Tag Archives: interpretation

Optimism and Pessimism

By Jim Selman | Bio

Here we are at the beginning of another new year. All the “Happy New Year” greetings are fading and we all seem to be digging in for the coming months.  We seem to ebb and flow with a kind of seasonal ‘mood swing’ and now, in the middle of winter, are beginning to get down to business. In general, most of us start a new year being optimistic—filled with resolution(s), ready to put the mistakes from 2009 behind us and eager to take on the world or ourselves or

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Purpose and Meaning

By Shae Hadden | Bio

The official arrival of fall always surprises me. It’s never the change in weather so much as the passage of time that draws me up short—what happened to the last few months of my life? This year I feel as if I’ve been lost in a time warp while the rest of the world runs ahead at its crazy pace…and as if I’m only just beginning to rejoin the rest of the human race. And no, I didn’t go on an extended vacation or take a leave of absence. All I did was connect to my

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Terrorist Paranoia

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I live in a country where multiculturalism was once the watchword of a generation. I attended high school in a ‘multicultural district’ in an inner city, took several language courses at university and hung out with people from diverse racial, social and cultural backgrounds. Today, I am disheartened to hear how ‘terrorist paranoia’ creeps into our everyday lives and has us question whether we will accept new people into our lives.

Today, two of my cousins asked for my
perspective on something that happened to them recently. They each,
obviously, had opposing perspectives on what had occurred and wanted me
to objectively give my opinion. Their story goes something like this…

A
young woman of Chinese descent, an engineer by trade, is living in our
city, working here temporarily. She has no friends or relatives here
and has been attending a downtown church in an effort to meet people.

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Listening & Learning

Life happens while we’re having conversations with ourselves and other people.

Listening is the context that makes life intelligible, allows anything to have meaning, and forms the basis for all communication (both written and spoken). It’s a whole lot more than just ‘hearing’ the words that are spoken. It’s about listening with an open mind, listening without already having an answer, listening to the person and noticing what they are not

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Fork in the Road

I am 64 years old. Somehow the number seems significant, although I
don’t know why. Everyone I have ever spoken to about age agrees: they
feel a lot younger than they imagined they would feel like at this age
(however old they might be).

It’s almost as if we reach a ‘fork in the road’ age-wise—a
particular moment in time, usually in middle age, when we experience a
total disconnect between what we see in the mirror and what we
experience in our mind. I think

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