NB: I found typewritten copies of these two prose poems among my parent’s papers, which are so rich and diverse that my mind can’t take it all in. DS

(The Gestalt prayer is a 56-word statement by psychotherapist Fritz Perls taken as an expression of Gestalt therapy as a life model of which Perls was a founder)

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.

— Fritz Perls, “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim”, 1969

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Walter Tubbs, Beyond Perls

If I just do my thing and you do yours,
We stand in danger of losing each other
And ourselves.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
But I am in this world to confirm you
As a unique human being,
And to be confirmed by you.

We are fully ourselves only in relation to each other;
The I detached from a Thou
Disintegrates.

I do not find you by chance;
I find you by an active life of reaching out.

Rather than passively letting things happen to me
I can act intentionally to make them happen.

I must begin with myself, true;
But I must not end with myself;
The truth begins with two.

W. Tubbs, Beyond Perls

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