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2024 was a doozy. In fact, I heard a lot of griping last year about the dire state of things. Yes, we're facing a lot of challenges. So what are we going to do about it in 2025? Where do we start? 

With good, old-fashioned conversation, guided by three key principles...

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This time of year, we spend a lot of off-key caroling on songs about joy. The savior is here, we sing! Let's celebrate! 

But do we know what that joy really means? I'm not sure I do. Which is why I took a trip to the Bethlehem of Jesus' birth...

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For C.S. Lewis, life looked a lot like a wandering path — one with twists, turns, and obstacles, but always open to the sun. I think, rather, that a labyrinth is a better metaphor. Visibility is poor, we're frequently lost, and there's little sense of what the "end" looks like. 

So what keeps us going?

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I saw the word "free" bandied about often in my food writing days — free meals, free booze, free trips. Inevitably, restaurants took advantage of the old aphorism, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." They claimed that yes, in fact, free lunch was possible — and on offer, provided patrons bought something more expensive first.

This has made me highly skeptical. I now struggle to believe the hawkers who say they have something for free — and I'm even more skeptical when I offer myself something for free, including the biggies: love, forgiveness, kindness. 

Why is that? When did I become so cynical I couldn't even accept my own free-will love? ... and how do I begin again to see free-will gifts as the better part of our humanity?

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Every so often, I think back to my days in the church. I examine the rituals and symbolism, and I consider them alongside the sometimes painful happenings in the world. There's so much juxtaposition it's — alarming. 

In this episode, I shine a light on just one of those juxtapositions. How stark it seems if you take just a moment to unpack it...

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One of my faves, Robert Frost, once wrote, "A poem is when emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." You could say that was the genesis of this episode: A processing of election angst, global turmoil, and lack of purpose. 

How do you find joy in all of that? You remember where you started before things got complicated. 

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A young man make his way onto a stage. He tells a story, a gut-wrenching story of a best friend who suffered — because of him. And at the end... well, I'll let you decide how it ends. 

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As we age, we lose our "elasticity." Sure, we lose the ability to stretch ourselves physically and bounce back after a strenuous experience, but our mental and emotional selves become less elastic, too. 

I don't know about you, but this is troubling to me. I don't want to be the old man shouting at kids to get off his lawn. I don't want to be so socially exclusive I end up lonely, brittle, stiff. 

So how do I avoid it? How do I retain mental and emotional elasticity into my 50s, 60s, and 70s?

Or can I?

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Everyone approaches midlife reflections differently: indulgent purchases to distract, brooding and isolation, caring less, seizing the day, upending insidious habits. 

As I reflect on the past four decades, I wonder: How is my penchant for rule-following holding me back? What role has it played for me — and for those like me? Should I finally let it die? 

You'll be surprised to know, I wrote a poem to find the answers. 

I'm not sure I like the answers I found.

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Poetry is hard. But so is marriage. What happens when you put the two together? Not good things, I'm afraid...