Archives for October 2017

4 Things Most of Us Refuse to Admit About Ourselves

10.29.2017 by Marc Chernoff // 54 Comments

4 Things Most of Us Refuse to Admit About Ourselves

I was writing at a local beachside coffee shop when a young woman approached me. “You’re Marc, right?” she asked.

I looked up at her. She had piercing eyes, a pierced nose, an elegant smile… but nothing that rang a bell. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?” I inquired politely.

“No,” she replied. “But I know you.” She swiftly walked back to the table where she’d been sitting, picked up her iPad, and carried it over to me. On the screen was our blog, Marc and Angel Hack Life. “You look just like your photo,” she said in a chipper tone.

I smiled. “So you’re one of the three people in this town who read it.”

She blushed. “What I like about your writing is that it’s so real.”

I cleared my throat. “Real?” I asked.

“I mean . . . you don’t hide anything. You say it just like it is. And that gives me hope.”

“How do you know that I don’t hide anything?” I asked.

She paused, tilted her head slightly and squinted her eyes as if, maybe, to look for something inside me that she had missed before. “Well, your words seem so, so . . . honest.”

Her compliment was appreciated, but it didn’t feel fair. Perhaps because I’m not always good at accepting compliments, or perhaps because I’ve been thinking a lot about honesty lately . . . and how I sometimes fall short.

“There are some things you should [Read more…]

One Hard Thing You Must Start Doing (To Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy)

10.15.2017 by Marc Chernoff // 38 Comments

A petite, light-skinned Jamaican woman sits with her husband in a crowded beachside ice cream shop in Miami. Although she doesn’t speak loudly or occupy much space in the room, people notice her.

Her hair is long, flowing and black like a windy night. Her lips are soft and red like rose petals. Her curves are subtle, yet they dip and bend in all the right places. Her skin is smooth, brown, maple cream. And her clothes are modest, accentuating everything, while exposing nothing at all.

She knows why they’re looking at her. “It’s because I’m not white,” she says. “It’s because we’re an interracial couple and they don’t understand why you’re with me.”

Her husband groans and closes his eyes. There’s nothing he can say. They’ve already had this conversation a hundred times before. He threads his fingers through his hair in frustration and watches as [Read more…]

7 Things to Remember When You’re Scared to Speak Up

10.01.2017 by Marc Chernoff // 26 Comments

7 Things to Remember When You Are Scared to Speak Up

In the early 1990’s, 12-year-old Severn Suzuki was passionately obsessed with real world issues like poverty, ocean pollution, and global warming. She was just a child, but she also understood that the decisions adults made concerning these issues would impact her life and the lives of all children for generations to come. And she believed she and other children should have a voice and be present during critical global meetings on these issues.

Severn boldly set her sights on attending the next United Nations (UN) Conference. At the time, in over 50 years, no child had ever attended a UN Conference—a formal meeting where ambassadors from nearly every developed country come together to openly discuss the future health of the world. But Severn believed it was time to change this—it was time for children to have a voice too. So not only was she determined to figure out how to attend, but she resolved to make sure her voice was heard loud and clear too.

Severn applied to attend the UN Conference through the environmental non-profit she and her friends founded when they were all just 9-years-old. And when her application was accepted—not because of her age, but because she had helped build a relevant non-profit—she knew it was just the beginning.

When Severn arrived at the UN Conference she hit the ground running with one goal in mind: [Read more…]