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.…
What or who do you believe in?
Beliefs can be a tricky thing. We all have them, in fact hold them dearly. Yet seldom do we explicitly state or share them. More often, beneath the surface, they inform, influence or dictate many of our actions.
Beliefs, according to the Oxford dictionary, can be defined in two ways:
One is “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.”…
My last cycle of REM sleep often occurs just before I wake. It is during this time that your brain processes emotions and emotional memories. It is also when we dream. Lately, it seems as if the emotions I’m processing range from mildly troubling to deeply disturbing. As I often remember my dreams, this can lead to an unsettling start to my day.
As it was this morning.…
It is a common misconception that Thoreau was a hermit. That when he went to “live deliberately and confront only the essentials of life” it was an act of seclusion.
His choice of furniture and its reported use is a direct contradiction of this.
Among the few possessions in the tiny cabin on Walden Pond, were three chairs. He said one was for solitude, two for friendship and three for society.…
Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke is a charming and wisdom filled slim book. It is written as a letter that one of his ancestors left his children before heading off to a battle from which he was unsure to return. He shares twenty values that his children should live by – if they wish to be a noble knight like himself. Within each there is a brief fable that illustrates the value in practice.…
As part of my end of the year project to get both my literal and figurative “house” in order, I found myself cleaning out my dresser. The sock drawer is always the most interesting part of this chore. Seeing what miscellaneous artifacts of your previous year were stuffed in between unpaired socks always comes with some mixture of dread and surprise.
Amongst the flotsam of old receipts, lottery tickets, and cards was a plain white envelope.…
Each Wednesday, I commute into the city to teach. It affords me the rare opportunity to relax, read, listen and think. As I travel by train for forty minutes and then walk the thirty blocks from Grand Central to Union Square, I often listen to podcasts, some that make me laugh and others that make me wonder. You could even occasionally catch me singing along to a tune on Spotify.…
“Hey, beautiful!”
A passerby shouted this to the person I was having coffee with a few weeks ago. This “drive-by compliment” from one friend to another brought a smile to all three of our faces on an otherwise dreary day.
It reminded me of a phrase that I learned in one of my many, many hours of online soccer training required to be a travel soccer coach.…
Grab a pencil.
Create a grid with an x (horizontal) and y (vertical) axis.
Label the x axis “Time” and the y axis “Meaning”
Now begin to plot the major activities in your life – both professional and personal – on the grid.
For example, I spend a lot of time on email – and generally get little meaning or value from it. Conversely, I get a tremendous amount of meaning from writing and spend comparatively less time doing so.…
I promised my daughter I would make her bed on Friday.
I finished it on Saturday.
Of course, making her bed wasn’t just tucking in her covers, arranging her stuffed animals and fluffing her pillow. It was putting together a new loft bed with a built-in desk and shelves underneath.
Now, I don’t consider myself especially handy. I’ve hung some drywall in my time and done a few projects here and there but by and large I would admit my skills are as limited as my tool box.…
This weekend my youngest daughter, fresh off her 10th birthday, began her fifth stint in quarantine.
This time around she will miss two soccer games, one of her best friend’s birthday parties, running a Girls on The Run 5K that she’s been in training for months and of course, trick or treating on Halloween. She will also be spending the next week doing school online. Bringing her total time of unnecessary online learning to over forty days.…
On Thursday, my wife and I met with a lawyer to put in place a will – a task that was long overdue. I suppose that one of the reasons for the delay was our aversion to confronting our own mortality. Though, we already had many of the difficult conversations necessary to make decisions that form the basis for this binding legal document. The most important of which was the selection of who would serve as the legal guardians to our children should both of us die while they were still young.…
Two weeks ago, I was one of over fifty children’s book authors who participated in the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival. It was incredible to see so many children and their families demonstrating their love of books. While signing books and seeing a kid’s face light up is an unimaginably cool experience, the best part of the day came when a teacher, who had traveled the whole way from Hershey, Pennsylvania, approached me with a small gift and important story. …
Earlier this week, I was looking to connect with Colby Sharp, an educator who hosts a podcast about children’s books, called The Yarn. I stumbled upon his twitter account and was struck by his “bio” which began with the phrase, “driven by gratitude.”
It was such a wonderful articulation of what motivates him and got me wondering about what drives any of us.
In my own life, I know that what drives me has evolved.…
I’m rushing to write this before I embark on six hours of travel soccer on a Sunday. This is after six hours of practice on Saturday. The joys of coaching all three of my daughters’ soccer teams.
This is on top of an email inbox that has gotten out of control, a calendar suddenly packed with appointments and a to do list that is seemingly endless.…
I’ve just come back from a two-week trip across parts of the country previously unknown to me. We started in Oregon, drove through Idaho into Wyoming and ended our family trip in Montana.
We experienced the wonders of nature in many forms. From Mt. Hood, to Craters of the Moon to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Custer National Forest.
Within each, we witnessed majestic views, the vastness of the great plains, spectacular waterfalls, lush forests, impressive geyser fields, herds of bison and elk, soaring hawks, eagles and osprey, two meandering moose and one adorable bear cub eating berries on the mountain side.…
I have kept a file of all the rejection letters I’ve ever received. Two novels, dozens of short stories, even several poems all rejected by one agent, publisher or publication or another. In my emails, there are probably thousands of other examples of my ideas or proposals being turned down. Of course, there are also those instances where I never even received a reply. This says nothing of the slew of personal rejections that have amassed between my socially awkward high school years until I met and married my lovely wife.…
Consider this scenario. One daughter goes to the pool and her mom buys her some candy. Another daughter goes into town with her friends and uses her allowance money to buy some candy. A third daughter gets no candy that day.
Is this fair?
This was exactly the debate that unfolded in my household last week.
One one level, you could look at this one particular situation and conclude that it isn’t fair. …
Over the last several months, I’ve been on a good run.
It started with being asked to give the commencement address at my alma mater.
Then on Friday, I published my first piece for Esquire. I’ve always wanted to write for them and this specific topic, “Dads without Dads” is an especially personal reflection timed for Father’s Day.
There is an NPR special report I’m working on examining inequality in education on Long Island that will air at the end of the month.…
If you see the movie version of “In the Heights” based on the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, you are likely to be wowed by the lavish dance numbers, moved by the stories of dreams and swept up by the fantastic music. Yet for me it was the poignancy of a collection of artifacts that show up in the film’s penultimate scene that will linger long after the images and tunes leave my head.…
I am now officially fully vaccinated. With the new CDC recommendations, it would seem as if I’m able to go back to doing many of the things that have been long denied.
While personally, I’m happy to shed masks when appropriate, eat indoors, gather with friends, I don’t feel any sense of extreme joy or even relief. I imagine this is in part because my children, other family members and over 40% of our country are still not vaccinated. Some…
When I was young, I would often wait until the precise moment when my sister had a mouthful of cereal before unleashing something silly or ridiculous. My only goal was to create sufficient laughter to cause the milk in her mouth to shoot out of her nose. I was remarkably successful.
Growing up, I would often take any proverbial stage in an effort to make others laugh. …
I recently finished reading the Booker Prize winning novel Shuggie Bain. It was an especially difficult read as it conjured up memories from my own childhood that I don’t often like to revisit. A time when my mother’s struggles dominated our life.
If there was a silver lining in this brilliant but bleak book, it was to serve as a reminder of the absolutely pivotal role my brother has played in my life.…
What makes for a successful day? If you’re like me, you might take a look at your calendar, figure out in your mind what you have to get done, and what you’d like to get done. Depending on how many things you tick off your mental list, you’ll do some calculation and determine whether that day was successful or not.
On Friday, my day was destined to be tight, small windows existed in between various obligations that included bringing my children to and from school and most importantly taking my wife to a minor medical procedure an hour away and waiting until it was completed so I could escort her back home. …
I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately.
On Monday of last week, an essay series that I worked on with Fast Company and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched with this piece from Saru Jayaraman looking at the future of work for restaurant workers. In it, she asks us to imagine a future where “diners don’t just ask about where produce comes from but how well workers are paid.”…
