lara simmons

"What happens when we don't take our pain, our pleasures and our mortality seriously? If we can't honor and embrace the disappointments as well as the 'successes' in our lives? We overcompensate. We take [ourselves] much too seriously. We fall out of balance." -- John Lee from his book, Writing from the Body   On Easter Sunday we had the fam over for lunch after church. "The Fam" this particular Sunday included three grandparents, four aunts and uncles, and four cousins between the ages of ten and fifteen. My younger son wanted to provide some entertainment for the cousins and decided we should have a scavenger hunt.  He got the idea from an episode of The Big Bang Theory, which we had watched earlier that week. In the episode entitled, "The Scavenger Vortex," Raj plans a scavenger hunt for his friends in which they solve puzzles and follow clues in order to find a prize. In Raj's version, the prize was a gold coin and, as...

"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." --Old sports adage attributed to sportswriter Grantland Rice I have always believed this old adage. Or wanted to believe that I believed it at least... I am one of those people who tries not to appear competitive, but secretly really likes to win. I put this down to being a first born - we can nearly always beat our younger siblings at almost everything we play for a number of years so we get used to it - but I'm guessing it's also part of being a Capricorn, part of being designated "gifted" in elementary school, part of my familial conditioning, etc., etc. In other words, it's a part of who I am. Competition gets very interesting once you have kids. I noticed right away that at a certain age (around 5 or 6) my older son got really upset whenever he would lose a game, but he was especially upset when he would lose to me. I struggled with this - should I let him win to give hi...