I understand being softhearted now in ways I didn’t as a younger man. It’s akin to eating unseasoned food, like a steak, when young. Then life adds seasoning, with failure, loss, heartbreak, success, love, and appreciation, and the definition of a soft heart takes on a clarity that is both dramatic and pleasantly surprising. One day you realize precisely what “sweet pain” means.
Category: life
Existing in a Real World
When you are sensitive, attentive, analytic, and logical, you likely live in a personal mini-hell. Allowing oneself to care means the observational data is presented to your heart and mind in equal measure. Mix in the mistake generator that runs in our background, and we have this incessant analytical process that weighs whether we care selfishly or unselfishly, when that changes, and when it matters. Relax.
That means you aren’t a monster.
A Day for Love
Love comes in two forms. The love that just is, like how a parent loves a child. Or a child loves a parent. The taste of a favorite food. How you love that puppy the very first time you feel his nose on your cheek.
The other form is the love you choose. The thing you do over and over and one day you realize you love doing it. The game you play. The person you meet, learn about, experience life with, and then one day, realize if you don’t stop it you are going to love them. That threshold event that happens in a relationship.
Some days are for reflecting on what and whom you love. Do it so you don’t have regrets. Do it today.
If Dreams Were Memories
I wish all my dreams were memories. Then I would have lived the life I wanted.
The Little Things
I’ve discovered personally that it’s in the little things where we fight our most important battles.
Attacking a Belief Structure
I’m reconsidering how I think about my country. It’s clear at this point that many of the assumptions I’ve made in my lifetime aren’t valid. I’ve projected my view of the person I want to be (and fail to be) onto my country. The population of the United States is not good, moral, acceptant, unselfish (generally), and caring. Neither do we see or care about the big picture, or the world in general. We only care about those last two if aspects of them impact us negatively and personally. This is the United States of America. This is who we are.
I have never had a day’s outcome impact my will to live like November 5, 2024, and I’ve lost a child.
Changes
One thing true love teaches us is that to really love someone, you have to accept all of them, not divide them into what you adore and what you’d change. You become wise enough to know that if you did change something, they wouldn’t be who they are.
Becoming a Handhold
I’ve learned that one of the most effective ways of supporting someone you care about is to make sure they know you care about the little things in their life. Tell them outright.
Learning
Knowing things is like following a bread crumb trail. Everything you learn just leads to another thing you don’t know. It never ends. But what would be the fun in knowing it all?
Project Management Motto
Manage the details and the big stuff will take care of itself.
Approaching Zero 