Today, multiple things happened that derailed my son’s after-school plans. He had wanted to go to the park with a friend, but the friend was sick, it rained, and the toy we’d ordered that he was going to play with didn’t arrive in time.

Here’s the thing though: any one of those things would have derailed his plans. So all the others were just “free” bad luck! They were misfortunes that didn’t add any additional burden or ruin anything else. One piece of bad luck essentially immunized him from the others!

It can feel overwhelming when multiple bad things happen in quick succession, but often the “concentrated bad luck” is better than the same misfortunes spread out. So enjoy the freedom of a statistically better tomorrow!

My father and I watched the news of Hurricane Katrina together. One particular piece of information caught my father’s attention: with all the damage to infrastructure, most people were without power. Generators were the only source of electricity, but the supply lines for gasoline were similarly hindered. As a result, gasoline was going for more than forty dollars a gallon in that area.

The gears started turning in my father’s head, and he said to me, “You know, if we left in the morning, we could be in New Orleans by tomorrow night. I’ve got the truck and trailer – we could fit probably three or four hundred gallon containers in there and haul ’em down ourselves. After our costs, we could probably still net ten or fifteen grand for a couple of days’ driving.”

It sounded like a great idea to me – we bring gas to people who need it, and we make good money in the process! We set our alarms for early in the morning and hitched the trailer to the truck in preparation for the morning drive.

Except in the morning, the plans changed. A new news story was on that put a stop to our idea. Apparently someone had done exactly that the day before, and had been arrested. Somebody who lived a little closer than we did filled up a truck with gas cans and when he started selling them, he got arrested for violating price-gouging laws.

So a guy who’d done nothing wrong got arrested and lost whatever money he’d sunk in trying to help people, and a bunch of people who needed gas to run generators in a blacked-out city didn’t get it. I’ll never know how many more people might have driven in to help like my father and I were going to had it not been for that effect.

Look, some solutions are messy. Someone hears about gas going for forty dollars a gallon when people need it and they get upset. But gas was that expensive because there was a desperate need for it! That price is exactly the solution; it wouldn’t have stayed at forty dollars for long if people could respond by bringing in gas from other areas like we were going to. Instead, those figurative walls were put up and the shortage – and resulting crisis – lasted weeks. People died.

Solutions to emergencies often look messy. Think about a paramedic cutting the clothes off of a gunshot victim instead of carefully removing them. Yes, you’d prefer the clothes not be destroyed, but that’s not the crisis. It’s just part of the messy – and best – solution.

I am extremely privileged. In terms of the advantages I had in life, I could scarcely have asked for a better deal. Of course, of the many blessings I enjoyed, all paled in comparison to the greatest one: I had dedicated parents who loved me.

I say this not to gloat (though I’m happy to brag about the wonderful people who raised me) but to make a joyful point. Of all the advantages life can offer, this one can be given by anyone. And it will matter more than the rest combined.

If you want your children to have a wonderful life, you can. Just be the best parent you can be. And I will give you one clear directive on how to do that – find someone whose path in life seems similar to what you want for your children, and then go meet their parents. Find as many good parents as you can this way, and model their behaviors.

If your parents were less than stellar, don’t harbor resentment. Forgive and move on, because they were just people. But don’t try to just do the opposite of what they did. The opposite of bad isn’t always good – sometimes it’s just a different kind of bad. Instead, find good role models for parenting, and make that your whole focus.

If you do that, you break the cycle. Your kids will grow up to say the same thing about you as I say about my mother and father. And they deserve it.

(This is a sequel to Pits & Mountains, so read that first!)

If you have a pit mindset and your life is okay, you are probably going to have a very hard time developing close relationships with people who have a mountain mindset.

If you have a mountain mindset, a “good” relationship of any kind is a foundation to build upon. You want to progress it and improve it. You want to deepen your connection or improve how you interact. No matter what kind of relationship it is – working, familial, romantic – you see the opportunity for a stronger bond that comes from putting in the intentional effort.

Pit mindset people don’t see the need – or they see the potential as too fraught with peril to attempt. Why do something that might mess up what you already have?

If both people have pit mindsets, that might work fine. But someone with a mountain mindset is going to be dissatisfied or even frustrated by the other person’s lack of effort and investment.

No way is inherently right – do what works for you and your relationship. But if you’re seeing it strain, ask yourself if your methods of travel are mismatched!

Any time you find yourself fighting against an annoying tide of the same seemingly never-ending problem, you might be looking at the wrong mess.

If your kitchen counter is constantly cluttered and you’re constantly moving things around, the problem isn’t the counter. It might be the other cabinets in the kitchen, or it might be just that you have too much stuff in general. But the counter is the symptom, not the core mess.

Now think about that with larger things – your relationships, your career, your health. Are you constantly getting sick and having to buy cold medicine and miss work? Then colds aren’t the core mess – some aspect of your health or environment is. Are you having the same fight with a loved one over and over? Then that fight is a symptom; the core mess is something else.

Look deeper – what causes the same little problem over and over? What would have to change in order for that little annoyance to become a rarity? That’s your core mess – put your effort into that. Approach that with intentionality, even if it might seem harder or more complicated to solve initially. It probably will be! But it will be worth it.

Sometimes you sit down to sketch or jot down some ideas, and the very first few lines you put to the page just aren’t right. You know they aren’t right, and they’ll hinder what you’re trying to do.

It’s okay to crumple up the paper and toss it. Start over. Paper is cheap! Being chained to bad ideas is very costly.

This is true of just about everything in life. Very few mistakes are so costly that you should chain yourself to them because you can’t afford to try again.

Sometimes, a man will find a hole. It’s in his path, within his domain, and it’s harmful. Maybe it’s dangerous, maybe it’s just in the way. As a man is wont to do, he begins to fill it.

The man doesn’t need the hole to thank him. He doesn’t need it to repay him somehow. All the man wants is to see the hole actually getting smaller.

Even if the hole could talk – even if it could thank the man for his efforts, tell him how good he’s doing, maybe even do some task for him in return – it means nothing if the hole isn’t filling up, getting smaller.

Few things are as breaking.

My eldest daughter has been a teenager for two months. In that time, she’s performed a live concert with her garage band, gotten a major role in her theater’s next production, and won an academic award. Teenage suits her very well, it seems!

All of these things are “extra” things – things she’s gone out of her way to pursue herself. Nobody made her do any of this. She’s trying on new facets of her identity every day (she’s also in Girl Scouts and Track & Field, plus draws or paints for an hour or more each day) and that pattern has been delightful to watch.

She’s strong, courageous, sure of herself, clever, and charismatic. I’m incredibly proud of her. And the best part is that with each new thing, she excitedly rushes to share it with me. On top of everything else, she’s devoted to her family. I took her out to dinner tonight to celebrate all her wins, and she chose the restaurant her siblings like as the location.

Fatherhood is joy!

Sometimes you need to know that everything might not be okay. And that’s okay.

Look, sometimes things will go wrong! You can’t prevent it, and trying will make you miserable. A general sense of calm, reasonably competent preparedness, and an adaptable spirit will serve you much better than a series of increasingly niche preventative measures for disasters you can’t possibly predict.

So cultivate an openness to the future, even if that future is wild and dangerous. All the fun stuff is on the other side of the messy parts, anyway!

Today was a day filled with chaos. It was very much the fun kind of chaos, even though I knew it would be a bit on the overwhelming side. When faced with that kind of a day, I’ve only found one mental preparation technique that lets me navigate it all with calm and poise.

Right from the start, I give the whole day to the madness & antics.

I say to myself: “Today is about fun. Nothing will get accomplished today. People will get messy, and they will stay messy. They won’t eat healthy, and they’ll go to bed late. One day of that is okay – even good. Embrace the chaos.”

And it works. A day of madness is fun now and then – with the right mindset.