Before we got married we asked our grandfathers, whose own marriages had lasted forty years or more, "What is the secret to a happy marriage? And they paused, looked down at their chicken salad, and said, 'You really have to like each other. After th...
Mileage craziness is a serious condition that exists in many forms. It can hit unsuspecting travelers while driving cars, motorcycles, riding in planes, crossing the country on bicycles or on foot. The symptoms may lead to obsessively placing more im...
Lat at nigh have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were mean to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't pain, an entrepreneur who never starts a ventur...
In every one of your relationships, you are on a continuum between intimacy and separation. You stand on a slide that tilts you toward either intimacy or separateness. Exactly where you stand at any given moment is the result of your decisions, your ...
Given the reality of unintended parenthood and parental unhappiness, one would think that women and men who make the decision not to have children - who are deliberate and thoughtful about the choice to bring another person into the world - would be ...
When I see a poor person I think of me, and then I think, maybe I should pay my clones for all the work they do for me. Then I think, nah, they’re only slaves. Through my clones, I am a slave to myself.
If you expect others to think for you, then you expect others to live your life for you. And I’m sorry, but the only person I’ll let live my life for me is my clone. He thinks like me, so I’m OK with him thinking for me.
Every day I must prove to myself I am a writer. The knowledge goes away in my sleep. What I wrote yesterday was paltry, meager, so flawed it is barely anything. Or, if it is good, I am no longer the person who could write it.
All you need in life is to know thyself; to live with the knowledge that it’s just life and that's the way it is. You need a sense of what your life means to you, the appreciation of yourself, your friendships and the love of others. You need a des...
If you walk 100 miles into the life you don't want. Often, you must walk those same 100 miles to get out of that life. This is the answer to why the journey to fulfillment is often so difficult. However, if you can find a shortcut, a new path, you ca...
When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they’d need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, a...
Although some of the people at church rejected and even denounced me, this did not particularly hinder me in my search. Rather, the fact that there were church people as weak and foolish as I was myself gave me a deep sense of reassurance. Arrogantly...
Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning.
I gazed up as if I hadn't heard, but what I was thinking was, tell me more about the pretty girls. I was embarrassed for wanting it, it was base, what did pretty matter? I had thought that so many times with my mother. A person didn't need to be beau...
Accept that what you see is what you'll get. Once your relationship becomes firmly established, your partner's personality and the way in which [he or] she treats you will most likely be what your future together will look like. Staying with a partne...
If we go looking for a friend, we’ll find many locked doors. It can be a lonely and often fruitless search. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard we knock there’s not a single person to be found for true friendship. But... when we go out to ...
What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness. A person with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pe...
My personal savior is common sense. And as far as God goes, I prefer to believe in one that would want me to use the excellent brain he gave us all.
A Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to America more than a century ago and made some astute observations about the American way. He said that we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution: the pursuit of happiness. One can not p...
The incommensurability between the modern economic system and the people who staff it explains why modern workers have so often been depicted as 'cogs' in the larger 'machinery' of industrial civilization; for while the practical rationalization of e...
When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would lik...
