Another World is Probable

I’m recycling this post from November 2009 so a lot has changed in my life since then but I think the message is still a good one. Enjoy. There is a quote that says, “Even if a young boy says something logical, it should be accepted, and if the Supreme Creator says something illogical, it should be rejected as rubbish." It’s a good point. As a friend says, the truth has a ring to it. There’s a res...

There’s a post-it on my bathroom mirror that says, “Remember life can be surprising and delightful.” To be honest, it’s been ages since surprises were anything but terrible. For instance, “Surprise! The water on your street has been shut off!” or “Surprise! You lost your wallet!” I’d kind of forgotten that surprises can be enjoyable and had an experience on Saturday that recalibrated me. More in t...

For a long time, I’ve strived to make my home a sanctuary. I want it to be a safe place, free from chaos and aggravation. In my ideal world, you wouldn’t hear a jackhammer, music from a neighbor, car alarms, or any of the other issues that go along with high-density living. Many years ago, I was on the quest for the perfect sanctuary space. I moved on average every three months for three years. In...

For a long time, I considered myself safe only if there was no presence of danger. That makes sense if you look up the word “safe” and “safety” in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines safe as “secure from threat of danger, harm, or loss.” That’s how I’ve tried to live my life: not running with scissors, wearing my seatbelt, looking both ways when I cross the street, etc. It’s been my prime obje...

Lately, I’m struggling to accept reality. I don’t mean things like the Earth being round, I mean the reality of my life. For instance, a client is one month late on a payment. I haven’t heard a peep despite the repeated telephone calls and emails I’ve sent. Every day I check my bank account hoping the payment has arrived, and when it doesn’t, I call them again, email them again, and still nothing....

All week the topic of self-compassion versus self-esteem has come up in conversation with friends. I learned recently that what I thought was self-compassion is actually self-esteem and the two are very different! That matters because self-compassion is the trait that gives us more motivation, more grit, better health, and greater happiness, according to research. More in this week's post.

Someone asked me recently, what do I care what Elon Musk does with his money? To start with, why shouldn't I care? We live in a society that pretends we're not all connected. That what one person does somehow has no effect on anyone else. Want to own a newspaper company? Sure, go ahead! Build a rocket so you can go to space? Knock yourself out! Won't make a difference in my life! But it does. More...

This post was originally published in July 2017. The other week I read an interesting philosophical treatise about the structure of our universe, which is an oval. We are made up of atoms with electrons moving around a nucleus. On a larger scale, the Earth is the nucleus and the moon is moving around it. In our solar system, the sun is the nucleus and all the planets are moving around it. However,...

I had an interesting dream the other night. I was on a spaceship and due to a setting, some people saw an illusion (luxury furniture, plush rugs, a tidy space) while others saw reality (cheap furniture, threadbare rugs, a mess). It was like a movie scene that magically changes an Ikea chair into an upscale-designer one with the wave of a hand. The dream got me thinking about reality and perception...

Sometimes I have temporary amnesia in that I forget how much can change in a day, an hour, an instant. If I feel blue, I think I’ll always feel blue. If I feel happy, I think I’ll always feel happy. I pretend a state of being is permanent when in reality, it’s anything but. For instance, I’ve been hawking my bank account, just waiting for payments to come in. I started to fret about what I would d...

As you’ve likely heard, the first-ever Amazon labor union was formed on Friday . What I love about this story is the David versus Goliath aspect. I can think of no better representation of a modern-day Goliath than Amazon. After all, Amazon accounts for more than 40% of ecommerce , according to emarketer.com. The next highest percentage of internet commerce is Walmart, coming in at 7.1%. So. There...

I had a humbling experience on Friday. While listening to my new favorite podcast, “ The Happiness Lab ,” the host Dr. Laurie Santos discussed inattentional blindness, or the inability to perceive objects if we’re not paying attention to them. She ran an experiment with her Yale students where she showed them a video of people passing a basketball. She asked her students to count the number of pas...

My friend Kat Nadel , a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) facilitator, mentioned she’s writing a blog about eight things NOT to say to Ukrainians right now. One of those things is including the words “at least” anywhere in your response. For instance, if a Ukrainian says, “My 12-year-old niece had to travel by herself to Romania and now she’s sheltering at a refugee camp all alone,” and you say, “Tha...

Facebook keeps showing me pictures from trips I took to Europe years ago, including one from Denmark in 2016. What I remember about that trip, other than laughing and exploring the country with a dear friend, is how everything reminded me of something else. The landscape but also the people. I may not speak the same language as someone else, but we both care about our friends and family. We both w...

As a highly sensitive person and an empath, I feel everything. Not only my own emotions, but other people’s too. If the folks around me are scared, I’m scared. If they’re sad, I’m sad. I’ve tried numerous ways of dealing with this high degree of empathy. When I was younger, I did my best to numb out, to not feel anything . Long story short, that was a disaster. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried all...

Like many people, Ukraine is on my mind. I’m watching in horror as Russia is brazenly invading another country in a quest for power. Republican Senator Mitt Romney told NBC in January that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to reestablish what he had before, a type of Soviet Union. And furthermore, Putin is clear he thinks the breakup of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for Russi...

I’m rereading a book I first picked up two years ago, Tosha Silver’s It’s Not Your Money , and I’m finding it’s just as powerful now as it was then. The title itself is a good place to start. It sums up the idea that nothing on this planet is truly “ours” in a permanent way. We are merely caretakers for the time being. You may think the money sitting in the bank under your name is yours, that the...

There's one person in your life who probably doesn't get a lot of thanks. Do you know who that is? (I'll tell you who I think it is.) What with Valentine's Day upon us, it would be a great time to express some love for this person. More in this week's post. 

In 12-step communities there’s a saying, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” When I first heard the expression, I thought it meant secrets, along with the things you’re ashamed of, and/or the emotions and memories you’re trying to repress, will drive you to act out in your addiction. While that’s true, I’ve also learned recently that secrets can make you physically sicker. I don’t mean the stom...

The other week I started a slow slide into depression because I ran out of resveratrol, a supplement I take to support dopamine production. In a quest to feel happier, I descended into an internet rabbit hole and of course a podcast from Glennon Doyle about how to live a little happier caught my eye, particularly because she featured Dr. Laurie Santos. Dr. Santos is a happiness expert and teaches...

Sometimes I have the expectation of myself that I’ll function like a robot. That no matter the circumstances, no matter how I’m feeling, I’ll be able to accomplish XYZ regardless. And if I’m not able to accomplish XYZ, then I beat myself up and make meaning from it like, “You’re so lazy.” This may sound silly, but what I often forget is that I’m a human and human beings are not robots. We aren’t a...

As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday here in the U.S., I keep thinking about one of my favorite quotes of his. There are many because the man was an eloquent speaker, but in 1963 he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indire...

Can we take a moment and acknowledge how hard it is to be alive? And in particular to be alive right now? I keep thinking about this New York Times article detailing how in the retail world, adults are acting like children because they are unable to cope with the stress of life. Grown men are screaming because the grocery store is out of the cheese they want. Women are becoming inconsolable becaus...

My spiritual teacher uses the word “beatitude” a lot because that is his wish for everyone, that we all experience felicity of the highest kind, or consummate bliss. That got me thinking about bliss, what it means to be blissful, and how that squares with, well, life. For instance, on New Year’s Day, my parents and I found the back window of our car rental smashed in. How does that fit in with con...

As I continue to grapple with the death of a friend and beloved member of my community who died from COVID-19 due to not being vaccinated, I keep thinking about a twist on an Al-Anon phrase: “Give people the dignity of their choices.” Each camp – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – staunchly argues their case. Each camp cites information, tries to convince the other, justifies their own choices, but...