Communication
Time we stopped mixing up the two concepts What’s simple is not necessarily easy. Everyone kind of knows this, but people still get the two mixed up. And with good reason, considering that both are about ease. So what’s the difference? Here’s a helpful way to think
Human nature
A riff off of that Simon Sinek video So I just (finally!) watched this 15-minute Simon Sinek video on millennials [1], and what’s wrong with them. Sinek [2] makes a number of great points in the video, which overall is a critique of millennials and how we are disconnecting
Communication
A poem No one is an island, they say but they lie, for what else are we? Bounded by our hard egos and separated by a vast sea of sheer individuality. Yet, we are not isolated for from island to island leaky boats incessantly float on currents of speech piloted
Empathy
(Bonus: an exercise to go with it that you can do with kids) Early on in my psychiatry training, I was exposed to two concepts that never actually came up in any exams. But they stuck in my head, because they helped make sense of something I’d observed as
Christianity
Some encouragement for we the easily distracted This one is for all the people who can’t seem to focus during worship in church. We know ourselves. It’s not everyday, but there are those days. You want to pay attention, but there’s just too much going on in
Empathy
A meditation on “dark” subjects I often think about what others consider dark topics. Pain. Suffering. Death. Evil. And I’m not just interested in them for their own sake — which is why I don’t consider my interest morbid (as some have described it), but rather for the questions
Communication
A meditation on sticks, stones and words Harsh criticism and real communication have this in common: Both are about nakedness. And yet, they are fundamentally different. Communication is you in charge. You in the presence of someone else (or even a group), but taking off your clothes yourself, perhaps because
Communication
A story about how I became free of this question It’s also a story of how one of the most powerful things anyone ever said to me came out of my mouth. It was a piece of advice I gave a friend, except I’m the one who’s
Human nature
Our young people are being sold a lie “I’m an art/science/commerce student.” What?! It distresses me to hear this statement. And it distresses me not just because the statement is a lie (it is—more on that shortly), but especially because it’s a lie that becomes
Communication
Lessons from Stephen King’s “Needful Things” Just finished Needful Things, by Stephen King, and I’m still reeling. King is truly a king and remains one of my favourite writers ever, since discovering him in secondary school. This 1991 book is a great example of why the King is
Christianity
No, really. I’ll explain. As historical records go, the Bible is pretty weird. I guess I’ve always known that on some level, but it came really clear after I wrote about history and how we get it wrong. In that article, I mentioned Chinua Achebe’s quoting the
Human nature
How I learned to come to terms with the dichotomy There’s a Switchfoot song whose lyrics, when I first heard them, felt like a telling of the story of my life. The Beautiful Letdown Those lines, for me, captured that epiphanic moment when you see something about yourself, and