A few days ago, my partner Karen’s beloved father passed away after a long illness. It was a very gradual departure; for weeks, everyone thought that each hour might be Charlie’s last. The days immediately following his passing were unthinkably grueling for Karen and her family, but I’ll say this for imminent death: it clearly differentiates the things that matter from the things that don’t. Being together matters; how we look doesn’t. Love matters; status doesn’t. Having a roof over our heads matters; having a mansion doesn’t. Peace matters so much that by comparison, literally nothing else does.

A few [...]

At first I trusted my car’s global positioning system—why not?—but soon its smooth voice began sounding like the homicidal computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Turn left now,” the GPS would command as I drove along a freeway, with concrete barriers to my left. “You have reached your destination,” it would assure me after leading me to a warehouse full of prostitutes and crack dealers. Once my kids programmed it to speak French, the GPS abandoned all pretense of helpfulness and began directing me southward in any and all circumstances. Presumably it was heading for Mexico to escape fraud charges.

These [...]

Several years ago, pretty much everyone I know became a huge fan of the television series Heroes. The show’s premise is that people all over the world begin discovering that they have superpowers—they can hear thoughts, manipulate the time-space continuum, become strong enough to break through steel bonds, etc. The kinds of things that couldn’t possibly happen on this planet. Except they do. I watch regular people make these kinds of discoveries just about every other Thursday. Here’s a metaphorical but only slightly exaggerated version of my typical coaching process. Some nice, ordinary-looking person comes to me and says, “I’m [...]

So I’m on my yearly migration to Africa, where I go to molt, feed, and mingle with others of my species. Every time I make the trip, I’m so grateful and happy. And miserable. And terrified.

It’s not Africa that bothers me; it’s getting there.

I admire but don’t understand people who love travel for its own sake. I have enough trouble puttering around my house; flying to places with utterly different time zones just seems gratuitous.

Eckhart Tolle says that there are only three feeling states for people who live in the Now: acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, which means “filled [...]

It was a problem I’d never anticipated: My brainy daughter was having trouble in school. Katie began teaching herself to read at 15 months and tested at a “post–high school” level in almost every subject by fourth grade. Yet her middle-school grades were dropping like a lead balloon, and her morale along with them. I cared more about the morale than the grades. I knew Katie was quickly losing something educational psychologists call her sense of self-efficacy—her belief that she could succeed at specific tasks and life in general. People who lack this trait tend to stop trying because [...]

Few hamster owners realize that their pets carry the powerful energy of intense passion and artistic aspiration that for some reason always ends up being considered amusing and adorable. If you doubt Hamster’s depth, please click this link to observe the moving death throes acted out by these talented little nuggets of cuteness.

If you actually watched the video, you now know how hard hamsters work at the craft of acting, bringing depth, energy, and true pathos to their performances. As if that isn’t enough, consider the piano prodigy at this link.

True, the Hamster isn’t playing the piano, because that’s [...]