Dr. Natural

Hello friends from Little Rock's University Avenue Hilton Hotel.  December 26th finds Barbara and me uprooted from our Pleasant Valley rental home which lies without electricity under a 9 inch blanket of snow and ice.  This Christmas blizzard is, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the city's first measurable snow accumulation in 86 years...what I'd call a quite unnatural occurrence in this most beautiful Natural State.

Yes, Arkansas calls itself the Natural State. For good reason too.  The state's land area is large and it's population is small. There are the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains with their state and national forests.  There are unspoiled rivers and lakes--the Arkansas, Buffalo, Red and White--perfect for canoeing and fishing.  There are vast wooded tracts for the state's male population to go deer hunting every fall and winter weekend. An hour south of Little Rock are perhaps the finest flooded timbers in the world, playgrounds for duck hunters who pay upwards of 100 grand to join exclusive clubs where they wake up at 4 AM, wear insulated camouflage booted waders, venture out in boats to duck blinds, shoot their quota and spend the rest of the day and night in a double wide trailer lodge, sobriety not required.

We two Yankees, with neither rod nor rifle, have been immersing ourselves in nature. Ten minutes from our home is Pinnacle Mountain, a rocky topped volcano shaped peak that rewards the climb up with great views of Lake Maumelle, the Arkansas River and downtown Little Rock in the distance.  When I bike down to the river, I can take the bike path left ten miles to Pinnacle, or right ten miles to the Clinton Presidential Library downtown.  Unlike one quarter of the state's population that is on welfare and two thirds that are obese, a large segment of Little Rock residents are well to do and very health conscious (and voted for Obama too).  There are 3 pedestrian bridges across the river with parks on both sides that teem with walkers, joggers and bikers on weekends.

The photos we've posted on Facebook don't do justice to the breathtakingly beautiful views from the trails of Mount Magazine at peak leaf season. Closer to home is Petit Jean's Mather Lodge where last weekend we and Brad had lunch after a 5 mile hike.  Our view out the window was a mountain notch opening to the river with hundreds of hawks riding the thermals seemingly just for our entertainment.  We haven't made it yet to the Fayetteville corner of the state with the University and Walmart daughter's Crystal Bridges American art museum.  Museum curators call it the #2 collection of American art anywhere.  Locals say to go for the spectacular architecture, gardens and walking trails. We're going this spring. Anyone care to join us?

Work here is as promised.  I am busy which is what I wanted.  It feels good to be fully employed.  Patients come to see me from all over the state.  They don't think twice about driving 2 hours for a colonoscopy.  They all ask, "Why Arkansas?"...I seem to recall all of you asking that same question.  BV  has her computer, the Internet and an easy access airport--all she needs to keep her Tox consulting business buzzing.  We joined a health club with indoor/outdoor swim and tennis.  We joined a reform temple. Barb has a swim & lunch buddy and a friend or two from her grad student days 25 years ago. I'm going to bed too early to allow a poker game. I'll just have to crash my old game this spring when we're back east for Brad's graduation. Tradition dictates that returning sons are allowed to win enough to cover air fare.

Bottom line, we are doing fine. We miss y'all, but not all the time.  We're still settling in, exploring and trying to fit in while holding on to our northeastern, liberal, Jewish identity.  In Stamford, I don't think we'd be spending tonight in a hotel.  We'd rough it or stay with family.  No big deal.  We are, to paraphrase Johnny Cash, keeping the ends out, waiting for some new ties that bind. I guess I'm gonna hafta larn fishin' afta all.  Oops..that line might get me tumpt.

Wishing you a healthy, happy, prosperous and Natural New Year!

The Best Things

The best things happen while you’re dancing


Just when the days are at their shortest, when the winter chill accosts me each morning and when you’d think that a nasty seasonal affective disorder should be setting in, I sit in my chair with my laptop feeling a very bearable lightness of being. Though close to the night before Christmas, it’s not visions of sugar plums dancing in my head that are lifting my mood. Rather, it’s Irving Berlin’s song from White Christmas, “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing”. The movie has been on TV every day this week. If you missed it yesterday at 9, you could catch it again at 11. I watched just enough of both showings to wake up this morning with that song playing in my head. And just like the TV programming, it’s been replaying all day.

Things that you would not do at home come nat’rally on the floor

Barbara and I took beginning ballroom dancing classes this fall. Waltz, foxtrot, swing, megengue and the cha cha cha. Irving, in his wisdom, did not say that the dancing would come “nat’rally”. It’s the other stuff that does. The touching, holding and smiling that are not the norm for any 50+ year old couple I know, just happen. As Vicki Baum said, “There are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them”. Strangely, I really liked the discipline of formal dance our instructors stressed in their classes. Less flower child, more atten-hut. Even Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing taught the importance of a rigid carriage, holding the arms up to create a personal space in firm contact with ones partner, the rigidity allowing even minimal pressure to be transferred and communicated. He chided Jennifer Grey, “No spaghetti arms”. I repeated that same line to Barbara many times during our sessions and, thanks Patrick, felt so virile. While the male is leading and feeling so full of himself, the female has the more difficult task of figuring out what he is going to do before he does it. As Ginger Rogers said, “I do everything the man does, only backwards and in high heels!” And she looked great doing it.

For dancing soon becomes romancing

It’s no secret why orthodox Jews, reactionary Christians (think Footloose) and fundamentalist Muslims prohibit dancing between the sexes. Put a boy and a girl together, add some music, start them moving in concert and it’s only natural that biology take over. That is every bit as true for the restrained waltz as it is for the hip swaying cha cha. The male creates his space, the female hers. The tension between them sets the romance to an emotional simmer, a much better temperature for a tender, long lasting romance. George Bernard Shaw said it best, calling dancing “the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire”.

When you hold a girl in your arms that you’ve never held before

I’m going to leave that line alone…it’s been so long I just can’t remember.

Even guys with two left feet
Come out alright if the girl is sweet
If by chance their cheeks should meet

While dancing
Proving that the best things happen
While you dance

Cute song. Cute story. Maybe a bit saccharine for my taste, but the holidays are almost upon us and what’s more, for the next three days I’ll be watching Miracle on 34th Street. I’ve got a ways to go before I’m ready for Natalie Wood’s “I believe…I believe…it’s silly, but I believe”.

Now for the ironic twist. The week after our dance classes ended BV had foot surgery. Despite the rumors, I did not break it, though I did upon occasion step on her toes. No cheek to cheek holiday parties or New Years tux for me. Talk about mixed messages! She’s lucky that I know that “faith is believing when common sense tells you not to”. Happy Holidays friends. Keep the music playing in your heads. Start tapping your feet. Stand up. Create some tension. The best things will happen.  Just let yourself dance right into the New Year.

Getting In Touch

“50/50” is an uneven movie that tells the story of an uptight 27 year old boy as he struggles with the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Thankfully, it is not a sentimental tearjerker, but more an exploration of the protagonist’s relationships with his girlfriend, best friend, physicians, therapist, parents and other cancer victims. The unevenness is the fault of the writer, who in his semi-autobiographical script, wastes the skills of some very talented actors by having them play caricatures instead of believable people. Angelica Huston is the aggrieved mother but nothing more. “I only smothered him because I love him.” Seth Rogan plays the same vulgar, drug, booze, woman-as-object seeking character as in all of his previous films. He is much less believable as a best friend without his posse. He has nothing in common with his neat freak buddy and in the end we are supposed to like him because he reads a book (though not to the end). Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, who played the villain brilliantly in “The Help”, is again cast as the bad guy, but this time just gets to show off her full lips, wet eyes, blazing red hair, avoid intimacy and get booted out the door. Who could even believe she and the cancer dude would ever hook up?

The cancer dude, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, does a good job acting out the stages of illness and portraying a stiff learning to recognize his feelings. He is helped by his therapist, played by George Clooney’s “Up in the Air” sidekick, Anna Kendrick. She is just another incompetent practitioner in a movie that stereotypes doctors as unfeeling assholes. She, however, has an excuse because she is a mere student therapist. As I mentioned in my “Death Lessons” blog earlier this year, medical students are in fact stumbling, fumbling, and potentially dangerous, but those flaws make them likable to patients. Emotional intimacy and trust are common. The therapeutic relationship in “50/50” begins with an awkward touch by the novice psychologist. The importance and difficulty of touch in the practice of medicine are well shown in “50/50". That got me thinking…

35 years ago I attended an old girlfriend’s massage therapy class in San Francisco. In order to work in a California massage parlor in those days you had to have a license. In order to get the license you had to take a course in massage. The class I had the pleasure to attend that day was therefore what my friend called “half hookers, half healers”—50/50 if you will. The hookers in their tight hotpants with their stiletto heels and nail files sat on one side of the room while the bearded or braless (or both my brother would say) Birkenstocked healers massaged each other. That room was a metaphor for the dichotomy of touch. And that ex-girlfriend was my 1980s definition of friends with benefits. Sex was sex, but a full leg massage after a 6 mile run was heaven.

Touch is an integral part of the practice of medicine. In our Physical Examination course we are taught to first warm our hands, and then initiate contact with a gentle, unthreatening touch to the arm. Every subsequent touch is preceded by a verbal warning, “I’m going to listen to your heart”, giving the patients the opportunity to prepare for the invasion of personal space and object if they want. After each part of the exam the physician should offer reassuring words, “Your heart sounds normal”. A good poker face is an asset. Worried looks and “Whoa, what’s that” are to be avoided. When examining the opposite sex or a child, a chaperone should be present. Nowadays every patient is a potential adversary with many lawyers ready, waiting only an 800 phone call away. Touch enables me to take a blood pressure and feel a liver. It also allows me to comfort the anxious, the ill and the bereaved. Mostly, it helps me build a physician-patient relationship with mutual trust. Think of the brisk, unexpected insertion of a cold speculum by a clumsy gynecologist and then imagine the opposite. I try to be that opposite. Some doctors never get it. A medical school friend once told me that’s why they have pathologists and radiologists. I might add psychiatrists too. Traditional psychiatry teaches therapists never to touch their clients.

Ofer Zur, PhD teaches an online course in continuing education for psychotherapists. In one session he discusses “To Touch or Not to Touch: Exploring the Myth of Prohibition on Touch in Psychotherapy and Counseling. Clinical, Ethical & Legal Considerations”. It is a major academic treatise. Some interesting points: 90% of analysts admit to being sexually attracted to their clients while 10% have acted on that attraction. The meaning of a touch intended by the therapist is not always the same as that perceived by the client. The perception of touch is influenced by factors including culture, race, sex, age, religion and many more. Societies place many taboos on touching others and oneself. Touch is critical to the healthy development of the fetus, infant and child. His bottom line is yes, touch, but following defined guidelines and only with training, competence and reeducation as needed. But realistically speaking, if you’re hoping for a comforting touch, go to the masseuse, not the shrink.

“50/50” ends on an optimistic note. Cancer-free dude and Psychie chick get together for a date. His hair is growing back. She is holding a pizza box. They smile and she asks, “What next?” Producers wanted an on screen kiss. Cast refused. End of movie. Tender touch to follow. I like it when the students stop their fumbling and feel good about being doctors. Even without the happy ending, medicine still has its rewards.

Art, No Refunds

Do yourself a favor, save your $12.50 and stay away from this week’s new movie, “Drive”. IMDB rated it 8.8 out of 10 so I didn’t bother to read the NY Times review that I now know was lukewarm. Mistake. In brief: Ryan Gosling plays a getaway car driver who falls for a girl, does a job for her ex-con husband that goes sour, not only killing the ex-con, but leaving Gosling with a big bag of mob money that gets him a knife in the gut. End of movie, but good fodder for today’s blog.

The problem with this movie and many others like it is that some directors just don’t know the difference between art and entertainment. Art is something that gives you a strong, usually pleasurable reaction. It can be beautiful or awe inspiring. It is of significance, not just ordinary. Entertainment, by distinction, passes the time. It keeps your interest. It can amuse or sadden, but if it is boring or offensive you walk out and that’s where the entertainment ends.

Some examples: Auguste Rodin’s marble sculpture of Danaid is a work of art. It is beautiful in subject, form and material. It attracts the attention of thousands of visitors daily in Paris’ Rodin Museum. The visitors appreciate the beauty then walk by to see the next masterpiece. I guarantee you that if that creamy white form came to life and lifted her hair from the cool marble stream displaying her nubile figure, no one would walk away. They would truly be entertained.

Many think that winemaking is an art and that a fine wine can be a work of art. I’m not sure I agree, but they find pleasure in swirling their wine in a crystal goblet and watching the rivulets of liquid stream down the glass. They draw the scent into their noses, close their eyes and imagine I’m not sure what. Finally they take a sip and draw it over their palates. If it’s over $20 a bottle I’m willing to call it art. On the other hand, give me 2 or more glasses of the stuff, and we’ll both be entertained.

So where did “Drive” go wrong? I blame it on movie school. “Drive” had many scenes where long silences, montages and close-ups substituted for meaningful dialogue. It’s hard to have two actors develop a relationship on screen by talking to each other. It’s easier to show a soulful look and hope the audience buys it when they embrace. Overly long face shots are okay if it’s Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”, but Ryan Gosling with his close set eyes and 38 regular body made me wonder if I had time to go out and pee. Even Brad Pitt, who does have the goods, knew that his face alone wouldn’t cut it. In his breakout movie, “Thelma and Louise”, he knew enough to take off his shirt. Tom Cruise took his pants off in “Risky Business” and his shirt off in “Top Gun”. There’s no way plain faced Jamie Lee Curtis would ever have gotten to show off her comic brilliance in “A Fish Called Wanda” if she didn’t show off her large boobs first in “Trading Places”. Long before “Gypsy” entertainers knew that “you gotta have a gimmick”.

“Drive” was also terribly miscast. The movie’s strong silent hero was a wimpy Canadian kid whose mother took him out of public school to be homeschooled because the other kids bullied him. No stubby facial hair or imitation Stallone voice could ever make him Rambo. Even worse was the casting of Albert Brooks as the local mob villain who slashes one guy and then sticks a jeweled blade into Gosling’s gut. Brooks is a standup comic. He was the sweat soaked loser in “Broadcast News”. A proper villain would have been someone in the mold of Donald Sutherland who both wielded and embodied the perfect stiletto in “Eye of the Needle”. That director, Richard Marquand, succeeded in artsifying his film with brilliant phallic imagery, both impotent and virile, that turned a very entertaining film into one that you can watch again and enjoy even more. No, you won’t get me to say it is a work of art!

Finally, the worst film of the year…I lasted 20 minutes, the last 10 with my eyes closed. You don’t have to trust me, just read the disclaimer below, posted by Stamford’s Avon theater.

Dear Patrons,

In response to some customer feedback and a polarized audience response to last weekend, we would like to take time to remind patrons that THE TREE OF LIFE is a uniquely visionary and deeply philosophical film from an auteur director. It does not follow a traditional, narrative approach to storytelling. We encourage patrons to read up on the film before choosing to see it, and for those electing to attend, please go in with an open mind and know that the Avon has a NO REFUND policy once you have purchased a ticket to see one of our films. The Avon stands behind this ambitious work of art and other challenging films, which define us as a true art house cinema, and we hope you will expand your horizons with us.

Thank you.

Now that’s entertainment.

Death Lessons--I

I was a fourth year medical student doing my neurology elective at Columbia’s Neurology Institute in New York City. It was an exciting time for me. I had a sublet across from the Blue Note Jazz Club. I took the bus to work by day and the subway to parties by night. The pulse of the city was a far cry from UCONN’s sleepy Farmington snore. I was happy to be there and eager to learn. Learning for a physician, clichéd as it may seem, is a lifelong process. It does not happen at a steady or predictable pace and can be about things you never saw coming. In the first two years of medical school it is force fed through lectures and books organized around subjects (anatomy, physiology) or organ systems (musculo-skeletal, cardio-vascular). In the third and fourth years, and for the rest of a doctor’s life, it comes from contact with patients.

Thirty years later I remember a patient I saw at Columbia. He was a 41 year old upper class New Yorker getting chemo and radiation therapy for an advanced brain tumor. His very attractive, but pale and anxious wife sat nearby as I interviewed and examined him. He seemed happy to see me. Hospitals, especially tertiary care hospitals, are cold and impersonal, and the waiting between contacts with caregivers can be so painful that medical students are almost always welcome. There is something very comforting about their clean white coats, insecure looks and plain ignorance. Patients often open up to medical students while holding back information from their more arrogant and hurried physicians.

Despite his brain tumor, my patient was awake, alert and it seemed, in complete control of his faculties. We talked about his illness, his work, his life. I didn’t really know all the questions I should have been asking, but we both had time and just kept talking. For some reason, one that I still regret today, I asked him about depression and whether he had thought about suicide. I didn’t even ask the question well. There was something about Hemmingway, I think. In any event, he gave me a big smile and started to answer, but his wife started to fidget in her chair, clench her jaw and glare at me. At the time I told myself that I had every right to ask a terminal patient about depression and that asking about suicidal thoughts was a doctor’s responsibility. I now feel that it was unnecessarily cruel to the wife and that as a student, not one really caring for the man, I did not have the knowledge or power to help.

The next day my preceptor told me that the patient’s wife complained about me, specifically my opening up the topic of suicide. She asked that I not see him again. I was not censured in any way. Senior physicians are very protective of their medical students and, at least on paper, I had done nothing wrong. He told me that the patient actually liked me. Sadly, the story did not end there. That night the young man, whom I today imagine wearing a tux out in New York society, went into a coma. His brain had swelled and herniated down his brain stem.

I left New York City with mixed emotions. I loved the Neuro Institute with its bizarre Movement Disorders ward—dozens of people even weirder than the ones who roam the streets downtown. I was proud of myself for braving the late night parties even though the women were way too cool for me. I was surprised and happy to receive an A and a glowing recommendation from my preceptor. Still, I was ready to get back to the normalcy of life in New Britain. On some level I still felt like I had caused a brain to herniate and a wife to be doubly distressed.

One month later I received a letter forwarded to me by my preceptor. It was from the young wife who had just buried her husband. She wrote to thank me for talking to her husband. He really did enjoy my company and conversation. She said that before my visit she did not realize how sick he was or that his death was a near term possibility. She said that my breaching the topic of death in some way prepared her and allowed her to project her built up anger, frustration and fear onto me. I don’t think she apologized for anything. She wished me luck and encouraged me to keep talking to my patients.

I said it already—you don’t always learn what you set out to learn. Sometimes the person you are caring for isn’t even your patient. Sometimes the things you learn are about yourself.

Get Up, Stand Up

Valentine’s Day plus two finds me sitting at home in my chair soaked in the early morning sunshine that enters through the blinds left open by my wife to prevent me from drifting downward into a wintery withdrawal. Her intentions are good, but this American Jew is of Russian descent and enjoys the embrace of a long, cold, snowy winter. Imagine Zhivago at his desk in Varykino. This is exactly what I need, nature slowing my pace, touching me with a bit of sadness that when bathed in sunlight awakens my poetic muse.

Zhivago wrote love poems to his mistress, Lara, in the isolation of his wife’s country estate as a revolution ravaged his country. He is portrayed as a healer, lover and poet in sharp contrast to Lara’s husband who is a central figure in the revolution, a man of action and ruthless cruelty. Two other characters in the movie, portrayed by no less that Rod Steiger and Alec Guinness, show us different paths to take in life. One is corrupt, lustful and selfish. The other is quiet, reads others well and somehow comes out of chaos in a position of authority. Which one do I want to be today?

     You say you want a revolution

     Well, you know

     We all want to change the world.

That was John Lennon’s view on things. Even two days after February 14th he would never leave us with “just another silly love song”. Thirty years after his death I remember his irreverence, his self-destructive years with acid, his using music as a tool of rebellion and his transformation into a man who stayed at home, cared for his son and asked us to “imagine all the people living life in peace”. He was an artist, not a fighter. Still, he inspired a cultural revolution. I wonder if ever, before his untimely end, he thought it was worth the tumult along the way or the risk (that he in fact predicted) to his own life. For the rest of us “life goes on”. Is revolution really worth the risks? My chair at home sure is soft and comfortable.

We’ve all been witnessing a revolution in the Middle East. I see the crowds of young people in Cairo’s central square and I am awed by their courage. I don’t think I would be so brave. As I watch TV I remember similar images from the 60s of American college students protesting the Viet Nam war. In that same era we marched and sat in to fight against racial inequality. We fought to abolish slavery in the Civil War losing more lives than in any other war. “Four score and seven years” before we rebelled against a foreign dictator and created a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. Our nation was born thanks to the courage of a bunch of rebels. And to our credit, in every generation since, we’ve reawakened that spirit to put ourselves back on course to being a nation of freedom and equality. I say we but I am no Strelnikov. The 60s are now half a century ago. I wonder if my generation of Americans and I have become too comfortable to even recognize a cause that merits our attention and sacrifice.

This very thought has been bothering me and sitting in my subconscious as a slowly simmering blog for the past few months. It started when I listened to the lyrics of a popular John Mayer song, “Waiting on the World to Change”

     Now we see everything that's going wrong
     With the world and those who lead it
     We just feel like we don't have the means
     To rise above and beat it

     So we keep waiting
     Waiting on the world to change
     We keep on waiting
     Waiting on the world to change

He goes on to say that someday his generation is “gonna rule the population”. I felt like telling him that if he and his generation “keep on waiting”, someone else, maybe those courageous Egyptians, or well educated Chinese or enterprising Indians are going to be in charge, not him. But me in my chair, who am I to tell him anything. Don’t I share responsibility for my generation’s legacy, Enron and Iraq?

Then something happened that made me look at America’s younger generation in a new and much more positive light. A nine year old girl was shot dead in Arizona. She had been elected to her school’s student council and went to see her Congresswoman speak to learn more about government. Her death was tragic. Yet, somehow, I felt hopeful. I was confident that she was not the only nine year old out there with the drive to learn the principles that have guided us, and to fight to help us keep them strong. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Christina-Taylor Green, five others in Arizona and thousands worldwide cannot have died in vain. We need to make sure of that. Whether by voting, singing, writing, marching, teaching, donating…whatever works for you, but not just waiting for the world to change. Time for me to switch to Reggae and Jimmy Cliff, and “get up, stand up” from this all too cushy chair. Who’s with me?

Getting Old (Lang Syne)

I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot?' Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances, or does it mean if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot?

So said Harry, Billy Crystal, in the closing scene of “When Harry Met Sally” with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background. After years of acquaintance involving on and off animosity, chance meetings, friendship and once awkward sex, he and Sally finally discovered and expressed their love for each other. They are by no means the only couple to get together many years after meeting in their teens. No big deal, but still, I’ve been wondering. What is it that makes us in our later years want to get back together with friends and lovers from high school and college?

The impetus for my musing was a phone call that I received last month from Karin, a Swedish woman who 45 years ago spent a year with my family as our au pair. She called from Stockholm and said that she wanted to see us when she visited New York for Christmas. The call came out of the blue and caught me totally off guard. 45 years ago I was ten years old. She was 19. To me, she was a nice memory. She was cute with many boyfriends, strawberry blond hair and more energy in the dead of winter than I’d ever seen, but still, just one in a series of women who helped take care of me and my four brothers. For her, it must have been different. We were her formative year. She went from being a schoolgirl in a cold family in a cold country to an independent woman in a houseful of adoring boys in a land of freedom and opportunity. When she left us she became a Pan Am stewardess, flew the world, married, divorced, got ill, got better, wrote a book. Now she teaches yoga and writes a yoga-nutrition column. And for some reason, she wants to see us.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? For Karin, the answer is no. She had the courage to make a new life for herself at 19. The idea of getting together with us probably helped her see herself again as a young, beautiful, spirited woman. Romanticizing our youth, nostalgia, that’s one reason to rekindle a relationship “old long since” as auld lang syne translates to from Robert Burns’ Scottish.

“Psychology Today” describes what I’ll call the auld lang syne phenomenon as a reaction to our baby boomer lives in which we move from place to place and job to job in search of opportunity. They say at some point we “crave familiarity. Someone who laughs at the same jokes, understands the same quirks”. Someone who knew us when. Is that why divorced couples often remarry or why a high school reunion can reawaken a first love? Or is it more a reaction to getting old, feeling stuck, being unhappy? My guess is that at some age we get to feeling it’s now or never. For those not used to testing the waters, a familiar port is inviting and considerably less threatening than the open seas.

Hmmm…Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it would be better to let those old acquaintances stay in the past. Regression and infidelity hardly seem like good answers for unhappiness. As Burns wrote,

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun till dine [dinner time] ;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

What’s to say things would work out with an old flame? If things aren’t going well it makes better sense to concentrate on understanding and fixing what’s wrong in the present, not risking a tenuous present for a glorified past. What did we really know at 19 anyway? Not much, maybe, but everything sure was more intense.

The answer for Burns, one that we embrace in song every New Years Eve, is to share “a cup o’ kindness yet”. Kindness would be a euphemism for Scotch whiskey. I’m no Scot, but I’d say that he means more than just getting drunk together. With that drink we are to remember our past, recognize the “many a weary foot” we’ve wandered since and respect each other’s present life with a handshake, and no more, as a gesture of friendship.

Friends, if I have forgotten you over the past few years, please consider this an apology. I assure you, it was not willful and had nothing to do with Robert Burns or “Psychology Today”. Me and Billy, we should remember but we just forget. Blame it on advancing age and too much caffeine free Diet Coke. Those chemicals got to be bad for you. Call me and we can share a real cup o’ kindness, for auld lang syne.