Albert Einstein is often credited with saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By that metric, I am medically insane. Every few months, I drive out to a manicured, affluent suburb on the lake for a family function, and every
There is a distinct, agonizing isolation that occurs when you finally set a boundary with a toxic family member in public. To the crowded backyard or the dinner table, you look like a monster. They didn’t see the thirty years of microscopic papercuts, the decades of disrespect, or the
My Great Uncle Gideon recently turned ninety and decided to throw himself one final, self-orchestrated victory lap. He packed up his Lincoln, left the soft climate of Florida, and drove north back to the Chicago grid to gather what remained of his orbit. The affair was staged at a
In the late 1960s, my uncle Frankie was the neighborhood archetype of the South Side "bad boy." Long before his trajectory escalated into a rap sheet that included an attempted murder charge, he was just a kid testing the boundaries of gravity—jumping from one flat garage roof
Years ago, I was sitting on the rooftop deck of the Snow Goose Brewery with my friend, Frank. The sun was tracing the edge of the mountains, and we were drinking away the afternoon, reminiscing about the rugged miles we’d logged just a few years prior. We had backpacked
When you reside in a subarctic outpost like Anchorage, the rest of the lower forty-eight doesn’t just feel distant—it feels abstract. Years ago, while working in an Alaskan school, I was called in to triage an elementary-aged student in the middle of a crisis. He was
Lately, the inventory has been compromised by an internal glitch: I have been spending too much time inside my own head. It is a common failure. I have caught myself practicing uninvited mind-reading—assuming the people around me are calculating the worst possible verdicts, rather than giving them the
We are taught from childhood to live by the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated. It’s an elegant piece of moral machinery. Every major civilization from the ancient Jewish sages to modern psychologists has endorsed it. It works beautifully—right up until the moment
We like to believe we are rational creatures. We read books on communication, we study ethics, and we convince ourselves that our lives are governed by the modern, sophisticated parts of our brains. But just beneath that thin veneer of civilization sits an ancient, tri-folded blueprint written in the
We are a species of horizon-chasers. We live our lives looking over the dashboard, convinced that the current stretch of road is just a tedious intermission before the real show begins. We tell ourselves that once we secure the next promotion, finish the house renovation, buy the better vehicle,
We are all sinners. I don’t mean that in the traditional, fire-and-brimstone, Sunday-school sort of way. I mean it in the classical sense: we miss the mark. We are clumsy. We are reactive. Left to our own devices, we routinely practice a highly flawed, reactionary brand