It’s difficult for many of us to make behavior changes that will benefit us in the long term.

From sticking to an exercise routine to keeping a healthy diet to saving money, we must prioritize the future ahead of our immediate circumstances in order to follow through. This can be very uncomfortable and unnatural, but the payoff becomes evident down the line.

After awhile, we’ve built a new habit and gotten used to this cycle. We learn to associate eating healthy food with feeling good. We come to enjoy the feeling of virtue that comes with following our budget or our exercise plan.

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Is there a chance that you subscribe to the notion that children (and humans in general) are fundamentally wicked creatures who must be coerced into doing right?

Or might you believe that the only way to get yourself to do anything is to be browbeaten or shamed into it?

I have discovered that these attitudes are prevalent around me — so much so that people don’t even realize that they have them. They don’t even know that there is another way.

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As a teacher, it’s all too easy to make kids cry.

It can be disconcerting when they start crying on the spot, but I’m very used to it by now. Depending on the situation, I hand them a Kleenex and we keep going, or we stop everything and address the issue.

It’s worse, however, when they go home and cry — and I hear about it later. This means that the kid cares so much about what I think that they keep it together in my presence, smiling and nodding, and then fall apart later.

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Back when I used to have appointments six days a week, I cherished any time when I could do my actual work.

Teaching music lessons was the fun part, but there was so much administrative stuff that needed to be done, and keeping up was a huge challenge.

I was sinking into a life that had no time for reflection or course correction — I was always running and striving.

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I have always enjoyed card games and board games, from the long summer afternoons spent playing Spit and Spite & Malice with my siblings and cousins to the more recent winter evenings engaging in Euro-style games like Dominion, Catan, and 7 Wonders (again with siblings and cousins, plus friends and in-laws!). Within a game, you create a little world that is continually subjected to outside forces you must reckon with — a cozy version of actual life.

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I showed up to Jalil’s house as usual for our tutoring session.

Right away, I could see that he was in a dark place — for an eight-year-old. The cheeky smile I always see when I walk in was replaced by a scowl. No eye contact. “He’s in a mood,” his mom said.

I knew we had a lot to do — reading, science, writing. We made it to the room where our lessons take place, but once we got there, Jalil remained sullen, just rolling a ball around.

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Maybe it’s from mom. Or dad. Or grandpa or grandma…or their grandma and grandpa.

It probably goes back farther than that, because it’s so ingrained in most of us that we don’t even see it. To paraphrase David Foster Wallace, it’s like water to a fish — so ubiquitous we’re unaware of it.

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