Thursday in the Park with George.

On Thursdays, I take care of myself.

For about the last two and a half decades, I've parsed out 45 minutes to talk to a therapist. Sometimes we talk about work. Sometimes it's kids. Sometimes it's things closer to the bone.

The important thing I've learned after, say, a thousand or so sessions, isn't what we're talking about. It's that we're talking--as we used to say in my youth--man-to-man.

A grown-up, mature conversation.

They don't happen too often.

Where you're not checking your phone. Where you're not be-pinged by buzzes and beeps and chimes.

When my 45 minutes are over, I extend things for another 20 or so.

Regardless of the weather, through blizzards and rain storms, through hurricanes, even, I take a walk from his office on Madison Avenue to the C train on Central Park West.

It's about a mile. And it's through the park. 

It lets me see dogs cavorting and the changing of the seasons.

Today, for instance, there were tiny pixels of yellow on the forsythia. Surely an early sign of spring and an obvious sign of some impending global calamity.

We have--just go to the movies or turn on the TV or watch the Republican presidential debate tonight--we have filled our worlds with noise and clutter.

We talk over each other like a million ants chasing a crumb or seagulls after sea offal.

We have a billion channels and are always on.

I like my Thursday mornings because they give me the power of quiet.

Shhhhhhh.