Déjà vu for you, too?

Our Spring season is repeating many of its typical patterns. The first rose-breasted grosbeak of the season arrived at the feeder today. Based on the photo records from prior years, he’s ten days to two weeks early. Leaf-out is progressing nicely. Despite a lack of sunshine, the countryside is greening and the first ruby-throated hummingbird has been sighted in the Rochester, MN area. Damp, cooler weather (all too typical for the North Country spring) is motivating me to mix another batch of sourdough, targeted for the oven tomorrow.

male rose-breasted grosbeak

Photo by J. Harrington

Some of us who lived through the 1960’s and ’70’s are developing a growing sense of déjà vu as we read about the campus demonstrations, the establishment’s responses, and the similarities in progressives’ reaction to Lyndon B. Johnson over Vietnam and Joe Biden over Israel. (We needn’t go into any parallels between Nixon and tRUMP.) There’s even a recent piece in The Guardian with the head: ‘Do not bow’: ex-Black Panther praises pro-Palestinian student protesters from prison.

Although it is highly unlikely to (re)solve many, if any, of our contemporary battles, it might help some of us to minimize escalation of confrontations if we learn or remember Fritz Perls' Gestalt Prayer, which serves as today’s “poem.”

    I do my thing and you do your thing.

    I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

    and you are not in this world to live up to mine.

    You are you, and I am I,

    and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

    If not, it can't be helped.

    — Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, 1969

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.