When it's harder than ever to choose joy, we risk accepting its absence. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of joyless days. We may fuel a vicious cycle dragging us further and further away from joy. But, when we make the effort to look for joy, we increase our chances of breaking our self-inflicted prisons… Continue reading Choosing joy, when looking for joy is harder
How are we to live?
How does one find joy in troubled times? How are we to live, when existential threats such as a pandemic virus disrupt our day-to-day activities and curtail our ability to enjoy our favorite activities? How do we keep going when an unknown, hard-to-quantify threat to our health lurks in the shadows? Some words from C.S.… Continue reading How are we to live?
Discovering competence
Most of us have been in situations where we arrive on a scene, especially when joining a new group, and learn that something is going terribly wrong. The Boy Scout group planning an activity is disorganized. The band uniforms to distribute are all in a giant unsorted pile. The last guy wasn’t enforcing the rules… Continue reading Discovering competence
Puzzles
When your brain is fully engaged in a challenging puzzle, the rest of the world can fade away. It could be a pencil and paper puzzle, like a cryptic crossword clue or “who owns the zebra” logic puzzle. It could be the situational puzzles that come up in complex board games, like how am I… Continue reading Puzzles
New room
The first grader looked up at his father. “Good luck in your New Room today, Daddy,” he said. The child knew what it was like to go into a New Room, having done so both for kindergarten and for first grade. It meant new friends to make. New authority figures to respect. New toys to… Continue reading New room
