“I hadn’t done drugs since sniffing Lady Esquire shoe polish when I was fifteen. I didn’t need to. I felt the pinch of wonder. I felt everything sharply, the people we met, the sensation of being in a body, of eating and drinking. I knew there was darkness in the world, but I was sure…
“I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.” — Anne Tyler “I read so I can live…
“Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.” — Jane Kenyon Last year my bride and I took…
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” — Walter Elliot “The future we have bet on unfolds as a series of outcomes.” — Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets The journey of becoming what’s next never stops, does it? We just move from one version of ourselves to the…
It’s understood that our ancestors lived in a time of darkness and brutality mixed with enlightenment and progress. History is a process of confronting and accepting the evidence we stumble across as we explore the path of humanity. We aren’t a perfect species, but we can make incremental progress towards a better world. We cannot…
When you think about the combined activities of drinking alcoholic beverages and throwing axes around in a room, one might fairly ask the question, “what’s the worst that could happen?” and come up with some cringe-worthy images. Yet humans have been throwing sharp objects while drinking for as long as there have been humans and…
We each build our identity through our actions—on the people we become through our habits and relationships. As Jim Rohn pointed out, we are the average of the five people we associate with the most. There’s a lot of truth in this observation. The people around us influence us, and amplify our own actions and…
“He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course. This sham diving into…
And consider, always, every day, the determinationof the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.— Mary Oliver, Evidence We are change agents, creating new iterations of ourselves with every action. But so is everyone and everything else, which makes change exponential and complicated. There are some things we simply can’t control. One moment we’re celebrating…
“All people, no matter who they are, all wish they’d appreciated life more. It’s what you do in life that’s important, not how much time you have or what you wished you’d done.” — David Bowie “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go…