Blog - Gary Stine

A sunlit forest path along a calm lake at sunrise, symbolizing peace, reflection, and the quiet acceptance of loss.

Graceful Aging

My Friend Tim Died Today-Reflection on Love and Loss

Reflection on Love and Loss My friend Tim died today, and though I’m easily moved, I’m surprised at how hard it seems to be hitting me. I keep bursting into tears. I know enough to let the tears flow. Tears have a logic of their own—one that I don’t need to understand. I simply obey, and let the tears fly where they may. I count on their cleansing effect. Tim was ten years older than I am. Eighty-four is a pretty good run, I guess. I knew he had esophageal cancer and was very sick, but I suppose I expected him to pull out of it. I had more years

Calm sunrise over a still lake with gentle reflections, symbolizing the shift from calm to crazy.

Emotional Ease

Toggling from Calm to Crazy

How We Toggle from Calm to Crazy I’m fascinated by how quickly we humans can toggle from calm to crazy — and back again. We’re calm one minute, and crazy the next. We can toggle back to calm as well, though it happens less often. Even though it can happen quickly, once we get our crazy on, we often struggle to allow ourselves to return to calm. Strangely, allowing is really all we have to do when we want to move from crazy back to calm. The difference between calm and crazy is much less than you might believe. The simplest way to say it is this: when we’re calm,

Love & Presence

An Old Friend I’ve Never Met

Online Friend The video platform Zoom, which probably saved the world from a much-worse-than-it-was economic meltdown, has brought a strange and wonderful phenomenon to life. This may have happened to you. You “meet” someone via Zoom and get to know them through repeated contact. It doesn’t take long before you feel like you’ve spent enough meaningful time with them to know them well. Many friendships have developed this way, and they’re every bit as real as friendships that come to life face-to-face. A number of times, there has been an opportunity to meet in person someone I’ve gotten to know very well on Zoom. The first time this happened, I

Linden tree blossoms on a summer day, reflecting a shift from low moods to quiet presence and well-being.

Emotional Ease

I Wish I Felt Well Enough to Enjoy This Beautiful Day

“I wish I felt well enough to enjoy this beautiful day.” — That was my first low-mood thought of the morning… ten minutes after a strong thunder shower swept the sky clear of anything but blue. The humidity was gone, the temperature was in the high seventies and there was a cool, fresh breeze. And here I was, somehow thinking my physical condition wasn’t up to the task of enjoying the day. The second after this thought crossed my mind, I saw it for what it was: low-mood thinking brought about by several acute sources of physical pain. There is an enormous advantage to understanding that low moods can only

Peaceful morning light in Gary Stine’s backyard symbolizing clarity and identity after retirement.

Graceful Aging

Identity After Retirement: More Than What You Did

“This is the morning view from my own front yard — a place that reminds me daily that we are more than what we’ve done.” Without having looked for it, I seem to have drawn clients who are either nearing retirement or have recently retired. As much as people look forward to retirement, when it comes, it can be bewildering. It’s pretty common for people to be so identified with what they did for a living, when their work comes to an end, so does their sense of identity. It’s a feeling of, “If I’m not doing my work, who can I possibly be?” It’s remarkably easy to mistake surface

Middle-aged man sitting alone on a bench facing a foggy blue lake

Love & Presence

Patience is a Form of Surrender

For the last four-plus months, life has placed me in a master class about patience. I’ve had to admit my expectation about how long, debilitating, and painful knee replacement surgery recovery was going to be had nothing to do with the reality I’ve been experiencing. And I’ve had to repeatedly readjust my expectations. When is the pain and discomfort going to slack off? When will I be able to walk without a limp? When will I be able to… fill in the blank. The answer I’ve had to become comfortable with is, “not yet. Not just yet.” The Trap of Expectations This morning, I finally remembered something I was so

Silhouette of a person blending into a starry night sky and forest — representing the imaginary self and our deeper connection to the universe.

Love & Presence

Your Imaginary Self

The Self We Think We Are There’s a “person” you’re intimately familiar with, probably more familiar to you than any other. An Imaginary self. Strangely, as real and ever-present as this “person” seems, this creature doesn’t exist in real life. It only exists as a thought—one you likely spend a great deal of time with. Who could it be? It’s you! Or more accurately, it’s the mental picture of yourself you carry with you. This picture is made up of memories, doubts, wounds, experiences, and various delusions, both depressive and grandiose. What I’ve just described is, of course, your ego. Why the Ego Feels So Real Your ego exists for

Inner Clarity

Which is more Interesting? The Historical You? Or the Emerging You?

During a talk with a client, it occurred to me that, like many of us, she was a prisoner to the way she’d learned to think about herself. In other words, she’d spent a lifetime believing a self-image, that like all self-images had almost nothing to do with who she really is. It was obvious to me that believing this self-image, which had been crafted over a long lifetime, was preventing her from seeing who she really is now. And even more than that, it was preventing her from seeing the person she is becoming. After hearing her refer several times to this imaginary person she has always believed herself

Stressed woman looking at a chaotic mess in her room with playful dogs

Effortless Clarity

Do You Know Exactly What You’re Looking For?

Do you know what it is you’re looking for in your life? It’s a strange question to ask, but what’s stranger still is that we often don’t have any idea how to answer the question. The closest we can come is often some version of, “I’m looking for something different from what I have; something that will make me feel better than I do right now.”

Reflections on Aging, Clarity, and Living Well