A homeless man named Yellow sat outside the Dunkin’ Donuts. He was asking people if they could treat him to a cup of coffee and muffin. His face and arms were completely covered with tattoos perhaps contributing to the lack of attention he was receiving. While I have walked by and ignored my fair share of homeless people in my time, I chose to treat him to an iced coffee and coffee cake muffin.…
Have you ever wondered where your imagination comes from? I had given it little thought until recently while reading the book, Why We Remember.
It is a fascinating exploration on how our memory works but it also details how our memory and imagination are inextricably linked. In fact, both processes occur in the brain at the intersection of our hippocampus and default mode network.
Most of us don’t remember every detail of every experience (those few who do have something called Hyperthymesia).…
I have felt a great deal of sadness in my life. For a long time my strategy was to deny it, suppress it, avoid it, or try to drink it away.
I thought of sadness as something that was inherently bad or wrong with me. A feeling reinforced by society which tells you from the youngest age “don’t be sad,” “snap out of it” or “boys don’t cry.”…
Emerson once wrote that ‘In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
With this definition in mind, songwriters are a particular type of genius creators. With a melody and relatively few words (usually between 100-300), the best have a rare ability to sing to us as if the words were moving from our own minds to mouths.…
My wife recently signed me up for a trial Tai Chi Qigong class. I was admittedly skeptical going in, but the class itself was a wonderful exercise in being present in your own mind and body. In the process, getting a better appreciation of your own sources of energy.
As part of the trial class, I also received a thirty minute consultation session after. I sat criss-cross applesauce across from the instructor, who was half my age.…
As you’re reading this, I am on vacation. Perhaps you are as well. Like many, the few weeks before a vacation are spent rushing around trying to clear the desk, empty the email box and remove as much work – not just off our plate but out of our mind. As part of that process, it means that I write two of these weekly posts in advance.…
The world has never been hotter. While statistics like Phoenix experiencing over twenty consecutive days of temperatures above 110 degrees are eye-popping, we don’t need numbers to tell us things are getting hot up here. We only need to walk outside.
Long before this latest and perhaps most obvious manifestation of climate change, my youngest daughter has been turning up the heat in our household for years.…
I learned earlier today that I apparently have not one but two meniscus tears in my right knee. This is in addition to an ACL sprain.
There are two treatment options. One is rest, anti-inflammatories and physical therapy. The other is surgery. The first does not preclude the latter because if it fails, then surgery will still be on the table.
Timing is also a factor.…
While many of you were reading last week’s note, Beauty, I was sitting in a synagogue attending the funeral of a friend.
He was a regular reader of these weekly missives, occasionally sending me an email to compliment me on my writing or to check in on the health of a loved one I referenced in a particular piece.
By all counts, he was a kind and loving man with a full life.…
Twice I sat in my bedroom chair and wept.
Spaced over the course of a week both instances involved a question of support. In the first instance, I was overwhelmed by offers of assistance when my wife was unexpectedly hospitalized for almost a week. Friends reaching out to see if we were ok, needed anything, just to say they were here for us. One brought over dinner, another bought us a week of groceries.…
There is a running joke in the hilarious and poignant one-man show, Old Man and the Pool by Mike Birbiglia.
His family uses the salutation “Take care” as a parting proxy for “I love you” – which apparently they never say to one another. It is suggested, understandably, that these two words are an insufficient substitute for the three words that are the gold standard in expressing how we feel for another person.…
What do you see when you look in the mirror? Does it match the way you feel on the inside?
When you are out in the world, how do others see you? Do they make judgements on who you are or what you’re capable of?
Similarly, how do you see others? Unconsciously do you judge them for how they look rather than imagining “who they are?”…
Recently, my wife and I took our daughter to see Dear Evan Hansen. I had seen the musical before with my oldest daughter, watched the movie and listened to the soundtrack hundreds of times with my family who love the music.
Seeing it again live was to restore its power in my mind – power that was diluted by the repeated listening and sing-a-longs on car rides.…
I have a headache. The precise location of the pain is above my left temple. The temple is particularly vulnerable as it is the place where the four bones of your skull fuse together.
The name temple is somewhat ironic. In ancient times dating back thousands of years, it was believed that headaches were caused by evil spirits.
In order to give them a physical route to leave the “temple” they would drill a hole in the skull. …
How many times have you lost your keys? Hopefully around the same number of times you’ve found them.
Of course, there are many things we lose and can never find again. Or we find things we were never looking for in the first place.
Our deepest losses are of loved ones. As are our most precious finds.
Our relationship to the ideas of what is lost and found tends to be somewhat transactional.…
I knew what I wanted to write about on Tuesday. I am still not sure what I have to say.
Speechless and helpless are two natural reactions when the same thing happens over and over again and you are at a loss for what to do about it.
If you read the number 19, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But let us not forget the two – teachers who died in the line of fire.…
Spiderman came to Hastings this week. More specifically, Tom Holland was in my town shooting a new anthology series for Apple TV. Throngs of kids lined up in a marked off area to catch a glimpse of him. When he finally arrived, clad in period 70’s garb, they screamed. Calling out his name, filming his every move, clamoring for him to come by and say hello – which to his credit he did.…
My friend recently told me the story about a lunch he had with another friend of ours. They were getting together at an old stomping ground where we had all had lunch dozens of times before. The circumstances this time were different.
Our friend had terminal cancer, was very weak, and it was clear that this would be their last lunch together. Eating his burger took longer than usual and the waitress seemed to hover a bit.…
I was startled when I learned that Bruce Willis was stepping back from acting due to his recent aphasia diagnosis. This New York Times article headline describes this affliction as “stealing your ability to communicate.”
My reaction was informed by my own experience with aphasia over a decade ago. Shortly after the birth of our first child, I found myself, on occasion, saying a word I didn’t intend to.…
Have you ever been in a funk? Assuming the answer is yes, how did it feel? More importantly, how did it end?
As I write this, I find myself in the middle of one.
For me, funks are episodic. Sometimes lasting a few hours, sometimes a few days. Rarely much more.
Different from true crises, which force us to focus all our energy to resolve a single pressing problem, funks are often a collection of smaller issues.…
If you rode the school bus when you were a child, do you remember who you sat next to? Can you see the faces of the other kids on that bus? Do you know or maybe wonder where any of them are today?
In his book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, Pulitzer prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof talks about his number 6 bus in Yamhill, Oregon.…
It is among the basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy – just above those physiological needs of food, water, warmth and rest.
We tend to think first of physical safety, but there are many other forms. Consider the following questions:
Do you feel safe from disease?
Do you feel safe from natural disasters?
Do you feel safe from losing your job?
Do you feel like you can safely pay your rent or mortgage?…
In a year defined by sickness, this week has been particularly so.
There are many forms of sickness of which I speak. The obvious one is the coronavirus – whose toll mounts despite having the means right in front of us to control it. Less obvious is the sickness in our politics and civil discourse – not just between members of different political parties but within our families and amongst our friends. …
If an actor is defined by the roles he or she takes on, then by all accounts Chadwick Boseman was a man defined by dignity, strength and justice. Playing Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and the Black Panther, among others, Boseman’s talents were undeniable – as were the many ways in which he chose to share his gifts both on and off the screen.
His death last week of colon cancer at the age of 43 stopped me in my tracks – not just because it was a tragic loss of a talented person in their prime – but because the same disease has wreaked havoc in the lives of my family and friends.…
I was drowning.
I was just chest high in the water when my feet slipped off the rock and sent me sinking down into the deep end of a swimming hole. I don’t know if I was 7 or 8. Nor do I recall which state park this body of water was located. What I do remember is the abject sense of terror I felt that was only assuaged when my older brother quickly swam to my aid and lifted me out of the water.…
