Carolyn Hax Quotes

Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.

There's nothing wrong with being happy somewhere, even if it's the little pond you grew up in, as long as you are in fact comfortable vs. bored.

Your job is to be you, which includes being the chief beneficiary of all things you do right, the chief victim of all you do wrong, and the one person on Earth who has to live with every choice you make. As gatekeeper to your life, you’re it.

Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting.

I do crosswords when I have time to kill somewhere, and am 100 percent successful on filling in the spots I get stuck on - after I close up, do something else, and then go back to it.

Minimizing exposure to miserable people is nothing short of a life strategy.

No matter what else comes, your courage will be your companion for life.

It's hard to send your baby off on a plane without you, though that's less reasonable, because sending him off in a car is statistically a bigger risk.

You can't make people like you under the best of circumstances, and you certainly can't make them like you while you're actively badgering them on what you perceive to be their failures of conscience.

When people get more frustrated by their indecision than by the situation that prompted it, clarity often follows.

Instead of talking at each other about the non-business-related contact, talk to each other about your concerns about marriage. Listen a lot, too.

And if you're a parent who thinks you're okay because your kid doesn't have a phone or iPod yet, and/or you've used all the parent controls to filter out explicit material, you're not okay. The filters are tissue paper and your kid without a phone is on a school bus or in a locker room or at a public park with phone-equipped kids every day. And they're like all kids in exploring - by whatever means available to them - exactly what their parents are treating as too embarrassing or taboo to talk about.

You don't want someone who can't tell the difference between having a different opinion and dismissing your opinion.

One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better.

Your friends will need you, too, someday. Maybe not in the same way, maybe not in cash and shelter, but they'll need you - to listen without judging, to invite them over when they're lonely, to show up for their events, to register in whatever way matters to them that they matter to you. Be on the lookout for these opportunities to give back, and do whatever is in your power not to miss many of them.

When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.

The most reliable ways to make oneself miserable are attempting to change people and not attempting to change circumstances.

Almost no one can take on an entire future in one step, much less while reeling emotionally.

Separation is where you see if it works better with the adults in two different homes.

I'm sure there are people who can toggle quickly from all-in caregiving to structured socializing, but I can't think of any offhand.

There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation.

When you fail to see something, that doesn't mean I'm hiding it.

You can't make someone agree with you, not even when you're 100 percent sure you're right.

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong.

Your parents' views are, by current standards, out there. Getting in their faces about it would be needlessly disrespectful, but there's no reason for you to tiptoe through their delusional little terrarium as if you can't bend even one blade of grass.

I think a person who arranges the event and orders the food also picks up the check - even the birthday person, even when people at the table insist on paying for the birthday person.

The only answer that has any chance against against the information saturation kids face these days is to talk openly with kids, early enough and often enough and unflinchingly enough that you set the precedent of being the safe place they can go to ask their difficult questions. It has to happen starting when they're 2 or 3, and they ask you where babies come from and instead of freaking out and deflecting, you give facts commensurate with their ability to understand.

People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them.

The sudden death of a partner while expecting a child is so universally understood as awful that I don't think anyone with any other weight to carry is going to get to same kind of sympathy - except perhaps people who lose a child.

Apparently you have ample proof from experience that you're not going to stop world evil by debating your in-laws into submission, so it's okay to choose not to try.

Waiting for someone to propose to you only passes the "Really, it's tradition!" sniff test when both of you think it's the man's job to propose and both of you think that's awesome.

A lot of support gets withheld out of fear of awkwardness and misspeaking.

If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.

I realize that people fly with small children all the time, and that babies are easier in some ways because all they do is sit/lie around anyway, but damn it's hard to keep a baby comfortable on any flight, much less a long one, particularly amid the looks of horror they will get from fellow passengers as it dawns on them that their 10- to 13-hour flight might come with a soundtrack of screaming baby.

Once given, a gift is yours to use, store or dispose of as you see fit.

Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay.

First group impressions can mask a lot of individual variations in the members.

There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.

For me, the greatest source of frustration was trying to work with a willful child when there was something else I wanted - say, to get the child to go to bed so I could have my own time. Just the promise of the time, and feeling that promise slip away, was enough to introduce a whole other element of stress into the encounter.

Some people can work amid chaos or conversations, and some can't - and while there's no doubt an element of brain wiring to it, there's also the possibility of acquiring skills that improve your focus.

When you are stuck in a group of people who merely trade turns at talking about themselves instead of actually conversing, it could be a matter of their not really knowing how to converse as opposed to being too small-minded or excessively Facebooked.

I have no quarrel with people who lack the skill or temperament to care for small children.

You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally.

I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that.

I think we'd all hate to be the one who gets declared undateable by one's entire grad-school population based on a couple of told and retold stories.

Separating is not divorcing. Please keep that in mind. It is, instead, the second step in seeing if there's a better way to manage your family.

Don't freight your answers with any notions of what you're "supposed" to do, and just see where your feelings point you. It can feel weird to be so formal about it, but if you're not used to doing it, then there's no shame in retraining yourself.

I'm not a big fan of the white lie.

Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.

There's nothing like a good family when you're really up a tree.