You’re in your living room, sprawled out on your couch, trying to remember who you were at eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-six, and wondering why you’re so different today. What happened to all your dreams, your plans for the future? How did your life slip away without you even realizing it? When we try to revisit those years, are our memories of events accurate? Do we see them as they were or as we wished they were? Do we make excuses for …
It’s been proven time and again that we feel more compassion toward an individual than we do toward a group of people. But, now we’re looking at a slightly different dynamic. Why are we feeling more compassionate toward a homeless man who plays the piano brilliantly than we are toward a 90-year-old man who has been arrested three times for feeding the homeless? In both cases, the plight of the homeless is the center of the controversy. Yes, this particular …
Have you ever noticed that when you are with certain people, you feel so alive, so energetic, but when you are with other people, you feel so drained, so tired? When I was teaching a course in metaphysics, I ran across an obscure term called zapper. Nowadays, we think of a zapper as an electronic device. The dictionary defines it as (a) an electronic device designed to attract and kill insects, (b) a person who habitually changes channels (as to …