What would happen if you let the pause be uncomfortable? Let your child be who they are? Let the sickness run its course? Let your advice go untaken? Let your parents be disappointed in your decision? Let yourself compare unfavorably? Let the person in the […]
Can you imagine? Being wrong for hours, sometimes even days was life before the internet and our ability to pull Wikipedia out of our pocket. Before portable computers and our instant ability to resolve factual disputes, writer Ben Tarnoff points out in a New Yorker […]
As the official gratitude holiday, Thanksgiving comes with some hefty expectations for feeling grateful, mightily so. It’s a good thing to do — good for the head, good for the heart and for the good of all, which science has proven beyond doubt. But there […]
“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot … Be water, my friend.” […]
I know of a very young child for whom normal growth and developmental charts are no longer a meaningful measure. With this new understanding, her family has been told that from here on out, this little person is to be taken on her terms. I […]
As it happened, Casper the box bed company was running a limited time sale the weekend we found out our friends, Christine and Sam, would be visiting at the end of October. The sale was great timing because of the two twins we have in […]
The framework I describe here is a process for remaining intact amidst all that comes at us over the course of a day, a week, a month, a lifetime. Every morning, we wake up and set about our day. In the hours to come we […]
Every morning, we wake up and set about our day. In the hours to come we will experience a continuous stream of pressures testing our in-the-moment soundness of mind and body. For example: Minimal pressure: You’re walking down the street and come to a crosswalk. […]
Some new neighbors moved into the neighborhood a few weeks ago. They are loud. They disturb the peace. They set off firecrackers. Illegally. I regarded this as a big problem. I wanted the old neighbors back, the formerly invisible ones. These new ones need to […]
Growing up, we were a cat family. This didn’t work out well for my younger brother, John, who was a dog person through and through. He solved the problem by simply pretending Winklemeyer was a dog. He never once let up on the claim. Much […]
From a half a block away, I saw them gesturing back and forth to each other, she posed in front of Stephen King’s house, he with a camera in his hand. Something wasn’t sitting well. As I got closer, I heard raised voices. Was this […]
Pilots do it. Astronauts do it. Surgeons do it. Taking a two-minute timeout to run through a checklist before undertaking a critical endeavor is a proven way to minimize errors, including life or death ones. It’s why the Joint Commission instituted a universal protocol for […]
Be cool. 