View from the North 40: Lessons from the middle ground

I have a long and successful track record of failing at productive introspection. My natural philosophy generator has two settings: ultra-pragmatic and ohmigawd(!).

It creates two types of responses the “whatever” and “life's too short for (insert curse word of your choice)” kind and the “life is over” and “what ___?!” (as in “what did I do?!” “what just happened?!” “what'd you do?!” and “what the (insert curse word of your choice)?!”) kind of thing.

I read something a while back that said true life-learning happens somewhere in the middle ground between those two responses. I've been working...