Good Bones, Pushing Water
Carrie Newcomer
We had a small water crisis at our home this week. The break happened within a wall, and so we didn’t realize at first that a pipe had begun to leak until morning when my husband noticed w...
On Love
Justin Faerman
I see so many people talking about the world's problems but so few talking about the solution to them: Love. It really is that simple despite how complicated we often try to make it. Pretty ...
Slavery To The Senses
Swami Vivekananda
We are all slaves to our senses, slaves to our own minds, conscious and subconscious. The reason why a criminal is a criminal is not because he desires to be one, but because he has not his mind under...
How Much Silence Is Too Much?
Gal Beckerman
Ours is a noisy country. We’ve been rebellious, insolent shouters since the beginning. We invent freak shows and circuses and casinos. Talk too loud. Our public spaces honk and whistle at us. We...
Why I Stopped Fighting
Indigo Ocean
When I was a teenage girl, I had a fight with an older boy who had at least fifty pounds on me. It was a pre-announced fight, so many other students had gathered around to watch. I recall having the u...
Two Stonemasons
Simon Senek
Consider the story of two stonemasons. you walk up to the first stonemason and ask, ‘Do you like your job?’ He looks up at you and replies, ‘I’ve been building this wall for as...
Hopium
Margaret Wheatley
The problem with hope is that it’s bipolar. Every time we rely on hope, we always bring in fear. Wisdom teaches that hope and fear are two sides of the same dynamic. You already know ...
A Flower's Job Is To Bloom
Srikumar Rao
A powerful moment in My Fair Lady is when Henry Higgins's mother commiserates with a sobbing Eliza Dolittle. Eliza is distraught because Higgins did not congratulate her after an exemplary perform...
Mental Immunity
Dalai Lama
Everyone knows that physical pain is bad and tries to avoid it. We do this not only by curing diseases, but also by trying to prevent them and by trying to keep our physical immunity strong. Mental pa...
Appearance As A Gift
Isira
Our whole experience of life is a relationship. Every single moment is centered in the way we relate to what is happening. To understand this more deeply it helps us to recognize core issues that m...
Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a lefto...
How We Wrestle Is Who We Are
Brian Doyle
I remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that his operations would either work or not and he would either live or die. There was a certain clarity there; I used to crawl into that ...
Meeting Our Own Mortality
Navin Amarasuriya
Stories have helped us make meaning of the world, from ancient times when our ancestors whispered around campfires. Inner mental models that explained the outside world shaped our perceptions, and for...