We humans become what we practice being. My mother taught me this lesson accidentally, by letting me quit piano and take up drums. How does a kid who despised the practice timer become a human metronome? Read on.
Tag: writing
Sometimes the Scar Is Worth It
My earliest memory involves a soccer field, a broken beer bottle, and a choice that left a mark—a scar that still reminds me of my father.
What to Do When Life Shows Up Uninvited
Take a moment to appreciate the pinafores and listen to the lollygags.
Why Does Rage Bait Work?
No one wants to be mad all the time. So why does social media constantly tempt us with rage bait? And why do we consistently bite?
The Struggle to Write Is the Struggle to Think
Ask most people to define “writing,” and they’ll tell you it’s the process of putting words down on paper, communicating what you already know. In reality, writing is often how you discover what you don’t know—and so how you learn to think better.
When In Doubt, Sing Out
I learned a crucial lesson about kindness and compassion while Christmas caroling in a nursing home in 1983.
Write It Down
The things you write down, using your own words, begin to become the meaning you create for yourself, if for no other reason than because you wrote them down. And creating meaning is not a task any of us can afford to outsource.
How Do You Stay Hopeful?
The philosopher Ernst Bloch argued that hope is woven into the fabric of reality. Here’s a brief look at his big ideas, plus prompts to get you thinking and writing (hopefully).
I Used to Be ChatGPT
In the early 2000s, my job was to find and share answers to hard questions fast. Here’s what that experience taught me about how humans know, why we need to keep thinking together, and when we’re better than any artificial intelligence.
Our Era Is Not “Post-Truth,” It’s “Loyalty-First”
In the history of truth, questions of loyalty came before questions of accuracy. In our current cultural moment, questions of loyalty seem to be ascending again, with some potentially dire consequences.
