Joe Soran

If you ask me where most of my daily happiness comes from, I won't hesitate. It comes from my marriage. My wife makes me happy every single day — not in some grand, dramatic way, but in the small, ordinary moments that quietly stack up into a life. My happiness doesn't depend on her. But so much of it springs from her anyway, the way a garden doesn't depend on rain but blooms so much brighter because of it. Marriage is a long journey — longer than any of us understand on the

I recently enrolled in a class called “Writing Your Life Story.” It is organized through a local community college and held at a senior center. I signed up because the subject is very close to my heart. Writing your life story is not very different from writing a letter to your grandchildren. Both begin with the same simple but powerful idea: Your life has something worth saying. The class syllabus immediately caught my attention. We will explore why our stories matter, how t

There's an old truth that never gets old: you can learn more about a person from what they do than from what they say. Words are cheap. Anyone can say "I love you." Fewer people can show it, day after day, in small unglamorous ways that never make it into a Hallmark card. So here's the question worth sitting with this Monday morning: What did you actually do to make your love visible? Whose life got easier because of it? Because love, real love, rarely announces itself. It do

Sometimes, the best way to understand ourselves is to write about something else. One way to think about creative projection is taking something that lives inside us—our experiences, struggles, hopes, fears, and wisdom—and expressing it through a story. Imagine a grandfather writing about an old avocado tree in his backyard. For decades, that tree has endured storms and droughts. It has survived insects, disease, broken branches, and scorching summers. And yet, year after y

What story do you hope your grandchildren will tell their grandchildren about you? For me, it is our family beach house vacations. For one week every year we gather together a beach house. We play in the ocean. The young ones running back and forth as they joyfully try to avoid the incoming waves, eventually building up their courage to let the water get higher and higher on their legs. The older kids body surfing or boogie boarding. The smell of sunscreen. A bag of chips a

Because one day you won't be there anymore. Your grandchildren will still be very curious. Someday your grandson or granddaughter will wonder about you. They won't be looking for your bank balance, your job title, or the size of your house. They'll want something far more valuable. They'll want your stories. They'll want your mistakes. They'll want your courage. They'll want your wisdom. Today, you can still answer every one of their questions. Write your answer

Isn't that one of the biggest goals of life - to be better today than yesterday. To learn something that you can apply today to live a better life today. To learn something today so that you can apply it tomorrow and for the rest of your life to make the rest of your life better. The basic principle is to learn every day. To learn from successes and even more importantly, from your failures. To remember what you have learned and to apply it to the only thing you really have

We are old. And that's okay. Aging is part of the bargain we make with life. None of us can stop the march of time. The years keep coming whether we welcome them or not. That part is out of our hands. But growing old comes with a gift that youth cannot possess. We have seen things. We have loved people. We have made mistakes. We have celebrated victories. We have watched children become parents and parents become memories. And if we have lived long enough, we have experienced

I love quotes. They are distilled wisdom. They contain very important messages. In your letter to your grandchildren include a list of them. These quotes or maxims act as very useful tools for the minds and hearts of your grandchildren. They are thoughts to live by. They are short so they are easy to remember. They help make better choices in life. You are loved more than you know. Your worth is not determined by your grades, income, appearance, or achievements. Kindness is

In 1973, Ernest Becker published a Pulitzer prize winning book "The Denial of Death." Some of the key points are that humans are unique in that that can think about thinking. They can put ourselves in hypothetical situations, to contemplate the past, present and future. They can vividly imagine their deaths. This leads to a very common feeling of fear that Becker termed "death terror." To counteract the this "death terror" people have come to the realization that they hav

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" — Mary Oliver That question stopped me cold. I have been busy my entire life. Productive. Helpful. Responsible. I have said yes when I meant no, filled my days with good things that quietly crowded out the essential things. Then I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. And something shifted. The Most Dangerous Word in the English Language is "Yes." McKeown offers three liberating truths: "I choose to." "On

Rode in the back of a pickup truck at 60 miles an hour eating a popsicle. Drank water straight out of a garden hose and somehow survived without electrolytes. Played with lawn darts — giant metal spikes specifically designed to test sibling reflexes. Rode bicycles with: no helmets no pads no fear and usually no brakes. Sat in the front seat at age five while Dad smoked with the windows rolled up. Shared one seatbelt among four children and a German Shepherd. Wandered miles fr

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Pico Iyer Include travel in your letter. What delighted you? What surprised you? Who did you travel with? What meals were fantastic? Where would you want to visit again and again? Where would you not want to travel to a second time? Who were the people that you met? Did you ever get lost? How did you make the best of a bad situation? What were the simple pleasures you will always remember?

The world your grandchildren are navigating would be unrecognizable to the generation that raised you. Social media delivers an unrelenting stream of comparison, criticism, and noise — twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, directly into their hands. The economy asks more of them and promises less. Mental health struggles that were once whispered about now touch nearly every family. The pressure to perform, to achieve, to appear confident while feeling completely lost

One day—maybe sooner than you expect—you’ll wish you could ask your grandmother just one more question. What was she afraid of when she was young?How did she get through the hardest moment of her life?What did she really believe mattered? But you won’t be able to ask. And that’s the quiet tragedy most families carry. Not that their grandparents didn’t love them……but that so much of their wisdom, their stories, their truth… was never written down. If you’re a grandparent readi

We all have scars. Some a lot more than others. Some are physical and some are emotional. You don’t get to be old without getting lots of emotional scars. They are part of life. They are proof that you have lived a full life. A life with love and heartache, great happiness and great disappointment, dreams fulfilled and dreams crushed, friendships kept and friendships lost. Your words can be the splints, casts, band aids, ointments and wisdom that can help your grandchildren h

In the old days, we used CliffsNotes. They were black and yellow booklets that summarized famous books. They were very popular because instead of reading and trying to figure out "Hamlet," you could read the booklet and get an expert review of the play in far less time. It was an easier way to understand a challenging classic. You can do the same things for your grandchildren. Have you ever read a great book that changed your life? That inspired you to change the way you

You have the right to the work, but not the reward. This timeless truth reminds us of something we often forget: our job is to show up and do the work , not to control the outcome. The Bible echoes this same wisdom. In Colossians 3:23 we are told, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” And in Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” These verses call us to bring our full effort, our full attention

Plato once declared, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Powerful words—but how do we truly examine a life? Not by letting thoughts drift through our minds, but by capturing them in writing. Thinking alone is fleeting. Ideas come and go, shaped by mood, distraction, and time. But when you write, something remarkable happens. Your thoughts slow down. They take form. They become real. Writing forces clarity. It reveals patterns. It connects moments that once felt isolated

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” Think about the movies that stay with you long after the credits roll. In Interstellar, a father reaches across time to guide his daughter.In Coco, a family’s survival depends on remembering those who came before.In The Notebook, a written story keeps love alive when memory begins to fade. Different stories. Same truth. We all long to be remembered.And more than that—we long to matter to those who