I had a woman come in to see me recently who was all flustered because she felt she was losing control of her life. She said that she wore her Montreal Canadiens jersey and sat in the lucky spot and still they lost. Now she was worried that her mother would get bad news from [...]
Category Archives: Human nature
Why is everyone smarter than me?
Here’s another one from the vault published in 2005. It is about the impostor syndrome and why it tends to happen. For some bizarre reason, I seemed to like the use of CAPS back then. Go figure Speaking of feeling stupid, a kind reader pointed out that the title should actually read, “Why is everyone [...]
I plan on winning the lottery
I plan on winning the lottery (Published today in Journal Métro. Je prévois gagner à la lotterie. April 22, 2014.) Voir plus bas pour la version Française. How’s this for a retirement plan? Spend all your money on whatever you want, but take about ten dollars every week to buy lottery tickets. As soon as [...]
Do-overs and Mulligans
Erase! Erase! Oh, if only… Do-overs (French version published today in Métro: Recommencer, April 8, 2014) Voir plus bas pour la version Française. What if you had the power of a do-over? Or something equivalent like erasing a day from your life? When would you use it? There is no shortage of bonehead things we [...]
Complaining, venting and whining
Despite my annual objective of writing one post per week, I have failed miserably. I still hope to do so but who am I kidding at this point? The plan was to post my column every two weeks and use the in-between weeks to make general comments about life that don’t fit into the newspaper [...]
Clicker wars
The battle lines are drawn. And by that I am not referring to the newly launched provincial election campaign nor to events in Crimea. I refer instead to a battle that is waged on a daily basis in living rooms across the world. Clicker wars (Source: La guerre des télécommandes. Journal Métro, March 11, 2014) [...]
The gay son
(SVP, voir plus bas pour la version Française) An abridged version of the following appears in this morning’s Journal Métro I recently met with a woman seeking advice on something very upsetting to her. She started by proudly telling me about her three children. She raised them as a single mother with no financial or [...]
All I want for Christmas is…more stuff!
(Source: J’en veux plus. Journal Métro, December 17, 2013). Voir plus bas pour la version Française. I’ve been slowly emptying out my parent’s house now that they are both in a nursing home. It’s amazing how much stuff people accumulate over the years. My parents were immigrants and had to make do with very little. They [...]
They’re not like us: Stigma, mental illness and groupthink
It is mental illness awareness week. You may have noticed that I don’t often focus directly on mental illnesses per se. I prefer to focus on our general human nature. The greatest compliment I get is when someone says, “Hey, you wrote about me today!” This is because I try to show how character traits and [...]
