Yesterday, I was blindsided by a phone call letting me know that a mutual friend of ours had died.
I have been sad ever since.
To be blindsided is to be hit unexpectedly. The pain is amplified exponentially because you are wholly unprepared.
While on a rational level we know that all people die, we have an expectation that it should only happen after someone has had a chance to live a long and fulfilling life.…
I had resisted reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius for a long time. The reasons for which aren’t entirely clear to me. Perhaps it was my perception that it would be cold, indifferent or dispassionate, like the word stoic implies.
Still other people, I know and respect, swear by it. Its sales soared as people searched for meaning during the pandemic.
Despite it being one of the best selling philosophy books of all time, it was never meant for public consumption.…
Imagine a young girl in a classroom. Because her family has little money she shows up to class with no school supplies and asks the teacher for a pencil. The teacher obliges but hands her a pencil with no eraser. When the girl simply requests a different pencil with an eraser, the teacher declines, saying “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Brittany Means was that little girl and she has now gone on to author her first book, Hell if We Don’t Change our Ways.…
Have you ever wondered where confidence comes from? Or why do some people seem to have more of it than others?
It’s a question I’ve been grappling with on and off for most of my life. As my own confidence is often fleeting.
I was surprised to learn recently that research suggests that 50% of our self-confidence is genetic. Meaning some children are predisposed to be more confident than others – even their siblings.…
As the camera pulled back to reveal the face behind the hand that played the strings, a huge smile cut across my face. Tracy Chapman was on the Grammy Stage. Playing a duet with Luke Combs who had covered her classic, “Fast Car”, the crowd echoed my reaction. Taylor Swift stood and sang along, others followed suit. It was a quintessential “Grammy Moment.”
Later in the same show, Joni Mitchell performed at the Grammy’s for the first time in her prodigious career.…
Guess what I overheard yesterday?
Well actually plenty, and each time it was valuable and unexpected.
To overhear something is to hear it without the intention or knowledge of the speaker. Not to be confused with eavesdropping; to overhear something is not intentionally listening in on a conversation you shouldn’t but rather just picking up the ambient conversations around you.
My first instance was walking to school in the morning.…
She approached me with a four inch stack of index cards, asking if I would help her study for her upcoming Earth Science midterm. My middle daughter had created what had to be over two hundred flashcards to help prepare herself for her exam and over the course of the last week had repeatedly reviewed them. It was both astonishing and impressive to see her mow through these cards with such precision and accuracy.…
What do you do during that time in between? Those few minutes spent in between projects or meetings? Right before a call starts or you’re ready to work on checking that next box on your to do list? How do you fill the space while waiting for that next thing to start?
Recently I realized that my use of downtime was both consistent and unfulfilling. My standard practices would be some combination of checking my email or text messages, catching up on the latest news, and most frequently visiting a sports website to catch up on the latest hot takes and opinions of rabid Boston rapid sports like myself.…
To give birth – whether to a person or an idea – is to bring something new into existence. Its origin is from the Old Norse word meaning “bear.” My assumption is that this was an early acknowledgment of the intense labor that is intrinsic to the act of giving birth.
When we give birth to anything it brings with it a combination of immediate joy, hope, anxiety and fear.…
Happy New Year.
Before we jump into 2024, many of us might spend some time reflecting back upon 2023. Among the many questions we ask ourselves are those related to accomplishments; What did we do? What do we have to show for the year? What did we produce?
As I look back, I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with or been supported by so many talented, wonderful people and organizations that have allowed me to produce more than a handful of things that I can take pride in.…
Like many families, every year we create a calendar. Around December, I begin by looking through all the pictures our family has taken over the last year. We then select somewhere between three and twelve to put with each month. In total that means around fifty to sixty photos end up representing our year at a glance. A small number curated from almost a thousand.
While I’m sure the family members who receive this gift appreciate it; the act of creating provides me with the greatest present.…
Over the last year, I’ve received a few notes, emails or texts that included the specific phrase, “I appreciate you.”
Prior to this year I don’t know if I’ve ever seen, said or received those exact words in any form of communication. Now, of course, it’s quite possible that only recently have I done anything worthy enough to receive such a warm and thoughtful collection of words.…
As part of my season of giving, I asked the waitress if she could add the bill from the two police officers sitting in the adjacent booth to my tab.
Smiling, she told me that the couple by the window had already made this anonymous gesture. In turn, I asked the waitress if I could pay for that couple’s meal. That too, she said, had been taken care of.…
As the saying goes, this is the season for giving. Yet for some, including myself, the giving is often focussed on just a few days.
For the rest of the month of December, we’re running around frantically trying to wrap things up – not just the presents we’ve purchased but various end-of-year projects – both work and personal – that have piled up the previous months.…
This weekend two million students who attend land-grant universities returned from Thanksgiving break. A few short days later will mark the end of Native American Heritage month.
I suspect that most of these students, like I once was until recently, are oblivious to the connection.
A few years ago, I was granted the opportunity and honor to give the commencement address at my alma mater, Penn State University. …
Last week, my entire family sat down to dinner on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. On Wednesday my wife and I went out for dinner for a date night, just the two of us, after friends had to cancel due to illness.
Since starting a family, dinners together have been a priority. As they get older, with more after school activities and a natural desire to hang out with friends, family dinners can happen a little less regularly.…
It is estimated that over 275 million copies of the board game Monopoly have been sold, making it the best selling board game of all time. Approximately one billion people have said to have played the game at one point in their lives.
I’m guessing that only a small fraction know that this game, a tribute to capitalism, was originally envisioned as a game to promote communal values and fairness.…
I was sitting unsure of what I would write today when my dog Scout began to bark. What exactly he was barking at was unclear to me.
By dog standards, Scout is not an awful barker. He barks when he senses a dog that he cannot see or sniff. Most often this involves dogs out for a walk across the street that he longingly sees while perched on our couch.…
In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Ed Sheeran described his work process. Every weekday, he goes to his studio to write and produce songs from 10:00am-5:00pm. By his own admission, most of what he produces is rubbish – but his goal is to only get one good song finished each month. By the end of the year, this means he’ll have twelve songs – enough for an album.…
This week, students in my Creative Team Dynamics class each had to perform an improv scene with their partner for two minutes. Prompts and the accompanying emotion were generated randomly by this website.
Having run this exercise many times before, I was taken by how well the students performed. The basic rules of improv are to agree with the opening statement and to build on each other’s comments using a “yes, and” framework. …
It is heart wrenching to see what humanity is capable of doing to one another.
How can any person or group of people be capable of murdering innocent children?
It is an unfathomable thought for most.
A difficult but more accessible question is to ask ourselves: What lengths would a parent or group go to protect their own children?
For those of us who have children, we can imagine ourselves being capable of almost anything.…
In class this week, I asked my students to sit across from their partner, in silence, and just stare at each other for two minutes straight. During this time, they should be aware of any distractions that pop into their mind that might distract them from the task at hand. Simply staring at the person across from them.
This exercise, popular in acting circles, is designed to help people be present and observant.…
Can you be happy with what you have?
This is the question that Kelsea Ballerini seems to ask us in her song, What I Have.
We can sometimes dismiss country songs as being overly simplistic. But as Harlan Howard astutely said back in the 1950’s, it represents “three chords and the truth.”
In Ballerini’s song, she challenges the idea of “having” by making accessible more complicated concepts and phrases.…
In the movie The Intern, Anne Hathaway plays the founder of a tech/fashion startup and Robert DeNiro is her unlikely “senior intern.” At the company’s open layout office, there is a tradition where a bell is rung to celebrate an achievement. You can ring the bell to announce that you’ve done something noteworthy or in recognition of someone else’s efforts or accomplishments. When the bell is rung, everyone stops what they’re doing for a moment to cheer or clap, before going right back to what they were doing.…
The first recorded labor strike in world history occurred in Egypt in the 12th century. Workers charged with building the Pharaoh’s burial tomb stopped working on several occasions because they were not given sufficient rations of food and water.
Let that sink in.
In 2023, so far there have been 200 hundred labor strikes affecting over 320,000 workers. That is triple the number in 2022 and ten times as many as there were in 2021.…
