Posts tagged as "humanity" - Chris Hardie

I think I've raved here some before about the someecards website and how lovely I think it is.  I have to stay away from drinking liquids when reading it lest I spray said liquid all over the screen in choking laughter.  Many of the cards you can send are hilarious because they so concisely encapsulate some of the more crude or dark thoughts that pass through the human mind now and then, and in a way that somehow brilliantly echo my own sense of humor.  That's maybe not such a good thing...some...

These "links for the week" posts are a lame substitute for real blog posts, but I hope you enjoy them anyway. I'm working on some other entries about my experience with "power off day," my preferred task list organization system (it's NOT GTD), the difficulties of personal change in a vacuum, and more on media coverage of energy prices - so stay tuned. But for now: Smaller Indiana, a social networking site for Indiana people, with an apparent trend toward IT/design professionals. It's built...

Every day, most humans are faced with choices, many of which are about making changes, taking on new directions, starting new journeys, facing up to problems, communicating honestly with each other, finding better ways to live. What are some of the mental barriers that keep us from taking on the things we want to do in our lives? What keeps us from choosing a better way? A) Fear of Failure Perhaps the most common - our sense that because there is a chance we will not succeed at the changes...

I think that one of the hardest things a person can be asked to do is confront the value of their own life weighed against that of the world around them. But we see the tensions of this confrontation everywhere - balancing our self-interest against our service to others; balancing our concept of the good life against the survival of other species and the environment they live in; balancing our intense love for a small group of people against the thousands of neglected and unloved that die in some...

The boy, trying to ignore the reoccurring dull pain in his left side, brought his hands together in front of his face, and held them there, barely touching. He moved his index fingers together and smiled at the brief moment before they touched, when each seemed to gently reach out to the other, attracting and pulling and melting into the moment of contact. The girl, several hundred miles away and an hour from the nearest hospital, dropped her shovel and fell back into the sand screaming in terror...

It seemed to be all my friend Eppie could remember about her father's death: the Ten minutes right before it. She had watched him die for months and had grieved for years afterward but the climax of the "event" as she remembered it was never the moment of death itself, but the Ten minutes beforehand. It always seemed odd to me that Ten minutes of life would mean more than the life lost, but the wistful stare in Eppie's eyes when we talked about it brought me closer to understanding. You see, in those...