X
Subscribe to get the latest
Food for Thought Bites
* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp

Was the Seat Up or Down?

Couple Courtroom Case Study Reveals Our Negative Bias

June 4, 2025

A couple having relationship trouble goes to a therapist. During the session, the therapist asks for examples of everyday friction.

“I’ll give you one,” she said, a bit too eager to indict the defendant. “I ask him to leave the seat down at night—because frankly, I don’t enjoy that kind of surprise.”

“That’s not true!” he objects, appealing to the mercy of the court. “I know it’s important to her, and I make sure to do it. But I never get any credit.”

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you: Why does the wife believe the husband always leaves the seat up, while the husband insists he always puts it down? Let’s examine the crime scene.

The defendant: The husband wakes up groggy, stumbles into the bathroom, and forgets to put the seat down. For him, it’s a non-event—nothing is recorded. But when he does remember, the act registers, paired with the thought, “Aren’t I a good husband?”

Now, the wife: She wakes up in the middle of the night, exhausted from a long day. She goes into the bathroom, and if the seat is down—it’s a non-event, unremarkable, forgotten. But if it’s up, she takes an unexpected dip–a memorable event she won’t soon forget.

Over time, when the wife rewinds her mental footage of late-night bathroom visits, there’s ample incriminating evidence against the inconsiderate #%!$, but scant evidence in favor.  But when we play back the husband’s tape, we see a highlight reel of saintly thoughtfulness, and few examples of his sins. 

The verdict: both innocent, both guilty. Victims of cognitive bias.

And so it goes with our relationship with life. We tend to not register many moments when nothing goes wrong—those quiet non-events. But negative experiences leave a deeper imprint. When we reflect, there’s a good chance we’re reviewing biased evidence suggesting life was worse than it really was, while much of the good happened with the record button off. 

So in the bathroom of life, be aware when the seat is up and recall all the good times when it’s down.

Thoughts That Haunt Me

What Do Ghosts Do During the Day?

June 3, 2025

After my grandmother passed away, my mother moved into her house. One night, she woke up at two in the morning to find the TV on—even though she was sure she had turned it off before bed. "It must have been Gram sending a message," she said.

Why is it that, after death, people seem to turn into tricksters or riddlers? If someone wasn’t like that in life, why would they start after death? It’s as if becoming a ghost flattens all personalities into the same eerie archetype.

Are lost souls stuck behind some dimensional wall, limited to a handful of odd behaviors? If they were intelligent in life, wouldn’t they be able to come up with clever, maybe even playful, ways to communicate?

If a ghost is just a soul in transition—one that eventually arrives in heaven and regains its full personality—why the weird limbo act in between? Why is the soul intact and recognizable in heaven, but vague and zombie-like as a ghost?

What do ghosts do during the day, anyway? Like at 3:00 PM on a Tuesday—are they just lying low, bored, waiting for it to get dark and spooky?

And while they’re killing time, do they talk to each other? Do they trade favors? “Hey, can you flip on that TV at 2 a.m. for me? I’m busy helping George make attic noises.” “Sorry bud, I’m on leaf-rustling duty in the cemetery.”

Once in heaven, do souls that had a stint as a ghost share their experience? “Yeah, it was bizarre—like a dream. I felt compelled to turn on TVs.”

The mind evolved to quickly make sense of unknown threats or unexplained phenomena—and it uses the imagination to do it. In a sudden moment of fear, we don’t think in broader contexts. We conjure up ghosts when two unknowns collide: an unexplained event and the uncertainty of what happens after death. At least, that’s what I hope it is.

Explorers Reach Peak in Ohio

Our search for meaning isn’t fulfilled by the outer goal itself, but by the inner story we tell ourselves about what reaching it means.

May 16, 2025

Imagine you climb to the summit of Mt. Everest, carve out a ten-foot patch of soil, and airlift it to a small town in Ohio. You put it on display, charging admission for people to “stand on the top of Everest.” Then you take a patch of Ohio soil and airlift it to Everest’s summit. When a climber finally reaches the peak, they find a sign: “Congratulations, you’ve reached Ohio.”

Would you pay a premium to stand on Everest soil in Ohio? Would you feel cheated if, after climbing Everest, you found out you were standing on dirt from Ohio? And if you mixed the two soils and divided them evenly—what then? Where, exactly, is the meaning located?

Now imagine watching the broadcast of the first astronauts landing on Mars. The world watches in awe as humans step out to take another “giant leap for mankind.” There are celebrations, parades, and the headline goes viral: humanity is now a multi-planet species. Over time, Mars is populated by millions, and eventually, the first native Martians are born. These children grow up knowing only the reality of Mars: cold, harsh, barren, and red.

One holiday, Martian teens visit the historic landing site of the first Earthling pilgrims. To them, it looks like every other stretch of the monotonous desert planet. They glance up at the sky and see a pale blue dot: Earth. In their minds, it’s a lost Eden—a utopia they’ve only heard about. They wonder how their parents could see meaning in this dusty patch of rock, while paradise hovers just above the horizon.

The magic is not the soil, or even the location—it’s in the story. It’s in the struggle of getting there and the cultural meaning we assign to it. If an alien traveled light years to reach the exact spot where you’re standing now, they might be celebrated as the greatest explorer in their species’ history.

Like time and space, meaning is relative. Any place in the universe can be amazing—or boring—depending on the story you tell about it. So before you chase fulfillment on some distant mountaintop or faraway world, look inward. It's closer than you think. But don’t expect to find it there either. That’s where you create it.