Hopeful Thinking

Our country, and even the world right now, is fraught with a deep lack of understanding for one another. We have sequestered ourselves into our little tribes of commonality, preferring to hear only the perspectives and opinions we share. We feel more divided than ever. This is an illusion, in most ways. For we are all deeply connected to one another whether we are willing to recognize it or not. But the borders we have drawn around our own ideologies are very real. We have a hard time listening to others. It feels unsafe. The rhetoric surrounding the subject of how to improve the quality of our world—and for whom—has revealed a deep layer of resentment on the part of those who feel left behind by social progress. You can see it in the rage of their tweets and posts. You can feel it in the way we avoid discussing it with the people we love the most for fear that our differences will divide us. I have always believed that history does not repeat itself in the way we think it ...

There’s a spiritual maxim which tells us that ‘we always get what we ask for.’ It’s a tenet of the law of attraction. It rings a bit like scripture, and it is, but this philosophy looks at the phenomenon of prayer from a different angle. Bluntly put, it means that if we are experiencing something today, whether good or bad, whether we realize it or not, it’s because we somehow asked for it yesterday. That seems like a harsh accusation to lay on someone who’s experiencing grief or hardship. Why would we ask for problems? The implication being that we are a failure at even daydreaming? Of course not. We never ask for sorrow. We have simply been trained to trust it more than joy. Our culture has a tendency to promote a paradigm of service to others at the expense of self. That second part is the flaw. ...at the expense of self. That’s the part which only ends up encouraging a polar opposite of “service to others” to occur: The exploitation of others to the benefit of self. The mo...

As I write my column this morning, it is the Fourth of July. I imagine the thousands of parade participants who, at this moment, are marching in parades down the Main Streets of America. Do they all know what they are marching for? Do they all march for the same thing? The short answer is yes. The long answer is a series of winding roads charting up the same mountain. Two in particular. One definition of the word ‘patriot’ is “a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.” That seems reasonable enough. Another offers, “A real patriot is someone who loves their country enough to speak up when they see something that needs to be changed; not someone who blindly assumes that their government knows best and is always right no matter what.” Definitely fair as well. The differing tones of those two definitions are trail markers along each path up the mountain. One is a more reserved and conservative viewpoint and the other...

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City and the birth of the modern LGBT civil rights movement. Back in the mid-20th century, police had made a habit of conducting regular raids of the city’s gay bars. On June 28, 1969 the gays had had enough. They fought back. For two nights the riots raged, and simmered for days after, bringing public attention to an issue that had mostly gone unnoticed by mainstream society. Each year during the month of June those nights of revolt are celebrated around the world with festivals and parades which use the word “pride.” For some it’s hard to imagine why that would need to be so. The argument of, “Why should there be gay pride parades? Why not straight pride parades?” is as equally a tonedeaf response to the LGBT movement as the reply, “all lives matter” in response to the statement, “black lives matter.” Of course all lives matter. Of course we should all have pride in ourselves. But that’s not the point. And ...

As a child I remember reading stories about people who had traveled the world, knew fascinating people and had learned numerous and interesting skills. Literary and film characters like Mame Dennis and Missy van Hossmere, among others, illustrated these qualities perfectly. They literally collected life. Long ago I made a pact with myself to do the same. It’s all in how you evaluate your choices which makes the difference. Poet Robert Frost, whether he meant to or not, taught us to choose the road less traveled by, assuring us that it would make all the difference. I’m not sure he was right. Beyond the fact that experienced readers of poetry recognize that the mainstream view of Frost’s words is entirely different from the actual words he wrote, we have gleaned a meaning for ourselves. We have declared a desire for lack of convention. But I encourage you to not be afraid of convention. In fact, I don’t think one should give convention any thought at all. What we should be on t...

I have sat at the bedside of dying friends and wished I could simply make it all better. I wished I could come up with a cure, a solution, a miracle. I have thought to myself, if only I could relieve them of this burden. It’s human to feel that way. In fact, I don’t think we would be very human at all without it. But we are so discomforted by our inability to control life that we sometimes miss the real purpose of our exposure to sorrow. Our job in life is not to fix, heal, or mend someone else. It is just to accompany them on their journey. Make their burden lighter by encouraging how well they carry it. You can’t carry it for them anyway. Don’t bother. Many have heard the term describing someone as having “the patience of Job.” This is a reference to the Old Testament narrative about a man who had everything taken from him by God in order to prove his piety. It was a test to see if he would give in to his misery and curse God. Job (pronounced jobe ) was patient, I suppose...

I knew a person once who always seemed to have something hanging off the end of his nose. It was very difficult to have a conversation with him. You’re not sure what to do, because you know it will embarrass him to point it out. Yet you also know it might quietly humiliate him to discover it later thinking back on all who must have seen it. What are the actions of a friend? I’ve always said that a friend will discreetly tell you when you have spinach in your teeth, dog hair on your dress, or if your fly is at half-mast. I should have told that man about his nose. Or maybe he preferred it that way. It happened so regularly he couldn’t be unaware of it. Could he? Is he absent of any real friend who would let him know? I imagine deep within a single living cell there exists a vast community of little components which comprise the whole. They each have a function. How do they collaborate with one another for the survival—and evolution—of their cell? What do they each do when faced with a...