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Dear Michael, Thank you for this piece that "re-awakins" my thinking about thinking, that has me wondering about epistemology, that is, how we know our truth. I would like to add that there is a range that extends beyond thinking. As a novelist, I look for sensory details that might bring alive a setting for the reader. While you're quite right that the reader is conditioned to experience that sense through the filter of her thoughts, the sense sits at the experiential foundation of the rational thought. Similarly with feelings. I'm presently collaborating on memoir with my mother. She's more of a feeler; I'm more of a thinker. I'm trying to channel her feelings that have been shaped from having lived nearly a century in India, Canada, and America, places that have different ways of thinking, but essentially the same way of feeling. One could say that Mom's feelings are the elephant upon which my writing rides. The elephant will go in any direction it wants to, while the rider attempts direction. We teach this idea of the elephant and the rider at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. It helps the highly rational students get in touch with their feelings as the develop greater interpersonal range. I'll close here with a linguistic formulation I like to share with the students: when you say "I feel that" or "I feel like," that is a thought not a feeling. Thinking is necessary but not sufficient. We must also sense and feel our way into all that the world has to offer. By integrating our thoughts, senses, and feelings, we develop our language of truth. Thank you ... Raj

Thank you for sharing these words of poetry. Words are keepsakes, keeping us close in good times and distressing ones.

Here are words of encouragement I recently shared with clinicians who care for my family: "Thank you for the outstanding care you always provide to our family. During this time of the coronavirus pandemic, I'd like to also thank you for heroically being of service to all of your patients. Please take care of yourself and your loved ones."

And here are words from a different era that my wife, Mangla, shared with me earlier this week:

“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and grew gardens full of fresh food, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”

~Kitty O'Meara 1839 – 1888
Irish-French Catholic Author

While I certainly appreciate Peggy Dulany'ssentiment to not be small, to lead large lives, I must say that the "Hero's Journey" (as conveyed by Joseph Campbell) is not mine. I prefer smallness and do not experience my life as shrunk or compartmentalized. My journey is with close members of my family and friend circle. I enjoy a consulting practice with a few dozen clients over two decades rather than thousands of clients. I take delight in the title of E. F. Schumacher'sSmall is Beautiful. Smiling on the cover is a photograph of Gandhiji surrounded by a bicycle, a butterfly, and a bulb. All small things that have their own magnificence.

Hello Naren,

Thanks for sharing this gentle parable. It reminds meSarvodaya's commitment to the universal uplift of all and its associated aphorism: "As you build the road, the road builds you."

Again, thank you ... Raj