Life This is what I wrote to a friend after coming back from the farm, it stands as one of my biggest aha's: Life is so busy for all of us. There is this meeting, that project, this function, that achievement. After being with Ragu and Nisha and living their life on the farm, there are two properties of this lifestyle that stick out in contrast. First, our lives are very fast-paced. And this pace is neither healthy nor desirable for me. It is not in harmony with internal or external nature. It is like a whirlwind that speeds up into a tornado. Second, life is very disjointed. We are pulled constantly in different directions. One thing after the next jumping around. A small h... posted on Aug 23 2012 (25,834 reads)

in the workplace is that it is a skill through which employees treat emotions as valuable data in navigating a situation," according to the authors. "Let's say a sales manager has come up with an amazing idea that will increase corporate revenues by up to 200%, but knows his boss tends to be irritable and short-tempered in the morning. Having emotional intelligence means that the manager will first recognize and consider this emotional fact about his boss. Despite the stunning nature of his idea -- and his own excitement -- he will regulate his own emotions, curb his enthusiasm and wait until the afternoon to approach his boss." Barsade says research suggests that ... posted on Aug 25 2012 (37,854 reads)

strangers, curious and intrigued by his blue apron and white lettering that read, “Peace Artist.” They offered him food, clothing, shelter, and care. Time and time again, his conviction that people are good would be affirmed. Time and time again, his faith in the wholeness of the world would be strengthened. After completing his cross-country pilgrimage, he reflects: “I say this wholeheartedly: everything that is done from compassion will be met with success. The nature of the universe is love.” The Seed of an Idea It actually began in college. One day, Peace Artist was sitting in a café when a good runner friend of his remarked, “... posted on Oct 12 2012 (38,277 reads)

motivated to learn more about being parents, to see if there are better ways of doing things, not by the measuring and tracking, but because we love being parents and want to be good parents. No tracking needed. What about running? Can’t we run for the joy of it? Aren’t we motivated to do it because we love ourselves? And who cares if we run more miles or not? That’s an arbitrary goal that really means nothing. Just run because it’s super fun, for the enjoyment of nature and great views, for the simple but boundless pleasure of a conversation with someone you love. What about work? Are we going to all of a sudden stop doing anything because it’s not m... posted on Nov 20 2012 (17,251 reads)

food for all is a public good.” The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect. And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. ... posted on Nov 27 2012 (74,473 reads)

lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in marketing at Stanford University, says the results show how something as subtle as our perception of time can have a big influence on our lives. “It impacts our willingness to volunteer to help other people and even our well-being,” she says. “The idea that an emotion can alleviate this problem is an incredible idea to me.” She suggests that people evoke more feelings of awe in their lives by exposing themselves to nature, art, and music. “Put yourself in situations where you’re experiencing new things,” she says.... posted on Dec 3 2012 (14,426 reads)

most accessible. Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived life in the Nazi concentration camps. Man's Search for Meaning is really two books — one dedicated to recounting his frightening ordeal in the camps (interpreted through his eyes as a psychiatrist) and the other a treatise on his theory, logotherapy. His story alone is worth the read — a reminder of the depths and heights of human nature — and the central contention of logotherapy — that life is primarily about the search for meaning — has inspired leaders for generations. Tom Wolfe, A Man i... posted on Dec 19 2012 (55,511 reads)

No - but we'll keep giving it our best effort. Useem: Thinking about your own personal experiences over the last five years, what are the two or three most distinctive capacities that have been required on your part in order to lead what amounts to America's premier public sponsor of the arts? Gioia: Well, I'm both pleased and alarmed to say that my job, in any given week, requires pretty much every skill that I've ever acquired in my life. But I think that's the nature of being a Chief Executive Officer, since you're helping shape something -- you put yourself into it fully. But I think the thing that I've learned from business, which most artists nev... posted on Jan 28 2013 (14,963 reads)

Danielle recalls.   Skingraft surgery was undertaken to reconstruct the mouth and soon the puppy’s condition improved dramatically and he began to function on his own.   Danielle named the puppy D’Artagnan (who served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard) or Mister D for short and introduced him to other dogs and cats who welcomed him.   Mister D began to grow into a large dog and earned a reputation for his generous nature. “He allows all the cats to sleep with him and we have actually seen him share food with other dogs. He picks out pieces of food and gives it to them.”   But in the str... posted on Feb 4 2013 (17,094 reads)

realize that my fascination with the Balinese lack of rushing and worrying is based on my own life story. From a young age, my mind has known how to worry and my body has known how to rush with impeccable skill and familiarity. I would say that I was born with these abilities, but I know that technically this isn’t possible. Maybe it’s more fair to say that somewhere between my first breath and the time I graduated from elementary school these ways of being had become second nature. I could perform them with the ease of a rodeo cowboy spinning his lasso in all directions and with the automatic reflex of a short-order cook flipping dozens of burgers on a grill. My successe... posted on Feb 11 2013 (22,476 reads)

a very young age, my oldest daughter has been a gift giver. Like most children, her offerings consisted of items that adults wouldn’t ordinarily classify as gifts. Broken seashells, traumatized frogs, dying weeds, and misshapen rocks were often presented in small, dirt-laden hands beneath a wide smile. In the past two years my child’s gift giving practices have moved up a notch. Gifts are no longer found in nature; they are found in our home. Yes, it’s re-gifting at its best—wrapping barely-used items and presenting them with great love.   I must be honest; I used to cringe at the sight of my child tearing through our (multiple) junk drawers looki... posted on Feb 9 2013 (26,029 reads)

science and technology offer great hope to cure various ills, the cures I have seen are equally associated with the art of medicine.  There is no science or technology that will hold or comfort a child in pain or comfort the dying.  It is human touch and connection that is equally if not more powerful than all the science and technology in the world.” The US suffers an epidemic of depression and loneliness.  This is due to our money-conscious, do-it-yourself nature which creates a fear of vulnerability.  We wear a mask of invincibility which cuts us off from our feelings, and authentic human connection dissolves.  We get little nurturing, and so... posted on Feb 22 2013 (21,316 reads)

alone. But it was Mrs. Laverne Perrin, my seventh-grade teacher at Bel Pasi School, who introduced me to the great literature of the world. We had to learn a poem each week. She would read Sir Walter Scott’s work, and in a different vein, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin; was one where we hung onto every word. She read us, I am sure, all the things she loved, for I remember her great passion for these books. Each story, was more than its words: it was the whole realm of history, culture, nature, philosophy, religion and psychology. Because of this heritage, I now read, and re-read from several books a day, all of which I own in my library. Reading is one of the most important even... posted on Dec 3 2013 (25,013 reads)

little is known about the view from the other side – the psycho-social and spiritual impacts of the disease on patients, and their subjective processing of the disease. The Cartesian split in modern medicine between body and mind has perpetuated the myth of the body-mind dichotomy. Another parallel development was the reductionist paradigm in modern science that attempts to understand the whole by examining its constituent parts. This approach has led to tremendous insights into the nature of disease, predict its course, and plan treatments. Yet the scientific preoccupation with objectivity and scientific phenomena has led to a “flight from consciousness.” It also led... posted on Mar 24 2013 (14,790 reads)

coming to only replace old gaskets. A few days later, he came across a statistic in the newspaper: a tap that drips once every second wastes a thousand litres of water in a month. That triggered an idea. He would take a plumber from door to door and fix taps for free – one apartment complex every weekend. As a creative artist, he had earned more goodwill than money and the first challenge was funding. “But,” he says, “if you have a noble thought, nature takes care of it.” Within a few days, he got a message that he was unexpectedly being awarded Rs.1,00,000 ($2,000) by the Hindi Sahitya Sansthan (UP) for his contribution to Hindi literat... posted on Mar 25 2013 (14,296 reads)

spring day in 1909, a little boy found his mother’s magazine clipping — the portrait of a man bearing “the aureole of sunny hair” — and asked her this was God. She chuckled with equal parts amazement and amusement, and got to writing the man in question a letter to recount the delightful incident — not only because of its inherent charm, but because her son had intuited a shared cultural sentiment: The man pictured was Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain — one of the most revered men in all the land. Over the course of his prolific career, Twain received countless letters from his adoring readers and, occasionally, his cri... posted on Mar 27 2013 (11,545 reads)

"officially" exist before, it exists now. Wabi-sabi resides in the inconspicuous and overlooked details, in the mirror and the hidden, in the tentative and ephemeral. Twenty-plus years have elapsed since my initial wabi-sabi formulations. Back then, the industrialized world was just beginning its headlong drive to digitize as much of "reality" as possible and transfer it into a "virtual" or "dematerialized" form. Back then, wabi-sabi's nature-based sense of "aesthetic realism" offered genuine comfort and inspiration for sensitive, creative souls. Will wabi-sabi's quintessentially analog sensibility still provide emotio... posted on Apr 23 2013 (30,806 reads)

the realisation that the efficiency which money provides is skewed took him closer and closer to the decision of moving on. “It was brewing inside me,” he says. He found moral support from some unexpected quarters—his boss at Edelweiss. When he told him that he would quit, his seemingly-capitalist boss opened up to him about a secret desire that he nurtures in his heart: He wanted to build an ashram for old people. This reaffirmed his conviction that people are generous by nature, but they act in correspondence with the space they are in. There are days when he has his doubts about the choices he has made. “On some days, I do feel ‘what I am doing here,... posted on Apr 29 2013 (31,216 reads)

of “Meditations” on life, of which she’d go on to produce another seventy-three besides the four included here. The letter, featured in the 1897 tome The Poems of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672): Together with Her Prose Remains (public library), was found after Bradstreet’s death in 1672 at her home in Massachusetts. For my deare Sonne Simon Bradstreet. PARENTS perpetuate their lives in their posterity, and their maners in their imitation. Children do natureally rather follow the failings then the vertues of their predecessors, but I am perswaded better things of you. You once desired me to leave something for you in writeing that you might look up... posted on May 12 2013 (20,527 reads)

deeds one has done in the course of one's life. So, you know, the relation to aging is quite interesting to explore in other cultures. And one of the most important things about Buddhist cultures is this view, not that we want to hurry up and die at all — in fact, our lives are an ongoing opportunity for us to realize compassion in the world and to really be a benefit to others — but that how extraordinary at the moment of death we have this opportunity to unify with our basic nature, which is, in a way, what heaven is. So, you know, that kind of shapes people's relationship to death. And, I mean, Victor Frankl said it very simply: "Death gives life meaning." ... posted on Jun 5 2013 (25,511 reads)