I love music, and I always have. It makes my body move and my spirit soar. I have many favorite songs and passages, and I can listen to them repeatedly — thrilling to the skill and nuance of the performers. My brain plays songs I’ve heard, like a tape recorder in my head. But sometimes… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Being kind
Doing our part to help things work out
At the core of our lives are two powerful traits: responsibility and compassion. While they sound like lofty ideals, responsibility and compassion are actually life’s calls to action, built into each of us. We know there are things we should do, and we know when we should be helpful and sensitive to others. Knowing these… Continue Reading
Celebrating our father’s confidence that things will work out
Celebrating a father’s birthday can bring out many emotions and thoughts, especially for adult children. Most of us get to experience our father for a long period of our lives, from being Daddy’s little one through to Dad seeming somehow smaller. For each of us, those days in between say a lot about how both… Continue Reading
We are all connected
"I'm alone, on my own, cast apart, and I'm scared" — these thoughts should only happen to each of us just once. Our first moment of feeling that we are doing life on our own should be our last. When our parent hugs us that first time should be the start of a lifetime of… Continue Reading
Guess who’s not coming to dinner
Having dinner with friends at a nice restaurant is a wonderful event. You are with people you love, being served excellent food that arrives without any effort by you in the kitchen. The air is filled with laughter and storytelling, and time rolls backward as you reconnect with friends with youthful exuberance. I joined five… Continue Reading
We are all the same size inside
Humans come in all sizes, shapes and styles, and just when you think you’ve seen every possibility you see someone who looks different yet again. I think we all find people to be interesting — they are variations on ourselves and the world-wide human community. Height is one of the greatest sources of differences with… Continue Reading
Not on the outside
One of the worst feelings is being left out. Something is going on and you aren’t included, whether it was intentionally, or you were forgotten, or they never imagined you might want to be included . While some people prefer being on their own, that is different from actually being left out. Being left out… Continue Reading
Being the gears instead of giving them
We all know what it is like to be part of our society: lots of things on the go, and ever-more things to buy. Threaded through most of the things we do are the people in our lives — our family, friends, work mates, service people and those driving by us. As a former computer… Continue Reading
Celebrating endless love
Today we celebrated the truly endless love of family and friendships — the love that each of us can be part of. I had the honor of helping to celebrate the life of my daughter-in-law’s grandfather. Bruce lived to be 91, and he and Ida had been married for 70 years. That is a long… Continue Reading
A Later Perspective with More Compassion
It’s amazing how unchanging our perspectives can be over time. I had a chance yesterday to see how revisiting some details from my past could give me a new perspective and understanding of a situation. Yesterday I got to reminisce at a party with a classmate from my childhood days, who I hadn’t seen in… Continue Reading