It seems we were born to invent. For better or worse, we incline to stretch, twist, and reshape much of what is before us, until what is there is the next advance on what had been before. Inventing is what we do. But often what we invent we would have been better without. New versions […]
Every age is an age of wonder, but some are more wondrous than others, and the one that spans my current incarnation is beyond what I could have imagined in my youth. For over seventy years, I have witnessed astonishing scientific, technological and social innovations, which accelerate now at an exponential rate. And yet, we […]
Can the trillions of cells in your body know what it’s like to be the whole that is you? Each of them is endowed with a certain capacity and function that does not include the capacity of knowing more than what it’s to do. Nor can a drop of the sea know what it’s like […]
Maybe it’s how you were taught to get ahead. I was raised to compete. “It’s every man for himself out there,” my dad used to say, “To get ahead, you have to outdo the next guy.” That’s how I was groomed to get what I wanted. Top of the list: to live the American Dream. […]
I keep hearing these days that happiness is a choice. Apparently, it’s up to me to make it happen. “Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try.” I decide to decide to be happy. Then along comes a crappy encounter, and I react in my usual crappy-encounter sort of way. I get upset, and I’m […]
We’ve all heard it said that ignorance is bliss, and that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But what you don’t know can hurt you. It can even kill you. I dare say that most of the people who die every year, die of some form of ignorance, whether slowly from decades of poor […]
In Hindu legend, Lord Shiva is depicted as Nataraja, lord of the dance that destroys the old and weary ways of the world. Whether by wisdom or whim, Shiva decides what must go, and with wild and ecstatic abandon, he performs its obliteration. His purpose, though widely misunderstood, is release of the soul from its […]
Sadness comes of missing what is no longer there or never was: a lover, friend, material gain, a piece of the past, a harmony or wholeness. It may be what we have lost, or what we have wanted and cannot have. But beneath this sadness is a truth awaiting discovery, a truth that is meant […]