REBTOZ

And the world continued to turn. His world turned within that world. In his world everything was neat, tidy, symmetrical, clean, and predictable. This was his template for ‘normal,’ the way things 'should' be. Ordered. His world was the way it 'must' be and the big world beyond was anything but. The tension between what he demanded of the world and how things were in reality was always close to breaking. Taut. Tense. 'The Angry Man.' We might talk of one world but there are many individually constructed worldviews. Mental health according to  Albert Ellis  is when we best align our own expectations and demands of self, others and life in general based on what we are most likely to get. If we don't want to feel uncomfortable and if we believe the world should give us what we want and it doesn't there is a disparity between what we want and what we receive! As Ellis reminds us: 'The world isn't for us or against us. It doesn't give a shit...

A lot of meaning in so few words and that was the unique capability of Seuss, to condense a lot into a little. But what does this mean?  Our ‘me-ness,’ what or who we believe we are is as varied and unique as a fingerprint or an intricate snowflake. Our children I believe do as Seuss did; cram a lot into a little. They process the messages they receive and make logical deductions about what these messages mean. They determine how worthy they are as people according to the sense they make of their experience. They are constructing their reality of who they are, parsing out what makes sense to them from the stuff that is non-sense. What happens when the non-sense makes sense and the sense is nonsense? And what are they missing out when condensing so much information into a one-word meaning - good, bad, smart, ugly etc? Who or what is the ‘me’ beyond the one word label we assign our person hood? Seuss again says: “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fanta...