Thank you for your interest in www.JohnSeanDoyle.com. I am Sean Doyle. In this blog, I explore the poetry and science of well-being. It is an invitation to inject a little more hope, affection and meaning into the world. It is about recovering a reverence for being, and creating a culture of kindness. Whether it involves the work place, parenting, community, home or hardship, this site about loving life just a little bit more.
I have been a lawyer for close to twenty years, and the law has been a good career. It has enabled me to live fairly comfortably and care for my family. The work is interesting, and at times, I have been able to do some good things for people in need.
As a lawyer, I have also seen a great deal of conflict. All-in-all, I have resolved roughly 10,000 disputes. Through that process, you learn some things about people. You see how they respond under stress, or when things are falling apart around them. You see the surprising things people do when they think they are getting what they want, and how easily they get distracted from what is in their best interest.
Of course, conflict and hardship do happen. People can be horribly cruel or cold to one another other. And yet every day, people do reach genuine agreement – even when it involves fundamental differences in value. I have seen this occur 10,000 times. Regular people quietly overcome challenges and hardships, and accomplish extraordinary things. And just beneath notice, friends, lovers and strangers constantly extend gestures of kindness to one another – in unexpected moments – and in both large and small acts.
In addition to law, I did my graduate training in applied positive psychology. Positive psychology is the scientific study of the things that make life worth living, the things that go right in life. Sometimes on this site, I’ll talk about the science directly. More often, I’ll talk about the subtle application, and how by attending to goodness we can increase the humanity between us.
Thank you,
Sean
Hi Sean,
Good Luck on the launch of your blog. I am a poetry lover and also write poetry and I have found poetry to be , “a saving bannister”, as the Nobel Laureate, Wiszlawa Szymborska has described it in one of her poems.
Marge Dukes MAPP ’06
Thanks Marge! I’ll be tapping into poetry frequently on the site. Enjoy