I have several colleagues who believe I’m being presumptuous when I say that developmental research, defense formation, reflective support, and a basic understanding of our need for AND (including compassion for the ways we protect ourselves from its absence) can  offer a “Decoder Ring for the Human Condition.”  

 

It is true, I can be hyperbolic.

 

Even so, through the last four decades of working with at-risk adolescents, homeless parents, and struggling professionals, I’ve consistently observed how each of their lives finds grounding and begins to settle once introduced to the paradigm being shared here.

 

My ongoing experience is that we live in a coherent universe.  Life may be a shit show but it can also make sense. At the core of this “making sense” is the recognition that everything shifts once we realize we don’t have to live it all alone. There is no cure for the human condition. But there doesn’t have to be. 

 

There is a huge difference between fighting against the current all on our own and going with it in the company of others.

 

With AND we flourish, recognizing new possibilities and an underlying goodness in relationships (with friends, family, strangers, animals, trees, light, dark, storms, and the vastness of a universe out of which this coherence keeps being born).

 

Without AND, we devolve into inevitable suffering. Lost, we flail, struggling against anguish we unwittingly recreate. Without AND as the decoder of our persistent struggling, our solitary and self-protective negative certainty keeps running the show.

 

So, yes, sharing this simple coherence as a Decoder Ring is something I choose to do.

​