These short reflections and insights range in length from twitter-length to short essays. They’re free, so what’ve you got to lose but a few moments?
I’ve had some pretty dirty jobs in my life. There was that summer working in the back of a butcher shop, bagging chickens, separating necks from hearts and livers into piles. Try doing that hungover during a heatwave at 7:00 every morning. There was that time I worked as a grease monkey cleaning up a […]
As human beings, we really don’t understand death. We can’t see its transformative power or see through its nonfinal nature. When I say that death has transformative power, I’m referring to that aspect of death – to that kind of death – which is not the end of the body. Rather, it’s the death we […]
In your life, out of all the moments and experiences, of all your deeds and perceived sins, you’re the only one who sees it all. You’re the only one who’s been there for everything, to witness every moment of it. Your prime relationship is, therefore, with yourself. I don’t mean this in a narcissistic way. […]
I think there is something to learn from the Shakers. They were a religious sect back in the 19th Century known for producing chairs that it’s said will last a thousand years. Yet none of the craftspeople took credit for their work. They believed that the act itself was its own reward, and invested themselves […]
I went out for a hike with my good friend, Ben. Before the pandemic, we’d go out every Sunday up Horse Gulch or down the Animas River or even just stroll through Durango, addressing and solving the problems of the world. Today’s hike was a little more significant for me. I was hiking, sans mask, […]
People sometimes confuse anger with resentment. Anger, we all know. In acting, they say that anger’s the easiest emotion to portray. In life, it’s the safest emotion to feel.
Anger can be justified, but most anger – which always feels justified – really isn’t. They call justified anger outrage, and the world, at given times, will […]
We can’t really know what love is until we pass it on. Whether it comes from a lover or from a friend or out from us toward a brother, love dies it’s shared. Love is within and flows from us. It pours through us but ceases its decant until we empty ourselves of it by […]
It’s sometimes said that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.
If we’re spiritual beings having a human experience, then our grief for having lost all those we loved, those whom we think we’ve lost, is a waste of time and a denial of joy. To live […]
I probably know more people who’ve committed suicide than anyone besides a shrink who works at a State hospital. I don’t write that to be funny, because suicide isn’t a joke. I write it because it’s true.
I’ve prepared a 240-some Power Point slide presentation on suicide. I’ve lost a client to suicide. For a long […]
It’d been a depressing start to the day. More bad news on the virus, on riots, on another type of depression we were all going through, only they spelled that one with a capital ‘D.’ I’d spoken via phone with my normally ebullient mother back in Chicago, but she was depressed, too. Everybody seemed to […]