Apologies. We tend not to be good at them. We tend to force children to mutter them insincerely. We get in the habit of muttering them insincerely, if we mutter them at all. The first place I heard an excellent, clear explanation of what an apology should be was in Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture at … Read more
Individual stories are where real emotional power lies. I mean, that 3,000 people were killed is quite something. That millions were killed in WWII is staggering. They’re numbers. They’re big numbers. They’re easy to wield, hard to comprehend. “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” Stories? Those are where power … Read more
The summer before I left for college, one of my aunts took me out for lunch. Part of her message to me that day was: things don’t always go according to plan. Plan accordingly. Somewhere in her early 20s, a year-ish after she was first married, her husband died. Brain tumor, maybe? I don’t remember … Read more
If you’ve never experienced this, it’s hard to understand. (I imagine chronic pain is similar. I imagine high-functioning autism is similar as well.) Everyone (I assume) occasionally doesn’t feel like doing some task. It takes a little get-up-and-go to get it done. The bit of internal oomph that pushes you over the threshold between doing … Read more
As a person who grew up on the straight and narrow with impressively judgmental parents, there are some things that have taken time for me to stop judging. (There are others I’m still working on…) Some brilliant advice I read somewhere a long time ago: instead of seeing or hearing about someone/something and saying, “that’s … Read more
Setting: a Sunday afternoon in early October in New Jersey. Small college library music room. A week before my 20th birthday, I was a junior in college, studying to be a music teacher. I was sitting in the music room in the campus library, working on a massive score project, when my right ear started … Read more
The Climbing Daddy needed a run. I wanted to take pictures of some of the fantastic thunderheads we had that day. We went to a local park with small mountains/big rocks where he ran, I photographed, and we were both happy. (Thunderheads are big, puffy clouds that are common during monsoon season here.) I got … Read more
After going through a handful of ideas, I put up the display shown in the picture in both of my classrooms. In case you can’t see the photo, there’s a poster in the middle that says “take what you need,” surrounded by sticky-notes with messages. You got this! I can do it! Mistakes are opportunities … Read more
If we spent as much energy teaching our sons as we do worrying about our daughters, we wouldn’t need to worry so much about our daughters. “Boys will be boys” is a cop-out. It does a disservice to all people. To girls and women, obviously, because it leads to a society where we live in … Read more
We have too much physical stuff, too much emotional stuff, too much junk to eat, not enough exercise or sleep or meaningful connections with people. Because— Society values and promotes being busy being stressed being underslept fast food large portions cheap everything convenient (to accommodate busy) sitting reactive medicine over preventative pills over natural social … Read more