Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. I was driving to work last week with a Spotify playlist on shuffle when Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" came on. In the first verse, Bruce runs into an old friend from high school, a guy who used to be the star pitcher. They grab a drink at a bar, and all his friend can talk about is back then. The best part of his life already happened, and he's still sitting in it. It struck me as so sad. We all know someone like that. Sometimes they show up at...
14 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. The band Dire Straits has a song called "The Bug," later covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter, built on an image most of us understand without explanation. Some days you're the windshield, moving fast, and whatever you hit barely registers. Other days you're the thing that gets flattened. For most of my life, I believed I could stay the windshield if I worked hard enough at it. Staying in control, appearing powerful, keeping the upper hand. It kept a lot...
21 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. Ted Lasso is fifty-something years old, a professional soccer coach, and by his own admission, has no business being on a dating app. Keeley helps him set up his Bantr profile, and true to form, he has wise and funny things to say during the process. Everything goes fine until the profile asks for three words to describe himself. He gains an insight that he might lean on the loquacious side and has trouble narrowing down to three single words. Later,...
28 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. The hooks for my over-the-door ironing board didn't make the move. They're somewhere between Texas and here, or maybe they never left at all. Either way, they're not on this door, and I have a 9-5 now, and my clothes are wrinkled, and the steamer is in a box I haven't opened because I don't know which box, because there are still boxes. So I did what you do. I threw a wet towel in the dryer with my blouse and hoped for the best. It half worked. It's...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. Gloria Steinem died last week at 92, still working. Not working in the way we usually mean it. Working the way she'd worked for almost a century: showing up, saying the true thing, trusting the next woman to pick it up. I keep thinking about who actually knows what she picked up, and from whom. This isn't a new question for me. It's one I've been living inside for most of my life. “ The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. —...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. Some people's fulfillment looks like living in a cave on a mountain, meditating in silence all day long. Some people's looks like running a billion-dollar company, or a country. Some people's is a paid-off house and a quiet Tuesday. All of it can be true. All of it can be fulfillment. The only question that actually matters: is it yours, or is it someone else's definition you've been running on autopilot? “ Your time is limited, so don't waste it...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. The only skiing lesson I ever had was from my cousin, in the parking lot, before we got on the lift. She taught me the snowplow. You see, you point your skis inward, you slow yourself down. That was it. That was the whole curriculum. I didn't ask any follow-up questions. It didn't occur to me to wonder whether there was more I should know. She said that was all I needed, so I got on the chairlift with her and rode it up. What nobody taught me was how...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. There's a Hawaiian prayer that's been around for centuries. Its name alone tells you everything: Ho'oponopono. It means "to make right." The prayer has four phrases. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. No elaborate ritual. No difficult conversation. Just four phrases spoken inward, to yourself, to the divine, to whatever you believe is listening. In the 1980s, a psychologist named Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len worked at a psychiatric...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. A move from one state to another had been calling us for a while before we actually listened. When we finally said yes to it, the move came together with an ease that surprised us both, like the house already knew its work with us was done and was just waiting for us to catch up. We packed up seven years of a life, sometimes standing in a room wondering where a particular thing had even come from or how long it had been there, and somewhere in the...
2 months ago • 3 min read