PROMPT: Schools

Daily writing prompt
What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?

It’d be nice if schools taught people how to NOT be docile, unquestioning worker-bees.

One can come through today’s education system with a PhD without emotional intelligence, self-confidence (beyond one’s silo,) a capacity to think soundly about a range of topics outside one’s discipline such that one recognizes potential unintended consequences and counter-intuitive influences, with an intolerance of competing worldviews, and with a lack of humility about what one knows and what humanity as a whole knows.

PROMPT: Quote

Daily writing prompt
What’s a quote that perfectly describes your outlook on life?

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark Twain

PROMPT: Favorite Quote

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite quote?

I don’t think I have a favorite quote, devoid of context, but as I’ve been thinking about travel at the moment, the following comes to mind:

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

James A. Michener

PROMPT: Reason

Daily writing prompt
Do you think everything happens for a reason?

No. I do not think everything happens for a reason, but I do think it is beneficial to see the positive in challenging life events. Both approaches serve to keep one from feeling victimized by life, but the latter doesn’t require that one believe in some grand architect twiddling the dials on one’s life events — and isn’t a Panglossian rationalization.

Your Own Way

Surrender

PROMPT: Anywhere

Daily writing prompt
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I could happily live any number of places — e.g. several places in Southeast Asia, the Caucasus (particularly Georgia — though with language concerns,) Taiwan, and South America spring to mind. As long as it’s neither brutally hot / humid most of the time nor Winter more than three months a year (and isn’t pricey,) I can probably learn to love it.

I would point out that if this is a forever and always deal, I’m not in. I don’t want to / plan to live any particular place for the rest of my life.

PROMPT: Languages

Daily writing prompt
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?

Fluently: English; With a substantial grasp of vocabulary and grammar: Chinese; Only polite words and basic phrases: Spanish, Hungarian, Thai, Japanese, and maybe still some Russian (which I took in Grad School — the worst possible language learning environment.)

Starting to read Chinese has been thrilling. It has opened a whole new world, and the nature of the language is so different that definitely rewires the brain a bit.

PROMPT: Biggest Mistakes

Daily writing prompt
What are the biggest mistakes people make when visiting your country?

Too much time in the big city and missing the beauty entirely.

FIVE WISE LINES [June 2026]

Photograph of sunset taken at Moalboal, Philippines across the Tanon Strait.

When I was younger I could remember anything,
whether it had happened or not;
but my faculties are decaying now and soon
I shall be able to remember only the things
that never happened.

Mark twain

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
but a fire to be kindled.”

Plutarch [paraphrased]

Judge a man by his questions
rather than his answers.

Voltaire

Resist much, obey little.

Walt whitman; “To the states“

People don’t take trips —
trips take people.

John steinbeck