Embracing Impermanence

I’m working on embracing impermanence. I’ve been reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, and she reminds us that impermanence is our natural state. Babies don’t stay babies, people live and die, jobs come and go. But it’s not just reflected in the big things, it’s also the little things that happen every day....

Protecting Our Future Normal

“I just can’t wait till things go back to normal.” How many times have you heard someone say that on a news broadcast lately? How many times has that thought crossed your own mind, even if you don’t believe it’s really possible? Living in this time of COVID-19 is hard, and one of the things...

I’m Not Social, I’m Intimate

Several dear friends sent me e-mails a few weeks into the lockdown that said variations of, “Are you okay? I’m worried about my extroverted friends. I know this whole thing is harder for people like you.” Then they’d say something like, “Well, at least you have Zoom, and now so many people are livestreaming their...

Actually, This Isn’t Unprecedented

I confess that I, too, have been using the word “unprecedented” to describe our current condition during this COVID-19 pandemic. And in so many ways, the word seems to fit. But then I came across these lines in Bill Bryson’s book, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, “London’s theaters were officially ordered shut, and would remain...

Stuck in a Pandemic World

Well, I knew it might happen someday. People ask me all the time how I can come up with enough content for a weekly blog. Don’t I ever get stuck? Up until now, I’ve been able to smugly reply, “No, I never get stuck. I think that’s because when I started this blog, I didn’t...