I’m both a planner and a spontaneous person. I both a why and a how person. But that’s not at all what this is about. I started right off the bat with a digression. Well, no. Not really. As a spontaneous person, I do often wonder why I end up doing certain things. I try to infer my motives after the fact. Which is why self-report surveys aren’t the greatest of tools but they can be tweaked to be useful. Ah, I went geeky there for a second. Forgive me. I don’t normally talk about psychology research methods as they are rather ho hum. I went right back intk digression mode.

Just a few minutes ago, I asked myself why I had just done what I did. I had just spent about seven minutes looking through the Facebook page of a dead individual. See, it was their birthday. Would have been and Facebook thought it wise to remind me. I didn’t know this individual that well. And they died about seven years or so. They would have been 33 today. They died young. They died of brain cancer. And, his mother posts every year on his birthday. And, that just pained me.

I had known him many years ago when he was an intern for me. He had been sweet, earnest and eager. He had a beaming smile. I stared at the posts from his mother. I stared at the posts from his friends wishing him the best up in heaven. I was saddened to read his mother’s anguish. And, yet I kept reading wishing that somehow she would be ok. I can’t imagine her pain. Nor do I wish for anyone to know it.

I could try to analyze why I kept reading through it. But I won’t. I’ll move on from these posts and hope for the best for that family.