If there was one gift I could give to my children

If there was one gift I could give to my children, it would be the ability to find contentment.

It's not the same thing as simply wanting them to be content. 

The contentment we most often speak of in western society is fleeting, temporary.  It depends on my ability to satiate my child's desires and it is often fueled by commodities.  If you begin to chase it, it may well turn into an eternal rat-race.  But the ability to be content - that is a sustainable, renewable resource.  And it originates in them, not me.

Kaivopuistonranta, Helsinki (2014)

When Dream Jobs Don't Pan Out

If you would have asked me what my ultimate "dream job" would be anytime between my fourteenth and twenty-first birthdays, I wouldn't have hesitated to proudly declare that some day I hoped to work for the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer. I envisioned grand adventures of living in foreign lands, constantly learning new languages, and working with locals as a representative of the alruistic American people, for the betterment of their country and the betterment of the world at large. What I never imagined is that, at the age of twenty-one I would be flying to Russia to start an internship which fully embodied the responsibilities, prestige and adventures I had sought as a young adult and believed awaited me at the State Department.