Cardthartic Meanings of Life card, Olive Branch

January 6, 2023 — While we truly wish that the soothing new card above could bridge the divide in Washington and our country, we’re sharing it with you today on the chance it feels like time to extend an olive branch in your own life.

We’ve always loved the powerful excerpt you’ll see below from psychologist Dr. David Keirsey’s book, Please Understand Me. I first read it decades ago and still pull it out every so often to reconnect with its wisdom and to gain clarity. We believe its worth sharing again now as we all strive to live in harmony.

Dr. Keirsey wrote:

“If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or, if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view. Or, if my emotion is less than yours — or more, given the same circumstances — try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

“I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. If you will allow me any of my own wants or emotions or beliefs or actions, then you open yourself so that, someday, these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me.

“To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And, in understanding me, you might come to prize my differences from you and — far from seeking to change me — preserve and even nurture those differences.”

Here’s to reconciling our differences across this great land, starting within our own good hearts. Have a restful first weekend of 2023.

Jodee Stevens
Founder & Chief Creative

Cardthartic Meanings of Life card, Olive Branch

January 6, 2023 — While we truly wish that the soothing new card above could bridge the divide in Washington and our country, we’re sharing it with you today to help foster peace in our own lives. 

We’ve always loved the powerful excerpt you’ll see below from psychologist Dr. David Keirsey’s book, Please Understand Me. I first read it decades ago and still pull it out every so often to reconnect with its wisdom and to gain clarity. We believe its worth sharing again now as we all strive to live in harmony.

Dr. Keirsey wrote:

“If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or, if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view. Or, if my emotion is less than yours — or more, given the same circumstances — try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

“I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. If you will allow me any of my own wants or emotions or beliefs or actions, then you open yourself so that, someday, these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me.

“To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And, in understanding me, you might come to prize my differences from you and — far from seeking to change me — preserve and even nurture those differences.”

Here’s to reconciling our differences across this great land, starting within our own good hearts. Have a restful first weekend of 2023.

Jodee Stevens
Founder & Chief Creative