The Everyday Human

August: On Wonder and Awe August 6 With the walking—the movement—your body slowly awakens, shaking off the rust of stagnancy. The tunnel vision you experienced moments before opens with the sky, broadening your perspective, sharpening your ideas, revitalizing your thinking. Oh, and very important, do this without a screen. Leave your phone home, or at the very least, leave it in your pocket or bag...

August: On Wonder and Awe August 5 When you’ve built a life you enjoy and have fallen in love with your routine, it’s good to stick to it. But too much of anything—even good things—can wear on you. It can become a sort of anaesthesia and numb you to life. That’s where looking at the world in unfamiliar ways comes into play. And it doesn’t have to mean looking at all new things, either. You don’t h...

August: On Wonder and Awe August 4 It is a wasteland and the hollow wind and the bones and corpses of what once was chills you to your core. You turn to leave, but before you go, you see something pierce through the seemingly eternal monochrome of these deadlands. A bit of green, blue, yellow, pink, purple—poking through the wasted soil. The rainbow-colored sprout of the seed of an idea, waiting f...

August: On Wonder and Awe August 3 It’s in the dark shadows of the universe—the unknown worlds that revolve around the stars we see at night, the wonder that comes with watching a bagworm stick its head out of its cocoon and work its way down the branch of a cypress tree, or the moment of self discovery while walking alone on a quiet path in the park before the world wakes. It’s these places and t...

August: On Wonder and Awe August 2 If you look at my social media feed, you’ll come across close-up shots or videos of butterflies and bees and snowberry clearwings (when they stay still long enough for me to get a shot). And for every 15-second video of those wonderful creatures, there are hours of my life spent standing among the flowers that I am fortunate and grateful to grow in my yard, just...

August: On Wonder and Awe August 1 July, the month of On Family is over at the Everyday Human. Family—what a beautiful and complicated thing it can be.   This month, the month of August (my wife’s birthday month and mine!) will have us exploring one of my favorite topics—On Wonder and Awe. A key component of what makes being human worthwhile, interesting, and sets us apart from so many other creat...

July: On Family July 31 This is a simple one.  Love is what it all comes down to.  It makes all the difference. It makes us who we are. And wherever you find love— —you find family. Reflection title: The Root of the Tree of Life Creative inspiration:  Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor Reflection question: How am I bringing my love into the world? How am I helping others become who they are wit...

July: On Family July 30 Out of a whole life of moments—about 2.5 billion if you count each second as a moment and live to 80—birth and death only make up for two (give or take a few). Granted, they are two very important ones. That leaves a whole lot of space in between. And in those in-between moments, you’ll of course find joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, loss and gain—and every blend and nuan...

July: On Family July 29 Anytime you learn something new (and I hope you’re always trying to learn something new), you’re bound to make mistakes. I try to teach this lesson to my daughter every day. She likes to get things right and can be hard on herself when she doesn’t nail it right away. But it’s also a lesson for me as a parent. This is something brand new for me, and each day brings new chall...

July: On Family July 28 You’ll get these results, or hear these stories and they’ll hit you with the shock that comes with learning that what you believed to be true was, in fact, a lie. And it’s not just the facts that shake you—it’s the feeling of being lost, of not knowing who you are, or where you came from, or who your loved ones really are. As the days pass, you’ll have question upon questio...

July: On Family July 27 The day inevitably comes when you find your mother or father or parental figure crying at the kitchen table after learning their mother has passed. Or when they mutter the words, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do,” when watching the bills rack up higher and higher with no way out. And on that day, you'll learn that they’re just human: delicate and vulnerable patchworks...

July: On Family July 26 Your family, your closest friends—those who you should have the most patience for. It’s always easiest to hurt the ones you love.  Maybe because you know they love you back and you take it for granted that they’re there and in your life in the first place and you just expect them to be there every day for the rest of it. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. You can pu...

July: On Family July 25 While some parents might speak with that voice and impart the wisdom and benevolence of the gods, let’s not forget that the cycle is not just that of good . . . but also of evil. And since humans are flawed, and some are fated or choose to carry out evil deeds, they will impart not some holy wisdom and righteousness, but instead a kind of profane ignorance and malevolence....

July: On Family July 24 Instead of confronting family skeletons or secrets, do you try to stuff them down? Keep the secret(s) safe and bury that skeleton in the sump behind the house in the woods? I think you know the outcome of this option. That thing will stick its rotting, maggot-eaten hands and head through the dirt, dragging itself back out into the light and the open air for all to see and t...

July: On Family July 23 Though Madeleine L'Engle wrote the passage that inspired today's reflection 53 years ago, it seems like it could have been written today. You can find the parallels yourself. Trust me, you don’t have to dig too deep. But while the evils of the past find new clothes to wear in the present, something else that rang true then still does today: we must find a way to p...

July: On Family July 22 While you’re raising and shaping your children, they’re raising something in you, too. The mirror they hold up to you is reflecting and revealing—it’s guiding you and reshaping you. Their honesty is funny, but it can also be brutal, casting a light on flaws or habits you may have tried to bury back in the shadows, forcing you to confront them and move beyond them. It’s a be...

July: On Family July 21 The important thing here, I think—and yes, it’s complicated (but what isn’t in this thing we call life?)—is that we must teach our children, the next generation, that actions have consequences. Great, we can all get on board with that. We don’t want the world falling into further chaos. But more than that, while imparting this timeless knowledge, we must remember two things...

July: On Family July 20 As I did my daily check this morning with my coffee (Gardener’s Handbook, Rule #3: A gardener must always inspect their plants in the morning with coffee, even at the risk of midges diving in for a sip), I couldn’t quite believe the lettuce had grown so quickly. Maybe it’s the hot North Carolina summers. Maybe it was a good batch of soil from Brawley Seed Co. & Garden C...

July: On Family July 19 As a parent now—living in what I think is safe to say a beautiful, yet crazy world—I’m more conscious than ever of the things I say, and more than that, my actions. I’m not sure truer words have ever been spoken: Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. I’ll tell my daughter she should exercise, that it’s g...

July: On Family July 18 Humans . . . we’re not objective or utilitarian creatures, are we? No—we can be infinitely bullheaded, romantic, and idealistic. We persevere through untold hardship and crushing pressure, forming social bonds harder than diamonds in the process. It could be your brother, sister, friend, colleague, comrade—it doesn’t matter. It’s something deeply human: that is, the ability...

July: On Family July 17 Sometimes your immediate family, those closest to you, won’t get it as you drift farther and farther away. But know this: you’re not alone. Despite what the news, social media, or certain politicians might have you think, there’s a whole world of humans out there who care and would be more than willing to throw you a line. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your book club. That...

July: On Family July 16 When it is in the nature of a parent to believe they always know what’s best and it is in the nature of a child to make their own way, there comes a time when one of them must willingly consult with their nature and persuade it to make a concession. For good or for bad, this must be the parent—or they risk becoming someone who would interfere with their child’s fate or dest...

July: On Family July 15 Your early years were when the first lines of your morality and understanding of what it means to be human were etched. But as you grew, you found that there were others—sometimes even yourself—who would attempt to continue or rewrite some of those lines—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And this is a part of life. Your tablet is constantly being written, and writt...

July: On Family July 14 By the time I was 15, a sophomore in high school—the year 2001—my mother was working as an overnight legal secretary for a law firm operating out of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She was getting ready to head home at about 8:00 a.m. Her shift was ending, and her boss asked her to stay to work overtime—given our poor financial situation at home, she usually wouldn’t h...

July: On Family July 13 It’s not just us humans. Despite the controversy around their motives, and whether animals can be driven by an altruistic love or not, they do this too, and not just with orphans of their own species: a beluga whale adopting a narwhal, a capuchin monkey adopting a marmoset, a lioness adopting a leopard and even an oryx (antelope), a penguin and a skua, and many other birds...