A meditation on the resurrection

A meditation on the resurrection

When I was twenty years old, I fell in love for the first time. It was the most intense and beautiful thing I had ever experienced. There was only one minor problem: I was struggling with a huge, terrifying, demonic force inside my own self. I’m sure there are many...

Repose

A few days ago I noticed that my Ficus Benjamina had started to sprout tender new leaves. It always happens around this time, and it never ceases to amaze me that during the darkest time of the year here in Iceland, when daylight is considered a luxury,...

The ethical blind spot

Here in Iceland we have a pretty nifty word: siðblinda. The literal translation of siðblinda is “ethical blindness”. Basically it is used to describe people who in English I would classify as either psychopaths or narcissists. The English language...

Us vs. Them

One of the worst things I do is when I start comparing myself to other people. I’m sure we’ve all been there. We look at someone else and see only what they have, and we lack. We become envious. We feel crappy about ourselves, because in the comparison, we...

Through the forest, but not alone

Since I started writing about all this stuff I’ve been writing about, I’ve received a number of messages and emails from people who say they can really relate. Some say that they find my posts hard to read because it mirrors their own experience in a way...

When understanding is overrated

Years ago when I started seeing a shrink, I learned that there are ideal conditions by which a child develops in a healthy way, and when those conditions are thwarted, the child’s development gets derailed. Those ideal conditions presuppose that a child grows up...