Finding meaning and purpose in a world of hurry and hustle
The cycle has become sadly predictable. Mass shooting, followed by offers of thoughts and prayers and little else.
Many have criticized this “thoughts and prayers” response as being an empty gesture – an attempt to look good without actually doing the hard work of helping.
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If you’re like most parents, you care more about your own kids than you do a stranger’s kids. In fact, if you didn’t, we would worry. But can we take our love for our kids too far?
Our natural parental instinct is to help our kids succeed, so we try to give them every opportunity and advantage that we can. For parents with economic privilege, this might mean enrolling our children in an expensive private school or hiring a private SAT tutor. It might mean taking them to the museum and the ballet and France. When surrounded by expendable income, the greater danger is not in giving our kids too little, but in giving them too much. As much as we love our own kids, our love and compassion are not meant to be limited to the branches on our family tree. If we give our own kids big head starts, that makes it significantly harder for other kids to keep up.
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It’s been a tense year, to say the least. Political polarization is at an all-time high and people on both sides are angry. Many people don’t just disagree with the other side’s views anymore; they think the other side’s views—and the people who hold them—are abhorrent.
It can be hard enough to navigate political differences with strangers and acquaintances. But what are we supposed to do when the ones holding the views we find abhorrent are sitting across the Thanksgiving table from us?Continue Reading
In the wake of yet another mass shooting — this time claiming the lives of at least 12 people in Thousand Oaks, Calif. — it’s painfully obvious that the United States has a problem with gun violence. In our current political environment, it’s also obvious that little can be done about it.
Sixty-one percent of Americans favor stricter gun laws, according to a recent Gallup poll, but this statistic hides a strong partisan divide: Continue Reading