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Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: Poitin Jimmie Being creative is hard. Thinking up ways to connect disparate elements into a whole that not only hasn’t been seen before but also delights us with surprise, meaning, or beauty requires a great deal of energy—”executive function,” as psychologists put it. Not to mention the time it takes to create something novel and then rework it and rework it and rework it until the original seed blossoms into a fully-formed painting or book or poem or song or blog post. It’s said that all writing is rewriting, but creation in any medium requires a laborious chipping away at unnecessary parts and a relentless enlarging and refining of others. And then there’s the space the children of our creativity occupy in our heads. Continue reading…
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: DVIDSHUB The abhorrence we feel when encountering beliefs that contradict our own is so universal and so powerful that it’s hard to imagine it’s the result of anything other than natural selection, programmed into us by evolution because it gives us some kind of survival advantage. Even if we’re able to tolerate beliefs that are different than our own, remaining so creates a tension from which we can never quite become free. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Keoni Cabral I remember thinking when I was lying on my bedroom floor, bleeding internally so badly that I’d lost the ability even to crawl, that if I hadn’t been married I would have bled to death. I was home after a laparoscopic appendectomy, had awakened at 3 a.m. with projectile vomiting, and had found myself unable to move (due to rapid blood loss). Luckily, my wife could do so normally and called an ambulance. I was transported to the hospital and ultimately saved by a second operation later that afternoon. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: pichado photography Years ago, I was having lunch with a friend who’d developed a reputation for being difficult. He complained frequently and bitterly, often about things no one else found bothersome. In general, he was perceived as negative and over-entitled. I thought most of the time the points he made were valid but that the way he expressed them was off-putting and prevented others from being open to his ideas. After thinking about it for a while, I decided, for his sake, I should let him know. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend
 Photo: Maks Karochkin “The Buddha’s compassion is perfectly equal and impartial. The Buddha views all beings as his own children and strives to elevate them to attain his same enlightened state of life. It’s not that there are no differences among people. Rather, it’s that the Buddha, while fully recognizing people’s differences, does not discriminate among them.”
—Daisaku Ikeda Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: The U.S. Army A relative of mine recently died, so my parents, my brothers, and I went to his funeral. The rabbi was appropriately somber and talked about him fondly, as if she’d known him (though she hadn’t). His sister and brother stood up and told us all how much they loved him and already missed him. Tears were shed and hugs exchanged. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Katie Tegtmeyer My wife once told me she felt I wasn’t particularly warm. She rarely saw me hug anyone, I rarely took her hand spontaneously, or rubbed her back or nuzzled her neck. And she very much wanted those things, she said. She needed to feel a sense of connection between us, a sense that we were more than just two people co-habitating in a house or co-parenting a child. And she didn’t. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: ICMA Photos I once conducted a job interview with someone I found to be passionate, energetic, intelligent, engaging, and prepared. As I asked her questions designed to produce an accurate picture of her potential future performance, I remained acutely attuned to my emotional reactions to her demeanor, trying to listen to what my inner voice was telling me about her. At the end of the interview I found myself excited about the prospect of hiring her. I had to remind myself to remain cautious, however, as I reflected on just how easy it is to confuse personality with character and how critical it is to separate them. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Alex E. Proimos A patient of mine has a mentally ill brother who’s depressed and anxious, as well as manipulative and stubborn. He often refuses to take medication that’s helped him in the past and as a result often ends up lying at home in his bed, unwashed and unkempt, for days at a time. When my patient discovers him in this state, she tries various things: taking him to the ER (which she’s learned leads nowhere), contacting his therapist (which sometimes helps, sometimes not), and even walking away, both figuratively and literally. She struggles with how much she may be enabling his behavior and with how unhappy his unhappiness is making her. Continue reading…
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