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Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: limaoscarjuliet You don’t really know what an experience is like, of course, until you have it yourself. I remember thinking to myself when my wife and I first began discussing the idea of having children that this was especially true regarding parenthood. In the past I’d been able to predict with reasonable accuracy a number of novel experiences based on previous similar experiences, but no experience I’d yet had seemed even close to the experience of having a child (sorry, owning a pet doesn’t come close). Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: SuperFantastic Two weeks ago, my son came home from nursery school with a splinter in his palm. It was so small, though, I wasn’t sure if it was really there.
“It’s there,” my wife said.
She’d tried to squeeze it out before I’d come home but had only succeeded in hurting him terribly. He’d shrieked and cried and tears had poured down his face. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: stevendepolo As long as I can remember, I’ve been burdened with a desire for perfection in all my creative endeavors. No new sentence can be written until the previous one is just right. No garment painted can be abandoned until its texture seems utterly real, as if touching it wouldn’t yield the sensation of oil paint but of velvet, silk, or cotton. But my dogged pursuit of this verisimilitude has often proven itself to be the greatest obstacle to my achieving it. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Aih One week ago, my family and I celebrated my father’s 75th birthday. Even writing that number I find shocking (probably almost as shocking as my father finds reading it). Birthdays have always represented the most important of all celebrations in my family—more important certainly than any local or national holidays. What, after all, could be more important to celebrate for a person and the people who love him or her than the fact of their existence? For what should any of us be more grateful? Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Autistic Psycho The other day I found myself standing in a long line to buy breakfast in my hospital’s cafeteria when I noticed something that surprised me: I wasn’t feeling annoyed at having to wait. In the past, such a delay to the start of my day—to any part of my day, really—would have driven me slightly crazy. Not because I think I’m so important that others should part before me, but because of an omnipresent feeling I’ve had to get on to the next thing I needed to do—whatever it was. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Shermeee Nothing in the world is quite so awful as boredom. Unmitigated pain—physical or emotional—is commonly viewed as giving rise to the worst kind of suffering, but the suffering engendered by true boredom, though qualitatively different, is perhaps in some ways just as terrible. I’m not talking about being bored for a few hours while waiting in line at Disneyland or in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. I’m talking about finding life itself not only uninteresting but also purposeless. I’m talking about what I call existential boredom. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: zoutedrop A few years ago, a close friend of mine was struggling with his job. He worked in a large corporation he couldn’t stand: unethical business practices, employee backstabbing, and sexual harassment all seemed to occur on a regular basis. He wanted out. Not only that, for years he’d harbored a secret dream of starting his own business. Driven by his growing disgust with his company’s culture, he made a determination to do just that. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: wonderlane By nature I’ve always been an excessively introspective person. My entire life I’ve believed, as Socrates said, that “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Even now, my wife frequently accuses me of living mostly in my own head. But in my first year of college, in response to my voicing my commitment to this credo, a friend of mine once replied, “Nor is the unlived life worth examining.” Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Anamorphic Mike In a previous post, The Three Realms Of Confidence, I told a story from my childhood (how I was bullied in seventh grade because I was Jewish) to introduce the concept that confidence exists in three separate realms. In response to that post, a reader commented (on the Psychology Today blog where my posts also appear): “I was periodically beaten up, but I ran away or didn’t fight back because I operated under the assumption that you should always ‘turn the other cheek’ and never fight back, regardless of the circumstances. The moral directive was to allow yourself to get beaten up…” Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend 
When I was a little boy—around six or so—I used some markers to draw a picture of a skyscraper-lined city street with cars rushing past (posted to the right). I showed it to my parents, who I vividly recall gushed with praise and awe as only parents do. I don’t remember her exact words, but my mother left me with the impression that I’d created something far better than I should have been able at my age. Continue reading…
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