I don’t think people talk nearly enough about the Elur Nedlog. True, I never talked about it myself until it occurred to me a couple of months ago, but that is no excuse! The Elur Nedlog is the Golden Rule spelled backwards. Where the Golden Rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” the Elur Nedlog says, “Don’t do unto yourself anything you wouldn’t do unto someone else.” I think the sentiment has to run both ways. That’s just math.

So especially in this season—this festive holiday fairyland strewn with its festive holiday [...]

Psychologists tell us we’re born afraid of just two things. The first is loud noises. Do you recall the second? Most people guess “abandonment” or “starvation,” but neonatal dread was simpler than that: It was the fear of falling. Today we all have a much richer array of consternations, but I’ll bet falling is still on your list. Why give up the prudent concern that brought your whole genetic line into the world clutching anything your tiny fists could grab? Fear of falling is your birthright!

Perhaps that’s why most of us, at least some of the time (and some [...]

Imagine this: You’re putting together a nifty jigsaw puzzle—say, your favorite Elvis montage painting on black velvet—when one of the pieces suddenly morphs into an entirely different shape. Aside from the unnerving quantum-mechanical implications of this event, you’ve got a problem—the surrounding pieces no longer fit. You could try to alter those pieces (a troubling prospect, since it will require distorting all the ones around them) or give up on the puzzle entirely—unless, of course, you could get the little sucker to resume its former shape and size.

This sort of situation arises in every human life. We live in [...]

I was a mere child when the classic tear gusher Love Story hit theaters in 1970, but I wept along with the adult audience as the dying Ali MacGraw told the darling Ryan O’Neal, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Two years later, I saw another movie, What’s Up, Doc?, in which Barbra Streisand’s character repeated the very same line to the very same actor. This time, however, O’Neal had an answer. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” he said.

For me, that was a light bulb moment. I’d been swept along by the romance of Love Story, but even as I’d [...]

“You must learn to tolerate the humiliation of taking your child out in public. Try to ignore the stares and insensitive comments of the people around you.” 

I don’t remember where I read these words—I vaguely recall a dingy red pamphlet, given to me by a well-meaning social worker—but I know exactly when. It was February 11, 1988, three months before my son, Adam, was born, one day after an amniocentesis revealed he had Down syndrome. I’d refused what would have been a very late-term therapeutic abortion but not because the diagnosis didn’t bother me. I felt trapped in a [...]