There is a popular YouTube celebrity who often makes videos of himself doing charitable or generous things for underprivileged people. The accusation that often gets levied against him is that he’s “just doing these things for clout.” In other words, he’s only doing these good deeds because he can make popular videos about them, increasing his own wealth and status in the process.

Um… good?

People have all sorts of reasons to do the things they do, and not all of them are purely altruistic. In fact, most of them aren’t. But that doesn’t mean that good doesn’t come from those acts.

This goes beyond just charity work in the world, too – it extends to all actions. Maybe you’re trying to work out solely to make it easier for you to pick up singles at the local bar. But in the process, you get healthier and live a longer life where you spend time with your family. It’s okay that your original motivations weren’t so high-minded; good came of it.

Don’t judge others’ motivations too harshly. Don’t judge your own too harshly, either. The world turns on the deeds that get done, not the thoughts that put them there.

I used to snack, a lot. As a younger man I basically always had some kind of food nearby, eschewing larger meals in favor of a constant stream of smaller bites.

First, that’s not very healthy so I’m glad my habits have changed. But they didn’t just change out of a desire for healthier eating, they changed because that no longer appeals to me. Smaller snacks hold very little interest for me; if I eat at all, I prefer a hearty meal. Most days I eat one large meal and that’ll be it for the day.

It’s interesting how that preference translates in other areas of my life. I prefer singular, more meaningful experiences over a collection of smaller ones.

Maybe that’s just natural – and maybe the pattern itself is healthy. At the beginning of your life, it’s good to sample as much as you can. Gather information, learn what you like. As you move on, you get a better sense of what those things are, and you can enjoy them more deeply. Microcosms of this exist any time you pick up a new interest, learn a new hobby, move to a new city.

Sometimes we think we need the constant stream of new experiences. To an extent, you do! Don’t ever let your life have no little bites. But you can slow it down and replace some of that with the heartier meals of life. Enjoy them that much more deeply.

Things go wrong sometimes. You make a mistake, something breaks, a plan falls through. It’s life! Most of the time, you have a Plan B; even if you didn’t have one in advance, one usually presents itself quickly. Need to go to work but you left your headlights on all night so now your battery is dead? Well, you can call a friend, take the bus, summon an Uber, etc.

But let’s say the backup plans have problems, too. No Ubers near you, the bus doesn’t run this way for another hour, and none of your friends are available. I’ll bet as you’re picturing this you can imagine the frustration and how easy it would be to get irritated at the stupid bus company, the lousy rideshare service, or your good-for-nothing “friends.”

People do this all the time. They get mad at the backups. But take a deep breath – the original problem was your fault!

It wasn’t the bus company, Uber driver, or your friends that forgot to put gas in your car. That was you. Frustration is normal, but don’t direct it at people who aren’t at fault for your main problem. That’s not only not helpful, it’s unjust. And it drives away the very people who might be able to help you next time you have a problem.

And they can drive away. Unlike you, they have gas in their car.

My son, who is recently five, just took his first solo trip to the park. Not with his big sisters or with me, just all by himself.

You will take tens of thousands of “first steps” in your life. You will walk places you’ve never walked before. You will walk in a new town, then a new state, then a new country. You might someday walk on a new planet. You will set foot on an airplane for the first time, or you will walk into your first job.

You will take your first steps down the aisle, perhaps. Or you will take your first steps toward the casket of a loved one.

You will march toward a battle for the first time, or you will take your first steps on a dance floor. Your life will be so full of first steps that you couldn’t count them all.

Each step takes you farther than you’ve ever gone before. Each step adds to the total number of steps you’ve taken, and no step detracts. The journey is always additive, the progress always forward.

When you are very lucky, you will be there for the first steps of someone else. Cherish those moments, and cheer for them. This is how we go. This is how we grow.

When I was an adolescent, I did a lot of theater, drama club, things like that. I loved the stage. For the most part, the stage loved me, too – it was easy to be there. I didn’t realize until later what a huge inherent advantage I had as a boy in that space.

If you look at any group of 13-year-old budding thespians, you’re looking at probably 90% girls or more. A handful of boys, tops. This meant, among other things, that it was really easy to audition and get great parts. I’m not a phenomenal actor and can’t sing at all, but I was a rare commodity.

I didn’t realize this was a viable, repeatable tactic at the time, but the lesson is clear now. Go where you’re the rare commodity.

No matter what you want to do, there is some space where that thing is in short supply. And if there isn’t, you can learn what is. Look around for weaknesses, gaps, shortages – and become the thing they need.

There are lots of unemployed people in the US, but there are also lots of open jobs. Why is that? Because some people will always try to sell into a crowded market. It’s human nature. You learned to make gadgets but everyone needs gizmos, but you like making gadgets. Your choice is to either learn to love making gizmos instead, or to keep making gadgets and complaining about the tough gadget market.

Survival is about shifting with the tide. The world is rarely shaped around your specific needs and wants, but you can learn to love lots of things. And few things feel as good as being needed.

Just because something is subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t be wrong about it.

Many things – even important things! – are subjective and hard to define within tight edges. Sometimes people exploit this fact in order to pull some rhetorical trickery. If you can’t define something too exactly, that leaves an opening for people to define it however they want, even to an absurd degree.

Let’s take an example – bullying. Bullying is bad, but what bullying is can be hard to exactly pin down. One of the reasons bullying can be hard to deal with in places like school is because sensitivity varies across individuals, intent is hard to directly observe, and many instances of it can devolve into “he said/she said” arguments with no clear objective result.

So if all that is true, doesn’t that mean that bullying is always whatever the victim says it is?

No, of course not.

Yes, bullying is subjective, but some things are clearly not bullying. If one student claims “She’s bullying me because she did her book report on a book I hate just so I’d have to listen to it,” then that student is over-defining bullying so loosely that it loses any influence as a term. That doesn’t mean bullying isn’t real, and it doesn’t even necessarily mean the student in question isn’t being bullied. But some things fall outside the range of reasonable subjective opinions.

So be wary about people pulling this trick. It’s an easy crack to slip through. Taking any negative but subjective topic and re-defining it so that it always conveniently wraps around the person speaking is an easy way to create a false moral high ground. Don’t fall for it – don’t be bullied.

It’s approaching. The wild is calling again. The desire to get hurt, lost, exhausted. The desire to climb the wrong mountain. To break things and suffer. And then, to conquer it all.

I’m not a “summer” person. I view the hot months as something largely to endure on my way to something I enjoy more. Summer is a fun time for the kiddos, which works out great for me; there are no conflicts between what they want to do during the summer months and what I want to do, because I want to do nothing. So we do whatever they want and have a great time of it, and then it’s back to school for them.

And back to the forest for me.

All this is to say that it’s coming. I already think about the woods at least once a day, because it’s been a long stretch of months now where I haven’t been. But the heat in the air is giving its one last dog-day hurrah before dying, and the brisk change means it’s time to get the kit in order and prepare for adventure.

I cannot wait.

Survival by strength only works until it doesn’t; one day, something is stronger. Survival by adaptation lasts as long as you can adapt. Things that can bend won’t break as often as things too strong to bend.

You can’t avoid disaster. It will always find the one edge or corner you didn’t anticipate and creep in – or it will simply blast through your strongest wall and laugh. But you can survive through cleverness and adaptability; you can be resilient through finesse if not strength.

Of all the false dichotomies out there, this one tends to get my goat the most; it’s time for another edition of “Johnny dispels folksy truisms!”

Yes, obviously we all want “good” stuff – good events, good objects, good people. But more often than you realize, quantity is the measure of quality!

Here’s a too-obvious example, but I’ll use it to make a larger point: Would you rather have a crisp, perfect one-dollar bill, or ten ratty old ones? For some things – like money – the measure of quantity is the only measure. All else equal, more money is usually better than less money, so quantity and quality are directly correlated.

Okay, now let’s look at some less obvious examples. Would you rather have a wonderful steak dinner or twenty peanut butter sandwiches? Most people might instinctively say they’d rather have the fancy dinner, but we might be measuring different things. The “quality” of deliciousness and satisfaction might be better on the steak, but what about the “quality” of not starving to death? If you’re on a strict food budget, having more food for the price is definitely the better option. That doesn’t mean you’re sacrificing “quality” – it means you’re making a better choice.

And therein lies the falsehood of the truism. Things have costs – in time, money, effort, juice. But things also serve more than one purpose, so you can’t always draw a direct line of comparison and say “This thing is higher quality than that thing.” I’d rather have ten mid-range pickup trucks than one sports car, given the same price. I can use the pickup trucks to make money! But maybe it’s more fun to drive the sports car – so what aspect am I going for? Fun or utility? The two options are each “higher quality” for a given quality.

There is no such thing as universal “quality.” There are qualities, aspects of things, and they line up with your wants and needs. The choices that best match your own desires are the best choices, regardless of some arbitrary measure like “few & expensive” versus “many & cheap.”

Decide what feature or aspect you want to maximize as it relates to your life, and then pick the option that does that. That’s the quality choice.

Those last few inches, those last few seconds! Oh how they burn!

Toiling for months is more enjoyable than waiting for the scant few minutes at the end when there’s nothing left to do. Agony!

Oh give me a hundred square miles of yard to tend rather than a foot of grass to watch grow.

I’m working on it. Like all things, it takes time.

Agonizing time.

Music helps.