Category Archives: A Case of the Human Condition

Personal essays. One woman’s journey.

A Case of the Human Condition: How Do I Mother My Twenty-Somethings? The Same Way I Mothered My Ten-Year-Olds - With Overkill

Christina hadn’t called. We had dropped her at the airport hours ago. The flight to Burbank takes only seventy minutes. She should be home by now. But Jon and I still hadn’t gotten the, “I’m home. The plane didn’t crash. My roommate remembered to pick me up, and we didn’t get mugged in the garage,” phone call.

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A Case of the Human Condition: Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder - But What If There’s No Beholder?

A flowering tree grows hidden in the canyon below our house. If no one sees it bloom, is it beautiful? Without a beholder, can there be beauty?

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An Case of the Human Condition: A Child Is Born — And So Is a Grandpa

My friend Jake is a man in his prime. He does triathlons, reads good books, knows all the best hiking trails and drinks nice wines. Jake has never been anybody’s rickety old grandpa — until recently, when Jake’s daughter gave birth to a baby girl.

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The Writing Room: George Leonard and the Tao of Writing

George Leonard, one of the fathers of the human potential movement, and I both worked at Look magazine during the 1960s. We knew each other — that is to say, we were aware of each other — at Look, I more aware of George than he of me. I was a very young editorial secretary and not a very good one. He was a Look writer and a star.

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A Case of the Human Condition: The Center of the Universe? It’s a Little Beach in Michigan, of Course

If I were drawing a map of the world, its center would be at Bass Lake, just where its outlet flows into the great, blue Lake Michigan. I have lived in California for nearly two decades, but like my forebears - my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother - I return to Lake Michigan every chance I get.

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