SHANE​ WARREN

Life throws curveballs. Sometimes, it feels like a relentless game of dodgeball where the balls are stress, setbacks, and unexpected challenges. But here’s the good news: you can learn to catch those balls with grace and bounce back stronger.

I’ve been noticing something lately, and I’m trying to name it without turning into the cranky guy yelling at clouds. It’s this… vibe. A kind of social theatre that plays out in comment sections, on talkback, at family dinners, in workplace kitchens. The place where someone says, “I’m just asking questions,” but it doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like a door gently closing.

There’s a name for this weird little void we tumble into every year, that space between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when time stops making sense, calories stop counting, and the line between “afternoon nap” and “existential crisis” gets deliciously blurry. It’s called Gooch Week.

These instruments do not “prove” that crowns cause prosperity, freedom, or happiness. They do support a humbler claim: where a democracy already takes law and competence seriously, an apolitical head of state helps it stay serious in bad weather.

As we roll into the end-of-year season - family dinners, office parties, group catch-ups, and those “let’s do this every year!” barbecues - there’s always that one person.

There are few theological distortions as remarkable, and as dangerous, as the rise of prosperity theology. Rainn Wilson’s words land with force: how did a radical peasant from Galilee, who preached solidarity with the poor, end up rebranded as a cultural mascot for wealth, nationalism, and “God wants you to have a bigger house”?

A strange thing happens when a country starts arguing with itself: we forget who benefits. We trade side-eye with the person down the street who votes differently, while those who profit from chaos quietly toast another bumper quarter. We rage at each other online, and the engagement metrics purr. We are, as the saying goes, taking the bait.

Apparently, the left is destroying society, undermining values, and eroding freedoms. And yet, here’s the inconvenient truth, much of what we call freedoms and values today were delivered precisely because the left fought tooth and nail for them.

What fascinates me and frankly disturbs me, is not whether guns are deadly. That is obvious. The real question is: why are guns clutched so tightly in the American psyche? Why, even after classrooms are turned into morgues, does the national conversation erupt in rage instead of reason? Why do so many cling to the “right to bear arms” as if it is the last thread of dignity they have left?

Suicide is preventable. Together, we can build a world where fewer families know this grief. A world where people don’t wait until it’s “too late” to ask for help. A world where, instead of silence, there is solidarity.