My son asked me a question yesterday about Iraq. He’s heard about my one experience under fire, when the convoy I was riding in was ambushed at night by attackers firing AK47s, a heavy machine gun, and RPGs. It was over quickly: we returned fire and rolled through with no casualties. I don’t know whether […]
I got to see the musical Wicked yesterday evening. I found it every bit as good as everyone told me it is; a compelling story with interesting characters, told through stirring musical numbers with sets and effects that are some of the best I’ve seen. I won’t spoil the plot for you, but it tells […]
My scoutmaster shared a demonstration with our Scouts yesterday to help them understand how apologies work. He had each of us hammer a nail into a piece of wood, then pull it out. The wood represented a friend; the nails, the hurtful things we sometimes say and do to others. Pulling the nail from the […]
We ask ourselves this question all the time, or one like it: Why can’t we just move back to Dallas? Why can’t I just go back to my old job? Why can’t we just keep our old car? Why can’t we just get back together? We get the idea that back then, everything was fine. […]
Some of us have a hard time controlling our tempers. We’ve all seen it: a friendly conversation turns into a mild disagreement, and one participant seems to lose all sense of perspective. A man might become visibly angry, might raise his voice, might adopt a threatening posture. A woman might become irate and start shaking […]
We love to think of ourselves as creatures of logic. We pride ourselves on the ability to consider the nuances of an issue, to look at it from all sides, list the pros and cons of each option and make a decision based on rational analysis. Think it through, we tell ourselves when we face […]
I was a lousy Army officer. Truth be told, by skills and temperament I probably shouldn’t ever have been there. But I was there, too stubborn to quit, and for twelve years I strove to become good at a calling I was unsuited for, until finally I figured out I could make a different choice. […]
I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a doctor at all, or a minister, or a counselor. People don’t often come to me with their problems, unless their problems are related to my work. No, I’m just a guy who’s been around for a while and seen a few things. Most of the stuff I write […]
The title of this post is objectively not true. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve been through, you can point to something that happened to someone else at some other time and tell yourself that was worse. But don’t tell your heart that. It won’t listen. I know a young man who’s […]
A Facebook friend posted something last week I feel compelled to comment on. I don’t remember the exact words, but the gist of it was that this person is sick and tired of the selfishness, self-centered attitudes, and sense of entitlement of people today, and they are waiting for a return of old-fashioned values like […]