Archives: 2009

more on Polarities…

December 11th, 2009

If you missed my last entry on Navigating Doula Polarities, let me bring you up to speed on my current thinking, vis-à-vis managing the sometimes seemingly ridiculous paradoxes, conundrums and ambiguities of life. I think you know what I’m referring to. For instance… on the one hand, we want to preserve our core values, hold onto those traditions and rituals that bring a smile to our face and joy to our heart. That bind our family together. The healthy habits that make it easy to love our loved ones.
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Navigating Doula Polarities

November 12th, 2009

Well… first, polarities. That paradoxical pairing of seemingly incompatible opposites, that, it turns out, are more often than not just two sides of the very same coin.

For all of us, the only universal polarity is life and death. We all were born. We all will die. Now, is it just me, or do you notice that, even though this is the ONLY thing we ALL have in common, it rarely, if ever, gets talked about! The death and/or dying part anyway, unless we’re talking about someone else’s funeral.
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ground balls…

October 30th, 2009

Ok, the World Series is upon us, and, as an old fan of the Yankees, having grown up with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, the stuff that heroes and legends are made of, you might think that ‘ground balls’ references that particular fall classic.  Nope.  Ground balls, is to fly balls, I learned the other day, as slam dunk is to sinking a three-pointer at the buzzer, from the opposite end of the court.

Forget the sports metaphors.  One’s easy.  The other is hard.  What I learned about the beauty of ground balls occurred while playing outside with my nine-month old retriever puppy, who, in the seven months that we’ve been raising him, has not gotten the hang of retrieving, at all.  Until I threw him a ground ball.  And then another.  And another…
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Common sense…

October 29th, 2009

Having grown up on Paine Ave., as in Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and an all around rabble rouser kind of guy, I am partial to clarity.  Clarity of words.  Clarity of thought.  Easy to say, often hard to do.

As an executive coach, and organizational development consultant, I get an often intimate, inside look into individual lives and their collective communities.  From where I sit, it looks like the world is going to hell in a hand basket. 
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