My nephew, Judah, had a rough morning today. He is in town visiting and he got embarrassed this morning because his four-year-old self could not do something we asked of him. After retreating to his room for a little while and shedding some tears, Judah had to practice the most difficult of human tasks: courage. Through tears and high emotions, Judah came in and asked for help. It was hard. He didn’t want to do it. But he mustered up... Read more
John Rockefeller, a billionaire in the early 1900’s, was asked, “how much money is enough?” He responded, “Just a little bit more.” This could be the mantra of modern American culture. We are obsessed with the belief that satisfaction lies in attaining just a little more. A few more friends. A spouse or a child (or another child). Retirement. A raise. Better weather. A vacation. More appreciation at work. It comes in a myriad of ways, but the obsession is... Read more
Routine gets a bad wrap in today’s world. We equate the establishment of habit with settling, being bored, stubbornness, and monotony. In order to get out of such ‘ruts’, we romanticize vacations and innovation. We idolize the thrill of newness, trying hard to escape the routines that we think enslave us. But the truth is, ironically, it might be the routines that really set us free. Establishing patterns is a way of life and it is not all bad. We... Read more
Freedom is an important value for all of us. We were not meant to be manipulated, oppressed, or controlled. Each of us is uniquely beautiful and has been granted one precious life to steward. This liberty, however, does not mean we can do absolutely anything we want without consequence. We have perverted our value for freedom to mean something entirely different than what it really means. Consequences There are consequences for the choices we make. Legal consequences like jail. Moral... Read more
We moved to New York City two years ago. It has been nothing short of a dream come true. The magic of this city has enticed me for years and it is a joy to be living here. One of the things I do as a New Yorker is take walks around the city. Past famous landmarks. Through famous parks. I want to get the full experience of the city. After two years of this, a certain routine has developed.... Read more
It’s been a challenging week for us. The circumstances seem to be piling up. We continually struggle with infertility, our hopes rising and crashing in four-week cycles. There is a bug infestation in our NYC apartment. We don’t have central air and the humid days can be suffocating. When I brush my teeth in the morning, I look at my reflection and see Job in the mirror. There is nothing near the tragedy Job actually dealt with present in my... Read more
As the trend of marrying later in life continues, more and more young adults are talking about their friendships as ‘families’. Things like ‘Friendsgiving’ are a bona-fide cultural phenomena. Added to this is the decline of a majority of marriages and parental abuses that challenge our conceptions of what it really means to be a family. So, what does it take to qualify as ‘family’? It can’t be just blood. Would we not consider adopted kids part of a family?... Read more
The rise of the Internet, smart phones, and social media has been well documented. So has their effects on face-to-face interactions. It is becoming a cliché, a norm, a regrettable but accepted side-effect. The decline of relationships. Young people are growing up more slowly, inhaling unrealistic expectations concerning instant gratification, and migrating social interaction to screen time rather than face-to-face. And older people aren’t much better. We have accepted the fact that any given marriage has about a 50-50 chance... Read more
While watching a World Cup game recently, I was struck by how often the people in the stands had their phones up to take a picture. There was one moment, when an important free kick was about to take place, that they panned to the crowd in the lower level behind the goal and it was a sea of horizontally arranged cell phones. I couldn’t even see the people behind them. I’ve done it myself. Haven’t we all? In fact, I participated... Read more
We all do it. Nobody really admits to it, except maybe in passing as a joke or a flippant excuse. But we are all talking to ourselves all the time. We laugh about it when it happens out loud. However, most of our self-talk is silent, an internal whisper that no one will ever know about. There is nothing inherently wrong with self-talk. It is how we process things. A filter we use to make sense of our existence before... Read more
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