Monthly Archive: October, 2006

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, two obviously beautiful, talented people–You’d set them up for a blind date if you didn’t know they were married–are separating. IBloid
has the scoop.

I should have predicted it. They have to be experiencing the usual signs and symptoms of this stage: Read the rest »

Stanley Fish’s description of marital quarrels was inspired by the Paul McCartney/Heather Mills breakup and his own life. How spats start: Out of nowhere. Any time. From nothing. How they spiral: Exponentially. Hope for peace in the future: None. They’re inevitable.

I agree. But you can also get some fun out of them.

I responded with this:

Oh, yes. The downward spiral into the mess. It happens when you least expect it. It’s called a reinforcing feedback loop in the complex systems world.

The best people fall into it, expecially when tired, hormonal, or hungover. Throw in before coffee/after coffee low blood sugar. It’s the classic butterfly effect, where small initial conditions create big outcomes. Read the rest »

Today blogger Leslie Madden Brooks asked on Blogher, “School Violence–What’s the Solution?”

I couldn’t answer the question at first. I was so distressed by it. And then I remembered. Why I write. Why I do the work I do.

I live on Maui, arguably the most beautiful place on the planet but 12 years ago I co-founded a youth center. We were seeing crystal meth and heroin and a level of violence that we had never seen before. A place was needed where children could be safe from the pressures of home, school, and the streets.

I research systems science so I describe love like this: the feelings and gestures associated with the free flow of information, energy, and resources between people that result in the social groups required for survival. It’s physiological. It’s genetic.

The answer is always the same: Increase that flow. Increase it in the simplest, clearest ways you can. Keep your eyes open for children who are alone, neglected, depressed, and bullied. The bullies are not the ones who shoot up schools. Look for the outcasts. Say hello. Introduce yourself.

Also, give kids a voice. Paia Youth and Cultural Center’s KOPO radio is the nation’s first youth-run community radio station. The kids choose the music. They speak out about issues that affect them. Kids listen.
Community is formed from connection. All the laws and all the “security” measures won’t make up for it.

Gandhi said that he everything he learned about nonviolence he learned in his marriage. (I’ll have to get that quotation right someday!)

The secret is and always will be love.

Oprah’s current favorite relationship expert, Robin Smith, in Lies at the Altar: The Truth about Great Marriages gives a list of 250+ questions to ask before getting married. Susan Piver’s The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do” is a great little tool. I have two friends who found their perfect partners as a result of eHarmony.com’s compatibility test and are marrying within the year.

Compatibility is a nice start but it probably won’t last. You can ask all the questions in the world at the beginning of a relationship and be compatible with a man in every way, and then find, a few years and a couple of babies later, that you don’t have anything in common at all.

The secret is to cash in on inevitable difference and incompatibility, and make it a strength, not a problem.
Easy for me to say. . .My husband and I are in the middle of it now, again. Read the rest »

In her NY Times blog, Judith Warner describes the problem of “experts” in parenting. The conflicting findings. How the personalities of the researchers effect the outcomes. In the end saying that we have to trust ourselves.

My comment:
Tradition has evaporated. We’re reinventing everything from scratch. How to eat, exercise, partner, parent, work, spend, contribute, worship, on and on. We are deluged with information from “experts.” We find that we aren’t smart enough, sane enough, beautiful enough, organized enough, wealthy enough, or working hard enough.

Life without traditional roles and rules requires that we design it as we go. It requires a higher level of cognitive functioning and a certain set of skills. But where’s the curriculum? Who’s qualified to develop and teach it? Our parents? Our expensive universities? Our therapists?

Life is chaotic. Parents are unsupported. Children suffer in poorly designed lives.

The good news is that life in the design space suites us. The skills aren’t all that difficult. It’s a matter of understanding the basics of creating life in the moment, on the run. Now that I’m 55, I’ve raised my children, and I finally have the time to explore all of this in my new blog and book.