A week or so ago, I had a very unpleasant encounter at work. A family came in: parents, a teenage daughter, and a son who was about ten or twelve years old. The son asked a mildly dumb question – one that I have had to answer from adults several times over the years, but dumb regardless. And then something happened that I did not expect. These parents absolutely shredded this kid. They made it…
This is a difficult one. Because it’s a question that I don’t have an answer to. I’m still exploring it, and I probably will be for most of my life. Let’s set the stage: The other men at my job decided to engage in something very basic and masculine – find out who could lift the most of something that was very awkward and heavy. When I discovered this impromptu contest, I loudly proclaimed that…
I have always had a complicated relationship with the idea of authority. Not to say that I was rebellious in action: My family had a joke that my idea of teenage rebellion was to stay home and do homework. But I never did fully accept the idea that someone else could tell me what to do or think when I could see clear reasons that they were wrong. Authority was a strange thing, to me.…
I was going to start off this post by admitting the title as hyperbolic. But then I thought about it for a minute and realized that it says exactly what I mean it to. Depth, of both thought and feeling, is the most life-changing thing I know. To examine an idea or concept closely, from many angles, and to try reach as full an understanding of it as possible — this process is the basis…
If there is something I can learn from anyone, then that also means that I have something of value to say.