Nights and mornings are times for me to both reset from long work days and prepare for long work days to come. As I grow further into my work, my evening recharge times have become precious. If you’re going for it during the work day, you’re going to feel that, too. If you’re reading this post, you might be wondering how you can build regular(ish) practices into your evenings to ensure that recharging happens.
Tag: family
The Risk/Reward Tradeoff of Technology
The paradox of technology presenting a more rewarding life but also a life of more risk is a reminder to us all to stay vigilant with regard to those who can wield the power of these tools against us. It is more important now than it ever has been that we remove the state from the mechanisms of control. Should we be successful, the life we all can have will be immensely rewarding.
Government Not Designed to Help
No government has ever protected life, liberty, or property when it meant scaling back its own power. Expecting government to do so is like hopping in your family SUV expecting to drive it to Alpha Centauri. That’s not what it was designed to do, and not in the realm of possibility, no matter how much you wish it were.
Freedom, Not Force, Creates Lifelong Learners
As author Ray Bradbury famously said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” If we want an educated and engaged citizenry, with a passion for reading and knowledge and ongoing self-improvement, then perhaps “free choice” should be the norm rather than the exception.
The Myth of Institutionalized Learning
This weekend conversation exposes the deep, underlying myth in our culture that children cannot learn unless they are systematically taught. Whether in school or school-at-home, children can only learn when they are directed by an adult, when they follow an established curriculum, when they are prodded and assessed. How could a child possibly know how to identify plants if it wasn’t part of a school-like lesson?
75 Times Around the Sun
Yesterday I observed the 25th Anniversary of my 50th birthday. On the original occasion, I opined that, like Merle Haggard, I could say “my life’s been grand!” I said at the time that I had lived a great half-century, therefore no matter what happened to me after that I could say that most of my life had been grand. The facts of the matter are that the continuing quarter-century has been even grander.
Social Security is the Titanic; 2022 is the Iceberg; Anybody See a Lifeboat?
Everything eventually comes to an end, and Social Security won’t be the single historical exception to that cold hard fact of reality. The big question is whether it winds down in the least damaging way or catastrophically implodes (cue images of the elderly living on cat food and so forth).
Makes for Very Poor Relationships
I think one huge problem adults have with interacting with kids (teenagers especially) nowadays is that they try to make their relationship some idealized thing. They like to be active in the kids lives, show interest in them, have a certain degree of closeness, and actualize their investment into the relationship they have wanted. Often, the kids don’t want this.
Empathize with Victory, Not Just Suffering
When we have empathy, we can imagine life through the eyes and experiences of other people. That of course means that we can imagine the suffering, pain, fear, and doubt of the people around us. But it also means we can know the full significance of someone else’s victories.
Hard-Won Homeschooling Freedoms Are Under Threat and Must Be Defended
I sometimes wonder about the courage it took those earlier homeschooling parents to remove their children from school before it was fully legal, to chart an alternative education path for their children when they were often the only ones on that road. I sometimes wonder if I would have had the same courage.