Life is about letting go, starting over, and grief on the way to the grave. In between those monumental stations of human being, we endeavor to find contentment, discover joy, and save friendships from perishing. Here is how Vincent van Gogh drew to know sorrow in 1882.
Five Thirty Eight is a new website that uses data quantification to make qualitative evaluations of our human lives. A recent article concerning people really only wanting to date themselves captured my attention.
Continue reading → Opposites End in a Vacuum of Ashes: Quantifying Human Compatibility
Jerald had a difficult time finding friends at the age of thirty-four.
He wasn’t the sort of person to go out to bars and didn’t participate in most group sports.
He further did not particularly enjoy the kind of music that would get one out of the house and into a music venue and so he never met anyone that way.
Continue reading → Making New Friends: Ten Sentence Story #151
One of the keys to living a human life is equally accepting the joys and the sorrows of our short time on this earth. We love to celebrate good things like birthdays and marriages and births, but when it comes to the sadder side of bouncing on this mortal coil, we often turn inward and inky and ask for privacy, and sometimes, we might even feel ashamed for feeling desperate and undecided. We need space and room to grieve because grief is the price we pay for love and friendship even though we may be reluctant to settle that barter.
Continue reading → Grieving is the Price of Love and Friendship
We have already seen how one state can put people in prison for failing to pay their court fees.
Continue reading → Being Forced to Pay the Debts of Your Friends
I have heard more stories about dying friendships than I thought. Someone I know would tell me that they dreaded the idea of seeing someone, because they didn’t enjoy the stories that the person tells or, for that matter, how the person behaves. I have to ask them why they bother hanging out with that person if they don’t enjoy spending time with them and the answer almost always comes back the same — they have known them for a great number of years (15, 20, sometimes more) and they don’t want to ruin a long friendship after everything that they have been through.
It was a cold winter day on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There were slick patches of ice everywhere, reminding me of my Charlie Brown New Year. I was walking with a friend of mine to the synagogue for the morning prayer and related the story about how I fell the one day and how fearful I was of falling down as a result. My friend is fantastic at offering good advice when it is needed.
Continue reading → Living Life One Foot in Front of the Other
You must be logged in to post a comment.