When I was a boy, my dad took me to one of his favorite childhood spots, Nathans Famous Hot Dog stand in Coney Island.

“What makes them famous, Dad?” I asked with the exacting simplicity and demanding tone of a five year old.

“Because everyone knows about them! And because they’re the best hot dogs in the world.” My father loved him a good Nathan’s frankfurter. It made him feel five years old, perhaps.

I had come to question adult answers to very specific child questions by this point. In the rapidly expanding gray matter tucked away in my bushy skull, it seemed illogical for it to be possible to have more than one answer to a perfectly good question (think of my early Star Trek influence), so I was cautious to accept answers as real truth under these circumstances.

Yet, as so many times it happens, even the passionate yet illogical answers we receive as children have a way of weaving themselves into the way we look at the world as adults. So, the Nathan’s Famous incident had a greater impact on me than perhaps the “Sky is Blue because…” incident or the “rocket fuel doesn’t work in automobiles because…” moment.

The belief that everyone knows something when it is famous and that something famous must be the best has significantly influenced me on my journey, sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a very confusing way. Since we live in a society mildly obsessed with famous people, places and things, it has been hard not to be impacted by the spin we place upon certain people.

We met Richard Nixon at a Soho restaurant several years after he had resigned from the presidency. My mother got him to autograph a paper napkin and I remember him smiling and jostling his hand at me from across the round table. He seemed nice enough to my pre-political self. I hadn’t seen Frost-Nixon at that point.

That same year, 1976, my mom took me to the Museum of Natural History where we toured the Tutenkhaman exhibit. We stood outside in a long line on a sunny spring afternoon with thousands of other fans gathered to see perhaps the most famous dead person on the planet, with surely the best coffin. I was mesmerized as much by the hysteria surrounding this dead pharaoh  as the exhibit itself. Surely better than a hot dog with god knows what inside of it.

I was pretty much cool-crazed on Bruce Willis in junior high school, especially during the hit show Moonlighting. My friend Chris and I would get on the phone at 9:58pm every Tuesday night as the credits rolled and begin reciting our favorite one liners. “Do bears bear?” “Do butters fly?” “Do pickets fence?” The witty banter between Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd were sublime and we never got enough of Bruce’s flirty, smart-ass grins. They fit perfectly with our hormone riddled, heat-seeking bodies and the trajectory into high school.

You can imagine how hard I squeezed my burgeoning psychic abilities into manifesting a meeting with Mr. Willis the first time I made it to Los Angeles as a 15 year old young man. It was at Catch a Rising Star, the stand up comedy club, that I conjured him. He sat by himself at the bar with a Molson Golden lager (remember those) and stared ahead at the bar, occasionally smiling at a joke from onstage. My friends, already very impressed that I had come through on my predicted star sighting, nudged me out of my seat to go and meet L.A.’s Famous.  I walked up alongside him with a napkin and pen in hand (think Dick Nixon), and with my best charm, fed him his own line back to him. “Mr. Willis, do bears bear?”

“Aw, not now kid, after the show.” And he turned back to his beer.

Nixon was friendlier. I was crushed. Moonlighting went off the air the next year and Demi Moore left him for Ashton Kutcher, eventually. Just saying.

A few years later we were in L.A. again for my cousin’s wedding and as we rode the elevator at the Beverly Hilton, Roseann Barr hopped on, alone and vulnerable to east coast star force newbies. She was even worse than Bruce Willis had been, squeezing out a snarl to our advances. It’s not like we tried to run off with her purse. Famous, yes. Best? Oh, come on.

I went on to meet lots of “famous” folks in my 40 years. Had the pleasure of meeting Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan before a Berkeley Bowl concert, someone who was the best Qawaali Sufi singer in the world, famous most places outside of North America. I saw him exiting an Indian restaurant just hours before I would attend his concert and I screeched my pick-up truck to a halt, jumped out and charged him. His bodyguards promptly stopped me and then the Master waved them to let me through and he gave me a most satisfying bear hug. A pleasing memory.

There have been writers and teachers, spiritual guides, gurus, movie stars and newscasters. Some famous, some the best. Just last summer I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Pollan, Sonia Choquette, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Cheryl Richardson, Caroline Myss and a score of others. Granted, many of them were on a Hay House cruise so it was like spearing fish in a barrel but it was all rather pleasant anyhow.

So, what about all these famous people, places, and things? Some call them Proper Nouns. I suppose because most of them require a certain proper behavior when one interacts with them in public. Stand behind this line, don’t move from that spot, pretend not to notice me unless I acknowledge you first, make sure you don’t overstay my kindness as I’ve just listened to your story about why you are so excited to be meeting me… it goes on.

To be truthful, there are lots of very real famous people who act as normal as the next person. There are also a fair amount of wing-nuts who might have traumatized some of the more well known folks roaming the planet with unusually poor boundaries and creepy vibes. Still, I continue to wonder what really makes a person famous. In this day and age, a person can become famous for shouting at the president during a speech or throwing a shoe at another one. Fame can come from waving a light saber around and posting it to YouTube or just telling a reporter that this group of people or that is bad. Instant Fame.

Hardly the best, though. It takes something more to be the best. Being the best is like being Superman. The best is like writing poetry like Hafiz or Rumi. Singing like Ella or Louis. The best is a Gandhi or a Jesus. Top-of-your-game kind of best. I suppose what made Nathan’s hot dogs the best for my dad had little to do with ingredients, proper cooking or even toppings. It was about that epiphany experience when he first realized the greatness for himself. What makes something or someone the best is our relationship to that thing or that person. What if I was in a bad mood when I bit my first Nathan’s hot dog? Would it’s greatness shatter my melancholy and its truth change me for life?

I work with dozens of couples every week on how to strengthen and sometimes, save, their marriage and one of the most vital elements that we focus on is appreciation. Appreciation is the fluid that keeps the mechanism of the relationship moving smoothly and it is often one of the first things to disappear when life seems to hit overdrive. Kids, work, TV, financial hardship… all of these have a tendency to dry up the simplest, least common denominator for your relationship: Why and what you love about your partner!

In order for both women and men to make their marriage a priority, there must be some basic steps taken to create a boundary for the relationship.

Many parents leave the door open at night for the kids. Makes sense, and, it also makes it challenging for intimacy to occur in a natural, spontaneous manner. Close the door sometimes! Even for a half hour of private time that the kids know about. It doesn’t have to be sex but it will at least be intimate and private.

Appreciation is the fluid for which your relationship thirsts! At least three times a day, be sure to acknowledge the things you love and are grateful for in your partner. A note, a hug, a text or email even as you juggle the kids will go a long way. We need to know we’re loved and that the things we do mean something.

Many couples observe “Date Night.” This is a wonderful routine that goes a long way for many folks. However, is a couple of hours a week enough to give to your relationship? I encourage couples to make time every day for at least some type of check-in. Typically, the time after the kids are down and the TV and laptops rule the living room is a perfect moment to pause everything else, look each other in the eyes and check in. Start with appreciation and then ask about their day. Ask if there is anything they need or that you can help them with. Remember, love is a verb. It is good will in action! We tend to rely on the “of course I love you” rather than the “how can I love you today…”

In the end, your kids win. We grow up observing our parents’ relationship and tend to either recreate or spend our lives reacting to the way things were in our childhood. Modeling healthy boundaries, loving service and boundless appreciation are just some of the legacies you can leave your kids. They will also get parents who are nurtured and patient with each other and therefore more present and loving about their needs. Kids need to see their parents being loving with each other and communicating in a healthy way, otherwise both generations end up on my couch!

I Want Your Love!

I want your ugly, I want your disease
I want your everything, As long as it’s free
I want your love

– Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”

Love is patient, love is kind…

How many of you have ever used this line in a bar: “I want your ugly, I want your disease?”

What’s that I hear? Crickets chirping? Are the cicadas back? I didn’t think so.

These words have a way of pulsing through my head every time I hear the hit Lady Gaga song, “Bad Romance.” At first glance, these are silly lyrics to another wonderfully pop-ular pop song, innocent place fillers until the next wave of synthesized rhythm and bass swings back around to make the car next to me tremble like a tween at a vampire flic. However, as I’m unconsciously humming the lyrics while a client takes her seat on my therapy couch, the words become hauntingly real.

As synchronicity would have it, the woman before me begins to tell the tale of dramatic new love, now only two weeks old. The passion, projection, and plans for a lifetime of bliss together are all added to an alluring soundtrack of the romance dance. As I listen to this bright, self-aware young woman speak about ice cream on the lake, drinks al fresco and sex on the roof of his apartment building, I consider the power of new love. We become so intense in our minds and bodies when we find ourselves in a mutual connection with a new partner that we almost forget how our minds and bodies operated just seconds before we met the new person.

Thoughts are incredibly difficult to change and actually tend to reproduce exponentially, spreading throughout our inner ecosystem. In fact, Richard Brodie in his book, “Virus of the Mind,” refers to these types of thoughts as memes, or thought viruses. Brodie suggests that “once created, a virus of the mind gains a life independent of its creator and evolves quickly to infect as many people as possible.” As a therapist, however, it is my responsibility to help support clients in determining which memes are actually healthy ideas to spread within and without their lives. As the recent film, Inception, so elegantly describes it, for an outside thought to really feel like our own it has to be presented in its simplest, most absorbable form. Easier said than done… Unless we’re talking about the “love disease.”

The desperation of the love we tend to feel in the early days, weeks and even months of a passionate relationship can feel exhilarating and even profoundly healthy, yet we commonly refer to this process as “falling” in love for a reason. There is a mix of terror and pleasure I feel when I plummet ten stories on the “Free Fall” ride at the Six Flags theme park. I accept that I will be voluntarily incapacitated for a brief moment of my life and most people would find it odd if I decided to bring my tax return up there with me to get some work done. Yet, is that not what we do when we fall in love: drop into an ecstatic state of temporary bliss that is actually complete incapacity? Is this what the Gaga lady is speaking about when she desperately calls for the ugly, the disease?

Consciously spreading healthy thoughts and ideas we consider to be supportive is in many ways the most effective way to combat mind viruses and remain in control of our life. Yet, how do we discern which thoughts are healthy once we are already “infected” by the infatuation meme? We all have the ability to resist unhealthy thoughts and their partner behaviors when we make healthy living and clarity a primary intention for the way we live our lives. However, in order to boost our psycho-emotional immune system, we must take good care of ourselves before we are introduced to “foreign elements.”

Nourishing our relationships through the appreciation of those people in our lives we adore and truly cherish not only makes them feel good, it is a healthy power boost to our own sense of balance. When we take the time and effort to choose to be vulnerable with our inner circle of friends and family, one of the benefits is that we remember what it feels like to love and be loved in its simplest, purest form; without any of the bells and whistles, perhaps even without the enticement of ice cream or sex.

Cheers!