What happens when success demands too much? Stephen reflects on the story of Dan, a successful banker faced with a choice between climbing the corporate ladder and being present for his sons. It’s a reminder that sometimes our priorities become clearest when we’re forced to decide what—and who—matters most.

Transcript:I met Dan at an agency for homeless teenagers. I knew this full-time volunteer had achieved a high level of success in banking only to take a year’s leave to work with desperate kids. Late one night I asked him why. Dan said it came down to an exchange with his boss one Friday afternoon. Dan had promised himself he would spend Saturday with his two sons whom he rarely saw and sorely missed. His boss said an important meeting had been called for ten the next morning. Dan told him he promised the day to his boys. His boss immediately shot back that if Dan wished to stay part of the team, he’d have to change his attitude. If he was really serious about his career, his boys would have to raise themselves. However, Dan would be the best damn provider they could ever want or need! Dan said that when it was put to him that way, his decision was really quite easy. His life issues had never been in sharper focus. He was grateful for the opportunity to say that on Saturday he would be playing hardball on another field.

From the surprisingly early beginnings of puberty to our culture’s fascination with adults who behave like children, Stephen reflects on how little we truly understand about human development—and wonders whether our greatest breakthrough might be learning why growing older doesn’t always mean growing up.

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I don’t know if it’s good news or bad, but I’ve read that scientists report that contrary to everyday wisdom, the onslaught of puberty may actually begin around the age of 7 or so. Evidence suggests that like most other aspects of human development, sexuality is more a process than an event that hits around the age of thirteen. And scientists say that process beings in middle childhood with a shift in hormone balances. Come to think of it, this could account for my infatuation with my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Coy, whose name had a striking resonance with her manner. I don’t know whether this window into human maturation leads to any breakthroughs in medicine, teaching or parenting, but with it I’m reminded how very little we really know about very many things. What I long for is the day our scientists can provide a bit of wisdom on why our culture is infatuated with seemingly fully developed adults who act out with about the same amount of maturity as seven-year-olds. Now that would be a real breakthrough!

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Stephen reflects on the fear, anger, and profound vulnerability exposed by that terrible day—and on what 25 years of rebuilding can teach us now. From the collapse of our illusions of power and invulnerability to the remarkable renewal of New York City, this reflection asks where our truest strength is found. The past does not have to dictate our future. Even from the rubble, life can emerge—and life and love will have the day, if we choose them.

9/11

The 25th anniversary of “9/11” triggers the terrible memory of a beautiful, cloudless Tuesday morning turned ugly by billowing stacks of smoke erupting from the tip of my island home. Within hours a silent, soot-besmeared remnant from lower Manhattan slowly walked north on avenues eerily bereft of cars, and then, nothing. Silence—the city was silent -- except for low streaking fighter jets searching for unknown enemies. It was as though we Manhattanites had collectively stepped through the scrim of a post-apocalyptic film for real.

With the distance of 25 years, we’ve gained at least a little clarity on how the initial all-for-one, one-for all communal bonding, gave way to unbridled anger and disorientation that shaped our civic life into a hugely mistaken forever-war. In the meantime, I’ve been aware that a profound spiritual truth exposed on that day strains to remain in our conscious awareness. This truth is revealed in the targets themselves: two of the then mightiest symbols of power and wealth in the world were brought crashing down to their foundations.

In the world’s financial capital no amount of money made any difference at all as the towers fell. None. No accomplishment, no fame or notoriety, no amount of preplanned security, no level of striving for comfort, no access to power—none of this made the slightest bit of difference when the towers came down in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the world. The most impressive and powerful works of humanity mattered nothing at all, which deeply unnerved those who thought our power and might had made us invulnerable. And that loss of control and veneer of invulnerability fed our collective anger, to our moldering detriment, since we’re now chewing our democracy to bits in amplified waves of anger, resentment and tribalism.

The spiritual truth that’s still available to us remembering that terrible day is the recognition that our truest strength is, and always has been, located somewhere else. Humanity’s originating heresy has always been idolatry, and its modern companion, narcissism. As David Foster Wallace famously and wisely observed with graduating collegiates some years ago: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

But here’s another truth. In the 25 years since, Manhattan’s entire Westside from the George Washington Bridge to the World Trade Center site has been transformed. Cranes and development everywhere. Housing and neighborhoods sprouting where only rotting docks and shipyards and derelict buildings had defined the riverside. The austere and lifeless canyons once known as the financial district have been entirely remade into residential communities with grocery stores and playgrounds. It is pricey real estate to be sure--there’s a whole lot of work to be done on that economic front. But still, out the rubble, life erupted.

Newcomers and GenZers will take this for granted. Old-timers can only marvel at the signs of life renewed. Here’s the lesson: There is always, always, tomorrow, and then the day after that, which, for the spiritually alert also points to the location of our truest strength, to the author of life and love and energizing hope as antidote to our crippling narcissism.

Here’s the takeaway: Life and love will have the day, if we choose it. That they’re woven into the fabric of creation--even in you and me--is what I believe. Despite current conditions, we have been given agency to participate in framing our future. The past does not dictate how we’ll choose to live in the present moment. Look about and everywhere there’s opportunity to participate in reweaving the fabric of our human community. Right where each one of us lives. Right there.

A single movie, a curious mind, and the encouragement of a gifted teacher can alter the course of a life. Reflecting on his first encounter with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stephen remembers the mentors who awakened his love of ideas and set him on a path of lifelong learning—and offers a heartfelt tribute to the teachers who continue to cultivate curiosity in the next generation.

It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school, 1968. My brother was home from the Air Force Academy, and we wandered into a brand new, big screen, cinemascope blockbuster called 2001: A Space Odyssey. I didn’t know what I was going to see that night, and I can’t say what, exactly, happened to me in the theater, but I left different than when I entered. Shaken, bewildered, astonished. Not quite sixteen years old, I was ripe for a kick-in-the-head experience that could awaken my capacity to think big and bold. And this movie proved just the ticket. Already an active reader, ideas began to capture and excite my attention as never before. That fall a young English teacher picked up on my newfound mental agitation and rose to his mentoring heights in planting the seeds that kept this young guy thinking right through to the present moment. His name was Rick Berkoff and unfortunately died too soon 15 years ago. But I became an instant fan of science fiction, which in turn spurred an interest in novels and nonfiction of every sort. Through the alchemy of a raw, awakened mind and the initial commitment of a mentor, I was set on a path of lifelong learning.

This memory returned to me with this summer’s release of Christopher Nolan’s IMAX blockbuster Odysseus, which, I confess, I’ve not yet seen. But, reading about Nolan’s directorial style and intent, I’m guessing volumes of the original story are flying off the shelves of booksellers everywhere, some of which have likely fallen into the hands of curious teenagers.

With the end of summer comes the start of a new school year and I’m filled with warm gratitude for the long line of mental mentors who cultivated my curiosity over the years. I don’t know who I would have become without them. Teachers are an essential component of our national infrastructure holding immense responsibility for the mentoring of our children. And God knows they have a complicated time of it these days. I hold them in very high regard. And I make it a practice, in a quiet moment of spiritual reflection, to say the names aloud of the those who’ve been important to me over the years, as I’m now sharing with you.

In this reflective episode, Stephen considers what it means to truly “take care of business” in a life. Inspired by a friend confronting grief and his own birthday, he asks a simple but searching question: If our lives ended today, could we say we had faced the difficult inner work presented to us? A meditation on mortality, peace, and living with fewer things left unresolved.

Transcript:Over the years I’ve been privy to crucial moments in people’s lives. Births, weddings, various life events, and, of course, death. I have always considered this a very, very great privilege. It has kept me close to things that really matter, close to a wide arc of profound human experience. Recently I spoke with someone who’s good friend was in the final stage of an advanced cancer. This 50ish-year-old acquaintance has been very emotionally attentive and caring. A reflective person, she said that her friend’s premature end was causing her to think about her own life, and it occurred to her that if she herself were to die today, that she could honestly say she had, in her words, “taken care of business.” That is, she had addressed most of the difficult, personal work that had been presented to her in her lifetime thus far. Not perfectly, she added, but sufficiently. After sitting with that for a moment I said that must give her a great sense of peace. She said the awareness came as little gift while processing her grief. /// As the timing turns out, I’m now composing this reflection on my birthday which is far closer to my final one than my first, and I’m wondering if I have “taken care of business.” In the deafening silence I realize this is a question worth holding on to... it will surely accompany me during my long walks in the woods ahead...

The story of Grandma Moses is a powerful reminder that our limitations don’t have to define what comes next. Reflecting on her remarkable late-in-life discovery alongside the wisdom of Viktor Frankl, Stephen explores one of our most enduring human freedoms: the ability to choose how we respond to whatever circumstances life puts before us.

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Perhaps you know this story of challenging inspiration. I think it bears repeating. Anna Mary Robertson worked as a so-called, “hired girl” on a farm. She met and married a hired hand on that farm by the name of Tom Moses. They moved to a farm of their own and raised ten children. Anna loved to do needlework, but as she became older, her hands stiffened with arthritis. So she decided to try painting and found she could handle the paintbrush more easily. One day an art collector passed through her small town and saw her paintings in a drugstore. She had been discovered--at 77 years of age. She continued to paint until several months before her death at 101. Why do we now have the wonderful paintings by Grandma Moses each now valued upwards of two million dollars? Her hands were too stiff to embroider. Have you been thinking that maybe you’re too old, too young, too poor, too much in pain, too anything at all, to get unstuck from your present circumstance?

The wisdom of Holocaust survivor, Victor Fankl, has resonance here. He wrote: We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way... Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

Choice is a powerful human tool. Perhaps the most powerful there is. And the beauty of it is, it’s available to everyone, everywhere, in every circumstance.

A childhood memory of catching frogs becomes a lasting lesson about cruelty, compassion, and the choices that shape who we become. Stephen reflects on the small moments that awaken our moral awareness—and reminds us that every choice we make about how we treat the world around us carries consequence.

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On a long walk in the woods recently, I arrived at a marshy pond holding a chorus of bull frogs. I spied a comfortable place to sit on a log propped on a boulder where I could wallow in the calming effect of the lazy croaking. But after a short while a memory came to mind of how, as a young boy, I’d scour a stream’s edge hunting for frogs. The fun was all in the catching. Once in hand, the frog lost its appeal, so I’d grant its freedom and search for another willing to give a good chase. Timmy had other ideas. When Timmy caught frogs, he liked to squeeze them sideways forcing their wide mouths to open so he could pour gravel down their throats. I went frogging with Timmy exactly one time. Catch, fill with stones, toss away, cackle with glee, times ten. Though I was inarticulate then, Timmy’s actions brought me to an awareness of the range of choices we humans have, as though a little lightbulb had been turned on in some dark corner. I remember the incident clearly all these many years later. It was only frogs you might be thinking, but as the years have passed, I have met my share of adult Timmys who have found far bigger prey than frogs. Just as with that early glimmering, I’m reminded that at every turn in my life, in every moment, small or large, I have choices to make about how I intend to live in the world, and those choices have moral consequence.

In this reflective episode, Stephen Bauman explores the quiet moments that truly shape our lives. While birthdays, milestones, and major celebrations have their place, it is the unplanned conversations, shared walks, and everyday acts of presence that leave the deepest mark. A thoughtful invitation to slow down, pay attention, and invest in the relationships that matter most.

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Parents of young children balance the demands of career and family life with varying degrees of success. Many plan around milestone events such as birthdays, yet they often overlook the fact that the most meaningful moments with children usually happen in small, unplanned ways. A walk to the store or a bedtime conversation can matter a whole lot more than a lifetime of expensive, carefully planned birthday parties. Brooding over the course of her life, Susan B. Anthony observed that “Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones—not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit, and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.” There’s good counsel here for parents. But then, since Anthony never had children of her own, her wisdom emerged from a lifetime of paying attention to the things that matter most. It’s probably worth repeating in these days of astonishing distraction that meaningful human relationship requires physical, that is, in person, time and attention. Time and attention -- the result of a grounding attitude and lifestyle, and not so much by occasionally marking the calendar of obligation.

This being my birthday month, it occurs to me that though I’ve had many a fun party--’cause I do like parties--nothing has defined my life more than the hours I’ve spent walking the woods or streets of New York, and most importantly, the “ambling stray dog” time with family, friends and so many others in conversation about the things that matter most.

A near-collision on a New York City street becomes an unexpected mirror for our own lives. Reflecting on outrage, anger, and the divisions that shape our daily interactions, Stephen explores how easily we lose sight of one another's humanity—and why practicing compassionate regard may be one of the most important disciplines for living well in turbulent times.

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Walking to a doctor’s appointment in New York I was lost in thought about the current state of our democracy. I admit I was highly agitated and muttering under my breath. So only semiconscious of my surroundings, I stepped off the curb into the street as a car was making a left turn. It screeched to a halt just inches from my knees, and like a startled deer, I manage to look up in stupefaction, stunned and uncomprehending. The driver of what I now saw was a big Mercedes with blacked out windows leaned out of his open window and screamed a string of deafening epithets, paused and concluded with a well-punctuated, “Go to effing hell!” Now I think I’m a reasonably thick-skinned person, but that day I was caught off guard by the evident violence in the man who nearly ran me down. In fact, I rather suspect he wished he had. I know, because sometimes I’ve been sitting in the same seat, if not the very same car. Funny, how when I’m behind the wheel, pedestrians are annoying as hell, but when I’m walking it’s the drivers who ought to have their licenses revoked. Have you ever noticed that annoying irony?

This story comes to mind to share given the agitated state of many of us much of the time these days. I’m thinking that in the meantime of our daily today, its especially useful to maintain the discipline of compassionate regard for others while acknowledging our own propensity for extravagant outrage.

What kind of people are we becoming—and who is shaping the next generation? After a candid conversation with a thoughtful fifteen-year-old, Stephen reflects on the quiet erosion of virtues like integrity, courage, compassion, and mercy. Drawing on a moving passage from The Chosen by Chaim Potok, he asks a pressing question: if character is formed through the examples we witness, where are today's young people learning what truly matters? This episode is an invitation to consider the values we're modeling and the legacy we're leaving behind.

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Several friends were having a heated after-dinner discussion concerning the state of certain historic values within our culture. You know, things like integrity, courage, compassionate regard for others...things like that. A variety of opinions were shared, but all of them expressed deep, even searing, concern for the future. Quietly, but attentively sitting throughout this agitated conversation was a young man, 15 years old, who finally just blurted out that he attended a prestigious private school with the children of powerful, connected families, and if they reflected the future of values in our nation, then we were in a hell of a lot of trouble. His passionate outburst brought us to a stunned silence. In his book The Chosen, author Chaim Potok depicts a father’s recollections of his early years with his son, wanting desperately to instill the importance of building a life on the things that matter most: “A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and to carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!” Back at dinner, after the teenager’s outburst, my friends and I set to wondering in a more subdued manner, where that sort of mentoring was taking place. At home? School? Where, exactly, was it being modeled? Parents? Government? Teachers? TikTok? The fundamental infrastructure of our national life is built person by person. Just who is doing the building today--and how?