Tonight, my two youngest children engaged in a conversation about what they think happens to you after you die. More accurately, it was about what they hope happens after you die. All of their hopes and wishes were centered around being able to still see and spend time with their family, whether reliving the best moments with them, still being able to observe and even help the living ones, or being reunited with the ones who have gone before.

I also don’t know what happens after we die. But what’s happening right now, while we’re still alive, is a greater blessing than I could ever have imagined.

Whatever normal humans have in their brains that connects to drugs to give them a euphoric feeling of absolute bliss isn’t formed correctly in mine. Drugs or alcohol don’t do that to me. What does do that to me is music. Specific kinds of music more than others.

Like seeing Kansas play live, for instance.

Anyway, last night was a heck of a bender. The very best kind!

Find your own euphoria, and find it in a way that doesn’t harm you or others. It’s good to have joy while we’re here. After all, all we are is dust in the wind.

It costs nothing to be polite, but it’s not impolite to point out when someone is harming you and ask them to stop. They may take offense, but taking offense doesn’t mean it was given. Sometimes you simply have to walk away.

Yesterday I got to read “Green Eggs & Ham” to a group of preschoolers that contained my adorable niece. They were enraptured; what a wonderful audience! Chiming in with me on key words, laughing at my silly voices, talking about their own experiences trying new foods. Wonderful children!

My father used to read that book, doing impersonations of John Wayne and James Cagney for the voices. I can’t do those; I was doing an impression of him doing those voices, as best as I could.

My father love the joy of children, and I’m happy to say he gave me that blessing as well.

Some actions are good precisely because they make us do things we don’t want to do.

“Don’t go to bed mad” is good advice because it forces you to talk about your feelings instead of ignoring them and letting problems fester. You don’t want to do that. You want to hold a grudge. But it’s better if you don’t, so we make little rituals. Breaking bread with your enemies. Smiling in the mirror.

Hatred, bitterness, even just grumpiness – they feel good. The things that caused them don’t, but the feelings themselves are alluring. But the truly good feelings are better, so we make our rituals.

Normal reflections are a tiny bit dimmer than the thing they’re reflecting, no matter how shiny the surface. They can’t reflect light 100% perfectly, so even if a little tiny bit is lost each time, the reflections will eventually end. That’s why fun-house mirror halls don’t truly go on forever and seem to darken in the distance.

Love need not be like this. You can reflect it a little brighter than what shines on you.

Step 1: Have children.

Step 2: Take a true, deep, honest, soul-searching accounting of your flaws. The things you wish were different. You can “woe is me” here all you like – blame the world, blame your upbringing. Don’t look for solutions. Just make sure you have an honest list of your worst traits.

Step 3: Raise your children to not have those traits. Whatever you said “If only I’d been raised differently…” do that. Blame your parents, go nuts. Just, if you do, make sure you parent your own kids the opposite way.

Step 4: Don’t be a hypocrite. If you tell your children not to do X while you do X, they’ll ignore your words and copy your actions. So as part of raising your kids not to have negative trait X, you have to do everything in your power to suppress that trait in yourself, or you fail at Step 3.

Step 5: Realize that you’ve made tremendous progress in fixing that thing in yourself while simultaneously doing your best to prevent it from ever even developing in your children.

Siblings are a tremendous blessing. As a child, they provide so much benefit – companionship and understanding, but even the tough moments are so good for you. Learning to resolve conflict and compromise, learning to share space with someone who isn’t exactly like you, these are essential elements of a happy and productive adult life.

If you can give siblings, do! And if you don’t have siblings yourself – become one. Nothing stops you from being that close and that loyal, and seeking the same. I’ve had more siblings than my blood sister, and I’ve been glad of all of them.

Happy birthday to my wonderful blood sister, though!

There’s a game kids play (made up by exhausted adults, I’m sure), called “The Quiet Game.” The rules are simple – the last person to make any noise is the winner.

Kids who can’t be quiet for thirty seconds otherwise will last hours at this game. I’ve seen it.

Games sharpen our skills, skills of all kinds. Games where you can lie or bluff make us better at reading people, and races make us both quicker and aware of our endurance. Games of skill sharpen our strategic insights, and games of chance help our risk assessment.

Play is good. Do more of it.

If you make a loud noise when you sneeze, you can change what noise you make. You can should “hadouken!” Try it, it’s super fun.

But the point is, we have a lot of reflexive actions. Sometimes the reflex is just to take an action, any action. You might have as easy of a time fighting the reflex as you would just changing the default action.