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On Second Thought Ezra

On Second Thought Ezra

  • The Adventures of Pip the Squirrel
  • D’var Torah
    • Genesis as the Story of Every Human Life
  • On Second Thought Series
    • The ‘Not Quite What You Meant’ Series
    • Embracing the Mundane Series
  • About

On Second Thought Ezra

D’var Torah

D’var Torah

Embracing the Mundane Series

Embracing the Mundane Series

The Adventures of Pip the Squirrel

The Adventures of Pip the Squirrel

Genesis as the Story of Every Human Life

Genesis as the Story of Every Human Life

On Second Thought Series

On Second Thought Series

‘Not Quite What You Meant’ Series

‘Not Quite What You Meant’ Series

About

About

  • Pip and the One Who Understood Quiet Things

    Pip and the One Who Understood Quiet Things

    After almost staying home, Pip attends a quiet supper gathering and meets someone who notices the same small things he does. A gentle story about recognition, emotional safety, and discovering that companionship can feel calm instead of lonely.

    May 9, 2026
  • Why “I’m Sorry” Is Not an Apology

    Why “I’m Sorry” Is Not an Apology

    By Ezra Nadav Somewhere along the way, “I’m sorry” became confused with accountability. It isn’t. “I’m sorry” can mean many things: But none of those things are necessarily an apology. A real apology contains something far more difficult than discomfort: responsibility. An apology requires a person to clearly acknowledge: without immediately shifting blame, defending themselves,…

    May 27, 2026
  • When Conversation Stops Feeling Like Work

    When Conversation Stops Feeling Like Work

    Some conversations feel exhausting long before we admit they do. Not because anything bad happened — but because we spent the entire interaction translating ourselves into more socially manageable forms.

    May 9, 2026
  • Pip and the Song That Was Carried

    Pip and the Song That Was Carried

    This story sits alongside the one I’ve just shared about Murray Cohen.It doesn’t retell his experience—it holds a piece of what he carried, in a different language. To read more about Murray, you can find his story here:The Music He Carried By Ezra Nadav In Oak Hallow, where Pip the squirrel lived, there were many kinds…

    April 14, 2026
  • The Music He Carried

    The Music He Carried

    by Ezra Nadav Murray Cohen never told his story all at once. It came in fragments—over coffee, in passing comments, in the space between one story and another. You had to sit with him long enough to understand that what sounded like a memory was often a doorway. And if you stayed, really stayed, he…

    April 14, 2026
  • It Was Never About the Tent

    It Was Never About the Tent

    Most people try to improve the tent. Bigger. Better. More features. But the problem isn’t usually the object — it’s asking one thing to do everything. Sometimes the better move is to step back and let the system do the work.

    April 6, 2026
  • Iran Didn’t Create This Crisis. It Is Actively Driving It — And It’s Still Not the Whole Story.

    Iran Didn’t Create This Crisis. It Is Actively Driving It — And It’s Still Not the Whole Story.

    Iran is actively disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, but the scale of the fallout says something bigger about us. This crisis is not just about a hostile actor. It is about the fragility of a system built on dependency, long supply lines, and too little resilience.

    April 1, 2026
  • Pip and the Ones Who Leave Small Ripples

    Pip and the Ones Who Leave Small Ripples

    When Pip meets an older turtle who quietly tends the forest, he begins to understand how small, thoughtful actions can change everything.

    March 21, 2026
  • The Work That Doesn’t Show — Epilogue 

    The Work That Doesn’t Show — Epilogue 

    The work that keeps a life going is often the least visible. It cannot be easily measured or recognised, yet without it, very little would endure.

    March 21, 2026
  • Choosing a Life That Holds — Part VII

    Choosing a Life That Holds — Part VII

    A life does not need to stand out to be good. In a culture that equates worth with growth and visibility, choosing sufficiency may be less about settling — and more about refusing to postpone living.

    March 21, 2026
  • Pip and Marloo from the Far Forest

    Pip and Marloo from the Far Forest

    When Marloo the goanna arrives in Willow Glen from faraway Bunyip State Forest, the animals of Pip’s forest grow wary of their unfamiliar visitor. But Pip is curious. As he shows Marloo around the woodland and introduces him to his friends, the forest begins to discover that belonging sometimes begins with curiosity rather than fear.

    March 9, 2026
  • Depth Over Spectacle — Part VI

    Depth Over Spectacle — Part VI

    Meaning rarely arrives in dramatic moments. More often it accumulates slowly — through repetition, trust, and the quiet act of returning to the same people and places over time. Depth is built through continuity, not spectacle.

    March 9, 2026
  • Adequacy Without Apology — Part V 

    Adequacy Without Apology — Part V 

    Adequacy carries a quiet kind of shame in cultures organised around comparison. Even stable, meaningful lives can feel insufficient when worth is measured against imagined alternatives. Letting a life be enough requires more than gratitude — it asks us to release the assumption that sufficiency must justify itself.

    March 4, 2026
  • Maintenance Is Not Stagnation — Part IV

    Maintenance Is Not Stagnation — Part IV

    Maintenance is the quiet labour of keeping things from falling apart. In a culture that celebrates novelty and growth, the work of care, repetition, and repair is easily misread as inertia — when it is often the very continuity that allows relationships, bodies, and institutions to endure.

    February 21, 2026
  • The Violence of “More” – Part III

    The Violence of “More” – Part III

    The pressure for “more” rarely feels like violence — until it becomes impossible to arrive anywhere without wondering what comes next. When growth is the only acceptable state, rest, repetition, and sufficiency begin to look like failure rather than the rhythms that sustain a life.

    February 19, 2026
  • When Optimisation Becomes Identity — Part II

    When Optimisation Becomes Identity — Part II

    When optimisation becomes identity, stability starts to feel like failure. In a culture that equates worth with growth and momentum, ordinary days can look like evidence of stagnation — even when they are the very patterns that sustain a life.

    February 14, 2026
  • Embracing the Mundane: The Ordinary Isn’t Broken — Part I

    Embracing the Mundane: The Ordinary Isn’t Broken — Part I

    Ordinary life hasn’t failed—it’s been misjudged. In a culture that treats constant growth as proof of worth, the mundane is often mistaken for stagnation. This essay begins a slow, deliberate exploration of why “enough” became suspect—and what we lose when we forget the value of ordinary, sustaining lives.

    February 8, 2026
  • Chronic Illness Is That Coworker Who Never Gets Fired

    Chronic Illness Is That Coworker Who Never Gets Fired

    Some days, chronic illness isn’t tragic — it’s just deeply annoying. A dark-humoured look at what it’s like to negotiate daily life with a body that won’t cooperate, won’t explain itself, and somehow never gets performance-managed.

    January 29, 2026
  • Pip and the Two Places He Loved

    Pip and the Two Places He Loved

    Pip the squirrel loves two very different places — one busy, one quiet — and wonders if it’s possible to belong to both. Through summer storms, fireflies, and thoughtful moments, Pip learns that loving more than one home doesn’t divide the heart… it helps it grow.

    January 14, 2026
  • Pip and the One Who Stayed Longest

    Pip and the One Who Stayed Longest

    Some lives shape the forest quietly, holding paths steady without ever standing in the middle of them. In this Pip tribute, watchfulness, service, and chosen belief are remembered with tenderness — and a life that stayed long enough to shelter others is honoured.

    January 8, 2026
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On Second Thought Ezra

© 2025 – 2026 On Second Thought | The Adventures of Pip the Squirrel
All rights reserved – Ezra Nadav

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