Fruitful Detours
Callings are hard to understand. They defy logic. When I felt a calling to become a pastor, it was contrary to anything else that I was considering. I had a successful career in finance, and by all rights I should have stayed on that track. There are days when I wish that I had — […]
I love music, but I hate noise. When I was younger, my Dad would say that I couldn’t tell the difference, but I chalk that up to a generational perspective issue. All kinds of noise bugs me, from loud mufflers on cars to those annoying power leaf blowers. Our condo has an “open floor plan,” […]
We are all influenced by feedback. If you touch a hot stove, you almost immediately feel pain and pull your hand away. That’s a feedback loop in action. One definition of a feedback loop is the part of a system in which all or part of the system’s output becomes input for future operations. The […]
Death is treated differently depending on where you go and what your cultural traditions are. In the U.S. death is generally avoided. We know it is out there somewhere coming for all of us, but we would rather not talk about it. Some psychological schools talk about “death anxiety” as a core element of many […]
I recently had a day that was just one long line after another, waiting for a while here and then there. I was traveling, which on reflection seems to lend itself to lines, but I wasn’t thinking about that then. I was just frustrated. It started because my first flight was early — so early […]
I had a birthday recently. It hit me harder than most. It brought me back to my most consequential birthday – when I turned 27. Yes, I was a baby. But worse than that, I was a privileged, intense, ambitious baby with a firm belief that I was the best thing since sliced bread. I […]
This is the season for New Year’s resolutions. It turns out that most people who make resolutions find that they have not followed through after only a few weeks. Every year, gym memberships increase in January, and get cancelled later on. A resolution becomes just a way to disappoint yourself, or to take on too […]
Connection is critically important for all of us. We are social beings, dependent on others from the time we are born. But it was not until recently that I discovered just how dependent I am on my cellphone to keep me connected. I grew up with an old fashioned wired phone on the wall of […]
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzger gave a commencement speech at Northwestern University in June, 2023. There were several entertaining parts of the speech. I learned a new word — “cheugy.” (It’s pronounced choo-gy.) According to the Urban Dictionary, cheugy is the “opposite of trendy” and is used when someone follows out-of-date trends. Pritzger says it means […]
The following chart gave me a shock. It doesn’t look like much at first. But then I started thinking, and doodling, and checking off boxes. I encourage you to print this first blank chart, and do the same thing. Then my chart looked like this: As I checked all these little boxes, several things stood […]