Isaac Morehouse

It’s popular to be “awake” these days. To realize everything is not as it seems, institutions lie to you, chicanery is afoot.

I will be the first to support a relentless pursuit of truth, but there is something refreshing about people who aren’t quite so attuned to the hidden problems of the world.

Those who simply enjoy life and don’t instinctively look for ways the world is unfair or deceptive may be sometimes naive, but thank goodness they exist.

Here’s to those who don’t know what’s going on outside their own sphere and don’t care!

It’s good to help people out who never acknowledge it or repay you in any way.

Helping people is good for your soul, except when it’s bad for your soul, which is surprisingly often.

You can do someone a kindness and increase your own smugness, become delusional about your importance to them and the world, and get hooked on need for validation or a feeling of superiority. These are almost impossible to avoid, especially in a world that rarely treats them like vices and makes a big deal about signaling virtues and a small deal about living them.

This is why people who seem unmoved or ungrateful when you help them are wonderful. If your reaction is anger towards them, or a feeling your were ripped off, it’s a good sign you have some vices lurking in you and they just saved you from feeding them further.

Help without needing a thing. When you can’t, learn from it.

Here’s to the ungrateful moochers!

My car runs better after an oil change. Stranger than that, it runs better after a cleaning.

And the dents on the outside get smaller when the inside is vacuumed.

These perplexing mysteries open the possibility of similar opportunity in other areas of life.

A little air in the tires might be just as good as a new car.

Sickness sucks. But there are times I am thankful for minor sicknesses. They allow some things that are good, but don’t get prioritized when you’re healthy. Things like,

• Doing nothing
• Reading
• Day sleeping
• Thinking about death
• Staring out the window
• Remembering things you want to do but have been neglecting
• Being thankful for health
• Praying

So here’s to sickness. May we make the most of it!

Storms are stressful and destructive. But they are also cleansing and purifying.

After a big one blows through, the air is cleaner. The trees are cleared of dead branches. After the cleanup, there is a refreshment in the land and lives of the people.

This does not in any way dull the horror and tragedy of loss of life of all forms that occurs in a storm. But all life will and must pass. Storms only change the pace.

They are terrible but they are wonderful too.

Worth more than money

Even though less fungible

A surprise favor

My grandfather was an amazing storyteller. His stories were always believable, but also incredible. In all likelihood, some were exaggerated.

This doesn’t diminish them, it enhances them!

Is there anything more American than exaggeration? Tall tales are the backbone of our mythology. Not dark tales, nor contemplative tales, nor cautionary tales, nor esoteric tales like many cultures. American stories are brash and over the top and about doing amazing things against the odds. It’s all good guys winning all the time.

The downsides to this are obvious, and manifest all around us. But I’m not too worried about those. We all know them and see them and (incessantly) call them out.

Today, I’m thinking of the wonderful parts about tall tales and histories that border on legend. They lift the spirit, delight, entertain, and embolden. They also frustrate the efforts of nihilists and negative Nancys.

Here’s to tall tales!

Small injuries are great.

Do you ever feel more alive than when you’re sore? When you’ve got a sprained finger, a tender ankle, a bruised rib, or a scraped knee?

I remember laying in bed after basketball games in high school, feeling my whole body ache. It was wonderful.

The human body is meant to be used. And its self-healing power is evidence that it’s meant to be used hard enough to get injured.

A well-used body is part of a well-lived life. Usage results in bangs and pains.

Here’s to the small injuries!

What could be more fun than a little misunderstanding between the young and the old?

My kids often make fun of me for saying things that are dated or don’t make sense to them. And I get no end of delight from mimicking gen Z slang.

Perhaps these things can drive a wedge between people, but I’ve found them to be points of contact and mutual fun-poking that bring generations together.

I love a good out of touch old-guy joke that gets pilloried by the young!

The hardest times elicit the funniest jokes.

With a massive storm blowing through recently, I came across plenty of grim jokes about its dangers. Every time, it relieved tension and made me laugh.

Dark humor is the best remedy for dark times. Few things warm my heart towards humanity like gallows humor.

A hurricane is approaching my home. This is not good. But I can’t help but be moved by the way people rise to such occassions.

All across my neighborhood, people were offering help and talking with each other. People I’ve never seen or talked to. In my experience, these storms bring the best out of people.

“Software is eating the world.”

A famous tech investor made this his thesis years ago, and it has proven prescient.

Still, decades into the eating of the world, there remain uneaten experiences, in between the layered folds of software.

When you discover a driving route no maps app will show you and cleverly navigate around thousands who are fully plugged in to the web, it’s a delightful reminder that not everything has been nor ever will be eaten by software.

Software is wonderful. It has improved life in myriad ways. But there’s still delight in the analog world. Here’s to those uneaten pockets! Find them and enjoy them.

I live far from my home state of Michigan. There are almost no fellow Michigan sports fans near me. Yet as the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions are putting together impressive seasons, I feel completely immersed in the Michigan sports community.

Each day, I can dip into a stream of ever-flowing conversations, jokes, highlights, and complaints about these teams with others who love them and grew up with them just like me. I get to step into a Detroit sports bar any time of the day.

Before games, I read scouting reports and predictions. After games I chat about plays or press conferences. I share joy, pain, and everything in between in real time and after the fact.

This was not possible before social media. Sports Twitter is my favorite Twitter (along with parody sports Twitter), and the last few months as the underdog Tigers have made an historic run, I’ve felt completely immersed in the community of fans. We are in this together!

A 30 second video of a stadium or sports bar full of fans give me the emotional charge of being where I cannot. All the chatter, and ability to rewatch plays and clips of locker room celebrations creates an orbit of fans, held together not by geography but by love for the game and the team.

This is an unmitigated good in my life! I love sports and being able to participate in the grand storylines and heroic metaphors with others across the globe.

Thanks social media!

I noticed something in the airport bathroom.

I’ve seen the little rubber anti-splashback discs in the bottom of urinals thousands of times, but for some reason it struck me this time: somewhere, there are designers modeling and testing theses, and factories producing them.

There must be quite a few, because I have seen endless variety of shapes, colors, and brand logos. There is apparently a robust industry dedicated to creating small objects whose sole purpose is to reduce a bit of messiness at the urinal.

Bathrooms don’t need these to function. They are not necessities. A very poor or barbarous society wouldn’t give them a thought. But they make the experience a little bit better. And they are ubiquitous.

A smiled at the thought that somewhere, someone was thinking about how to better manufacture these little things. Without any conscious effort on my part, I get to experience a slightly more civilized society.

I have done daily writing and other challenges on and off for 15 years. It’s always a beneficial experience.

I decided yesterday to start a new one. For the month of October, I’m going to publish a post every day about something good in the world.

There’s no shortage of bad news and scary world events. If we don’t train ourselves to see all the good around us, we will begin to see only darkness.

In an effort to not allow the darkening of my own eyes, I’m kicking off this daily positive post challenge.