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Rebooting Oneself
Decades ago, I was walking my dog after a hard rain and I slipped on a wet, grassy slope. My feet flew above my head. I went down hard. I mean, really, really hard. It knocked the wind out of me. As I helplessly slid down the hill, everything went bright white. I couldn’t see,…
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Mourning the Imperfect
We’re told it’s impolite to speak ill of the dead, but that makes mourning most people extremely difficult. Nobody’s perfect, and this habit we have of trying to sanctify people simply because they’ve done the one thing that we will all do eventually, which is shuffle off this mortal coil, means that there are whole…
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Spiritual Residue
Have you ever noticed that when a toxic coworker goes on vacation, the atmosphere at work visibly lightens? People are more relaxed. They are more prone to smile and be lighthearted. You actually hear laughter in the workplace again. On the other hand, there are some people that can make you smile when you merely…
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Please Like Me
I work with someone who doesn’t hide the fact that she doesn’t like me at all. Her perception of who I am is so far from my actual motivations that it baffles me. It’s as if when she looks at me she sees someone else entirely, and that person is despicable. It’s a shame, too,…
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Human Signposts
As you walk your path in life, you’ll come across many intersections and forks in the road, and you’ll have to make decisions. Sometimes you won’t even know you’re at a crossroad until you look back and realize you’ve negotiated your way through it, or discover to your horror that you’ve gotten off track and…
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On Being a Fish Out of Water
Not fitting in or being uncomfortable is what the expression “like a fish out of water” means. That’s a pity, because if you think about it, a fish out of water is experiencing the ultimate form of enlightenment. If you’ve been in water your entire life, you don’t really realize you’re in water, do you?…
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Human Force Fields
Recently, an employee with a company closely related to mine retired and I kid you not, we all felt as if we’d taken off a shoe that was two sizes too small. The man was toxic, hostile, anal, and completely evil. I’ve never in my life met anyone who was so universally disliked. The day…
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The Return of the Green Monster
I could smell it the other day. Creeping down the river, lapping at the shore. It steals your breath. It burns your skin. It kills the fish, the birds, and the plants. It makes you sick. The green monster first appeared in significant size in Jacksonville in 2005, and it was bad. I mean, bad.…