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March 8, 2026

A Dramatic Moment and a Fitting Word

Kakistocracy.

Not bureaucracy, not religiousity, and, for sure, not meritocracy.

I’d never heard the word. I’d never read it before. But in our interesting times, I have learned a few things.

According to Wikipedia:

Kakistocracy is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.[1]: 54 [2][3]

The word was coined as early as the 17th century[4] and derives from two Greek words, kákistos (κάκιστος, ‘worst’) and krátos (κράτος, ‘rule’), together meaning ‘government by the worst people’.[5]

American poet James Russell Lowell used the term in 1876, in a letter to Joel Benton, writing, “What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people,’ or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”[11]

Keep that word in mind as you read further.

This past week, a friend mentioned an extraordinary play I attended at Court Theatre in Chicago in 2013. It was a one-person show adapted from Homer’s Iliad.

The online study guide describes:

The Iliad … is an epic poem traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events that took place during the weeks of a disagreement between the Greek King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.

A drama can stick with you. You might have witnessed a scene that is hard to get out of your mind. An Iliad, as the one-man theater piece is called, offered such an experience.

I was not alone in this. Friends who attended were all struck not only by the actor’s ability to recall every name on the long list he uttered. They were overwhelmed by what he told us about ourselves, our past, our world, and our future.

One possible future of humanity

I have given you two clips from the play below; the first is a one-minute introduction. The second is the stunning three-minute excerpt I referred to:

I hope you will watch at least the second of these: the actor Timothy Edward Kane’s chilling recitation of a list of wars, from Court Theatre’s production of An Iliad. Kane is a more than competent man who demonstrated his craft and preparation.

You will hear name after name after name. All the titles by which the conflicts are called today.

Several could be added to the list the narrator exclaimed. War has not ceased since 2013.

A play without competence displayed by its director and actors is unthinkable.

War is a different thing.

Incompetence is an inevitable component of wartime, especially among those in the lead, a quality that stands alongside the heroes sharing its history.

Now, a few days into a new conflict, we appear to have a term for the creators of a grand but misguided venture.

What do you think? Does the K expression apply to the evolving circumstances?

The word has been waiting a long time for a place in a sentence.

What a misfortune that it fits any moment at all.

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The top image is of an Ancient Greek Storage Jar sourced from the Art Institute of Chicago.

March 1, 2026

About the Purpose of Life

You know the people. Indeed, you might be one of them. I am speaking about all of us and the objectives we pursue. The list includes items like money, power, status, beauty, attention, control, and fame.

According to Yuval Harari, the historian, author, and public intellectual, we are missing the point. He doesn’t talk in terms of purpose. Rather, he believes much of humanity views existence as a story.

Their story.

We search for our part in a play, looking for the musical score we perform and the lines we must speak.

It might not be in a book. Anywhere we think the answer can be found is acceptable. This could put us on a ball field, in school, raising a child, formulating a meal recipe, or serving in an orchestra or the military.

It might be something we discover within a religious faith.

The historian suggests reality is not about the drama or the character we play in it. We fail to understand life when we close our eyes to much of the anguish embedded in our world, and produce the very pain we wish to bypass.

Thus, ignorance is the cause of many predicaments, according to Harari.

Ignorance of reality.

We brush aside cautionary information we should ponder. Think of the times we cannot bear to face the events and choices generating discomfort.

Paradoxically, by wearing a blindfold while pursuing our goals, we increase our chances of hurting ourselves, our acquaintances, our family, and those who are different from us.

Looking is inconvenient. We decide to cross out the difficult parts in the play’s manuscript. Alcohol and drugs are available to serve as masks. TV is one of the endless distractions.

By avoiding what the mirror shows and turning away from careful, honest consideration of how we cause injury, we do not recognize or acknowledge our contribution to pain. This leaves us unable to remedy either our own misfortune or that of others.

As Harari notes, “We can’t fix something we are busy ignoring.”

To eliminate this tendency, the alternative is to engage in human life rather than hiding from significant parts of it. The unpleasant wisdom it offers begs for attention.

We hope to avoid pain, but discover that anguish does not obey our attempt to flee from it. As Henry Fielding said, “When you close the door to nature, she comes in at the window.”

Satisfaction in a life well-lived is the result of triumphing over its difficulties.

What is needed is the realization that not all unhappiness is inevitable. Our complex and potential difficulties can often be relieved by acknowledging our condition honestly, so we can take them on and improve ourselves.

Here is another hard truth. We can control, to some degree, the present moment and our own minds, but little more. The past is unchangeable, and the distant horizon offers no guarantees, no matter our plans, efforts, and ingenuity.

Not even the greatest and most powerful leaders do better. We grasp all too well the history of their mistakes and the limitations and unexpected consequences of their decisions.

The fix, Harari might tell us, is to work within the terms life allows, not denying them, not ignoring them, and not running from them.

This includes the most inescapable fact of living.

We age, we die, and everyone precious to us passes away.

Our end arrives at an uncertain time, while attempts to live forever have their shortcomings. Some of the wealthiest men want to reach eternity, an expensive way of denying death.

Downloading their consciousness to a computer becomes a goal. Moving to another planet is planned should the world become more unfriendly.

No wonder some of them build rockets.

No wonder we try to hide or alter the evidence of aging.

A number among us consider bringing forth children as our posterity, perhaps winning a Nobel Prize, or having our name in a record book, or on a building. Thus, we hope to be remembered, reaching a form of immortality.

Are the names of the following men familiar?

Each won a Nobel Prize in 1920.

Harari is not alone in pointing out our tendency to evade the reality of death, accepting it only as an abstraction somewhere in the distance, and trying to dodge thinking about it. Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, deals with the subject.

Becker wrote it over 50 years ago.

Bottom line: Yuval Harari believes increased contentment comes from accepting the realistic conditions of life, thereby increasing our chances of reducing our pain and the suffering we cause.

Game on.

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The first photo is a Supercell in Lubbock, Texas, in June 2025. It is the masterful creation of Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

Next comes an Eharo mask from Papua New Guinea. The eharo masks were worn during ritual dances, before formal sacred rituals. They were intended to be humorous figures, dancing with groups of women to the amusement of all. This particular item is in the Muséum de Toulouse collection and was sourced from Wikipedia Commons.

February 15, 2026

A Few Added Words on the Subject of Living

For some, the Christian Bible is enough, or the Koran, or the Shreemad Bhagavad Gita. Include the Torah, the Talmud, and the Agamas. Perhaps all the guidance and wisdom in the world is to be found amid them and the other holy books.

But I suspect that the legendary philosophers of history might have a useful and additional word or two, men like Seneca, Socrates, and Spinoza. I would add several novelists, including British writers Julian Barnes and Virginia Wolff.

What is more, sometimes your mom or dad, or your third-grade teacher, offers enlightenment.

If truth is present in any of those possibilities, there also should be value in a few words not always or easily found among the sometimes contradictory messages that sacred books, among others, send our way.

Here are a few for you to accept or ignore.

Life is hard, but it offers a balm not found in a tube of calamine lotion at the pharmacy. It is discovering something or someone to love. The conventional wisdom suggests you must find a lover, but there are many others. A friend, a sibling, your parents, or a pet can offer affection and gratitude in receiving it.

More?

I have an old buddy who enjoys and even treasures his work and might win the Nobel Prize someday. I have cheered athletes who are in love with the game they play. I’ve also run into more than a few self-involved folks. On occasion, they are self-sufficient in the practice of their genius.

Think about writers, artists, sculptors, musicians, and composers. Add to the list, if you like, women and men who seek more than entertainment in the arts, entranced in discoveries of intensity, joy, and moments of ecstasy. If you’re lucky, you can find more than a single such passion.

The point is to be attached to, devoted to, involved in, and touched by what you love.

And, if you are thoughtful, you can return the endearment and the attention. You give back to the game, whether it’s a contest, a person, the adoration of Mozart, or the game of life.

Erin, of the Existential Ergonomics blog, wrote a wonderful post the other day that speaks to those who recognize that life and full reign over your existence are in opposition, much as we wish otherwise:

I am learning the difficult grace of release. I once believed I could map every turn of this story, determine when and how love would appear. But life, patient and persistent, keeps prying my fingers open.

Each time I loosen my hold—on plans, on control, on what I thought I needed—something softer finds its way in. I’m beginning to see that undoing isn’t failure; it’s invitation. It’s the space where breath returns, where grace has room to enter and rebuild.

My response to her statement was this:

Well said, wise, and beautifully expressed, Erin. We never have full control, but for seconds or days at a time, and even that is an illusion. These are the terms on a contract we never signed. Acceptance and managing the cracks that form in our painting is the art we must keep creating—to find love in the cracks.

I should have added more than shared adoration to what saves us, including whatever is useful and whatever can compensate for the blows of fate; if they can.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking feature of our lifelong but imperfect bargain is the loss of people. Then we learn to grieve and endure, cherishing their memory, and desiring a reunion in the afterlife. It is an outcome that is part inclination, belief, and hope, as well as a certainty in select minds and hearts.

A written guarantee? Hard to find on any day or on eBay, but hope often takes its place.

We live in a difficult time. Life moves faster and faster; lasting work is uncertain; residences double as offices where a screen and a phone substitute for a meeting place, a handshake, a kiss, and a hug. Meanwhile, skin hunger grows like ivy on the wall.

George Orwell, a visionary author, described our dilemma as he contemplated it more than 75 years ago:

All we have done is to advance to a point at which we could make a real change in human life, but we shall not do it without the recognition that common decency is necessary.

Surely decency is a step toward love. To love one’s neighbor and the stranger. To provide for the starving and homeless. To call the other by their name, with honor. To recognize our shared humanity.

And not to take arms, but to hold the other in our arms and let her know that she matters.

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The first image is Meanna. It is an album cover from Tales of Loneliness, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Below it is An Elephant at Sunset in Amboseli, Kenya, 2024, by the superb photographer, Laura Hedien, presented with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

February 8, 2026

Therapy in Sixty Seconds

Therapy is a serious business, but like comedy, there is a place for cracking a smile. According to an old adage, “comedy is tragedy plus time.” I can’t say that is a perfect formula, and tact is always a wise and thoughtful prelude to a joke, or holding back from offering one.

The pictured statement above my paragraph might be something a counselor would think, though he probably wouldn’t say it. Below are more pieces of advice and observations on the human condition.

You will get a big payoff at the end if you can tolerate the F word:

 

 

 

 

Now for the payoff. Uncle Noggie is a brilliant man who can tell you the truth and make it funny at the same time. Here, he offers eight valuable insights in “Three Years of Therapy in Sixty Seconds.”  Don’t miss it, but don’t leave counseling. He is kidding, but on target.
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February 1, 2026

Memories of a Grieving Spouse

What happens when things end, especially relationships? This usually refers to breakups that, by definition, shatter a once precious connection. Think of a chasm and a broken heart at its bottom.

Julian Barnes knows what loss feels like. His wife of 30 years, Pat Kavenaugh, died in 2008 from an aggressive form of brain cancer. There were 37 days between her diagnosis and her death.

The author found his wife’s approach to her demise both stoic and graceful, “never angry or cross.”

The writer described the depression that followed in a recent interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.”

It was like being caught in an avelanch. Every day it became worse. It was the most appauling thing that happened in my life and the blackest, the thing that deprived you of hope and balance. It took me years to get over it.

Barnes recalled that he considered killing himself if the grief didn’t stop. A few weeks after his wife’s passing, he found himself thinking of taking his life as he walked on a familiar path home.

I looked across the curb on the other side of the road … and I thought I can kill myself … that’s permissible. It’s not unforgiveble in my morality. I’m extremely unhappy, I’m bereft, though I have many friends. And I think I said, or a friend said to me: give it two years and, ok, I’ll give it two years.

But before that two year period elapsed I discovered why I couldn’t kill myself: I wasn’t allowed to kill myself. And that’s because I was the best rememberer of my wife. I knew her and I had celebrated her in all her forms and all her nature, and I had loved her deeply. And I had realized that if I had killed myself then, in a way, I’d be killing her, too.

I’d be killing the best memories of her, they would disappear from the world, and I wouldn’t allow myself to do that. And at that point (my thought of killing myself) just turned on its head and I knew I would have to live with the grief a long, long time, but I didn’t think an answer to the grief was killing myself.

The writer has never believed in God, nor does he hold the idea of being reunited with his wife in heaven. His view of human existence is that “life is not a short walk across an open field. There is always something waiting for you, coming out of a hedgerow at you.” His writing has long dealt with endings.

Mr. Barnes continues to write and is a much-celebrated, award-winning, prolific author.

Six years ago, however, he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. It is treatable and, with continued daily medication, he is not likely to die from this condition.

His continuation of life, as he describes it, is a form of responsibility. He did not want the thoughts and stories and fullness of his wife to vanish because of his own suicide. Nor, it seems, to dispense with his meaningful affection for her and remembrance of her.

Were we to follow his example, we would all keep photos and movies, enjoy mentioning the departed with those we know, and share our memories. I have friends who have written their own biographies using StoryWorth to leave an account of their lives for those who care about them.

Indeed, I have completed such a memoir myself, including advice that it will be more than proper for them to laugh about me once I am gone.

We don’t want to be forgotten, do we?

But while we live, we should “live” with all the strength, joy, and kindness we can muster, as demonstrated by Julian Barnes getting married again a few months ago, 17 years after his loss of Pat Kavanaugh.

What a marvelous thing it must have been for him to marry again, at 80.

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The first photo is of Julian Barnes at Headred, 2018, Estonia. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons and is the work of WanderingTrad. Next comes a picture of Pat Kavanagh, an image from the Evening Standard. Finally, Barnes, with his second wife, Rachel Cugnoni, sourced from the Telegraph.

January 24, 2026

Cheating and the Yearning for Trust

Many of us write about how to find fulfillment. Add our plentiful commentary on acceptance, gratitude, achievement, loss, depression, defeat, and victory.

Somehow, at least one thing is left out.

Cheating.

In childhood, it was unimaginable to me. Yes,  kids cheated on tests, threw snowballs at moving buses, and found miscellaneous ways to raise hell.

Yet the adults I encountered all appeared decent enough, unlike the fraudulent and dangerous types in news reports. TV was the box where bad guys lived and did their worst, not in my neighborhood.

My dad had a small business, which offered a different story. Mercury Lighter Service was a side job he created, fixing cigarette lighters.

Milton Stein and my mother, Jeanette, learned to repair most of those that were broken.

My parents performed their magic on our dining room table after dinner, after my father came home from his supervisory position at the post office and his second job, keeping the books for my Uncle Sam’s business.

His enterprise was not without its share of upset.

Like deadbeats.

He muttered the word, sometimes changing it to “another deadbeat.“

I asked him what he was talking about. “Adults don’t always pay their bills,” he replied. There were many reasons, including the desire to cheat you.

Such men—it was always men—seemed outliers to me, not regular, honest folk. Perhaps I wanted to envision the world as a benign place. Later, I discovered that the people of the planet were more complicated.

Here, however, is something close to the truth. It is part of a footnote to the Enchiridion, itself a discourse recorded by Arrian, from the teaching he received as a student of the philosopher Epictetus:

Those who have the ability sufficient to raise themselves from a low estate, and at the same time do it to the damage of society, are perhaps only few, but certainly there are such persons.

They rise by ability, by the use of fraud, by bad means almost innumerable. They gain wealth, they fill high places, they disturb society, they are plagues and pests, and the world looks on sometimes with stupid admiration until death removes the dazzling and deceitful image, and honest men breathe freely again.

Stupid admiration. An interesting phrase. The crooks would be easier to recognize if each took the same name and a differentiating number—something like Stupid Admiration #1, #32, #47, etc.

The swindlers can be hard to identify and receive high praise from sycophants and those who want to ride the master’s coattails to wealth.

Does it appear to you that criminals have mushroomed? How do some of them do so well at profiting from their corruption?

Consider the word “con men,” short for confidence men, meaning they gain your confidence so they can take what you have.

The rascals flatter you, recognize that you want to be seen, approved of, and admired. Swinders offer a vision of the future in which your life will be better. They will help to make it, too.

One thinks he is lucky to have found such a person, a kind of father figure and wizard put together. I was taken in by such a one once, years ago.

It happens, but why?

Almost everyone, deep down, wants to be cared for. No wonder that wounded men on the battlefield cry out for their mothers, as they have since the beginning of time.

They search for a place in a trusted group, people who resemble them, think as they do, and brace them against the possibility of others, either different or suspicious.

Laughter, love, kindness, and locked arms fulfill an ageless wish. Togetherness means more when it promises the security of survival. The saying goes, “I will be there for you.“

The fraudster plays on all this and more.

Today, many people ask what they should do to thwart dishonesty and bad faith. Many are afraid, confused, depressed, or all of these.

They hope for a leader, a savior, a person to lean on; someone who can win the day, take the group’s prize to the car wash, soap away the darkness, and bring the light.

If you could sell guaranteed trust and a supportive community on a street corner, you would make a fortune.

The world will always need saving. It always has.

That said, most of us have faith in the basic decency of humankind. My dad didn’t give up his small business or hide from others because of a few underhanded debtors.

Milton Stein went to WWII in a uniform he believed in. To him, it represented the rightness of the fight. He returned still faithful to my mother, and she to him.

Remember, it is always darkest before the dawn.

And then there is love.

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The top image is a Poster for the American Drama film The Cheat (1923).

The second item is an Advertisement for the American Comedy-Romance film The Confidence Man (1924), starring Thomas Meighan, from the March 29, 1924, cover of the Exhibitors Trade Review. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 18, 2026

Why We Write

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.”

So said Anais Nin, a woman whose journaling began at age 11 and continued throughout her long life. She described her relationship with the psychoanalyst Otto Rank soon after their contact:

As he talked, I thought of my difficulties with writing, my struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed. Of my struggles to find a language for intuition, feeling, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless.

How hard is it to understand others — to see them in full as they wish to be seen? To what degree can every word, thought, and expression be fathomed as it emerges, and when it does not?

Consider the quotation above. How much of a flavor is retained? To what extent does the act of remembering itself transform what has happened, even as it fades and alters with age?

The celephane-wrapped freshness of our past recedes in favor of a modified reminiscence.

Nin recognized something else. She was a student of psychoanalysis and realized that she required more than one language to convey what best fit her desire to communicate.

As Wikipedia notes, “she (first) wrote in French and did not begin to write in English until she was 17.[11] Nin believed that French was the language of her heart, Spanish was the (tongue) of her ancestors, and English…the (dialect) of her intellect. The writing in her diaries is (therefore)…trilingual.”

Our reflections change as we contemplate our former selves, our loves and losses, our encounters with books, work, failure, and success in a changing world. The growth and metamorphosis brought by aging offer new perspectives.

Heraclitus reminds us, “no man steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

Time is a master teacher if we listen to its voice.

To the good, laughter survives in the form of stories, along with some of our private sentiment.

Enough.

In a week, will you recognize yours truly at my unchanging keyboard? Will you think of me as you do now? And what will your mirror hold?

Ask Anais Nin and Heraclitus.

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All of the images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Woman Writing with a Pen is the work of Kristin Hardwick. It is followed by Anais Nin as a Teenager about 1920. Finally, Nin’s Signature.

January 11, 2026

Unconfusing Our Confusion

I am confused some of the time. If I hear an idea that belongs to someone else, I am slow to say whether I agree or disagree. At least more hesitant than I used to be.

Why? I consider the thought or opinion from multiple angles. Perhaps from the point of religion, or my lived experience, or all the other thoughtful people I know. I ask the other to tell me how he arrived at his point of view. Have other intelligent public intellectuals taken the same position?

Where is the evidence?

When I offer my slant on a problem, if it is well organized and reasonable, my counterpart might react with, “That makes sense.”

Such acknowledgements are affirming. Still, I prefer it if my interlocutor asked a question rather than accepting my position without taking a moment to think through the concept or dig deeper. Challenges are desirable because they help me learn.

Information rains down on us at a level unknown to everyone who lived here before us. Even during the first years of television, most of us had access to three major stations; the networks signed off at midnight and returned to broadcasting the next morning.

Today, depending on the source, the news may be mere idiocy or deceit. We can be fooled without extraordinary effort. Moreover, many people find the ideas, reports, and news painful to listen to. They turn away because the full blast fire hose of disaster, unhappiness, and unfairness is too much to bear. The deluge feels like punishment, a form of battery and inundation.

It is easier to reach a quick conclusion about what is right and what is wrong than to gather information and inform ourselves. Instead, we choose to believe we have learned enough. Since we cannot tolerate more, we decide our knowledge is adequate.

In my way of living, I tend to take in more reportage and analysis than most, including different frames of reference.

Nor am I easily driven by emotions such as anger and hate. I have found that by gathering information, reading, and listening to multiple sources, I can reach a sober conclusion.

So I think.

Of course, I am not God, the Pope, or the Dalai Lama.

Yes, I have many concerns about the future of the world and the lives of my loved ones on this planet.

But.

Somehow, I sleep at night, believing I understand what I think is happening.

I have long been asking myself questions. Soon after I reached the age of double digits, I watched newsreel films about World War II on TV or in school. There he was, Chancellor of the Third Reich, wearing a toothbrush mustache—also called the Führer und Reichskanzler—ranting.

The typical response was “It can’t happen here!” Yet I found myself unsettled. What if the dark presence spoke English?

I’d reached 11 or so. Over time, I came to understand that under pressure, much of humanity is not at its best.

Part of our dilemma comes from our appreciation, enjoyment, and vulnerability to stories. Our ancient predecessors needed to be persuaded by a leader who hoped to protect their group of 20 or 30 from dangers, whether from natural disasters or enemies. Similarly, access to healthful food and avoidance of sickening or poisonous substances were essential.

Somebody would tell a story, and if the group survived, the information would spread.

We have long encountered secular, religious, and political tales, sometimes forthright, sometimes not. Their self-interested spin and opportunistic motives might influence others through storytelling.

Each country has its own history and mythology. Widely accepted origins, part legends, bind millions of people who will never meet into a community of trust, shared ideals, and cooperation.

The American history I learned in the middle of the last century made little mention of discrimination against religious minorities among early American settlers. Those books didn’t touch on how white male property owners alone possessed voting rights, or a woman’s lack of standing on numerous issues.

Neither were the brutality, unfairness, and intolerance experienced by the Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Japanese citizens of the West Coast a part of the story presented.

Ours was the land of the free and the home of the brave. Not of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynchings of black men.

The confusion of so many of us is exacerbated by algorithms designed to stir us up and drive us to return to the sources we visit.

We are no longer the children of devoted parents who make up stories at bedtime, as I did for my kids—a new one every night to amuse my daughters.

Now, as adults, we are left to ferret out which accounts are accurate and which play us for fools. Beware those who make us think that the other, who lives in another part of the nation, has darker skin, speaks with an accent or a twang, is our enemy.

How shall we reduce our confusion and not be overwhelmed? Take a break from the avalanche of supposed information every so often. Find joy in friendship and love. Eat well and exercise.

Talk about the turmoil, too, and find a connection so that you are not alone.

Learn new non-political things, new games that will keep your brain in shape, and remember what you can be grateful for. Then get back to a part of the news cycle you can manage, be careful of your chosen sources, and do your part to repair the world.

Yes, we are all confused, at least a bit, but there is goodness to be found in our land if we seek it and work to sustain it.

It is the work for all time and for our time.

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All the images above are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. At the top is a Confused Man by Notas de prense. Next comes Confused Young Woman by CollegeDegree360 on Flickr. Finally, Confused User Icon Red by OERDESIGN.

January 4, 2026

About (Your) Face

What does a face do? What unspoken message does it convey?

Man lives in a world of endless mirrors, so plentiful that he cannot escape himself.

Men and women do their best to make themselves presentable and attractive. Some study their default expression and attempt to alter it. The goal is to enhance beauty, masculinity, sincerity, intelligence, approachability, toughness, or fearlessness, among other characteristics.

Are they readable? Perhaps. Can one discover inner qualities based on peering into the face facing him? Sometimes.

Early in life, humanity displays the features it inherited. Later, the adventurous or the unhappy try to transform their appearance.

Others are transformed by their character.

Men display beards or mustaches. Tweezers pull out unsightly hair for both sexes, and high foreheads find long strands traveling downward to cover the upper section by intent.

Moisturizers keep the face soft, while sunscreen helps protect it from the sun’s harmful rays, which can age the skin and cause cancer. Makeup and lipstick play their part.

Time changes body language, and unconscious modification defines the impression one makes before he speaks. Hardness, menace, kindness, indifference, severity, or gentleness might become apparent.

Eyes are sympathetic or piercing. The orbs hold a glance or turn down and away. Inner strength can be read as contempt. The masked face of one who does not wish to be thought of as vulnerable becomes unbecoming. Faces range from welcoming and confident to haughty or insecure.

Lincoln said, “Every man over forty is responsible for his face.”

George Orwell added, “At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves.”

The phrase about-face is both a military order to change direction while standing at attention and a reversal in point of view.

So much of life is about face. A public disgrace or humiliation is described as a loss of face.

All manner of facial expressions can become a person’s arsenal for social interaction. Think of a smirk or frown, interruptions, talking over others, and raised eyebrows.

Add a visage full of contempt, the expressionless deadness of preferring the phone to a lunch partner, boredom, frequent laughing at a so-called friend, and an intimidating presence or state that makes an individual appear twice his size and scary to small children.

Better to unveil the face of an angel if one can.

I am close to a few.

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The top photo by Paul Aigner is of the journalist Olenula for the newspaper “Lukhovitskie Vesti.”

The poster below it features Konrad Adenauer, who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963 and was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

December 28, 2025

What If?

You were born very tall or very short?

What if you disliked your name?

What if we lived our faith — practiced it each day?

What if you were married for eternity and lived forever?

What if we changed the world to help those left behind?

What if marriages were all contractual and you could end them every 10 years just by saying so?

What if every day reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and water was like gold?

What if you were in line to speak with God for 10 minutes? What would you say? At the end of your time, what might he say to you? Next? 

What if men got pregnant?

What if everyone lost sexual interest at 35?

What if you were born impoverished? Or rich? How would life be different?

What if you could wear only clothes made by famous designers?

What if no one brushed their teeth or used deodorant?

What if hell required imprisonment with someone who disagreed with all of your political opinions?

What if the same person agreed with everything you said and had no ideas of his own? 

What if he believed in a different religion?

What if you suffered from pain every day?

What if you knew what people really think and say about you?

What if the dead could be brought back to life on earth? How would the world change?

What if everyone were taught to use the word love more often than four-letter words? 

What if you had a special piggy bank for charity and put loose change into it every day?

What if you took your kids to a food depository, brought along food, and filled the bags of other donors for those who can’t afford it?

What if you took a homeless person to lunch?

What if we taught kids that money isn’t the secret to happiness and told them what fulfillment really is?

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The first photo is by Hisa Matsumura at the Tottori Sand Dunes, sourced from jameslucasit@substack.com. It is followed by an Elephant at Sunset in Amboseli, Kenya, in Early November 2024. It is the work of the photographic artist, Laura Hedien, presented with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.