Regrets: Pig on a Plane

A pig recently traveled on a six-hour US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Seattle, and he didn't ride coach.

Two passengers convinced the airline ...

Torment of Guilt

Let me tell you about Sarah. She was rich. Very, very rich. Not only was her income a thousand dollars a day, but she had inherited twenty million. That's ...

Why Failure Lingers

Failures take on a life of their own because the brain remembers incomplete tasks or failures longer than any success or completed activity. It’s ...

Consequences of Adultery

Richard: "Cheating was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I don't know that we wouldn't have gotten a divorce, but I felt really bad ...

Who Is My Neighbor?

Years ago I flew to Minneapolis to give a speech at a conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Near downtown Minneapolis, my taxi was stopped ...

Regret and Fear Are Thieves

We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.

As One Door Closes, Another Opens

When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully at the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.

A Humanist's Lament

Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candour on television, Marghanita Laski, one of our best-known secular humanists and novelists, ...

Life after Innocence

Grief refuses to flee the past just because it is gone and things have now changed. .... Consider when we lose our innocence--when we discover that we ...

True Shame and False Shame

Shame is only partly about blameworthiness. Of course, we do feel ashamed of ourselves when we are guilty, and we should. Sin is, after all, a disgrace. ...