It was late at night. I was reminiscing on old high-school videos about time travel and such. The videos ended and I was desiring more to entertain myself before falling asleep. I saw a video posted by some channel about moms, entitled something similar to “relationship troubles.” It was intriguing enough so I watched. I cringed a bit listening to the first few minutes of a bunch young mothers talking about relationships, but kept watching, possibly out of being a bit delusionally sleepy, or I guess it was an interesting enough conversation to keep my attention.

Anyways, one of the moms was explaining the process of her getting divorced. The couple, after a recent marriage and new baby, was going through a dry season. They had both suddenly realized it, and she explained how in one conversation, she may have just mentioned something that planted a seed of opportunity in both of their minds to call the whole thing off. The interesting piece to me has nothing to do with babies, marriage, or whatever (though practical still). I was mainly struck by that idea. She said something like, “so what.. do you not want to leave?” Apparently he had not thought it, but over a month or two things changed and he did decide to call it off. She said how she looked back and wondered if those few words gave him a go ahead to actually think about it.

In her case and in many it may or may not be true—something may have been inevitable regardless of a few words. But it’s interesting how that works—how it works everywhere, in and within all of humanity collectively and between two people. Cool people don’t want to admit that they’re influenced by others. Or maybe, truly cool people do admit that they’re totally influenced by everything around them. A true human being must admit his humanity. Otherwise you’re committing a great evil which will be ripped away the day you die. I suppose that last part was a semi unrelated side note. Anyways, it’s a crazy idea. One word here may trigger a subtle spark of hope, humor, or connection. And a different word there may trigger dissension, offensiveness, sour feelings, or the spark that leads to the plight of a relationship.

I’ve seen just a couple words go a long way in doing some damage. Damage that can often be solved by a conversation or two. But sometimes it lingers and you can’t get rid of it. It did something. Thus is life I suppose—a story. And maybe thus is the call to maintain a bit more optimism.

To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!
- Solomon

All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired.
-GK

While standing in line waiting with hundreds of others as the sun was rising for the doors of a book sale to open, a friend says to me, “Do you ever wonder why God loves us?” Explaining her thought process as we looked out into the crowd of quirky weirdos standing around with suitcases (to fill with books) and blankets and tired eyes. And no offense to you if you hear me saying this because I understand what you meant, and I think it’s (sort of) true. Right after she said that I thought of a sentence I was just reading from Tremendous Trifles [...]
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I saw a post online from Tremendous Trifles by GK and realized I was overdue to read some more of him.  I started reading the preface and thought I’d share it. This is so fantastic:

These fleeting sketches are all republished by kind permission of the Editor of the DAILY NEWS, in which paper they appeared. They amount to no more than a sort of sporadic diary–a diary recording one day in twenty which happened to stick in the fancy–the only kind of diary the author has ever been able to keep. Even that diary he could only keep by keeping it in public, for bread and cheese. But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader’s eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as “The Bed-Post; Its Significance–Security Essential to Idea of Sleep–Night Felt as Infinite–Need of Monumental Architecture,” and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. “The Window-Blind–Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil–Is Modesty Natural?–Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc.” None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don’t let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.

I just watched a very enjoyable TED talk about an atheist who has a proposal that atheists begin to implement some good practices from religions. You can listen to it here (20 minutes), or read some snippets I took from their transcript [...]
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