Category: Challenges

“What will you do now?” solicits my lawyers. “What do you really, really want?” beg my friends. “How will you make the payment?” demands the mortgage broker. Gandalf reminds me, “All [you] have to decide is what to do with the time that is given [you].” Oh, is that all? I’ve never wanted what Richard Rohr warns about in Falling Upward, his book about the second half of life. “Merely to survive and preserve our life is a low-level instinct that we share with good little lizards.” I like the Wizard more than the Lizard. Having an internal belief that...

There is a gospel singer I listened to when I was young, who expressed his life motto, oh way back in the 1990’s. I believe he got it from his Pentacostal preacher father. He said, “Do the next right thing.”  Apparently the saying has been a widely used phrase for a very long time. Martin Luther King Jr., Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, who knows who originated the words? The Stoics probably mentioned it 2,000 years ago. (http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/09/ancient-wisdom/) It seems wise on its face. You know, better than, “Do the next dirty, rotten, scandalous thing you can think of.” I have a...

              I recently stumbled across these words by Tibor Kalman, “I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability. That’s what we really pay attention to anyway. We don’t talk about planes flying; we talk about them crashing.” Tibor was a graphic designer known for several Talking Head album cover designs and an innovator in his field. He seemed spot on in describing, “What we pay attention to.” Planes crashing instead of flying? Classic news media focus as one example. It does seem to be a negative take, but I think he was highlighting something...