Last night, I attended a benefit for a young lady fighting lymphoma. She’s a member of my daughter’s theater company, a smiling thirteen-year-old named Ella. She was diagnosed in June, and now wears the bald head and scarf typical of chemotherapy patients. She has a long fight ahead of her, but she faces it with […]
We’ve built a society on avoiding pain. We tell ourselves we can have what we want, and we can have it easily–with only a little bit of work, only a little bit of discomfort, only a few easy payments. We tell ourselves we have a right to the things we want, that we deserve them, […]
Today is the best day of my life. Not because I expect something incredible to happen today, although I’m open to that possibility. Not because I think today will be significantly better than yesterday, although it certainly could be. Not even because I feel particularly good today, although I choose to feel good as often […]
This weekend, I had the honor of accompanying eight Boy Scouts on a backpacking trip to Oklahoma. Some of the Scouts are older and more experienced than the others; in fact, three of them hiked the very same trails a little more than a year ago. But for several of them, it was a weekend […]
I’m worse about this than most. This one is mostly a reminder to myself. Most of us are hard-wired to blow off victory. That’s a pretty drastic statement, I know. But how often have you waved off a compliment with something like it was nothing? How often have you lost sight of everything you’ve accomplished […]
So many of us spend our lives careening from one crisis to another, never taking the difficult step of assuming control of our own lives. How much better might our lives be if we could shift our focus from who’s to blame to what can I do? Goals Status: Marathon: On Track. I’ll do four […]
BBC News – Malala and Kailash Satyarthi win Nobel Peace Prize. Changing the world patiently, peacefully, without threat or coercion, may be the ultimate expression of courage. Especially when those who oppose the change you seek are anything but peaceful. Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban two years ago for […]
Wherever you go, there you are. I have no idea who first said this, and for once, Google is no help. It’s the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, first published in 1994, but a friend of mine used to use the phrase in high school in the late ’80s. But where it comes […]
The world is not conspiring to make your life suck. Most of the time, the world could care less about you. You are in control of your life. Will you accept one that sucks, or will you show some courage and at least try to make it victorious?
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. – John Augustus Shedd, from here Most of us build our lives around what is safe and comfortable. A daily routine. A familiar route to work. We wake up at the same time, eat the same thing for breakfast, get […]