I love libraries. I love books. And I love complex staged wonders like the world-record setting domino book chain planned and executed by the Seattle Public Library. And so on a crazy, over-scheduled Monday, this seemed like an ideal post. Think of it as a Monday mental health break. ☺ Note: If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.

As indicated by my post last week on “Grit,” I think this is one of the most important and challenging elements of parenting. Important because if our kids don’t learn to persevere when things get really challenging, if they don’t learn resiliency in the face of set backs, and if they don’t learn that they’ve got more in them than they thought, it’s going to be really, really hard for them to flourish as adults. Why? Simply because life is full of setbacks, we all suffer low moments, and some of the most important situations we’ll be in – parenting, marriage, etc. – require us to give more than we’d imagined we had. But...

I saw this video a few weeks ago and loved it. But I also hesitated to put it on my blog. It’s another video of Louis C.K., the comedian who I think is a very astute student of human nature and our culture. It’s on his hesitancy to give his kids cell phones. While naming some of the detrimental social conditioning he thinks cell phones promote – not making eye contact, always looking down – he goes beyond that to talk about the ways in which we us our phones to avoid sadness. Rather than feel sad, we look for something meaningless to do, like sending a text. In fact, Louis believes there’s a value to feeling sad, a value to...