NPR This I believe's

Sweet Friday: This women believes in the power of tradition. In this essay a middle aged woman talks about her increasingly difficult life as a mom of five and struggling with a divorce. She talks about the power of tradition as sort of a glue that she believes can hold her family together. Her kids nad her every friday after school and work have a sort of desert feast that they work together to prepare and eat as a family. I think what this woman is doing is incredibly smart. She's keying oin something that many people don't realize but I think tradition is an extremely powerful thing. It's based on what makes family such a close and important thing which is history. History and habit in the past I think leads to a similar future. This is probably why that saying "past behavior is the best map for future behavior," rings true so often, and why bad habits, especially, are so hard to break.

I Always Have a Choice: Catherine Royce believes that no matter what, she always has a choice. This woman has spent her entire life being active but has recently been diagnosed with a disease that deteriorates every one of her muscles and will eventually kill her. But because she is a trooper and fighter she has learned that she always has a choice and instead of giving up and letting the disease take over she has made the choice to find other ways of communication and has opened herself up to the idea of letting others into her life and letting others help her. Although this essay was short it was very touching and rang true to me. Things in life will definetly never be easy and sometimes there may seem like there is no way out or any options unless you recognize that you always have a choice whether it is going against peer pressure, standing up for your beliefs or doing something the hard way, there is always a choice.

Just Like Pastrami: This essay is by a man who grew up surrounded by his father's jewish delicatessan and has found pastrami as a perfect metaphor for life which he believes is best enjoyed when "marbled and savored for it's rich cmplexity,". I think this man has an ingenous point in the fact that no matter how much we can attempt to sepereate work from play or our school and outside lives, we can never truly seperate the because they all affect each other through us. The best and most practical way to live a good life, I agree, is to accept it for the blend of work, play and relationships that it's made up of and incorporate them all together.