Pop quiz; Which cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is the coolest?

Ding, ding, ding. If you said Raphael, give yourself a big high-five. On the other hand, if you picked Leonardo or even Donatello, then you’re not a complete loss as a person. But if you said Michelangelo, we can’t be friends.

At least, not with my twelve-year-old self, that is.

It’s simple, really, Michelangelo made me feel insulted. There was just something about the “party dude” in orange that felt like a copout. Like he was more of a critique on how adults saw kids, then a real and…

People, places, thoughts, and experiences are dirty. And the older you get, the more of them you collect. The more graveyards you fill.

It’s like a hike that starts fresh, clean even. Then you hit the brambles, and the blood comes. It cakes — a scar.

Good advice here — wisdom.

Lots of bad advice over here — folly.

Both are regarded along with no small amount of guidance ignored. Because what is right isn’t always right right now. And right now isn’t always about being right.

Dirt, grime, bloodsuckers, and blisters accumulate. Infect. The hike continues, the landscape changes…

“If you don’t go to Sunday school,” mom threatened, “you’re not getting into heaven.”

Those were mom’s big guns when I was growing up. Heaven, she described, was a million times better than the best birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, with unlimited tokens, bottomless pizza pies, and present — lots of presents.

So I went, and when the Sunday school teacher made it to the part about Heaven, I listened.

“You’ll worship all day and fellowship all night,” teacher explained. She was squatty, bird’s nest hair the color of rust, and always smiling. …

Have you considered that you’re the problem?

That the reason school sucks, work just isn’t going your way, you’re broke or fat or single or whatever is entirely your doing?

I do it all the time. In fact, “I’m the problem” is one of the four pillars painted on the whiteboard in my garage.

I didn’t always think like this. I love to blame. I’m naturally critical. Finding the fault in others was a game to me, and I was good at it.

But it wasn’t helping. Being a victim never does. Neither does blame, revenge, grudges, or resentment.

Try…

I wonder what it felt like living those last ten years alone.

Except for me, a few olds ladies in his semi-assisted living complex, a social worker, and the convenience store employees across the street, who else did he have? What did he think at night when he dozed off?

Could it be that dad concocted a story? One that let him slip away from the world, one day at a time, with nothing more than a motorized periwinkle chair and The History Channel.

And if so, what kind of story makes someone ok with giving up?

The stroke that…

Hills are torture at 4 am, and it’s so quiet you can hear your breath falter in the cold.

I run anyway.

Not because I’m tough or fit or, God forbid, a runner. Because routine, simple as that. Because effort equals energy.

But no matter how many times I take the hill, I still want to quit. It feels like Everest; my calves burn, my nose runs, and I just want to turn around and go home. Every. Single. Time.

And that’s another reason I run. Because I like wanting to quit and running anyway. …

You will make more than 35,000 decisions today.

You don’t know you’re making them, of course — if you did, you’d go insane. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to make more than 1,000 decisions in the next hour. Heads up! You’re making one — or a hundred — right now.

“Am I going to keep reading this?” you’re wondering. “Is this guy going somewhere with this?”

I assure you I am, and it’s important, so stick with me.

Let’s say you’re part of the group that decided to make a New Year’s resolution. Good for you…

There is only one recycled breath in this world.

It gives me light and purpose. I meditate on it.

Then I envision it moving on, and along with it, everything I’ve ever known. Whatever remains — empty.

Then I inhale again, and the breath returns, somehow different — a brand new guide with fresh power and opportunity and pain and suffering and bliss. And I let that breath go too.

Freedom starts with inspiration. It continues with expiration. The most beautiful circle imaginable, forever dying, perpetually reborn.