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Friday Musings: Journal Prompt

Friday Musings: Journal Prompt

I recently came across a journal prompt that went like this: “When everything else is stripped away, and no one’s opinion is influencing you, what is your truth?” Well now. That is quite the question, right? As many of you know, I spend lots of time each week with three little people under the age of five who I can guarantee you know the answer. For them, truth equals self; they are one and the same. Up until a certain point, we all shared that perspective. We were blissfully unaware that everyone views the world in a different way, which led us to the logical conclusion that everyone must see us exactly as we see ourselves. The possibility of not being accepted was nowhere on our radar. Around the time we turned five years old, however, we began to become self aware, and that led to the realization that other people aren’t always thinking and feeling the same way we are. Self awareness in an adult is a wonderful thing. It enables us to understand and recognize our strengths and weaknesses, and it heightens our intuitive response to other people’s feelings and circumstances. The first inkling of self awareness in a child, however, most likely comes as a bit of a shock. This is the moment when we discover that in addition to being very different as individuals, there is also a kind of social ranking that exists between us. What comes next makes matters even worse: we soon learn that we’re going to have to figure out how we fit into that hierarchy, and whether or not our truth is going to make that process easier or harder.

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Friday Musings: Morning Star

Friday Musings: Morning Star

I think there are few people who would argue with the statement that we are currently living through a time of unprecedented difficulty. As we close in on the 2-year anniversary of the first U.S. Covid cases, we still find ourselves in a kind of holding pattern, circling the airport, waiting to learn what the future will bring. The greatest unanswered question, arguably, revolves around the concept of returning to normalcy. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that it’s better to be safe than sorry. That’s been my position right from the start. Nevertheless, I think that one of the things we can all universally agree on is that we miss human interaction and the human experiences that appeal to our sense of aesthetics. This pandemic has required periods of isolation and restriction, many of which we thought were behind us, but this recent surge feels eerily reminiscent of early 2020. From everything we’re being told, we are NOT back in that place, but it’s certainly easy to understand why we might feel that way. The bottom line is that when human beings spend too much time alone, unable to be a part of the world, a kind of sensory deprivation begins to occur that can leave us feeling emotionally drained. We are, after all, very social creatures, and we have a certain craving for interaction, connection, and shared moments of grace at a collective level. Without these things, we are greatly changed.

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Friday Musings: Finding Nuance

Friday Musings: Finding Nuance

There are certain words in the English language that fascinate me. Cadence is one of them. I wrote an entire blog post about the particular and pleasing rhythm that certain people have when they speak or write. I suggested that I thought it was also possible for there to be cadence in life. I love the word somnambulism too, otherwise known as sleepwalking, and one of the words most likely to cause someone to lose in a spelling bee. I did not write a blog post about

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Friday Musings: A Leap of Faith

Friday Musings: A Leap of Faith

I have found myself wondering recently about the things that define us as human beings. There are certainly many studies that show how related we are to other members of the animal world, particularly chimpanzees, but what are the traits that truly differentiate us? For starters, we have complex language skills, the ability to write things down, and the desire to share knowledge on a large scale. Not only are we able to communicate, but we are able to intuitively understand one another’s emotional states and

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Music and Cocktails: A Totally Amazing Mind

Music and Cocktails: A Totally Amazing Mind

We all have songs that play in our minds like some sort of a soundtrack for our lives. We’ve included them on so many of our playlists that people actually begin to roll their eyes when they hear them. “This one again?” they ask, but we don’t care, we keep playing it for them anyway. I’d venture a guess that if you ask any one of my kids about some of the top songs on my life’s soundtrack, they’d tell you “Dreams” by The Cranberries was one of them for sure. Originally released in 1992, and then re-

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