Therapy is not all focused analysis. Once in a while I reach up to my bookshelf and read a quote or a poem that is relevant to what is being discussed. I may do this because I feel a constriction in our conversation. I feel we need a third voice to join us and allow us to look out further from our restricted space. It also models and teaches how good art and literature can be psychologically useful.

...the soul’s progress is both deep and dark and requires a descent as well as an ascent. “Growth” is entirely the wrong word for what ripens and matures us into people of substance and gives us a soul. Sex is integrally involved in that process, and it isn’t always “nice,” clean, uncomplicated.

You use words every day. You can find the vital words that jar you into awareness. The way you talk to a friend could be your art.

It helps to know who is living through you at any given moment. The less you know about it, the more it dominates and keeps you from other adventures.

No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act. As a writer, then, and as a runner, I don’t find that writing and publishing a book of my own personal thoughts about running makes me stray too far off my usual path. Perhaps I’m just too painstaking a type of person, but I can’t grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing, so I had to actually get my hands working and write these words. Otherwise, I’d never know what running means to me.