Friendship and relationship advice
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Point of view
“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird Folks who lack empathy view everything solely from their own perspective. Putting their own needs first, they hear only what they want to hear. They rarely question if their actions are hurtful or offensive. They’re often convinced that their beliefs and opinions are the Universal Truth — and can’t understand why other people are sometimes at odds with…
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Does character matter?
“We live in a culture that teaches us to promote and advertise ourselves and to master the skills required for success, but that gives little encouragement to humility, sympathy, and honest self-confrontation, which are necessary for building character.” ~ David Brooks, The Road to Character Like others who grew up without social media, I wasn’t comfortable promoting myself — especially early in my career. Broadcasting my achievements in public felt awkward, even rude, and I still struggle with this issue. But today’s quote pushes beyond self-promotion and digs deeper. Author David Brooks writes a lot about the importance of character. And I can’t help but wonder, given our country’s savage political…
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The language of community
“When we love people, we share things with words. We share poems. We share songs. We share our favorite books. Because if we can make enough language bridges between the two of us, our hearts and minds will begin to know each other better.” ~Martha Beck This busy week has been all about sharing good books. On Tuesday night, I hosted our neighborhood book club, and last night I hosted a discussion of The Let Them Theory at the Blair Memorial Library’s “Self-Help Book Club.” Both book discussions were lively and thought-provoking. Best of all, I learned such interesting things about each person who reflected on what she had read.…
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A beautiful day in your neighborhood
“Building a community means fostering friendships that light up the neighborhood.” – Amy Williams As reported in a new Pew Research poll, only about a quarter of American adults know all or even most of their neighbors. Thanks to social media, we have scores of online friends around the country — but we can’t recall the names of the folks who live across the street. At most, we might wave at our neighbors from the car as we’re leaving the house. It takes time and shared experience to build solid relationships. Likewise, forging a friendly neighborhood requires care and effort. But work, family, and outside social commitments leave us little extra time…
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Why life is better without Facebook
“The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and demagoguery.” ~ Franklin Foer This year I’m celebrating nine happy years of Facebook sobriety. Once I quit, my emotional wellbeing, social life, family relationships, and productivity all improved. I started reading more, writing more, spending more time with friends and neighbors, and enjoying the simple pleasures I had overlooked while I was scrolling for social media updates. Though I wrote this Oakland Press column a couple of…
