Our telephone meeting was scheduled after completing her Friday morning show. She was munching on chocolate covered almonds… I had just consumed a delectable chocolate covered cherry cordial. We laughed at our timely indulgences…call that bonding…and proceeded in a spiritual, philosophical, sociological, psychological and anthropological conversation that rivaled my postgraduate days.

Being a New Yorker myself, the phone connection vicariously transported me back to my hometown. For a brief time, there was no separation in status, in hierarchy, in purposefulness…while Dr. Joy Browne and I were together; we were explorers of the human experience.

I asked about her eclecticism and she said, "My training was in engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas and I've always looked at how things worked. When I shifted my focus to human beings, I realized we are far and away the most interesting things on the planet." I agreed with her wholeheartedly and I am sure if you take a moment to look at the human interactions you engage in daily, you will see, we are phenomenally complex and extremely interesting.

I asked Dr. Browne for her primary prescription for developing intimate relationships. She was quick with her answer. "Do not blame othersŠever! It leaves you in the past and in a negative place. Just think about it. The only time we assign blame is when things go badly. So rather than go backward, I suggest we are here to learn. It is best to believe that people and situations are in our life for a reason. And, those encounters, although often painful, are incredibly valuable and can become enormously comforting. I am a scientist," she continued, "and people do things for reasons. If someone's behavior seems irrational, look for the piece that is missing. Be willing to try something else. Reinforce positive behavior. Our society is focused on the notion of perfectionism. Mistakes are to be avoided and denied but deep inside, we know our ugly little secret Šthat we're not perfect. Then we try to keep everyone from knowing that. So when things go wrong, we are quick to blame others and divert the attention quickly before it's discovered that we're not perfect, hence…unlovable."

She was condensing her knowledge from almost twenty-years of study in human behavior and I asked her about us, people in relationships. "Women talk about fear of success. Men talk about fear of failure," Dr. Browne said. "They are both the same. The entire species fears not being loved…of suffering abandonment. If I become too big for my britches, a woman will think, no man will love me. The man thinks, if I can't take care of myself or my woman, then no one will love me. The fear is-I will be alone and if I am alone I will die. You know what Liz, I am alone, and you are alone. It is a scientific principal-we really are alone in our thoughts, fears, dreams, wants and desires."

"I recently had an experience at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City," she continues. "Harrison Ford narrated a documentary that explored the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe. When it was finished I knew…there has to be other life forms. As a scientist, I would say that it's one in a gazillion we're alone. And then, I realized, our lives are absolutely irrelevant, except to us. In the whole scheme of things, we are really small and nothing matters but our lives have to have meaning or we would be wasting our time."

"So I say, learn what you need to learn with as little wear and tear on yourself as possible. Learning, changing and understanding is the job. The real job of living is to develop your own meaning, your own purpose and to take a quantum leap into courage, bravery and love-for loving is the scariest and the bravest thing we humans do. Remember to dance like nobody's watching and love like you've never been hurt.
Helen Keller said, 'life is daring risk or nothing at all.' "

"I'm a scientist at heart with lace around my left ventricle, so the way I see it, our lives are defined by us. Live with as little fear as possible, hurt as few people as you can and seek to bring pleasure to many."

It's all about you, me and us-all of us, everywhere!