temparbor

What Is Your Destiny?

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”What is Your Destiny?”]123rf.com[/featured-image] What Is Destiny? People have always lauded me for my transparency and authenticity. It probably seems like searching intensely for ultimate truth is my destiny. But I feel like I just realized at any early age that I’m terrible at hiding my emotions, and terrible at actingContinue reading “What Is Your Destiny?”

The One Thing You Need To Do To Succeed

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false”]123rf.com[/featured-image] I’ll bet there’s something in your life you deeply want to do but you’re afraid you can’t. Or afraid you’ll fail. Or you don’t know where you’ll find the time. Or you’re afraid people will laugh at you. And they may. Or you’re afraid you’re just dreaming and being stupid. OrContinue reading “The One Thing You Need To Do To Succeed”

The God of Kim Davis

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”Kim Davis”]image from gawker media[/featured-image] We used Newtonian physics to formulate the laws of nature. For hundreds of years, that is all there was. Objects could not be in two places at the same time. What goes up must come down. We understood these laws as defining reality itself and believedContinue reading “The God of Kim Davis”

7 Ways to Fight the Stigma of Mental Illness

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”mental illness”]123rf.com[/featured-image] [This topic was requested by one of my regular readers, that is, one of the people who receive this blog via email.] I have been stunned by the ignorance I have encountered since the 2011 suicide attempt of my daughter. Some people said she just did it to getContinue reading “7 Ways to Fight the Stigma of Mental Illness”

“The Sky Is Not Falling!”

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false”]image ©Disney Corporation, 2005[/featured-image] If the line that we see the world not as it is but as we are is true (and I’m convinced it is), there are a lot of dark, fearful, negative, cynical people in the world who look around them and see only despair, only things to fear,Continue reading ““The Sky Is Not Falling!””

How to Listen Well

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”listening man — how to listen well”]123rf.com[/featured-image] In my last post I gave you four reasons why you’re probably a bad listener. At the time of this writing that post has had over 40 shares! I promised you I’d follow up with a post on how to listen well. I hopeContinue reading “How to Listen Well”

Why You’re Probably a Bad Listener

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false”]123rf.com[/featured-image] What is Listening? When I talk about “listening,” I do not mean passively allowing speech to enter your ear canal so that you can respond to it according to whether or not you agree, or with your own stories and perspectives. That’s just hearing, and hearing is biological. But listening is a humanContinue reading “Why You’re Probably a Bad Listener”

Things I’m For

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false”] I’m for equality, for justice for all, for caring about other people above asserting our own rights, for defending what’s good for most people rather than for 1% of us, for an end to bigotry, for kindness, for compassion, for courage, for an absolute commitment to, and unwillingness to shirk from,Continue reading “Things I’m For”

Why the Race Dialogue in America is Going Nowhere Fast

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”dialogue — two men arguing”]123rf.com[/featured-image] Foreword: This piece speaks of “black America” and “white America.” Someone has recently read the piece and observed that though these two groups are far from monolithic, I write here as though each group has a single point of view. Though I recognize this, and obviously I cannotContinue reading “Why the Race Dialogue in America is Going Nowhere Fast”

How Education Does (and does not) Matter

[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”excellence and education”]123rf.com[/featured-image] Someone said to me recently, after reading my bio attached to a syllabus I had prepared, “Do you think we (she’s a professor as well) come across as egotistical with all the stuff we put in our bios? Should we just teach and let it speak for itself?”Continue reading “How Education Does (and does not) Matter”