“Every behavior has more than one cause.”

Cain croppedLooking for a simple explanation for why some people are introverts and others are extroverts? Then don’t read Susan Cain’s book Quiet. Her explanation has not one, not two, not three, but four factors: our  inborn temperament, environment, free will, and how these interact at any … Read More

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Fitgerald croppedWhat does this final line of The Great Gatsby mean?  That depends on what you want it to mean.  You can use this line to support an affirming “life goes on” perspective. Or, if you are an existentialist, you can say that it shows how pointless … Read More

“I wandered lonely as a cloud”

Great poems croppedThis is the opening line of a poem written by the revolutionary William Wordsworth in 1804.  He shook things up by experimenting with “real language” (as opposed to the formal style found in serious writing), and he wrote about feelings (as opposed to intellectual matters). This line … Read More

“Only the past interests me now.”

See croppedAlbert Einstein wrote that the separation between the past, present and future  is only a stubbornly persistent  illusion.  This idea is at play in Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  The narrator is an old woman who looks back and concludes that she … Read More

“Now I become myself.”

parker j palmerParker Palmer quotes this wonderful opening line from a poem by May Sarton  in his collection of autobiographical essays Let Your Life Speak. For him, the process of “becoming” meant taking many wrong turns before finding the right ones. People who know him only as the … Read More