The Afterword

Tag: mental-health

  • When Courage Becomes Contagious

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    Peter
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    What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies? I must admit that I am conflicted. When I was younger, I enjoyed the Dirty Harry movies. Harry Callahan is the lone, morally certain cop who sees what the system cannot or will not see. Bureaucrats, courts, procedures and superiors get in the way. Harry acts.…

  • Brave or Foolish?

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    Peter
    in

    What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching? I don’t know whether it was the bravest thing I’ve done or one of the silliest. I was walking along the main street of an inner-city suburb when I heard someone yell, “Stop!” I turned and saw a man running towards us, with…

  • A Miniature Philosophy of Justice

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    Peter
    in

    What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street? When I was eight, a friend and I were walking to school when we found a banknote lying on the ground. In today’s money it would probably be worth about $30. Not exactly a fortune. But when you are eight, $30 is enormous. It…

  • Work Worth Giving Yourself To

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    Peter
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    If the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why? If the salary were the same, what job would I be doing right now? The same one. That answer is easy for me because money has never been the main reason I have chosen a job. Of course salary…

  • The Week Someone Else Became Me

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    Peter
    in

    What’s the weirdest coincidence you’ve ever experienced? I have always had a fairly naïve faith that if you tell the truth, things will eventually sort themselves out. One small and stupid episode from many years ago shook that confidence. I received a court summons for fare evasion. Apparently, I had caught a train into the…

  • When You Realise You’re the Adult

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    Peter
    in

    What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult? Adulthood is a series of progressions. You get your driver’s licence and discover a new freedom. You vote for the first time. You start work and begin finding your way in the world. You move out of home, get married, perhaps buy your first…

  • Trust the Hunch

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    Peter
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    If you had a time machine and could send just one messageto your past self, what would it say? If I had a time machine and could send just one message to my younger self, it would be: Trust the hunch. Not because every instinct is right, or because careful thought does not matter. But…

  • Where Do You See Grace?

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    Peter
    in

    Which author would you love to have dinner with? If I could have dinner with an author, I would choose Tim Winton. But not in a restaurant. I imagine fish and chips somewhere on the Western Australian coast, sitting outside with the ocean stretching away in front of us. And there would be one condition:…

  • People Were the Point

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    Peter
    in

    If your future self could send you one sentence,what do you hope it would say? If my future self could send me one sentence, I hope it might say: “The people mattered more than the projects.” My mother often told me that I took on too much and needed to do less. She was probably…

  • Better Slightly Uncoordinated Action

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    Peter
    in

    What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? The best advice I have received may be this: Better slightly uncoordinated action than fully coordinated inaction. I am a pragmatist at heart. I often begin with a hunch rather than a plan. I have a glimpse of something that might be worth exploring, even when…

  • Learning to Sit with Suffering

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    Peter
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    What’s a skill you consider basic, that most peopledon’t actually know how to do? Sitting with someone who is suffering seems like a basic human skill. It is also one of the hardest. As a young man in my twenties, I regularly visited people in an oncology ward. They were experiencing all kinds of emotions.…

  • AntennaPod

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    Peter
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    What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it? I recently checked the Digital Wellbeing section in my phone settings. AntennaPod consistently comes out on top, anywhere up to an hour per day. I do not feel bad about it at all. AntennaPod is the app…

  • Too Busy Enlarging Our Lives to Live Them

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    Peter
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    If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be? If I could erase one trend from history, it might be the belief that bigger is always better. Bigger houses. Bigger cars. Bigger companies. Bigger cities. Bigger economies. Bigger audiences. Bigger ambitions. We have learned to treat growth as proof of health and…

  • Writing That Fills Me

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    Peter
    in

    What’s one habit that has improved your life the most? When I first started writing as a hobby many years ago, I set aside one morning each week. It was a discipline, and for a while it worked. Eventually, though, it was crowded out. I stopped writing for myself during the years when I was…

  • Being Needed and Being Whole

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    Peter
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    What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years”— and what got you through it? People often say that a person’s forties can be the hardest years of their life. That was true for me. I would call that chapter The Hard Years. Not because everything collapsed, but because I came face to…

  • Before The Problem Starts Shouting

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    Peter
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    What’s a lesson you’ve learned recently that shifted your perspective? Problems often speak before they shout. That is something I have been learning recently. Looking back, there have been situations where the signs were there early in the piece. They were not dramatic. They were not disasters. No alarms were ringing. But there were small…

  • More or Less

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    Peter
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    What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger? When I was younger, more seemed better. I loved to read, and building a library was something I valued. Book by book, shelf by shelf, I watched the collection grow. There was satisfaction in it. A growing library felt like a sign of…

  • Keep It Simple

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    Peter
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    What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you? The best advice I would give to someone younger than me is this: keep things simple. That may sound too plain to be useful, but a lot of wisdom is plain. We often make life harder than it needs to be. We overthink, rehearse,…

  • Recognising the Thread

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    Peter
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    What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self? At 20, I thought life was a linear progression. You chose your path, dedicated yourself to it, and then walked it. The challenge was to make the right decision early, commit to it, and stay faithful. At 20, I knew what my passions were.…

  • The Cost of Being Always Available

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    Peter
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    Write your guide to setting healthy boundaries in relationships. I am not sure I am qualified to write a guide to healthy boundaries, except as someone who learned them too slowly. For 20 years I was a parish minister. That meant working in a caring profession. People had real needs. Crises happened. There were weddings,…