Megan's Monthly Musings

Maybe you shouldn't follow your heart

In The Age of Feelings Are Facts, it's not a surprise that the faulty advice to "follow your heart" is having its moment in the sun. I've been hearing this advice since I was a kid, and I didn't follow it even

Mainstream ideas about healing are wrong

Fortuitously and unfortunately, Glenn Greenwald (the journalist who published the Snowden revelations ten years ago) wrote about grief last year when his husband passed away (at the age I am now) after a long, hospitalized illness that "came out of the blue" (not even Greenwald could voice suspicion

It's time for my generation to lead and we're not ready

Tim Keller's death last May made me realize a) why I've always liked older people and b) that we're starting to lose our leaders. I disagree with a lot of Keller's views, but also, he was my pastor of sorts when I

Gratitude is not a competition

When you were growing up, did your parents encourage you to eat your green beans "because there are starving kids in China?" When you're going around the room (as an adult now) at the beginning of a meeting or a gathering and the ice breaker is

No, not "everyone" needs to be in therapy

Related to my last post about friendship, part of the hollowing out of friendships has been because of the professionalization of intimacy and the massive push for widespread therapy attendance. Seems like every influencer, podcast host, and Facebook ad is about how "everyone" can benefit from therapy and

Making friends is hard as a grown up

This culture is not great at affirming the value of friendship. Whenever even the smallest thing goes wrong in a connection between two friends, there is very little messaging other than that person is toxic and if they aren't for you or serving you then you need to

The passing of time is hard

He has put eternity into man’s heart... ~part of Ecclesiastes 3:11 I've never related with time well. I feel every second like Velcro, even now as it feels like it's all going way, way too fast - just like the adults around me as

Results are okay to want

Happy new year! My only resolution this year is to stop gaslighting myself. And one way I've been doing that is by allowing others to dictate where my joy/happiness "should come from--among other things, traveling versus arriving. If you're frustrated by the constant exhortation

End-of-the-year reflection 2: what I don't need to hear any more

I was reviewing my reflection from around this time last year, and it was eerily similar in terms of relational struggles. I want this pattern to end. I know I'm definitely contributing to it: probably the biggest way I'm investing in this cycle of intense relational

End-of-year reflection 1, or what I needed to hear ten years ago

I'm shifting without the clutch from my Left/Right series to looking back on this year because I'm tired of being angry, screaming into a void, and taking responsibility for trying to help people out of the trap I was in for so long. One of

What the Left gets Right: censorship is bad.

Since October 7th, universities across the nation have been the host of "Free Palestine" demonstrations and professors, administrators, and academic bureaucrats have stood in support in the name of "free speech." Reporters, journalists, writers, artists, etc. who have gotten censored or cancelled for their pro-Palestine pieces

What the Left Gets Right: we are unsafe.

Society has gone mad (I mean that figuratively; I’m not contradicting what I wrote a month ago in my mental-health crisis post) with its obsession with safety the last three years. Masks, testing, track and tracing, censorship of “harmful” information (which the Left conveniently gets to define)—all of

What the Left Gets Right: women are being exploited and threatened.

One particularly malignant aspect of the mental health crisis I wrote about last week is the rapid and seemingly thorough takeover of all major institutions of the transgender ideology. If you ask any questions at all about this soft-suicide stepping stone to transhumanism, you are the problem: you’re “hateful”

What the Left Gets Right: our society is in a mental-health crisis.

It’s so bad, I think most people on the Right would agree with those on the Left about this. I’ve written extensively about this crisis on Mad in America, though it’s a fairly focused and Left-leaning outlet, so I haven’t gone into much about the pandemic-related

What the Left gets Right: Caring for the poor is imperative.

Fair warning: friends, because this issue rends my heart daily, I tried real hard to be calm while I wrote this. I failed. This is the best I could do. Poverty is heartbreaking. I have been on the front lines in social work in Seattle, which is one of the

What the Left gets Right: Inequality is real.

I ended our last post by advocating for capitalism, flaws and all. Three years ago, I would never have imagined myself doing so. I was All. In. on universal basic income (which I'm placing bets will be rolled out with the rapidly incoming central bank digital currencies AKA

What the Left gets Right: society has structural problems, part 2.

To pick up where we left off on August 1st, the Left actually isn't advancing a structureless society, though, much as many on the Left might believe they are. The Left also believes that stripping society of hierarchy a) actually gets rid of power and b) will benefit

What the Left gets Right: society has structural problems, part 1.

The last five-ish years, it's been impossible to avoid hearing/seeing advocacy to "undo" "structural" or "institutional" problems. The most common problem named is "structural/institutional racism," of course, but, as the Left has reorganized more and more of society,

What the Left gets Right: Accountability Matters.

In my second June post, I reflected briefly on accountability, and have been thinking about it in broader light than I used to ever since. It's not just that church, like I mentioned in my last post, seems to be evading accountability. It's that their are

What The Left gets Right: there are issues with the church (part 2).

Parents may think they're doing their kids a favor by teaching them a wide range of theories, religions, perspectives, etc., and then letting them pick which ones they prefer/think is best/works for them. But that's a disaster if there actually is such a thing

What the Left Gets Right: there are issues with the church - part 1.

My reflections on Tim Keller's death last month have changed how I was going to write about this subject, which has been on my list for quite a while. I'd wanted to be more respectful and sophisticated than simply hurling insults at the church, which is

A break from our regularly scheduled programming

It is pure coincidence, if anything ever is, that I'm needing to take a break from my What The Left Gets Right series at the halfway mark in the calendar year: four days after my last note to you last month, Tim Keller died and I have been

What the Left gets Right: the expansion of medically assisted suicide is dangerous and ominous.

Back in March, I wrote about the Canadian program MAID, which stands for medical assistance in dying. The fact that this program exists is concerning enough as it is but why it's been making news lately makes it even more worrisome. Before March 31st, only those with a

What the Left gets Right: public education has gone wrong (part 3).

I want to acknowledge that I started this series in agreement with The Left on its stance that public education has gone very wrong. I agree; it has. And Street Data is just one example of how it could go even more wrong. Street Data, as I've written

What the Left gets Right: Something is wrong with public education (part 2).

At the beginning of the month, I began the discussion of the woes of public education. The Left is right that something is very wrong in our public schools, and that a lot of what's wrong is having kids sitting in rows of desks asking for permission for