Willful Ignorance: Penn State, Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell, and Others
According to James Carse, Professor Emeritus at NYU, there are three kinds of ignorance: ordinary ignorance, willful ignorance, and higher ignorance. The first is the very essence of learning — you move from unknowing to knowing — like learning history, science, facts and trivia. The second type, willful ignorance, is when you know something but choose to pretend you do not. The third type of ignorance is lofty in scope and hard to achieve — it is a reverence for the unknown...
Read MoreThe Memory Challenge
The other night I discovered a new game for the ‘over 50′ crowd. I was at a dinner party and a group of us were chatting about who knows what when suddenly I was trying to remember the name of the actor who starred in a 1970s (or ’80s) television cop show and had not too long ago been on trial for killing his wife. We all stumbled into memory lane for a few minutes trying to recall the actor and show when an actress suddenly shouts out — “I was on that show…...
Read MoreWhat to Do When Spiritual Complacency Sets In
I found myself saying words the other day that shocked me. “I’m not seeking right now” were in response to a friend’s questioning me about my interest (or lack thereof) in meeting her friend, a South American shaman who guides people in self-investigation. That line, “I’m not seeking right now” came up from an unconscious orientation of complacency. I had recently turned my outward attention to the plight of gender equality in the developing world, to girls and women who suffer...
Read MoreTrue Blood and True Life
I just spent the week with Sookie Stackhouse in Bon Temps, Louisiana. I had never seen an episode of True Blood until six days ago when I watched episode 1 season 1 on HBO GO on my iPad. Yesterday, I left Sookie screaming in the finale of Season 4. Why was I sucked into Bon Temps, Louisiana and its inhabitants for a week, like a V addiction? And why was this immersion so satisfying? Perhaps its because Bon Temps and the characters of True Blood are a metaphor for the diversity of life itself...
Read MoreThe Changing Face of Parenting
My days of ‘hands-on’ parenting (the parenting that takes place between infancy and 21 years of age or so) are over. Our youngest of three kids just turned 21 leaving my husband and I in a new ‘phase’ of life. The all consuming enterprise of hands-on parenting changes radically when adult children take over the helm of their own vessels to travel through life. While those years of parenting are all consuming and, yes, exhausting, they give one a true meaning to life while eliciting...
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