we use the word unity.”

The United States was forged through compromise among factions that disagreed profoundly on slavery, regional influence and the relative powers of state and federal government. When Washington assumed office in 1789 he cited the blessings of providence in noting that “the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established.”

Jefferson was the third U.S. president, and the first whose rise was regarded by opponents as a kind of emergency. The 1800 election won by Jefferson marked the beginning of competing political parties — Jefferson was a leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, losing incumbent John Adams a Federalist — and critics regarded the new president as a dangerous atheist. “JEFFERSON — AND NO GOD!!!” was how one Federalist paper described Jefferson’s candidacy. Adams did not attend the inauguration, a breach rarely repeated although Trump has vowed to do the same.

“Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind,” Jefferson urged in his address. “We are all republicans: we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, a Federalist who administered the oath of office to Jefferson, wrote later that the speech was “in the general well judged and conciliatory.”

Lincoln’s pleas were more dire, and tragically unmet, despite what historian Ted Widmer calls his “genius to combine urgency with literary grace.” Seven out of 11 future Confederate states had seceded from the U.S. before he spoke, in March 1861, over fears he would end slavery. The Civil War would begin a month later. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln had insisted, reminding fellow Americans of their “mystic chords of memory” while also warning that resistance to the will of voters would destroy democracy.

“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism,” he said.

Historian David Greenberg, whose books include “Nixon’s Shadow” and “Republic of Spin,” cites Richard Nixon’s inaugural in 1969 as another speech given at a time of social turmoil. The U.S. was violently divided over the Vietnam War and civil rights, and Nixon himself had long been seen as an unprincipled politician exploiting fears and resentments — appealing to what he would call “the silent majority.” His speech at times was openly and awkwardly modeled on the 1961 inaugural of John F. Kennedy, who had defeated Nixon in 1960.

“We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity,” Nixon stated. “We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another — until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

Some presidents asked for unity, others asserted it.

Franklin Roosevelt, elected in a landslide in 1932 during the Great Depression, said in his first inaugural speech: “If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other.” Four years later, having won by an even greater landslide, he declared the country had “recognized” a need beyond financial help, a “deeper” need, “to find through government the instrument of our united purpose.”

Unity can prove more imagined than real. When James Buchanan spoke in 1857, three years before the Civil War, he claimed that “all agree that under the Constitution slavery in the states is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective states themselves wherein it exists.” Rutherford B. Hayes, whose presidency was marked by the retrenchment of federal troops from the post-Civil War South and ongoing resistance from Southern whites to equal rights for Blacks, declared during his 1877 inaugural that true peace could be achieved through the “united and harmonious efforts of both races” and the honest work of local self-government.

“A president often claims the country is ‘united’ behind a belief when it’s more wishful thinking than reality,” Widmer says. “I’m not sure how many Americans wanted to do something for their country after JFK asked them to — although there were impressive new kinds of volunteers, like the Peace Corps. And I think that many Americans still appreciated help from the government, even after Ronald Reagan declared that ‘government is the problem.’ “

So let’s have it. . .
what’s your speech
what are you going to say to
unify
validate
inspire
motivate
guide

What will you Legislate in your Personal Constitution:

What will you Amend into Law

Before you BRING HOPE
who will you look to
GET HOPE. . .

NOW THAT’S AN INAUGURAL STATEMENT
let it begin in the very Soul of
US
and beat from the very Heart of
US

It was literally The Father’s Day that wasn’t. . .

It began easy enough;
following Church we went through a Drive-thru Starbucks to ‘BUCK’ up for the trip to Pittsburgh and all went well until it
DIDN’T. . .
Right before the last exit on the Ohio Turnpike to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the lights were flashing and the power was failing. . .

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst of the DAY :

Sometimes the best plans are the one you didn’t even want to make
let alone try to make. . .

It wasn’t a complicated PLAN A,
B,
C,
or all of the other
Letters of the Alphabet,
TRIPLED UP. . .

. . .but there we were;
B R O K E N
D O W N
and even that wasn’t easy. . .
A call to Triple A and we were told that they don’t service broken down vehicles on the turnpike but they would connect us with a Service that could assist us.
A S S I S T
U S
meant up to a $450 tow bill back to our house
or we could choose to chance going 3 miles to get off the turnpike where Triple A then could service us. . .

WE
CHANCE’D
IT
albeit
on the berm of the road going 20 miles an hour with limited power for steering, breaking or chasing the rain off of the windshield;
and after hitting three straight red lights once we got off of the exit we literally rolled into a National Tire & Battery that was thankfully open on a Sunday, Father’s Day afternoon at 3:00 p.m.

All I wanted to do was to see my dad on Father’s Day
but it didn’t happen. . .
I was on the Road that I wanted to take me to a good place
and found myself on quite another Highway that took me to a
BETTER PLACE
. . .and I almost missed
THE LESSON IN THE JOURNEY

By getting
UN-TRACKED
I was able to see/experience the Kindness of Strangers
I was able to see/experience that my Trust Issues are really TRUST ISSUES
I was able to see/experience that though I didn’t end up where I set out, I ENDED UP
U P
U P

I never got to see my dad that day, but while waiting in the garage for them to replace my Alternator and Battery I talked to my dad on the phone and
A B S O L U T E L Y
had a conversation that I
HAVE
NEVER
WOULD
HAVE
NEVER
HAD
in person. . .

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm of the DAY:
Sometimes the best plans are the ones you don’t make. . .

Sitting in that garage on The Father’s Day that wasn’t
I was able to
Count all of the things that could’ve went wrong and didn’t
I was able to make it to the service plaza
I was able to get back on the turnpike
I was able to get off the turnpike
I was able to find a National Tire & Battery that was open on a Sunday till 5:00 p.m.
I was able to be shocked that they actually had the parts on hand
I was able to be with Erin, which is never long enough, to add another chapter in a book we co-author in unusual but amazing ways
I was able to REMEMBER that this isn’t the only time I took a road to find myself on quite another one that was never planned/imagined/understood to find out that I didn’t have to worry or trust in order to have it
ALL
WORK
OUT. . .

Sometimes the BEST PLANS
are the ones you don’t make
to powerfully find out
(A G A I N)
you’ve been on the
RIGHT PATH
all along
and you had little or nothing to do with it
except to enjoy the RIDE
(OR NOT)

It’s true
for a Father’s Day Trip home that never happened
and even more true for the
rest of life
t o o

What’s the RIGHT ROAD. . . ?
It’s not always the One you take
It’s not always the One you want to take
It’s always the ONE
you happen to be on. . .

W O N D E R:
It’s never tough figuring out which way to go if it
R E A L L Y
D O E S N ‘ T
M A T T E R

Sometimes the Road Home
isn’t the one you Choose
Sometimes the Road Home
isn’t the one you GPS’D UP. . .
I T ‘ S
B E T T E R

Here’s the Key to
THAT VEHICLE:
NO ACCIDENTS
IT’S ALL ON PURPOSE FOR PURPOSE
SEE
BE
FREE
T H A T

Happy Travels

It was suppose to be a simple trip.

A favor that turned into a furor!

Why do things go all ka-fluey when there’s just no reason for them NOT to go smoothly?

Don’t tell me: “JUST BECAUSE!”

Don’t tell me: “It’s a fate thing?”

Don’t tell me: “Mr. Murphy has moved next door and wants to be intimately close to you.”

Don’t tell me that sometimes when I look at something square on without blinking that I still can’t see if for the very life of me.

I went to the Redbox kiosk as the rain beat down on me like a war drum gone amok. I tried pressing the RIGHT buttons but, oh, no, Mr Murphy on a Christmas morn with an Easter sunrise, the Redbox machine was more frozen than an iceberg in January.

As I was ‘praying’ an unheard sanctuary prayer, a couple came running from their car to return their DVD and when I told them of the problem, they too joined me in this unholy litany to the Redbox gods.

And then, then it happened. I told them that I was going to go to another Redbox a few miles a way and if they wanted, I would be glad to return their two DVD’s.

They didn’t pause. They said, “Would you? That would be so nice of you.”

They shoved the DVD’s in my hand quicker than they could have ever done to that Redbox machine. And they ran back to the car faster than the next raindrop and were gone.

They trusted me. They trusted me with about $100.00 worth of their DVD movies. They trusted ME!

On the way to the next Redbox kiosk (about three miles) away, I was no longer mad at a favor turned bad. I was a little more humbled, a little more encouraged and validated.

What, what made them trust me? Was it the rain? Was it the baby crying in the back seat and wanting to get home NO MATTER WHAT THE COST? Was it my face? A kind offer that surprised/shocked them? Was it the frustration of a frozen Redbox machine? What?

What do we show people? How are we ultimately seen? Kind? Sincere? Compassionate? Trustworthy?

I can’t pass THAT or any other Redbox kiosk now and not ask myself those kind of questions.

Come on, there’s day’s when I do everything I can NOT to look my way for any reason.

Maybe this is a kind, a compassionate reason for all of us to be reminded, “It’s no longer enough just ‘not to be so bad,” but to be kind, compassionate, giving TO BE KIND, COMPASSIONATE and GIVING.

Maybe the “T” in Trust actually begins with an “I?”

Maybe we can actually ‘take back’ TRUST one DVD at a time. . . ?

Maybe THAT’S the special feature we all need to do more than just renting out or simply viewing…?

Maybe. . . .