ALL EPISODES

I had a friend. Literally have his world come crashing down on him this morning when a water pipe burst in his apartment building and started leaking from the ceiling. Understandably, his girlfriend was in a panic and to some degree, so was he. They had just gotten settled into this place with jobs and responsibilities weighing on them. They just didn't have the energy or the time to deal with this on top of everything else they already had going on. I read something in a

When a lion is looking for something to eat. It doesn't think about the antelope's feelings. It is focused and it is hungry, and it takes what it needs. It feels cruel, but the lion would die if it didn't choose to be the predator it was meant to be. People are odd creatures. We can be both predators and prey, and as such, I think that there's an argument to be made that maybe there are times in life.

There's a moment in the Chronicles of Narnia when Peter, one of the young protagonists, comes face to face with a wolf that wants to kill him. When others go to him, the king of Narnia, Aslan says Back, let the prince win his spurs. I never thought much about this until the other day. I happened to be watching the movie with my kids, and I thought, why on earth would you ever risk letting even the least valuable person in your army be killed by an enemy in one-on-one combat i

When I told my five-year-old, his mom and I were divorcing.  I was practically crying, and his response was, it's okay, daddy. I don't care if you split up. If only that was true. He's seven now and struggles more deeply than ever with the fact that the two people he loves most are not together. The ramifications of divorce go beyond what I think we like to imagine. Sometimes over 50% of marriages today are expected to fail. Maybe it's just easier to divorce or maybe the s

If you cannot stand to be apart from them, you're not in love.  You are infatuated or maybe just dependent. The difference between actually being in love or not is the difference between feeling pain when you aren't around them and having no place that you'd rather be. Romantic relationships have a way of being a kind of band aid for a lot of our insecurities. They make us feel less alone. They can bring some excitement to our lives. They bring pleasure to our lives. They

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on...

Have you ever felt like other people got a head start in life, like they were born taller, richer, smarter, more connected? Well, maybe they were, but even with all of those advantages, they're still not guaranteed to win, and neither are you unless you stop playing their game. So, you can play your own game. So, someone was telling me a story recently about this guy that was born with a disease that made his spine form abnormally, and the effect was he didn't grow very tall,

I think as much as the typical man wants to project an image of rugged independence and toughness, what he really wants out of a relationship with a woman is to be mothered. There are two distinct differences between men and women, as I see it, and one obviously is biology, but the other I would say is nature. The differences between our nature's, is that generally speaking, men are tuned into things and women are tuned into people. You won't find nearly as many women as m

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on...

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on...

It is easier to see bad things than it is to see good things. Catastrophe and destruction suck up our attention like a vacuum. It isn't uncommon for the first thing we notice about someone else to be something we don't like. On the other hand, appreciating things that are beautiful and good. Takes a little focus. Unless of course you happen to be a man and you're looking at a woman, but generally speaking, beautiful things like flowers,

Humanity likes to fool itself into thinking it knows the world it lives in, but we don't. We are surrounded by darkness so thick that even the light we shine doesn't go very far. But there's a kind of comfort that we can take from living in the darkness because that same darkness gives us permission to stop thinking so hard about what is.

If we had a metaphorical cup that needed to be filled up to feel contentment, what would we have to fill it with? I know what we try to fill it with. I know we try to fill it with all kinds of things, but sometimes I think the real problem isn't that we don't have things to put in the cup, but rather that the cup has a hole in it.

Everybody starts out in life as a bully. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but children are savages. I find it amusing sometimes to watch my kids pick on each other. They are masters of poking at each other's insecurities. The funniest to watch is my three-year-old, who likes to tease my six-year-old. She is three, and she already knows how to get her brother to hyperventilate.

The reason words matter is because when we cannot accurately name or describe a thing, we are powerless to take action. How could we? Without a name for that which we are experiencing or seeing, we do not even know the thing that needs to be acted upon. When we are afraid, if we can learn the source of this fear and put a name to it, that fear often goes away, or at the very least, it's weakened.

Our pride is tied up in the picture we create of ourselves. It's what we see when we look into the mirror of the mind. But in truth, the whole thing is made up. We are not the person in our imagination. If we could eliminate this perception of ourselves, we would be free of pride. And pride is effectively the fence we build up around us.

When I'm watching a movie and something bad happens to a dog or a baby or a little girl or boy, or even a grown woman. I feel pretty sad for them. But you know who, I don't feel bad for almost ever. Men, typically. I'm just waiting for them to suck it up and move on to trying to fix the problem. Watch.

I love the old Shaker song, Simple Gifts. I don't entirely know why the idea of being simple resonates so much, but I thought it might be an idea worth exploring. Maybe it's a gift to be simple. Because if you can be satisfied while living simply, then you've found contentment. Speaking as a person that feels they have a complicated life, the very idea sounds like relief from the hustle and bustle of the day.

What in life deserves our time and attention, and what things don't? I hope that as we consider that question, along with other topics...

I don't like the word vulnerability. To me, it strikes a tone of weakness. I think I understand what people are getting at when they say that we need to be vulnerable. The problem with vulnerability is that the word actually means that you are susceptible in some way to an attack from someone or something.