Category: Life Lessons

Human beings want more of everything. We are on a hedonic treadmill that says, “What I have now is OK, but I really want more—more stuff, more money, and more friends. That would make me happy.” From a societal perspective, the hedonic treadmill has some benefits. It keeps us on our toes and moves society forward. It also gives lots of people jobs. If people didn’t want more Oreos, no one would have jobs selling Oreos at the grocery store, or stocking the Oreos on the shelf, or making new kinds of Oreos.

I don’t know exactly when I took the red pill.⁽¹⁾Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance. It’s much easier to talk about a time when I’d taken the red pill and was talking to someone who hadn’t. I was at the Whitney Museum of Art with my friend. We saw the exhibit fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad.

This is one of the scariest interview questions. In an interview, you always want to show yourself in the best light. You want to show how perfect you are. But here’s a secret. Interviewers know that you’re not perfect, and that’s OK. It’s more important that you learn from your mistakes and try to get better. This requires you to be honest about where you went wrong in the past and what you’ve done to fix it. If you can’t admit your mistakes, how can you grow?

Many people think of this question as, “Give me a reason not to hire you?” Or they think about a horrible mistake they’ve made it the past, like when they had just started their summer job at the local caterer and completely misinterpreted the instructions for their first order, like:

I know that money wouldn’t make me happy, but I still had dreams of being an early retiree. I dreamt of being that person who quit their job, moved to Hawaii, and sipped margaritas while I cashed my dividend checks. But as I got older, I realized that it’s not about the age of retirement but the quality of that retirement.

If you threw a party and invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say, “Thank you for being a friend.”
— Theme Song from The Golden Girls

In Judaism, the word minyan refers to a group of 10 adults that come together to pray.  For certain prayers, most importantly prayers of mourning, a minyan must be present. It’s a struggle to find 10 Jewish men and women on a Sunday morning at our shul. On one cold day, I volunteered and was the 8th adult there. Not convinced we’d get to 10, we started the service. I was wondering why we had this arbitrary number of 10. Why are we dragging some people out of bed who don’t want to be there? Just then, surprisingly, the 10th person showed up and in a palpable way, and we were transformed. We went from praying as individuals to praying as a community. I felt like we were the lions forming Voltron.

It made me think about friendship. Friendship is about being there for one another. Anyone can celebrate with you when it’s convenient. A true friend is always standing by you even when especially when things are tough.

When my Bubbie died in January, I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. People kept telling me that, “She lived a good long life” and “Her memory will live forever” but this wasn’t helpful. I know that she lived a great life and I know that I was very lucky to be 41 when my last grandparent died. But how should I deal with her death? What do I do now?

Below is my eulogy for my Bubbie, Connie Schlaff, who died on January 9th, 2019 (1/9/19):

There’s a video of the great physicist Richard Feynman. In the video, his friend Danny Hillis said, “I’m sad because I realize you’re about to die.”

And Feynman said, “Yeah, that bugs me sometimes too. But not as bad as you think. By the time you get to be my age a lot of what is good about you has rubbed off on the people and so … although I will be dead, I won’t be completely gone.”

And that’s the way I like to think about Bubbie and all the little things she left us. Like some of her favorite things. I remember the last things that Blake and Ari did with Bubbie. These might have been Bubbie’s two favorite things. Ari did a crossword puzzle with her and Blake asked Bubbie if she would watch his new favorite show, Jeopardy, with him.