When Love is Love

You don't know me, I'm the one who loves you. When time was young We walked the halls together, Then you hugged me quick And said goodbye and left. Not just once but twice, When no more letters sent. I'm the one who could  Not stop loving you, The one who had to call, The one who did. Perhaps you think you do, But you don't know me. When love was new I meant the world to you. Annies need sunshine and Clarks need rain, So it was all meant to be. But still you don't know me. You are the one  Sent to tell me, I am the one Sent is to bring you home. Come and desire above all else To become one with me in Him. When you do, then on that day  You will know me as I am, And I will mean much more Than the world to you, And you will know why you mean Much more than the world to me. If you don't, we won't  More than this world be.

In 1991, in the tiny town of New Berlin, in upstate New York, a young physician named Bill Thomas performed an experiment. He didn’t really know what he was doing. He was thirty-one years old, less than two years out of family medicine residency, and he had just taken a new job as medical director of Chase Memorial Nursing Home, a facility with eighty severely disabled elderly residents. About half of them were physically disabled; four out of five had Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of cognitive disability. Up until then Thomas had worked as an emergency physician at a nearby hospital, the near opposite of a nursing home. People arrived in the emergency room with discrete, reparable problems—a broken leg, say, or a cranberry up the nose. If a patient had larger, underlying issues—if, for instance, the broken leg had been caused by dementia—his job was to ignore the issues or send the person somewhere else to deal with them, such as a nursing home. He took this new medical director ...

Reese Russell, a tall, slender, fun-loving, and handsome young man with jet-black hair and dark brown eyes, was thirty-four years old when the United States entered World War I in April 1917. He came from the little Appalachian mill town of Cedar Bluff in Tazewell County, Virginia, a place of quiet mountain charm where community picnics, summer bandstand concerts, and church revival meetings were the order of the day. He and most of his friends had never been more than twenty miles from home. Why travel, people joked, when they already lived in the most beautiful place on earth?  Russell registered for the draft in the summer of 1917, and the U.S. Army called his number soon afterward. Putting down his banjo and straw hat, he kissed his girl good-bye and joined the 317th Infantry Regiment of the 80th “Blue Ridge” Infantry Division, a unit made up of draftees from rural Virginia, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania.  He went to France and fought in the Battle of the Meuse-A...

This is from Carl Rogers' Book On Becoming A Person . Some, but not those on experience, have also become significant to me, who as a person, wants to understand better why we as behave as we do. There, in very brief outline, are some of the externals of my professional life. But I would like to take you inside, to tell you some of the things I have learned from the thousands of hours I have spent working intimately with individuals in personal distress. I would like to make it very plain that these are learnings which have significance for me. I do not know whether they would hold true for you. I have no desire to present them as a guide for anyone else. Yet I have found that when another person has been willing to tell me something of his inner directions this has been of value to me, if only in sharpening my realization that my directions are different. So it is in that spirit that I offer the learnings which follow.  In each case I believe they became a part of my actions and i...

I first met Joe Friedman in the Summer of 2017 when I brought down a load for our move from Utah to Gilbert, Arizona. He lived across the street with his wife Merle Morgenstern. I was impressed with Joe's friendliness and desire to get to know his new neighbors. Annie was not with me on this trip but I told Joe a little about her and that she was French. The first time he met her he greeted her with a hearty 'bonjour.' When we moved in on the 1st of September 2017, Merle and Joe came over to say hello and to allow us to meet Merle. They brought some lovely flowers, and we were both impressed with their youthfulness and good cheer. It was not long after that we invited them to dinner, and that began a warm and beautiful 4x4 friendship. I say 4x4 because it is rare that two couples mix and blend so easily and comfortably with each other. While our backgrounds are different (they Jewish and we Mormons) we came to recognize that we connected with them and they with us i...

He died at 37, penniless and forgotten—but you're wearing his invention right now, and every day of your life.  In 1880, a pair of shoes cost more than most families earned in a week. Not because leather was rare. Not because cobblers were greedy. But because of one impossible step in shoemaking that no one—not a single inventor in the world—could figure out how to mechanize.  It was called "lasting"—attaching the upper part of a shoe to its sole. It required such extraordinary precision that only master craftsmen could do it. They made about 50 pairs a day, working from sunrise to sunset.  And they knew they were irreplaceable. Dozens of brilliant inventors had tried to build a machine for this. All failed. The work was too delicate, too complex, too... human.  Then a young Black immigrant who barely spoke English decided to solve it. Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born in Suriname in 1852. His father was Dutch, his mother was Black Surinamese. As a boy working in machine...

Notes on dream 10/6/2025 My dream began with Annie and I going to a big gathering together. I had to sit in a different section from her. I watched where she sat, and then went to my seat. From my seat I could see the area she was seated in, but when I looked, I couldn't see her. Because there were so many people in attendance, I left my seat to go find her, but she was no longer where I could see her. I inquired of others sitting near where she was sitting, and a few recalled seeing her, but didn't see where she had gone.  As I was looking there were many people gathered around, what seemed like many stations. There were trains and trucks and elevators at these stations. Some people were being directed and were following others in large groups. They appeared to be going to these stations. I was in one of the groups and we got to a station and were boarded on this large truck. The truck, however, did not have wheels. It seemed to be suspended in the air by cables and held a lot...

Remember how we met one day when days were full of fun, and how we fell in love then, the days all seemed like one? All those youthful love days that did go on and on and on, wonderful in all the ways that never seem to dawn, till one day you were gone. I had friends to play with, friends to spend a day with but no taste for the game, the days were all the same. Not just a shadow or a memory and more than just a dream, your leaving left a refugee and years to go between. Remember how a young boy knows the closest to his heart, how the door will never close no matter we're apart? All those youthful love days will go on and on and on, wonderful in all the ways can never be withdrawn, our day could never dawn.

It seems to me that when others are genuinely interested in you as a person, it is a sign of affection. But what does it mean to be interested?  When someone is "interested in you as a person," it means they are curious about: Your thoughts and feelings: They ask questions and listen attentively when you share. They want to know about your life, your past, your passions, your future aspirations and your experiences. They pay attention to what makes you, you. Not what you do, but who you are. They are genuinely concerned about your well-being, and they will dig deep to find out. They have no expectations of you, nor do they judge and evaluate you. This kind of interest demonstrates that they value you as a person, and want to connect with you on a deeper level than just superficial interactions. It also is a reflection of their own development as a person. How Does Interest Connect to Affection? Affection is a broad term that encompasses feelings of fondness, liking, and care....