I love roller coasters that make my stomach drop. One ride in Las Vegas, the Big Shot, straps you into a row of seats and catapults you into the air from the top of the Stratosphere Tower - then plummets back down. I ride it over and over; it's exhilarating. ↗
President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another? ↗
Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships. ↗
I think it's a great thing to have failed in life and then pulled yourself up by the boot straps and actually done something, because then you appreciate it more. ↗