I was trying to think of how to explain the loss of the so-called "feminine values" - all that is YIN as opposed to YANG in our current times. It feels like an important exercise - like protecting an endangered species…

Isn't it curious that there is one relationship – that with our family of origin – which it's considered a failure if we do not eventually move out and leave them. While another relationship - marriage - is considered a failure if we do move out and leave them.

The poet was correct in saying "the child is father of the man." Our childhood drama sets the stage for the dramas that will be enacted by our future self. The scripts we create and the characters we conjure up later in life are all in service to the psychological puzzles left over from childhood.

I've been thinking about the many different ways that we show our love, concern, affection, interest, passion and care for the other beings in our experience. The diversity of relationships that we engage in every day mandates that there be a diversity of forms with which to express our relatedness - and finding the right form to fit, perfectly, the kind of relationship we have with each person, plant or pet is one of the arts demanding of human beings.

In conversation together we have articulated the existential truth that even among couples with long and happy marriages, we can really only be to each other as “ships passing in the night.”

As those of you who have flown Southwest will recall, seats are not assigned. You draw a boarding number and then look for any open seat when you get on. I was about in the middle of the pack so there were plenty of middle seats left when I boarded, and therefore I must assume that some guardian spirit or daimon was guiding my choice when I took the middle seat in row seven next to Emily who was at the window…

The great poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote one of the most psychologically astute poems on the subject of loss - something we are all grappling with now.