Mantras

...or how I embarass myself while I try to make the world a better place.

Fri Feb 20 2026

I carry around a bunch of cheesy mantras with me. Well, they make me feel cheesy whenever I feel compelled to pull one out, which is fairly often. It’s something I picked up from my dad. I started with his go-to, classic dad-isms. So a few of these come from him. Some are mine. Some I have no idea where I got them from.

Life events often show us simple truths. We should listen, and try to remember them, and continually try to imprint them on the psyche of our kids. I can imagine no better way to make the world a better place.

Be here now.

Part of love is freedom.

Life starts from here.

Give fate an opportunity to intervene.

Life gives us precious few opportunities to reinvent ourselves, and we squander them at the peril of our own happiness.

The best you can do is be the you that should have been.

Relentlessly take the high road.

Money buys opportunity, but not happiness.

Life done right is bitter-sweet.

Dad-ism: Do it right the first time.

Dad-ism: Take care of your tools and they’ll take care of you.

A good idea is a good idea, no matter where it comes from.

Once you know you’re wrong, change your position immediately; don’t waste time on lost causes. (Borrowed from Steve Jobs)

He who defies love is a fool.

It is the fragility of our lives that gives meaning to the actions we take with intention.

I will create something beautiful.

When you help good people, you help yourself.

Life is a journey, and if it doesn’t make you cry along the way, you’re doing something wrong.

Idle boredom is a gift; it is an untilled field of creativity.

How you got here matters, but not as much as you being here now.

Grief is the bill of love, fallen due. (David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue)

Toddlers are agents of (thermodynamic) entropy.

Life is long, until it isn’t.

Silence is the elegance of a deep connection.

The only wrong answers for what you do with your life, are the ones that don’t feel genuinely yours.

San Francisco is the land of one-way streets and no left turns.