The Simple Life
Posted in Reflections
Tagged children, comic, Comical Explanation, creativity, freedom, imagination, outdoors, parenting, parenting tools, play time, responsibility
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Clarifying Power
I feel most powerful when…” I am thinking creatively about how to solve pressing social problems like poverty, gender, and social inequality. I love big ideas and the excitement that comes with dreaming up a better way to connect to others and build a more just world. We know the problems — many have existed for generations. It’s time to push for the solutions and strategies that will bring about real change, even if they make us uncomfortable.” Power to me means….” making a way for others to lead and to step more fully into their power. People along my path opened doors for me, and I feel it’s my duty to do the same. It’s also about using the power or advantages you have in life to help the most vulnerable among us. What good is power if all you’re doing is hoarding it?” What do you do when you feel powerless? “I have two go-to strategies when I feel powerless: My first strategy is to take a nap or go to bed — everything always seems a bit clearer in the morning or after I’ve had time to reflect. The other strategy I use when I’m feeling powerless is to surround myself with the support and love of friends and family. In tough and uncertain times, they always feel like home base.”Dr. Nicole Mason
Posted in Reflections
Tagged advantages, Dr. Nicole Mason, dreams, faith, honor your truth, hopeful, inspiration, integrity, leadership, life lessons, mindfulness, nap, power, purpose, realationships, self care, social inequality, social problems, solutions, strategies
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Thank you
I texted my father — our first message in months — asking if the link he had sent to an online photo album was real. He said it was. I selected the first photo: Two-year-old me, smiling wide, nestled in his arms. I felt nostalgia, guilt, then sadness. I started to text him back but couldn’t find the words. Over the years we had constructed a wall between us, strengthened by every guarded exchange and words left unsaid about our Asian immigrant family, my queer identity. How can we break through a silence that’s been 20 years in the making? — Arthur Chen
Posted in Reading, Reflections
Tagged active listening, appreciation, Asian immigrant family, children, communication, disconnect, emotions, faith, family, Grief, healing, journey, LGBQT, life, love, memories, parenting, photography, sexual orientation
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Appearance Alone
His name was David, but most just called him “the street fiddler.” David was a disheveled, older man who was a regular fixture in popular places in our city, serenading passers-by with unusual skill at his violin. In exchange for his music, listeners would sometimes place a dollar in the open instrument case before them on the sidewalk. David would smile and nod his head in thanks as he continued to play.
When David died recently and his obituary appeared in a local paper, it was revealed that he spoke several languages, was the graduate of a prestigious university, and had even run for the state senate years ago. Some expressed surprise at the extent of his accomplishments, having assessed him on the basis of appearance alone.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your wonderful love for me. I pray that others may see Your love in my words and actions today.
Posted in Reading
Tagged accomplishments, affluent, apperances, assumption, community, compassion, death, donation, homelessness, kindness, music, Negative thought, obituary, prayer, prestigious, Street person
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Culinary Possibilities
We the People Of The United States Don’t Eat Like We Used To…and that’s a good thing. Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, my mom’s dinners were limited to a short rotation of roast chicken, London broil, shrimp scampi, frozen Hungry-Man meals and takeout. To be fair, she was working with limited options. At our local supermarket, the lettuce was mostly iceberg, the apples were only red and not delicious, and there was one variety of mushroom—the kind that will make you hate mushrooms for your entire life. Still, we ate pretty well. Actually, we didn’t.
These days we’ve got more choices, more knowledge and, yes, more guilt than ever. Our food stores not only offer multiple varieties of produce but also ones that are organically and, often, locally grown. Meat is free-range and/or grass-fed. Seafood is sustainably harvested. Coffee is fair-trade. We are so food-woke, our choices around what we eat are nearly as central to our identity as our Instagram feeds that obsessively document those choices.
Plus, our food is so globalized now. Not only can we find real tacos from coast to coast, but we can also find real Oaxaca- or Baja-style tacos. While nationalists may be having a moment politically, they are getting killed in the aisles of Trader Joe’s, which is the United Nations of packaged foods. People in Houston can discern between northern Thai and southern Thai cuisine, while picking a Chinese food restaurant in Seattle or Chicago or Philly might mean choosing between Sichuan, Cantonese, Hunan and Taiwanese. Kids regularly eat sushi, soup dumplings, baba ghanoush and pho. Once, my son, fed up with the globe-trotting succession of meals he’d been served, actually cried out: “I just want American food! Like hamburgers! Or tacos!”
I don’t recall what we were eating on the night of that outburst—it might have been tikka masala delivered by UberEats or chicken souvlaki pitas assembled from one of those hand-holding Blue Apron kits—but it happened to be a meal when the entire family was sitting down together. And that’s a rarity these days.
For much of America, dinner is very often not in a dining room, unless you’ve turned that room into a home office, in which case you probably do eat there. More likely you’re eating on a stool at one of those islands everyone puts in their kitchens. Or maybe you’re hunched around a coffee table in front of a TV, or at a Michelin-starred restaurant in front of your phone. And yet, the activity of eating in this country has arguably never been more social. Food continues to serve as a catalyst that brings us together—especially around the holidays
Joel Stein
