The Everyday Human

May: On Love May 22 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin's book  The Lathe of Heaven. Is love some carved, painted statue meant to sit dusty in a museum of your life? Of course not. Just as it is not something you purchase, or something that just appears one day.  It has an origin . . . like a seed. It is a complex, living, breathing, and fragile thing that n...

May: On Love May 21 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Baba Dioum, from the 1968, Triennial Meeting of the General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), New Delhi. And so we have it: Love is key to not only survival, but to coexisting and preserving the beauty of our world and of each other. We are one species of humanity...

May: On Love May 20 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Jonny Cash. It’s an interesting thing, this idea that paradise is somewhere out there waiting for you. And I blame the travel industry and marketing. You’ve been sold this idea that where you live and where you are isn’t paradise, and that you need this idea of paradise to be happy, but as the old saying goes, “wherever you g...

May: On Love May 19 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "Once I Passed Through a Populous City" by Walt Whitman. So what is it that endures through time? What will the ruins of the places I visit and live in now look like 3000 years into the future? Will some soul wander through and imagine the lives and love that existed millennia ago? Perhaps . . . What endures these ages...

May: On Love May 18 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from the video game  Unravel Two. There will come a time when you reach a wall that only your partner has the strength to climb. Or you come to a crevasse that only you have the skill to leap across.  They climb the wall, turn with a smile, and pull you up after them. You make it across to the other side and tell them to jump—to t...

May: On Love May 17 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., in particular from A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches. If you’ve been hurt or wronged, choosing love can be one of the most difficult things to do.  Choosing compassion over judgment, empathy over resentment, kindness over cruelty might seem a herculean task. Or to some, even idea...

May: On Love May 16 Today's reflection was inspired by a poem by Matsuo Bashō. You live your life, you think, according to what you want to do, or perhaps should do, or what others tell you to do. This goes with being an active participant in society. But when was the last time you slowed down enough, left your screens and job and whatever might demand your attention for a time to just be? If...

May: On Love May 15 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Thomas Merton's book  No Man Is an Island. Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out the secret: that love— real love—is a radical acceptance of your friend, family member, or partner. It’s not liking the same things. It’s not running in the same crowd. It’s not about sharing the same physical space day a...

May: On Love May 14 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "A Dandelion for My Mother" by Jean Nordhaus. The resilient and unassuming dandelion. A symbol of love and life. It holds more love in it than the diamonds mined from the bowels of the earth by exploited hands. It will hold strong in the face of poison and death and find ways on the wind to new life. It will offer the c...

May: On Love May 13 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Final Fantasy VIII. Unlike Keats’ Bold Lover from yesterday, you can’t make time stand still. You can’t live eternally in anticipation, but seeing that and knowing it is a gift, because you can recognize the moment when it’s here—each and every moment. The meeting. The seconds leading up to the kiss. The kiss itself. And the...

May: On Love May 12 Today's reflection was inspired by John Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." What if it’s neither the journey nor the destination?  In Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury, Big Panda asks, “Which is more important, the journey or the destination?” To which Tiny Dragon replies, “The company.” So you have to ask—would Keats’ Bold Lover be satisfied living...

May: On Love May 11 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Terry Pratchett's novel  Sourcery. Love—it’s what makes the world go round. And it’s what allows us to survive on that same world made of rock and water, hurtling around the sun at 67,000 mph.  Love is a beautiful thing to have, and some of the pragmatists or cynics out there might say, “Eh, it’s fine. But it’s a luxury....

May: On Love May 10 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Shakespeare's  Hamlet. Hamlet writes to Ophelia, declaring an unshakable love, and then his actions betray both those words and her. Did he mean the words he wrote—if only for a time? Was the love true, then, even if it didn’t last? That’s the harder question. But don’t be afraid to ask it. A love untested might be no lo...

May: On Love May 9 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Oscar Wilde's play  An Ideal Husband. It’s so important to love yourself.  As the cliche goes, you can’t love someone else before you love yourself—and it’s true. It starts with the society within you—your soul. And it’s a lifelong romance . . . the most complex and fragile relationship you might ever have. It’s something...

May: On Love May 8 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Carl Sagan's novel  Contact. Love—is it a mystical force of the cosmos?  I deny that it is and claim rather that it is a deeply human one grounded in action and presence and in choice. One that transmutes our insignificance in the expanse into greatness. It is the only answer to the question and it is the only thing that...

May: On Love May 7 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from the 1998 masterpiece of a video game  Xenogears . We can imagine that God had a choice when creating humans: create us perfectly, or make us flawed. And God chose, very obviously, to make us flawed. If we were perfect, then we would not help each other—perhaps even, we would not love each other.  Would we even have a need for...

May: On Love May 6 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from the book  The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak.  The fact that someone loves you so much that your mere presence is all they need to feel whole, protected, and loved in return is a remarkable and beautiful thing.  It’s not always possible, of course. Other obligations call, you need your own time to be yourself, but know that when...

May: On Love May 5 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "Music, When Soft Voices Die (To–)" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It can be beautiful to hear a song you only listened to with your mother long after she is gone. It can be painful to smell the perfume or deodorant of your partner after they’ve left to live their life with another. It can be surreal to touch the wooden handle...

May: On Love May 4 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "Hyla Brook" by Robert Frost. There is a type of love out there. A love that love does not and will not tolerate ideals of perfection or expectations of permanence. No, instead it exists and thrives in the fleeting moments and in our flaws. This love’s roots grow deeper as the bearers age and are wind-stricken and suffer...

May: On Love May 3 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "Love Walked Alone" by Stephen Crane. One cannot be stronger than the other. The stronger love grows, the stronger heart’s pain grows right alongside her—waiting, always waiting. The reason is simple as to why it’s so difficult for some to love—it is because the risk for suffering is so great.  But the ultimate question...

May: On Love May 2 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince . There is so much— too much— emphasis on the wrong stuff. On what it means to live a good life. On what it means to be successful. Too many people have suffered from the belief—instilled in them from a young age by parents, peers, television, or now social media—that money and...

May: On Love May 1 April, the month On Nature, is over, and May, the month On Love, is upon us. Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist. Loving someone or something—to truly love them unconditionally and selflessly demands that you change and improve. Always . Your mind, body, and soul. It is to give away parts of yourself to them in the hopes t...

April: On Nature April 30 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "The Gardener 85" by Rabindranath Tagore. Buy a bag of bulbs and plant them in the ground and think of all the other dirt-covered, cracked hands that dug through the same dirt you’re kneeling in now. Smell the honeysuckles and lilacs in April, think of all the others who stuck their noses into the flowers of the a...

April: On Nature April 29 Today's reflection was inspired by a quote from my novel  Dead World: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale. According to National Geographic, about 571 species of plants have gone extinct in the wild since the 1750s. And since 1900, an average of eight plant species have gone extinct every three years. I don’t know what the world will look like 10 years from now, let alone hundre...

April: On Nature April 28 Today's reflection was inspired by the poem "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry. We fear a future that does not exist, one that we created and then let control our lives in the present. This is a very human thing to do—anxiety has helped us survive for millions of years out in the plains or in the forests and mountains. And it’s easy to say, “Do not...