On Second Thought Ezra

Author: On Second Thought Ezra

  • Looking for Work Has Never Been Easy — and It’s Never Been Harder

    Looking for Work Has Never Been Easy — and It’s Never Been Harder

    by Alex Sturman, PCC Looking for work has always carried a certain emotional weight. Even under the best circumstances, there is something exposing about it. You take years of experience, mistakes, growth, leadership, conflict, resilience, skill — all the complicated parts of being an actual human being — and compress them into a few pages…

  • 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,…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.