Yeah, I'm perhaps getting jaded in me olde age. I have a wife and three daughters, each of whom battles with emotional issues, some from their pasts, some from their presents. As a social scientist, I understand how important utile feedback and information can be in making oneself do something...for oneself. People clucking and expressing sympathy, even giving what might pass for encouragement or advice, too often misses the mark in my experience. Some people need a stark assessment of their circumstances, but as told by others because they take so many cues for guidance from others. (See J. Rotter, 1996)

It's not that I am unsympathetic about how life impacts people. I feel that if someone can take the time to type out an initial post that describes themselves and their circumstances accurately, and honestly, then they have the presence of mind and perspective to understand that they have to want a remedy badly enough to avail THEMSELVES of it.

True story, as told to me by my well-aged engineer father: Living as a young lad in northern Ontario, Canada, surrounded by literally scores of gold mines and the people who worked in them, his parents finally decided to have a large wall telephone, the crank and cradle kind with the bell-shaped earpiece, installed in their home. This would have been maybe 1942 or so when my dad would have been about 12. Soon enough, my dad asked his father if he could call a friend. My grandpa said sure, and my dad made an initial attempt to take up the instrument and to place a call. He knew how to do it from watching his parents, but this was his first call by himself. He eventually turned and asked his dad to perform the function to enable a call because he was afraid. My grandpa, without looking up from his paper, replied, 'Son, when you want to place that call badly enough, you'll place it yourself.'