Jonas Cain's Blog (99)

These are a few of my favorite days:

• Valentine’s Day (because love makes life worth living)…

Every time you meet someone, a part of that person becomes a part of who you are.

Perhaps through an…

He earned $4,000 during his time in Mobile, Alabama.^[1] This is a considerable sum even by today’s standards, but in the early days of the 19th century, it was…

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”…

It's not that we forgot. It's that we never knew to begin with.

And it’s hard to know which poison is worse: The wrath…

The look on the woman’s face said it all—but if there was any doubt, it was resolved when she opened her mouth.

 …

The Magic Ring

A powerful king instructed a council of sages to create a magic ring with the power to make him happy when he is…

“Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson[1]…

How often have we marveled at the beauty of a butterfly while also failing to acknowledge the changes it went through to achieve it? Such willful blindness is of course natural when we remember how painful change can be, yet few things are as painful as staying…

During a recent virtual event hosted by NetSquared of Adelaide­,[1] I facilitated a workshop…

He knew where he was and why he was there, but what he didn’t know was who he was.

While…

A friend recently told me how much money his company had spent on a presenter for an all-company virtual meeting—to the tune of $100,000.

This friend was part of the planning committee tasked with…

When it was too tough to break by hand, he would burn firewood over the rock and then pour water over the hot surface. The thermal stress would crack the rock into manageable pieces that could then be carried…

The umpire wasn’t happy, and didn’t hesitate to let the player know how he felt. Looking up into the stands, he yelled, “You’re done!”

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This week is very different from every other week for the past seven years, and moving forward, things are going to be very different.

 …

A gust of wind burst in when he opened the door and told me to stick my legs out. At first, instinct refused to comply, but I reminded myself that Dean had done this thousands of times. He knew what he was…

I was invited to two Super Bowl Parties that year. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, I accepted the invitation to both. Even though everyone was happy to see me, I didn’t get to enjoy myself—because I wasn’t really present at either gathering.

With the first, I kept thinking about when and…

Eleanor Roosevelt once suggested that “Happiness is not a goal…it’s the byproduct of a life well lived.” Accepting this axiom as a functional truth, the question becomes, how do we live well?

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There’s something blatantly arrogant about the song “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,” because it can never be universally true. Everyone has their strengths and everyone has their weaknesses.

But of course, sometimes it is true.

Sometimes.

And if…

Most birds nest and sing from the trees, but larks aren’t like most birds—they nest on the ground and sing from the sky—inspiring poet William Wordsworth to muse:…