Over sixty years ago, Carl Rogers, a pioneer in psychotherapy research, demonstrated that improvement in therapy was associated with a triad of therapist behaviors: genuineness, accurate empathy, and unconditional positive regard.

"Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death." This dynamic is not uncommon. I think most of us have known individuals who numb themselves and avoid entering life with gusto because of the dread of losing too much.

Why is death so terrifying? What specifically is it about death that frightens you?"

"Look straight into the heart of your panic. Tell me what you see."

We considered, for example, whether the idea of an alternative destiny was acting to counteract somehow the straight line stretching from birth to death.

Attempts to preserve personal identity are always futile. Transiency is forever. Rippling, as I use it, refersinstead to leaving behind something from your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown.

evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who asks us to imagine a laser-thin spotlight moving inexorably along the immense ruler of time. Everything that the beam has passed is lost in the darkness of the past; everything ahead of the spotlight is hidden in the darkness of the yet to be born. Only what is lit by the laser-thin spotlight lives. This

Here-and-now interactions (that is, comments about the other's immediate behavior) seldom occur in social life.

Good ideas, even ideas of power, are rarely sufficient in a single shot: repeated doses are necessary.