Somehow, somewhere along the way, we as a society seem to have come to the belief that every person perceives every experience in the same way. The fact of individual experience, individual knowledge, individual background, individual resilience… these things all seem to be dismissed in favor of the belief that if X happens to little…
I know that we all have heard these three rules before, but it seems like every time they pop up in my social media feeds or they get referred to by someone I know… I’m reminded of different parts of my life and when I learned these lessons. It’s interesting (to me) to see where…
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t speak with someone who is trying to figure out how to make it through the day. Now, keep in mind, most of them are exaggerating when they say they don’t know how they’re going to make it. What they really mean is that they are tired –…
When I was in my teenage years, I remember my father, almost every night, sitting on his bed, just staring into space… or at least, that’s what I thought. When I asked him about it one day he told me he was meditating. When I asked why and what about he told me that he…
The glory days of spring and summer have passed. The days are shorter, the nights are longer, the fires are warm and blankets are good. Snuggling occurs far more often. For all that, many people will tell you “spring” if you ask them what their favorite season is. They’ll cite the rebirth, the returning greenery,…
In any given December you can hear people talk about the bad habits they’re going to quit as part of their New Year’s Resolutions. My biggest challenge with such statements is that the person is waiting for a specific day, as if they need the calendar’s permission for when to start. How about starting RIGHT…
Is life a circle? Or is it a line? Does it matter? Why even think about it? Just recently I ran across some memes that had me wondering about the mindset they presuppose and the overall tone, be it positive, negative or somewhat neutral. They started me thinking about Body’s Cycle – the humane decision…
As this is being written, the author is sitting comfortably inside on a Sunday morning. It’s 85F outside but about 70F inside. Yesterday, a Saturday, the temperatures reached 99F with a “real feel” of over 110F. Early yesterday morning there were a few boys and girls club sports teams practicing and every coach, every parent…
Most of my readership knows I’ve written before about how age is simply a number. All too often people seem to carry beliefs that some capabilities and disabilities accompany certain ages. We expect children to start walking at a certain age, give or take a month. We expect them to start talking (coherently) at a…
What is it with people and bucket lists? I mean, I get it. Sure. You make this list of things you want to do before you die. You make a list of experiences you want to have, places you want to go, etc. I get it. But here’s my question: When do you actually start…
You know (literally, many of you know) I love to write. Even as a young boy in my preteen years I enjoyed writing. I realized way back then that I could write anything I could imagine and my writing had to be sufficiently articulate to describe what I was imagining; detailed enough to insure that…
On any given day, but a LOT on most Monday mornings, you can look in your social media feeds and see quite the variety of posts about motivation. I’m guilty. I supply some of them. I also look through them and this morning I happened to notice just how many of them focus on outlook….
“What follows ‘I am’ is far more important than what follows ‘You are’.” I put that quote up on Facebook a while back and got a LOT of traction with it. It seems so simple a concept – what you think and say about yourself matters more than what others think and say about you….
It occurred to me this morning as I was working through various social media feeds that there were some folks who were all taking the same actions to work toward different goals. While it’s vital to understand that everyone has different goals, or at least different definitions of what a particular goal is, it’s perhaps…
Keep in mind that it’s Christmas Eve as I type this… This morning as I drank my coffee, sitting at the dining room table, I looked into the family room at our Christmas tree and the gifts stacked under it. The idea of gift giving and what kinds of gifts we give began to churn…
Welcome to the end of another year (or close to it). As we approach the New Year, lots of people are focused on the resolutions and changes they want to make. Folks think about what they are unhappy with or set new goals. It’s a great time of year for new beginnings (although ANY time…
I have heard so many jokes about why you shouldn’t piss off an author. Everything from, “because they’ll write you into one of their books and then kill you off in some unique and interesting way,” to, “you just never know what their imagination will produce.” I always found it rather humorous that people had…
This morning, as happens all too often, I saw a social media post that argued planning over improvisation or “winging it.” I saw another one that suggested winging it was always better than planning. Both arguments seem sound to me and I came to the realization that to be truly successful you have to do…
It’s “Black Friday” 2018 as I type this. Thanksgiving is a pleasant recent memory and we can finally justify all of the Christmas commercials and music we’ve been seeing for the past two weeks. Alongside the early commercial push for “buy buy buy!” I’ve been hearing friends talk about how the holidays were going to…
While I’m going to use examples from my childhood and that of my children, this article does not apply only to parents and children. It applies to anyone who would see you do something different because of what they think is best for you. The honest reality is that sometimes their plan is better but…