“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” …
Note: The following will appear in the May-June issue of Neighbors of Batavia magazine. Since leaving my last job, when asked about the next phase of life, I generally reply “I’m seeking my vocation.” As it turns out, my vocation has been in search of me, but I was deaf to its call. Vocations, I …
Note: The following will be published in the May/June issue of Neighbors of Batavia Magazine. “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” Neil Postman I love Neil Postman’s insight, even though it speaks so forcefully of my own mortality. There will be, in the briefest of moments, a …
Most writing is the scratching of an insatiable itch for immortality. Alas, the more written, the greater the itch. Dee Hock Since reading Dee’s most recent work, Autobiography of a Restless Mind, I have been pondering the human desire for immortality, and wondering if, perhaps, we understand immortality inaccurately. 2.2 million books were published last …
Note: The following essay first appeared on Tikkun Daily at www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily. I appreciate their work and am thankful for their generous support of mine. Years ago, my brother-in-law, a retired geophysicist, invited us to join him on a trek across the lava on the island of Hawai’i so we could see red-hot flows making their …
Note: I am submitting this for publication in the November/December issue of Neighbors of Batavia magazine. “Imagination is the organ that allows us to thrive on the cusp between danger and opportunity.” Lee Smolin in Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe Every morning we wake into a world fraught …
Note: I wrote the following piece for the Batavia Chamber of Commerce newsletter, but thought it might be of interest to the readers of my blog I’ve been accused of focusing too much on images of death, but bear with me, you just might find the questions I am about to ask confusing and irritating …
Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, said it whimsically: few people on their deathbed wish they had spent more time at the office. But recent encounters leave me reflecting, considerably less whimsically, on what I might wish the moments just before I am called from this life. For ten …
I was a newly-minted MBA moving from an entry-level position to a job selling catalysts in the oil industry. The sales manager, Jim Trecek, arranged for me to spend a week under the tutelage of a renowned salesman in Toronto. His name was Pat McLaughlin. I arrived at the Toronto airport before Pat, and …
Every once in a while I am arrogant enough to think that life has left me in charge. When I believe I am, life is quick to remind me of my arrogance. Just before Christmas, the Operation Snowball family lost another teen to suicide. This past Thursday, the teen directors decided to use the …