Fencing Bear at Prayer

1.  Focus on your own feelings about what your friend or colleague or partner or student or child is talking about rather than on what he or she is saying about how he or she feels.  Take every opportunity to think about how what you are hearing says something about yourself. 2.  Allow your own feelings about what you are hearing to interfere with what the speaker is trying to say.  Defend yourself immediately against these feelings by making what the speaker is saying somehow about you rather than about him- or herself.  Start arguing about whose perception of the situation is correct.  If this doesn't work, counterattack , e.g. by making the speaker feel guilty for having the feelings that he or she has expressed. 3.  Presume that you know what the speaker really means before he or she stops talking (or you interrupt).  Presume that the speaker knows you understand what he or she has said without checking to be sure (e.g. by asking questi...

"Norma [Lady Harte] and Rosemary [the recently-widowed Mrs. Clement Kane] were the sole occupants of the drawing-room, Sir Adrian [Norma's husband] having drifted away to the library. When Jim [Kane] and Patricia [Miss Allison] came in through the French windows Norma [Jim's mother by her first husband, James Kane, who was killed in the Great War] was seated bolt upright at a card-table, energetically playing a complicated Patience [i.e. Solitaire], and telling Rosemary at the same time how much happier she would be if she found an Object in life. "Rosemary was quite in agreement with this, but explained that her Russian blood made it impossible for her to remain constant to any one Object for longer than a few months at a stretch. "'My dear girl, don't talk nonsense to me!' said Norma bracingly. 'You're lazy, that's all that's wrong with you. Why don't you take up social work?' "'I don't thin...

I feel scared when I think someone is angry at me and will fight back by getting angry myself. I feel anxious when others express uncomfortable emotions, particularly if I am involved in some way. I find empathizing with others difficult and frightening. I hate fights. Fights (I am convinced) mean something is going to end, and so I panic and try to run away first. If I can't run away, I cry and/or try to puff myself up, like a dog raising her hackles or a bullfrog threatening to explode. I believe that if I were really a grown-up, I would never get angry or lose my temper. That I do proves that I am still a child. I like to think that I am particularly sensitive to others’ emotions, but in fact I’m not very good at reading other people because I tend to assume that they don’t like me or wouldn’t if they really knew how childish I am.

"It is okay to guess what an animal is feeling, just as it's okay to guess what any human is thinking. This is how we learn to know one another, by guesses based on our own experiences, our (always imperfect) understanding of how someone else communicates what they are feeling or thinking, and our willingness to accept feedback and fine-tune our behavior. It's okay to guess what your dog is trying to communicate as long as you're willing to accept that you might be wrong, correct your misunderstanding and try again. It is not okay to guess what an animal is thinking or feeling if you are unwilling to accept nothing less than absolute compliance with your wishes. Far too common are assertions that someone 'knows' why a dog did or did not do something; rarely is that guess tested against the reality of the dog's responses. I make a lot of guesses based on my observations of a dog's behavior, the situation and many years of experience. But I'm al...

This is one of those posts that I've been mulling over for days now, which either means it's going to be brilliantly insightful or--more likely--hopelessly convoluted. I had an idea this morning that I had finally figured out a way to tackle the question that's been nagging me, but now, at the end of the day, tired from reading in the literature on late medieval Flemish art, I'm not so sure. I don't, however, want to let it go another day because I'm afraid my entanglement and fatigue is only going to get worse. So, here goes: why do we study history? I know, I know, I'm an historian. I should know the answer to this question. But the thing is, I don't, not really. I know some of the answers that my colleagues have given, but even so, I'm still not sure. Do we actually care about the past "for its own sake"? If so, why? It's not like we can help the past be anything other than the past. Or do we study the past to tell us some...