Life is unfair. And we are faced every day with a choice to act fairly anyway. To be kind. To rise when others go low. It isn’t easy to choose kindness over ugliness when we are triggered by past events that live in our hearts […]
Dreams. They accompany us on life’s journey. Yet dreams can turn into expectations, which can turn into our worst nightmares. We dream about what our lives could have been. And what they still could be. We dream about what our children’s lives could have been. […]
A seismic shift in thinking can happen with a single book. Or a single experience. Or a combination of both. The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by The Arbinger Institute is one such book. Sending my son to the outback in Utah […]
Have you ever tried to stop the wind? It is a ferocious force. We have windmills to capture it, sailboats to utilize it and chimes to ride its wave. But wind comes and goes depending on factors beyond our immediate control. As I recently stood […]
Scanning the horizon of Lake Constance last evening, I was reminded that I spent five formative years of my life here. It was on this lake that I learned about democracy, pursuing a master’s degree in political science and literature at the University of Constance. […]
Things happen. And we can deem them a disaster or the fruition of our desire. Or something in between. It really depends on our state of mind. Because as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, things happen. Whether we like it or not. Every […]
A part of me is dying. Perhaps it has to do with my son choosing to live in the United States for a year or my 50th birthday careening towards me in ten months. Or that my nearly grown daughter doesn’t need me nearly as […]
If we were to spend 1/3 of our lives doing something we despise, the other 2/3 wouldn’t be much fun either. And yet we spend 1/3 of our lives working.That translates to 90,000 hours from our personal bank account of time. So if work is a grind, […]
Dr. Seuss exclaimed one sage day in late January 1990 that we would indeed go places. In his very last book Oh the Places You’ll Go!, he promised we would sometimes have it easy. But, evidently, we would also go through dark times too. Oh […]
When did life turn into a game of Whack-a-Mole? If you switch on the news for even a moment, it’s as if the entire world has turned into a thwacking, walloping, hectic machine. We’re dodging and hopping and pummeling against an elusive something. We argue. […]