Joseph Kreydt

Tag: reflections

  • Laughter is a Bridge

    When I was eleven years old, I rode a boat to Catalina Island with my family.

    At that age, my number one priority in life was to laugh, so, naturally, I brought a whoopee cushion with me.

    A couple foreign men were seated near us, saying something in another language. They were inches away, but they might as well have been in another country.

    That was, until they saw me tricking my grandma into sitting on the whoopee cushion. Then they started laughing. We all made eye contact and connected almost like old friends.

    We bonded over simulated farts, and I learned that laughter is a universal tongue. It’s a bridge that connects souls even when the high walls of language divide them.

  • My Contribution to Journalism

    There’s a lot of journalism about the dark things. That’s important because we can’t be whole until we integrate what is in our shadows and we can’t integrate what is in our shadows until they are illuminated.

    But I have something else to report. This can be my contribution to journalism.

    There are beautiful walkways cloaked in fresh air. And as the sun sets, the clouds have turned pink and purple and orange at the same time. And there’s a sycamore tree that has seen more sameness than I ever will. And two fawns are having a bedtime snack in a field. And the air is cool, but not enough for a sweater. And the moon is half, and the color of half and half.

    Broadcasting from just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I’m Joseph Kreydt. To all the dark places and to all the light, good night.

  • The Value That Numbers Can’t Measure

    The Value That Numbers Can’t Measure

    Not all hours are equal, even though the clock says they are.

    It was Sunday. The grocery store was noisy and packed. I offered my sympathy to the cashier. “But does it at least make your shift go faster?” I asked.

    “At times,” she said. “But then there’s the last hour. That last hour is definitely sixty minutes.”

    She didn’t mean the minutes were literally longer. Everybody knows sixty minutes is the exact same quantity of time as an hour. She was expressing the paradox that those two things are not at all equal, especially when you’re anxiously counting down the minutes.

    The last hour is equal to all the other hours. It’s also much longer. How can both of those statements be true? Because there are different kinds of value.

    There are quantifiable, metrical values; four and four is eight; trees are plants. And then there are paradoxical, felt values, like the old saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Both are real, but we often forget the second one, which may matter even more.

    Patience can’t be bought. Love can’t be measured. An old growth forest is more valuable than the price of all its timber. A single smile can carry more weight in a life than a million dollars.

    What is something you’ve experienced that was more valuable than its quantity?