ANDERSON W. WILLIAMS

Discovering Uranus

8/6/2020

Well. It finally happened. My kids discovered Uranus.

Well…their anus…er…your anus…um…Uranus.

Giggling and vibrating like Beavis and Butthead, my two daughters (6 & 8) came home from “school” having spent part of the day learning about the solar system and the Big Bang and how the planets were formed - and, all I could get was:

“Uranus, Daddy! Uranus. (butt out, one leg bent for emphasis, exaggeratedly pointing at their butts as if directing me from a 100 yards away that they’d found something really exciting). Uranus! Like YOUR ANUS! Anus, Daddy. Get it!?”

I feel like maybe this was a beautiful moment in fatherhood. Raising two girls, it’s not that often that a Beavis and Butthead reference is accurate or warranted or endearing. Oh yeah, and planets and astronomy and the history of our world and our tiny place in it too. So glad they’re learning that!

But, URANUS! Get it!?

Aside from a fatherhood milestone, it’s really a developmental milestone. It’s a play on words. And they GOT IT! It’s a warp speed flashback through the galaxy of all those knock-knock jokes they told and didn’t get. Worse, the ones they made up and nobody got! (I actually love those.)

Perhaps most importantly, this moment - Uranus - could well mean the liberation of the Dad joke. The possibility that puns and plays on words may actually land! This seems fundamental to the evolution of our relationship, our maturing mutual respect, and enduring love. How do you build those things without first “getting” Uranus? It may well be the linguistic fulcrum upon which balances the very possibility of fatherhood success.

Am I reading too much into it? Probably. But, I get it. And, I appreciate it. And, it’s awesome.

Uranus.

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A crushing sweetness

7/30/2020

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As we got home, I grabbed my phone and looked for the text I hoped wouldn’t come, but in my heart knew would: my dear friend had tragically lost a young and healthy family member - father, husband, son, brother-in-law, son-in-law, friend. Seemingly perfect health. 47. Cardiac arrest. He’d been holding on in the hospital for days but the damage was done. The doctors had let the family know.

I knelt on the floor - the only position that somehow made sense - and I began to cry. I sobbed for my friend, his family, those kids - as I do again while writing this. The kids.

As I buckled toward the ground, my fists and knees balancing my body - a crooked and convulsing all-fours - I felt my daughter’s soft, light body drape gently across my back, her arm, tiny, wrapping, seeming to encompass me. This child I’d just come home with who was about to be banished to “some time alone” for her behavior, her wild emotions, her bickering, her temper, this child who hasn’t sat still for 6 years, this child so emotional herself, stood there, still, holding me. Her head now resting upon my upper back, her warmth comforting me. Her heart sustaining me.

As my cries slowed and I sat more upright, kneeling, she slid from my back down my left side and grabbed my hand with her left while her right caressed my upper arm. She didn’t say a word. No one was watching her. My sobs picked back up for another round - she squeezed my hand tighter.

She stayed there with me through all of my sobs and deep breaths and more sobs and breaths. Quietly. Still. Holding me.

And this is why I was sobbing. And this is why I write. And this is why being a parent has made me stronger and more vulnerable than anything I’ve ever done. A crushing sweetness.

___

I write my blog as a sort of record that I was here, a breadcrumb of thoughts, and sometimes even a direct note to my children. I have to admit that I write, at times, for fear that this same thing could happen to me. What will my children know of me if something were to happen? What can I leave that lasts longer than memory? What wisdom could still be here if I were not? What love? How do I leave their world better no matter when I leave the world?

And there, in this moment, in the arms of this sweet little animal, mustering a presence and a stillness never seen before - for the moment - I know I’ve communicated something far greater than words.

And, again, this is why I cry. I know my friend’s lost loved one lives on with and within his children. Beyond words. The loss and pain are horrifying and yet somehow they will carry his light and love, holding it tightly, caressing it gently, comforting, with a crushing sweetness.

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Podcast: Fortune's Path - why being wrong helps make us right

7/22/2020

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When a penny of value is worth more than a dollar of vision

6/18/2020

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This is a hard lesson learned in the land of early startups and new products, but there are good reasons that it’s both a hard lesson and one that founders keep having to learn for themselves.

Entrepreneurs are typically driven by a vision, one that they hold dear, perhaps for many years, of how they can and will solve a pain that they’ve experienced and that they believe a lot of others experience - and will pay to fix.

That vision is powerful. It wakes the entrepreneur up every morning. It inspires those first people willing to have coffee with you to bounce your idea off of. They validate it, making the vision that much more powerful. It excites friends and family who feel your passion and may even be willing to invest in it. They believe, which adds more fuel. It draws those first people who want to join your team and help build your vision. They want in.

That vision is fundamental. It’s foundational.

So, it’s hard to accept when in the face of business reality the vision loses its potency and immediacy. The vision is still important and deeply rooted, but it becomes increasingly marginal in the face of here-and-now questions about adoption, what you’ve learned from the market, and how you have used or will use investment to turn the early product into a viable business. In other words, unless and until people are using your product (people who aren’t your coffee-going friends or family) and you are building and iterating based on that feedback, your vision is in a state of diminishing value to your business.

I’ve stumped even seasoned founders - after hearing their thoughtful and thorough business strategies, clear visions for the necessary features and functionalities of their products, and go-to-market plans showing how users will be downloading their app by the thousands - with a simple question (scaled to the business/conversation):

Who are your first 10 (or 20 or 100) users?

Followed by: why will they use it and why will they keep using it? And then, why will they tell someone about it?

It seems obvious after I ask the question that you can’t get to 1000 users, much less 100,000, if you can’t get, and keep, your first 10. If you’re doing it right, the product will evolve rapidly as those numbers grow, so it’s ok to think about a small but as-representative-as-you-know first set of users who you want and need to learn from to prove your value. In fact, you must.

One critical part of securing those early users is articulating the value you are going to deliver and then delivering it. It’s not necessarily about the magnitude of value for an early adopter. It’s about trust and belief that you and your product can deliver what you say you are going to deliver.

Unfortunately, founders often fall into a self-created chasm between their vision and what they have had the time and investment to deliver successfully as a working product to date.

Imagine a circle on a white board - let’s say 4 feet in diameter. This is the founder’s vision. Now, imagine a circle inside that circle that is say 6 inches in diameter. If you promise the big circle and deliver the small one, you’ve lost. It’s a major disappointment to the people who thought they were getting the big circle. You’ve not just over-promised and under-delivered; you’ve breached some level of trust. You’ve created even more doubters.

Alternately, if you promise the little circle and deliver it, you win - even if it’s with a smaller user base and only delivering on a fraction of your vision. They may not yet be blown away, but they are that much closer to lining up behind your vision.

In either scenario, you’ve delivered the exact same (small circle) value with dramatically different outcomes for your business.

It’s important to understand that this value scoping is not compromising your vision. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s building the product and the users and the business that are required to achieve the vision, which always takes longer and requires more money than you think.

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Educating a Radical - The Kindergarten Edition

5/23/2020

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I often lament in my own heart and mind that my more radical days seem to be behind me. What am I doing with my life and my upbringing? And then, there are other times when I think my radical waters may actually just run a little more deeply now - yes, more still with less activity agitating the surface, but perhaps with a wisdom and nonviolence I never knew in my more activist days.

The moment I regret that I don’t do work that is directly focused on social change anymore, I seem to find myself having a conversation about justice or equity or privilege or race or gender with my daughters (6 & 8). And, the more I have those conversations with them, with all the apparent complexity and history and economic underpinnings, the more frequently I arrive at a simple answer - a simple explanation - a simple premise: Love.

This morning I watched from the sidelines as my kindergartener had her final class meeting on Zoom, replete with a photo slide show and original music by her exceptional teacher (who also taught my 8-year-old who loves her so much still that she sat in on the final class of kindergarten again with her little sister).

The love of the kids for their teacher was obvious. They wouldn’t let her end the meeting. “Mrs. Scott, I lost a tooth.” “Mrs. Scott, my Mom was crying.” “Mrs. Scott, I got a haircut.” “Mrs. Scott, I got a puppy.” “Mrs. Scott…”

Her students love Mrs. Scott.

In turn, Mrs. Scott’s love for the kids is honestly somewhat profound. It’s not just that she is chronically kind and funny with the kids. It’s not just that she’s encouraging and seems genuinely interested or concerned when they tell her they have a hang nail. It’s not just the hours of work that went into creating her classroom and a wonderful virtual last class that felt warm and close even as it was remote. It’s not the tears she cried at her own video which she had certainly watched a thousand times while putting it together. Yes, of course, it’s all of that.

But, it’s Mrs. Scott’s bold and radical and clearly articulated message in words and on the screen and in actions that said: I love you. She wrote it right there on the screen: I love you. She said it to all of those squirmy, smiling, doting faces in their little Zoom boxes: I love you.

The kids know it. They know it down deep. And, this is why they read. This is why they work hard for her. This is why they want to be their best selves for their teacher - even when that often means all the repressed ugly comes out on the parents when they get home! I still appreciate that - most days.

What more profound way could a child start her educational journey than associating it with being loved and with learning to love herself and to love others in her classroom and beyond - to love in a way that, in her kindergarten style, encourages her to make simple choices to build a more loving world with kindness and color and unicorns and chaos.

Now, I’m not naive. I’ve been through school and I’ve worked around education. Sadly, this sort of overt and radical love does not last - at least not in this pure form. It lives here and there with those special teachers, but is not the first association most of us have with school.

But, imagine if we built schools around the idea of love. Imagine if the love a kindergarten teacher gives her children was the same love given by an AP Biology teacher to a Senior in High School. Imagine if the love among peers encouraged in a kindergarten classroom was cultivated in Middle School classrooms. Imagine what school would look like! Imagine what our children would be like! Imagine what our society would be like!

There was a time when I would have ignorantly suggested that this was some sort of naive vision for social change, that it was a nice thought for a Hallmark card, but hardly one bent toward radical social change. I was wrong.

My belief today in love as the necessary foundation for change is more deep and more radical than any belief I have ever held. And, as I continue to read and learn, I understand more deeply how it is actually woven into the most profound and effective social change work in our nation’s history - and similar change work across the globe.

This is not a new thought. It is not a unique thought. And yet, it is a thought we fail to keep, to protect, to live into, to remain committed to over a lifetime of education and learning.

Myles Horton puts it clearly and succinctly and with an almost 90-year history of work at the Highlander Research and Education Center to prove it can be more than an idea. It can be put into practice.

“I think if I had to put a finger on what I consider a good education, a good radical education, it wouldn’t be about methods or techniques. It would be loving people first.”

We love you too, Mrs. Scott.

Myles Horton, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

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Presence in a time of...

5/19/2020

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Someone asked the other day: “how are you guys doing.” It’s a question we are all asking a lot and being asked by those who care about us. It’s a pretty complicated answer given the times, but I now feel like I have an honest - if not short - response.

If you’d asked me three months ago how I would be doing if a tornado ripped through my community and then two weeks later we started hearing about hundreds and then thousands of Americans dying of a strange virus that would ultimately be killing upward of 100,000 in the U.S. alone with the epicenters being in states where much of my family lives and then another week or so later schools would be canceled and businesses would all be forced to close and we would need to wear masks to go to the store and stay at least 6 feet apart from people wherever we are, that this condition would last for two months and counting with the kids never returning to school and my wife and me not returning to work outside of our home and much of my community still looking like the tornado just happened…

Stress.
Anger.
Disillusionment.
Loneliness.
Fear.
Sadness.

If you’d asked me to imagine all of that back then and how I would be doing two months in, all of these emotional responses would have been easily assumed. But, my imagination would have colored them far more intensely than reality has. All of us are more resilient in life than we are in our imaginations. Anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one knows this. But, resilience is about bouncing back. We are still in it! We still don’t know how or when or if this thing will end - or when it will come back. Dealing with this requires something different: less wild imagination - more observation, less reaction - more reflection, less action - more stillness.

Presence.

Presence asks: what of this situation can I control?
Stress scleroses around all of it that I can’t control, thus constraining my ability to control what I can.

Presence allows me to maintain agency in the face of what feels like chaos.
Anger reduces agency to reaction - a destructive behavioral loop.

Presence asks what I know differently today, and based on that, what will I do differently?
Disillusionment wanders and wonders in all that I don’t know, thus leaving me unsure of what to do at all.

Presence makes the most of the connections and the tools within my grasp.
Loneliness feeds on what I don’t have or is no longer within my grasp given the circumstance.

Presence builds muscle.
Fear builds scar tissue.

Presence reminds us that our sadness must be accepted and tended to. It won’t go away. It may be stuffed or hidden or put aside for a variety of healthy and unhealthy reasons. But, it will be expressed at some point, in some way, and its easiest expression is in the present - as sadness.

It is important for me to note that I am fortunate to-date to have remained healthy and to have not been touched by Covid-19 directly. That’s first and foremost. I am also fortunate to still have work and a home that was only modestly damaged by the tornado. So, let me be clear, I feel very fortunate despite the times.

And still, Presence isn’t easy for me. In fact, it’s a discipline that, as often as not, loses out to all of these other emotional responses. So, Presence must also be a principle as much as it is a practice - a principle that drives and encourages the practice in the face of all the rest.

Presence in the time of…whatever happens next.

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Light Inside

4/26/2020

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14 years ago on April 27, 2006, my Father committed suicide. He had no light inside.

Living with suicide for all of these years, I am ever aware that I have never had to fight that darkness - that Depression that ultimately consumed him, killed him.

Largely thanks to my Mother’s tireless effort, indefatigable will, and a light that is implicit in her being, my Dad left me a light inside that he never had. My Mom’s light continues as a living gift to me and all who know her.

Light and shadow go hand-in-hand to create form and beauty.

Today, I am inside - every day. Looking for light. Like all of us, thanks to the pandemic, I am living in mostly physical isolation. But, I am also “inside” doing a lot of work mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to sustain my best self and try to remain a light of my own, to find the essence of this moment, to be present with it.

A light defined by shadow. Shadow defined by light.

I have captured these images of light and shadow throughout the inside of my house, the home where I was raised, where my wife and I are raising our children - the house still full of the light and shadow that so defined me.

I am sharing these thoughts and images because I can. I am sharing them because I must. I am sharing them because it has been 14 years since I learned what darkness means and in that time I’ve also come to understand light.

I hope you find your light in these dark times, and hold it dearly, grow it, share it, that it may be what guides you and those you love out of and beyond this shadow.

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Glad she got the last word

4/23/2020

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Last night, my kindergartner referred to the voiceover on some show she was watching as “gregarious.” I knew she’d been hanging out with my Mom. That is a Mom word. That was one of our “refrigerator words” back when I was her age.

So, I immediately thought that we should revamp that Word of the Day tradition of my Mom’s with my kids. Fun, right!? And clearly, three-and-a-half decades later, I still remember what gregarious means and even recall several others she posted during that time.

I didn’t have a plan yet. Just the idea. Even the simplest things have to percolate sometimes.

And then, this morning, that same kindergartner was spinning off some serious Covid-inspired funk and frustration. (She is fortunate Covid can be blamed for a period.) She clearly needed attention. She clearly wanted her parents not to be working. She clearly knows how to get under my skin. She’s a master.

So, on the spot, I came up with our first family Word of the Day: Turd.

I explained the meaning of the word, explained my association to her behavior, and used it in a sentence so that she could clearly understand. And, to her credit, she was fighting back a smile at my performance even as she was whining and forcing herself to cry - ultimately working herself up to a real foot-stomping, door-slamming turd-a-palooza.

It didn’t last long.

She was back in maybe 5 minutes and the rest of the day got better from there.

By the evening, we were laughing and dancing and singing Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats (our go-to) and being silly - basically being our best selves together. I do treasure these times.

In the midst of this goofiness and goodness, she walked back over to where I had posted our first Word of the Day and replaced it with her own post-it note - wadding mine up and throwing it in the trash.

Hers simply stated: No Word of the Day!!

Atta girl. Good day.

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7 More Things I Hope My Kids Are Learning During the Pandemic

4/17/2020

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Here are 7 more things I hope my kids are learning as a follow up to my blog a couple of weeks ago: “10 Things I Hope My Kids are Learning During a Pandemic (so far).” And, even though I still can’t fathom how my children are being taught their math, I’m pretty sure this makes 17 things to date.

It’s OK to cry.
I heard my daughter crying the other morning, and I could tell by the tone and how long it lasted that it was something different. This wasn’t about not getting dessert or her sister not sharing the screen when teleconferencing with friends. This was just sad. Just the night before, I had walked in on her telling her Oma how stressful it was not being in school (kindergarten). She took the play-by-play approach, but my summary is that she needs more structure and she needs the love and attention of her teacher. She loves her teacher. “I’m really frustrated” she said through her tears. I was so proud of her using her words and so thankful for the opportunity to say these critical words out loud to her, to myself, my wife, and my other daughter: “It’s OK to cry.”

Your parents don’t have any more experience with this than you do.
The “It’s OK to cry” line was quickly followed up with an opportunity for another critically important message and one I’ve always been committed to as a parent: I don’t have the answer and I can’t solve it. We are all just figuring this out together and doing our best. This my-parents-are-human perspective for a child likely makes a lot more sense in a pandemic than in the normal day-to-day. But, the message for really difficult personal and life situations is no different today than it was six months ago - or will be six years from now: I don’t have all the answers and I probably can’t solve it.

We are on the same team.
When we can’t control things - and we can actually admit it (something we can control) - it’s really important for us as a family to “be on the same team.” We have to work together. Of course, it’s natural for us to get frustrated or annoyed with each other. It’s natural for siblings to pick and prod and snipe at each other some. After all, they’ve been together in the last month probably more than they ever have before. But, it’s also important for them to see and hear and acknowledge what they are doing. That what they are doing is normal doesn’t necessarily make it OK. I asked my girls the other night what they would think if they heard me speak to their Mommy using the words and tone they had been speaking with to each other. They obviously didn’t like it and clearly were not comfortable with my thought experiment. The older later apologized, triggering something similar from the younger. The next day was markedly better.

Grief is a process.
We are all grieving to some degree in this odd, unknown, new experience. We are grieving a loss of freedom. My kids are grieving missing their friends and teachers and just a normal schedule. I am grieving for my children. We are grieving for our friends and family and elders whose lives are turned upside down, whose jobs are evaporating. We are grieving for over 30,000 people we don’t even know, grieving for their families, their children. We are grieving a quiet awareness that we’ve lost some degree of innocence. We will not be the same after this. Our grief will last awhile.

Laughter is healing.
I don’t even remember what happened the other night that got us all tickled. It’s likely I may have been making up some crazy song and singing in a terrible voice (my only option), possibly dancing. It’s equally likely that someone just farted. Either way, we all were laughing, cackling. And, it was clear we all needed that moment of joy. I felt that moment deeply as I looked at the sparkle in my kids’ eyes and their face-swallowing smiles. It felt like oxygen. It felt like a breath I haven’t taken in weeks.

You’ve gotta take care of yourself to take care of others.
We have to recognize when we aren’t taking care of ourselves and acknowledge that the impact is all around us. We each have to find ways, whether a quiet moment alone, a few minutes with a book, a few minutes walking the dog, exercising - whatever it is - to do something every day for ourselves, for a little bit of space and self care. As parents, this is not only about sustaining ourselves but modeling behaviors that our children can learn and internalize deeply in such a difficult time. My older daughter asked to read a kids yoga breathing book last night and commented on how different she felt after some deep, intentional breathing. I hope she always remembers this.

There is always beauty to be found.
I have never walked my dog in the middle of a work day. I have never taken a walk with my children in the middle of a work day. I have never walked with my dog and my children to get hot dogs and have a picnic during a workday. I have never had hot dogs customized with my children’s names on them during a workday, or ever. Lunch today was a gift.

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10 Things I Hope My Kids Are Learning During the Pandemic (so far)

4/1/2020

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I think we parents need to take a deep breath and step back from the struggle of attempting to school our children at home and help our children’s educations emerge from the real, lived experiences we are all working through.

We don’t need to try to be the school teachers we are not, but we can try to be learners and thinkers who reflect on our experiences and are resilient and empathetic and loving and kind, and we can model these lifelong tools and values for our children here and now. No worksheet necessary.

Our children will not remember the classroom lessons they learned - or didn’t - in the time of the pandemic, but they very well could carry lifelong lessons in how we all treated each other and managed our way through it - human-to-human - even at a distance.

So, to my children, here are some things I hope you are learning in these first several weeks of a new pandemic reality:

Your education is far, far bigger than school.
There’s a lot to learn during a post-tornado, pandemic-driven quarantine when you live with a senior citizen and have family member with chronic “underlying conditions”. And, while, yes, I want you to practice your reading and keep your math skills fresh, it is a very different kind of learning that will turn tragedy into possibility as your life unfolds. These are times that help illuminate who you are and architect who you will become. Your education is a lifelong process most deeply rooted in presence with whatever life throws your way.

Every day matters, and you can’t count on tomorrow.
Some days this means you throw caution to the wind, and some days it means you proceed with all due caution. Some days it means you get a puppy. It’s part of your life’s journey to gain the wisdom to know the difference.

Your teachers love you.
And, your teachers miss you when school is out. And, they are not only willing to do what it takes to deliver your lessons but will even call you on FaceTime and chat for half-an-hour like you are lifelong friends who just needed to reconnect. What you talked about was not the lesson to be learned. That they called is the lesson.

Your teachers are creative.
Joy and creativity and good teaching go hand-in-hand. Your teachers often work in settings that limit their creativity and steal their joy by focusing their labor on Education rather than enabling their work in helping students learn. Those livestreams and videos and conference calls for you and your classmates are your teachers doing their work in new ways because their work matters to them, to you, to all of us. Their creativity matters - your creativity matters - and school should never take that away.

Your parents work hard.
(But, that doesn’t make us great teachers.) We work hard because we love you. We work hard because we want to provide for you. We work hard because our work is part of our sense of who we are. Hard work matters, no matter what that work is. If you are going to do something, do it with all you’ve got.

Help in whatever way you can help.
When you see a difficult situation, ask yourself: how can I help? It doesn’t have to be complicated. But, your ability to help starts with understanding the gifts you bring to the world and figuring out where those gifts can meet the worlds’ needs. If nothing else, you can always be kind. You can always listen. You can always treat others with respect.

Even if you can’t do anything, you can always say something.
When you don’t feel like you can help or don’t know how, dropping a note or a text and just saying something like “I had you on my mind. Sending my love” is good for you and good for whoever you send it to. Difficult times can make us feel alone and powerless. Your words can help remind you and others that we aren’t.

There’s always someone worse off than you.
So, there’s really no time or use for complaining. When you think of the frustration of a pandemic and how bad that seems for you, you can also think of your friend and classmate who lost everything in a tornado just weeks before. If you will pause and open yourself to empathy, you will always find someone whose situation makes yours seem relatively manageable. Then, you can ask: how can I help?

Friends matter.
Our friends tell us something about who we are and where we’ve come from, and when our basic way of life gets disrupted and our sense of who we are and why we are comes into question, connecting with friends can be critically grounding. It matters even if it is virtual.

Physical health and mental health are closely related.
Getting up every morning feeling isolated takes its toll on a spirit. No amount of food or drink or vice of any sort can rejuvenate the spirit. Such things can soothe temporarily, but they cannot re-spirit us from the inside out. A few minutes of yoga, a walk, a bike ride, a short run, whatever it is - physical health doesn’t have to be long or complicated. Every little bit helps, and it helps our minds as much or more than our bodies.

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Discovering Uranus

A crushing sweetness

Podcast: Fortune's Path - why being wrong helps make us right

When a penny of value is worth more than a dollar of vision

Educating a Radical - The Kindergarten Edition

Presence in a time of...

Light Inside

Glad she got the last word

7 More Things I Hope My Kids Are Learning During the Pandemic

10 Things I Hope My Kids Are Learning During the Pandemic (so far)

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