hsfo-presents

"Remember me and smile...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:28:01 +0100

... for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry."

~ Dr. Seuss

(From Friday, June 1st, 2012)

Hi, all. In a matter of hours, I'll be retired, at the statistically young age of 57. I don't feel as if this is an end to anything, interestingly, but a new beginning. I hope this change will mean that I can spend more time doing what I love, and with the people whom I love, not the least of which are you.

Below, you'll find the so-long note that I will shortly release at work. I wanted you all to see it first because it frankly has more to do with each and all of you than anything else. You all are among the people I feel I'm heading toward at this juncture in my life. It's immensely satisfying to be able to retire and have your sense of purpose grow, instead of diminish. I feel fortunate in this respect.

The genesis of HopeScope has likely never been much of a mystery to any of you, but perhaps the below note will provide some more insight as to why you all are so important to me. So, with that, I'll share it with you.

Love to all!

----------

I recall that Thursday evening in December, 1981. Months prior, I had received my master's degree in counseling psychology. Mom had gone out somewhere, so Dad and I had headed to York Steak House in Catonsville for supper. As we ate and talked, a familiar presence, simultaneously imposing and warm, approached our table. It was one of my graduate school professors whom I had always held in particular esteem. After I introduced my Dad and exchanged a few pleasantries, Lee surprised and honored me by asking if I would consider an entry-level position in his practice. Respectfully, I declined. Funding cuts, as a consequence of the chronic devaluation of mental health services in our culture, had curtailed at least two of my graduate internships and low-paying stints as a substance abuse therapist, and a concession to economics had forced me to accept an unrelated U.S. Defense Department job. I was to enter on duty the following month. Fiscal responsibility had dictated my decision, and to a 26 year-old, it seemed set in stone.

Lee wished me well. "It's a shame, though," he pronounced with gracious candor. "You would make a great therapist."

Almost exactly twenty years prior, an unsung academic at MIT's Department of Meteorology had created a rudimentary computer program to simulate weather pattern behaviors. On one particular day, he changed one of a dozen or so numbers representing atmospheric conditions in his model. That miniscule alteration vastly modified the program's long-term forecast, an effect which was central to Edward Lorenz's 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfiy's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

That premise, since dubbed the "Butterfly Effect", describes a "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" in which an isolated alteration in a nonlinear system can induce exponentially larger changes to a later state. The concept is often spindled and mutilated in popular culture as we bastardize it into an imprecise formula for indulging our fantasies of predicting the future, or even reverse engineering and modifying it. In doing so, however, we overlook the most salient lesson of Lorenz's theory: It is immensely difficult - perhaps impossible - to calculate forthcoming events with certainty. So, rather than draft a threadbare metaphor into serving the notion that any of us can orchestrate tomorrow by undoing yesterday, I would simply suggest to you that the future is indeed a product of "small changes" over which each of us holds some measure of influence.

Since January, 1982, I have filled myriad capacities here. Though none of those positions has allowed me to utilize my academic or practical specialties directly, all of them have immersed me in scenarios with which I was initially unfamiliar, for better or for worse. Meeting my wife here, for instance, was an unqualified windfall, and my increased exposure to burgeoning web technologies in 2000, when I arrived in this office, would prove to be another personal planetary alignment of sorts. Though web content management is not an occupation that I would have envisioned for myself, my placement in this role at the turn of the century seems, in hindsight, fortuitous. My introduction to web technologies not only piqued an avocational interest in social media, but spawned a working theory that it could potentially become a vehicle for the delivery of mental health adjunctive resources to young people in need... not merely a sterile clearing house of information, but a warm safehouse on the interwebs that could traverse continents and bridge seas, and which imposed no fee or temporal limits on "residency".

In 2004, concurrent with working here, I began to test my theory avocationally, using resources afforded me by a low-cost social media platform. Nearly nine years have since passed. The software media evolve and adapt, as does my model of care. And so do the adult and youthful participants of what is no mere fictional trope, but living proof of a "sensitive dependence on an initial condition" evolving into outcomes in three countries. Some earn degrees. Some overcome emotional challenges or abuse, or reconcile with estranged parents. Some stop self-harming, secure appropriate care, avail themselves of hospital if necessary, or even put hospital behind them forever. They will laugh and love and live again, having intersected with a "small change in a nonlinear system": This office - this "condition" - gave someone an idea, and an introduction to the tools with which to execute it.

I could never have predicted that this place would lead me back “home" since, as Lorenz suggests, that would be difficult or impossible to do with certainty. It is equally futile to re-plot our route once it is behind us. Regret is a circular folly. Ultimately, my tenure here has been an intersection through which I needed to pass in pursuit of a calling, initially vague, but now much more distinct. In The Pretenders' '80s hit "Talk Of The Town", Chrissie Hynde sang:

"Such a drag to want something sometime... (but) one thing leads to another, I know."

Those simple words are as true for each of you as they have proven to be for me. Hopefully, most of you have already found your vocation or, at the very least, are exercising your chosen craft. Ideally, the work you do here represents for you the fusion of both a personal and civic objective. As I look around me, I see evidence that this is the case for many of you. Equipped with your tailored skills, and motivated by an ethical imperative, you actualize a theory that translates directly to a critical reality: the security of a people. That is the "later scenario" to which each of you is hopefully contributing. At the end of the day, if you do what you love while serving an authentic objective, you inhabit a coveted domain indeed, and are virtually assured of nipping the potential tornado at its seed.

For my part, I will be headed "home" now. There is still a lot of work to be done there, whether I am contributing to the foiling of destructive storms, or to the formation of perfect ones... or if not perfect, then at least free. In either case, I will be accomplishing what I set out to do all those many years ago. It's just that I’ll have taken the long way "home".

Warm wishes for the very best to each of you!

Tommy

May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:00:50 +0100

Hi, everyone.

May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month. The idea, of course, is to allow and encourage helpers, helpees, and the general public to become more educated on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), especially with regard to what it is, and what it is not.

If you'd like an authoritative resource, I'd recommend the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder as a place to start.

Thank you!

TC

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: Hope for Borderline Personality Disorder

Thu, 17 May 2012 01:59:30 +0100

Hello, all.

It's been a little while since I have had a Musings item that I felt compelled to post. Today, however, one of our 'Scopers made me aware of an article about Dr. Marsha Linehan, the developer of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which is tailored for those suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD has long been the bane of mental health professionals because of the degree to which is confounds both sufferers and helpers alike. Often featuring both affective components and behavioral ones, such as self-harm and suicidal inclinations, BPD has been resistant to most known treatment modalities. DBT, however, has proven to be of help. Most interestingly, perhaps - but perhaps logically - is that Dr. Linehan herself has suffered from BPD for most of her life, having experienced firsthand the pain of those whom she seeks to liberate from this intractable illness. Now that she has "come out" with her own story, DBT has even more credence.

I invite sufferers and helpers alike to read the article. There is hope.

TC

I am only one...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:00:31 +0100

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

~ Edward Everett Hale

We were bikers... my buddies and me.

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:19:45 +0100

Greets, everyone.

The other day, as I was visiting the vintage motorcycle forum to which I belong, I encountered some prose that had been written and shared on the forum by someone whose web acquaintance I'd had the pleasure of making a little while ago. During that time, he and I have had a few pleasant exchanges - mainly bike related - but one or two were a little more personal. I'd previously shared with him what I do avocationally, and that I also happened to enjoy writing, and perhaps one or two of our more personal exchanges centered less on bikes, and more on our "personhood", if you will. So it was with that brief sense of my new friend that I was not at all surprised to read what he'd written and shared with the rest of us on the bike forum.

His initial intent will be guite clear when you read the piece, I think. Though the work's outermost skin speaks of men and machines, and of the bond among those men - those friends - any of us who has ever had one or more close friendships, forged in commonality, will find themselves reflexively peeling back the layers as they read... morphing the writers message into a shape that echos tales of their own friends, their own fond recollections, their own loves, their own losses, their own ultimately solitary humanity. The piece speaks simply, yet eloquently, of not only the passage of time, but of the value of friendship as an antidote to our congenital and terminal oneness, and how both time and friendship shape our oneness as water and wind shape stone. We are all sculpted by our relationships. To the extent that we can, we should all strive to cultivate relationships that will work us with the gentlest hands and keenest eye.

Thank you, Hamamatsu.

Enjoy this beautiful prose.

TC

~ ~

We Were Bikers... My Buddies and Me.

We were bikers back in the day, the 1950's is when we started....my buddies and me. We rode Triumphs, BSAs, Nortons, Harleys and Indians and we argued who had the best and fastest motorcycle. We imitated James Dean with our white tee shirts with rolled up sleeves, and we wore black jackets that made our mothers worry... my buddies and me. We rode hard, we drank beer and we worked on our own bikes, we were independent and free. We were straight and tall, we held our heads high...my buddies and me.

As we became men, some of us married, most of us went to work, some went to college, and sadly some of us went off to war...my buddies and me. We raised our children and supported our wives while younger men rode their motorcycles in our stead. We were gallant and trusted men...my buddies and me. We never wavered, we never quit, we always did what we had to do, we did what men do...my buddies and me.

As we aged and our children had children, we once again turned to motorcycles to fill the void that was in us all these years. We rode with dim eyes, gray hair and sore knees, but we rode together again straight and tall...my buddies and me. We rode Harleys, and we rode Indians, Victorys and metric bikes and we argued who had the best motorcycle just as before...my buddies and me.

Now I am in the winter of my years and I sit and wonder what happened to my buddies and their motorcycles...because you see, my buddies are gone, and now it's just me.

~ Hamamatsu

First Person: Borderliner Personality Disorder

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:27:58 +0100

Hello to all.

As it happens, one of our own 'Scopers who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is quite a creative talent. One of her gifts is an impressive command of written English. In her two blogs, she uses her talent to render personal accounts of living with BPD that are both imformative and compelling, to BPD sufferers and those who support them. Perhaps you'll visit, and re-visit, coming away - at the very least - with the certainty that you are not alone if you suffer from BPD, as well as with confirmation that BPD is something that some people struggle with; it is not who they are.

A Reluctant Borderline

Thoughts and Musings of a Girl... Interrupted

TC

The Ha Shem

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:57:58 +0100

Hi, everyone.

Much of the time, I find myself struggling to eek the occasional satisfying performance or recording from my guitars. But when they come, they are hard earned and especially sweet. And it's usually shortly thereafter that I encounter something like this, below, and am overcome by a curious mix of frustration and inspiration. But there is no denying the latter in this performance from this particular artist, Esteban Antonio.

Enjoy.

TC

Beauty is in the...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:24:23 +0100

... operant conditioning of the beholders eye? Likely.

Happy New Year to all!

This is mainly for Mel, but others of you may be interested as well.

One of the guys on the classic motorcycle forum to which I belong is a sculptor by the name of Juan Balandran. I don't know Juan, but there was a link to his site and blog in one of the threads on the bike forum. I visited both out of curiosity, and I found that, though must of his work is not entirely consistent with what I have been "programmed" to consider "beautiful", I was nevertheless struck by its singularity. And that got me to thinking that beauty might not, in fact, be in the eye of the beholder, but in the operant conditioning of the beholder's eye. This became more apparent to me as I examined Juan's work more; my own operant conditioning began to collapse under the weight of my curiosity, and the beauty of his work became more apparent to me.

This may be true for some of you as well, most of all you, Mel, our resident artist. It's interesting to me how, after seeing so much of your work and talking with you so often and for so long, I can no longer admire a creation without thinking of you and wondering if you might like to see it. In a very literal way, your pursuit of art has forever enhanced my response to it. Art takes on new import for an observer when the observer knows an artist well.

That said, let me offer this small disclaimer: Some of Juan's work is a bit "edgy", even risque. He's a competent writer too, and this caveat extends to his blog entries as well. I feel an ethical imperative to respond to, and influence, all of you 'Scopers in healthy ways, so I often struggle to balance my inclination to insulate you with my desire to expose you to the unvarnished truth of the world. But who am I to censor what you experience?

Therefore, I'll take another step toward recognizing your maturity, and share with you all Juan's site, and his blog. I hope you'll enjoy it. Perhaps it will spark some interesting discussion about our perceptions of beauty, and how they are so ethereal and subject to influence.

TC

Kindness Boomerang

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:17:18 +0100

Hello, everyone!

One of our 'Scopers shared an act-of-kindness presentation that's more than just worth seeing; it should be a mandate... a staple in everyone's "Kindness Kit". :) I hope you enjoy it!

TC

Happy Holidays to all!

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:24:46 +0100

Greetings to everyone!

I just wanted to take a moment, on this Christmas Eve, to extend to all our members and visitors alike my sincere wishes for a Happy (and safe) Holiday Season!

Fond well wishes to all!

TC