Sublime

You’d be amazed at how many nineteen-year-old boys are completely out of ideas when you take sex and violence off the table. And yet, when I asked them to think far beyond the obvious, most of them rose to the challenge.

Each of us must decide: Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore? Pick a camp. I think it’s clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate.

Somehow, with the passage of time, and the deadlines that life imposes, surrendering became the right thing to do.

Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?

Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I’m a great optimist. But when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst-case scenario. I call it “The Eaten By Wolves Factor.” If I do something, what’s the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves?

Medical authors Atul Gawande and David Kuhl have both written beautiful books about death and the experience of dying patients. B. J. Miller, of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, gives a truly magnificent TED talk on the subject. These and many others wish to bring a more humanistic perspective to the treatment of the dying. They warn of th

thought about that which everybody sees. Arthur Schopenhauer

As I see it, a parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help them develop a personal set of tools for the task. So my dreams for my kids are very exact: I want them to find their own path to fulfillment. And given that I won’t be there, I want to make this clea