It must have been an enormous relief—or perhaps even a surprise then—for a young Theodore Roosevelt to hear from his father when he was entering Harvard to “take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.” Because pretty every parent for all-time has accidentally emphasized very different priorities day to day….

With bills to pay or traffic to wait through, a colicky baby or a resentful teenager, it can be hard to feel it. It can be hard to feel that the moment right in front of you is a gift. But indeed, these are wonderful moments. “Always hold fast to the present,” Goethe said. “Every…

You’re trying to teach them that punctuality is important, but in practice, it’s more a lesson in anxiety. You’re trying to teach them not to do something dangerous, but because you got upset and angry, what you really made them feel was that you were dangerous, that you were not safe. You’re trying to get…

They can’t tell, you know. They can’t tell that you’re joking. They don’t understand that sometimes you just need to vent. They don’t know that you and your spouse are frustrated together, rather than at each other. No one informs them that the two of you made up later, when you actually were fighting. They…

The great physicist Richard Feynman had a father who instilled his brilliant son with an interesting perspective about the world. Sitting down, he would lay the newspaper out on the table and ask his boy questions about what they saw and read. Once, when they came upon a photo of the Pope blessing a group…

If it’s hard for most parents not to push their beliefs on their kids, imagine what it must be like for a bishop. Obviously they believe very deeply in something—so deeply that they have dedicated their lives to it. And they’re just supposed to let their kids figure it out for themselves? Well… yeah. As…

It wasn’t the album his label wanted. It wasn’t the album they expected. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska was about as unusual and unexpected of an album that an up-and-coming rockstar could have possibly turned in, Warren Zanes explains in his fascinating book about the album, Deliver Me From Nowhere. Bruce had recorded it by himself, in…

When we were kids, it was easy to have a passing interest. We had phases. We fell for fads. We were exposed to new things—art, music, ideas, people—and we could explore them and abandon them if we learned they weren’t for us. Many of those things now seem like the distant past to us, because…

The need to understand that it’s never over. Not playtime, sometimes that does end. And yes, sometimes things do end—relationships, opportunities, phases of life. But their ability to succeed? Their ability to start over and regroup and try again? This is something that they always have the chance to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his…

In one of F. Scott Fitzerald’s funniest short stories, “Head and Shoulders,” a certifiable genius falls in love with a showgirl. The plot and moral of the story aren’t relevant for today’s email—though the story is highly recommended—instead there is a little passage in it that introduces a concept that is worth thinking about: “I…