There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to maintaining a healthy relationship. You are on a team. You are still an individual. Your emotions matter and need to be expressed. The same is true for your partner. You need to extend grace and hold each other accountable. You need to share life but not be codependent. You need conflict as well as forgiveness. The swirl of factors to consider can make relationships frustrating, compound problems, and... Read more
It is hard to tell what is true in this crazy world. We see biased news reports, hear facts that suggest competing narratives, and we have to navigate it all through our own experience and belief systems. And then there is the annoying reality that people disagree with us, which makes us instinctively want to dig our heels in even more. A lot of times it seems like people talk about their perspective as an objective, observable truth. But even... Read more
A few weeks after our miscarriage, I started going to counseling. Like many Americans, I found it to be a helpful place to process the grief and anxiety I was feeling. Just a few minutes into my first session, the counselor hit me with the question, “How does that make you feel?” I had to stifle a laugh. It was so cliché, so exactly what you would expect from a counselor. Movies and TV shows emphasize that one question (coming... Read more
As much as we love adventure and excitement, human beings are creatures of habit. We love our patterns, our schedules, our routine. There is a simple and straightforward reason for this: life is so busy and complicated that we find it helpful to create a little structure to ease the tension of what we should be doing and thinking about. Like most things in life, there is a good way to apply our obsession with routine and a bad way.... Read more
From the time we are babies, we are asking questions of the world around us. What are you? Do you like me? Why are you different? How can I use you? Whether it is inanimate objects or other human beings, we are exploring the world around us, inquisitive about what all of these external things are and what they mean. Oddly, the final frontier seems to be the internal. Our own self. What we do is gather all the data... Read more
Too often, we view work as an obligation. A means to an end. A way to put food on the table. A begrudging exchange of effort for money. The mental image we have is like Homer Simpson dragging himself to work, suffering monotonous tasks, and getting out of there as quickly as possible. The design and intention of work, however, is not all about dreariness. We spend almost a third of our day at work. If we can find a... Read more
Why do we wait until the last minute to do things? Why do we travel to unfamiliar places for adventure? Why do we highlight the drama of our personal lives and talk about the same issue to everyone who will listen? The reason is this: we thrive on crises. My brother once found himself in a dating relationship totally obsessed with crisis. If there wasn’t an obvious one, they made one up – fighting about which restaurant to go to... Read more
Conflict is never particularly fun (at least not for most people). But it is inevitable. When two (or more) people are sharing life and space and perceptions, there are bound to be points of contention, disagreement, and high emotion. We often say conflict is not good or bad. It is neutral. How we set out to resolve conflict turns it into a net gain or loss. It is our response that determines its value. If you are anything like me,... Read more
My wife and I have spent a lot of time in a lot of foreign countries. And one of the things that strikes many Americans when they are overseas is the difference between the way we perceive time versus the way some cultures (particularly Africa and Central America) perceive time. The knee-jerk reaction is frustration and to think these other cultures are “doing it wrong”, that they are irresponsible or lazy or some other negative synonym. The truth is, these... Read more
Life is such a difficult adventure. It is fun. It is infuriating. It is hard work. It is confusing and enigmatic. We do our best to make sense of the world around us. And when that runs dry, we trust in things outside of our internal selves. One of the temptations is to make ourselves so busy we do not have to trust anything or anybody; we can live in the absurd delusion that we can make everything happen by... Read more
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