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Traveling far from home with limited language skills is humbling and illuminating. One thing that it allows me to do is get clarity on what is important. I can see what others from different cultures value. I can empirically determine for myself what is important. Strange how many of the things that we regularly spend […]

Do not fear mistakes, there are none. I really like this thought. I think I really needed to hear it today. I know that I will need to hear it again (and again). The words are credited to Miles Davis. Who knows exactly what he said or meant; there does appear to be a bit

I could likely begin every one of these posts with “I’ve learned (or am learning) the hard way the following, just a head’s up, don’t be me. This is certainly true of this lesson that I have to learn and relearn and forget for long stretches and then re-relearn. Opportunity costs are sneaky, they are

This is a reflection on balance. Anything in excess or applied at the wrong time or for the wrong reason can be detrimental. Excessive pleasure is dangerous. You can be too nice, too giving, too brave. Everything must be in balance. Just stay with me here.   One tool that I have developed for myself

I’m throwing down the gauntlet. I’m just going to (naively) state that we can all be happier, we just must decide that that is what we want. Oh, and come up with a plan, and implement it religiously for quite a while, and then have it start magically become automatic. I’m going to run this

I didn’t realize it when I bought my blue backpack in college that I was actually buying a good friend, a teacher, an aspirational goal. I had always bought a cheap backpack pretty much every year of school for as long as I could remember. Sometimes they would last a little longer, seldom as long

This is one of the most freeing realizations possible. This tiny insight is worth the price of admission all by itself. The day that we learn this, breathe this in, and accept this as truth is the day we stop worrying. The day we stop worrying is the day we start living and loving and

n This post has been kicking around in my head for a long time. It all started when I ran across the word hygge. Hygge is a Danish word to describe the content good feeling central to Danish life. I’ve been trying to build around this idea, construct my ideal day with the small, familiar,

Are there opposites or is it an illusion? Think of Einstein’s famous thought experiment about being in a constantly accelerating elevator vs being in a lab on the Earth. His postulate that eventually birthed relativity was that one was indiscernible from the other. Maybe there is only one thing, one place, and it vibrates or

One morning I went out to the garage and pressed the garage door opener on the wall as I was readying myself to depart to the grocery store or a doctor’s appointment or to drive to Argentina, well probably not the last one. But the garage door did not open? The spring that lifts the