years I assumed that the Titanic tragedy was a result of human arrogance, the belief in the indestructibility of the newest, largest, fastest, fanciest ship of all time. But actually the Titanic went down because of distraction. Other ships had been warning about the iceberg-filled waters for days, but the Titanic’s captain changed course only slightly and did nothing to slow the ship’s speed. When the radio operator received a call from a ship that was surrounded by ice—this was less than an hour before the collision—he responded, “Shut up, shut up, I’m busy.” By the time lookouts spotted the iceberg ahead, it was too late to... posted on Jun 7 2013 (68,883 reads)

lived and as yet unlived, was spread out for examination, that my life was being read like a book, weighed like a stone in the palm of a hand. I saw that everything counted—or, everything real, every tear, all our suffering. That I didn’t “believe” in  any of this—that I was too cool, too skeptical, too educated to be dazzled by experiences that were clearly, had to be, subjective, that I would never resort to hackneyed religious metaphors, and images like weighing and reading—that also didn’t count. My opinions about what I believed or didn’t believe, what I was capable of or not capable of, were just smoke to be brushed a... posted on Jun 21 2013 (84,126 reads)

Burmeister is an Argentine handyman turned filmmaker. Though good at unstopping toilets and repairing windows, he decided to change his path at middle age and make films. Small films. Local films. Free films. Love-infused films. Films that make you feel the joy he clearly manifests in doing them. Daniel is a one-man film crew. When he needs a tracking shot, he hops on a bicycle and records with one hand while steering wobbly with the other. When he wants the effect of a panning shot, he places his subject on a sheet, which someone pulls from off camera, creating the appearance that the camera is panning the subject. Beyond Daniel's ingenuity, though, is a system. Burmeister ... posted on Jun 26 2013 (24,768 reads)

proper function of man is to live - not to exist." -- Jack London Too often we go through life on autopilot, going through the motions and having each day pass like the one before it. That's fine, and comfortable, until you have gone through another year without having done anything, without having really lived life. That's fine, until you have reached old age and look back on life with regrets. That's fine, until you see your kids go off to college and realize that you missed their childhoods. What follows is just a list of ideas, obvious ones mostly that you could have thought of yourself, but that I hope are useful reminders. We all need r... posted on Jul 28 2013 (302,106 reads)

does it mean to be mindful?  Essentially, mindfulness means to be present, and in the moment.  It is important that we remind ourselves of this simple fact.  All too often we can lose the true essence of mindfulness by over-complicating things or putting all our emphasis on the act of meditation alone.  Mindfulness is not something we leave at the chair, but something we can carry through our everyday lives.  If we can apply mindfulness on the chair, then why not while brushing our teeth, catching up with an old friend, or even waiting for our morning train?  All these moments present an opportunity for us to apply mindfulness,... posted on Aug 2 2013 (227,989 reads)

ON KINDNESS BY POETS, SAGES & ACTIVISTS In a dominant paradigm weighted towards self-interest and self-orientation, we must make a special effort to question our mode of being. Can we afford to be narrowly self-focused? Can we grow to anywhere near our true potential if we look out only for ourselves? What role do kindness and compassion play in bridging a world that is growing increasingly fragmented? What follows are five powerful reasons to be kind, articulated by some of the greatest minds and hearts from around the globe. 1. BECAUSE THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH KINDNESS IN THE WORLD Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this... posted on Sep 3 2013 (156,560 reads)

Seligman, the father of positive psychology, theorizes that while 60 percent of happiness is determined by our genetics and environment, the remaining 40 percent is up to us. In his 2004 Ted Talk, Seligman describes three different kinds of happy lives: The pleasant life, in which you fill your life with as many pleasures as you can, the life of engagement, where you find a life in your work, parenting, love and leisure and the meaningful life, which "consists of knowing what your highest strengths are, and using them to belong to and in the service of something larger than you are." After exploring what accounts for ultimate satisfaction, Seligma... posted on Dec 27 2013 (357,898 reads)

Americans are against sleep, equating it with laziness. But one of the world's leading experts on sleep says that's hurting our relationships and our ability to solve problems. We spend almost a third of our lives asleep, giving more time to sleep than any other activity. Some of us are blessed with easy sleep; others of us suffer from insomnia or sleep disturbance. Yet, until recently, scientists have known very little about the purpose of sleep or how it affects our brains and day-to-day functioning. Matt Walker is an associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and Principal Investigator at the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. With the advent of functi... posted on Dec 24 2013 (70,985 reads)

past few years have been marked by two major trends in the science of a meaningful life. One is that researchers continued to add sophistication and depth to our understanding of positive feelings and behaviors. Happiness is good for you, but not all the time; empathy ties us together, and can overwhelm you; humans are born with an innate sense of fairness and morality, that changes in response to context. This has been especially true of the study of mindfulness and attention, which is producing more and more potentially life-changing discoveries. The other factor involves intellectual diversity. The turn from the study of human dysfunction to human s... posted on Jan 23 2014 (129,105 reads)

they are always an offering) to the children if they would like to tell the story of their picture or experience, they were welcome to one by one. It was amazing! All of the children, and there were eighty of them, queued up in line, and for the next several hours, we sat there, and one by one, each child described their picture and told their story. These pictures were filled with imagery of villages being burned, bombers flying from above, limbs being cut off, people being shot. These were images coming from children five to eighteen years of age. It was something we could never have imagined, and here they were expressing it, their memories of it. We realized in that moment, our job wa... posted on Apr 9 2014 (26,466 reads)

don't even think about whether I love music or not because my connection to music is deeper than love.” ~David France At least once in our lives, most of us have been inspired through music to reach beyond what we thought was possible. For David France, music served as his bridge into a different kind of American dream. The son of immigrants from the West Indies, he was just a shy kid in school trying to find his way until one day he was introduced to the violin. Everything changed after that. As our guest on Saturday’s Awakin Call, David shared how his journey in life has blossomed in between the soulful notes of classical musi... posted on Jul 11 2014 (21,323 reads)

Unified is transforming its schools by embedding social-emotional learning into the district culture—one adult at a time. Last week, The New Yorker reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s 2010 gift of $100 million to the Newark School District hadn’t really improved the schools—with most of the money having been spent on labor contracts and consulting fees. CASEL Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), an urban district with demographics and challenges similar to Newark’s, has taken a very different tack to school reform—and it’s not costing $100 million: The district... posted on Aug 16 2014 (24,078 reads)

do children know that adults seem to have forgotten? Children are more confident, more courageous and enjoy life far more intensely than adults. Sometimes it feels that we spend our entire lives trying to return to who we were as children. Here's what we can learn from our younger selves to bring more clarity and joy into adulthood. 1. Every day is a fresh start. "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" - L.M. Montgomery. Wasn't it always amazing how the end of a school day always felt so final, so finished? The break between June and September seemed like a lifetime. Because when you are young, every day feels li... posted on Jul 25 2014 (75,835 reads)

and psychiatry and neurology primed me, I think, to see play behavior in its evolutionary terms. So that when I had the option — fairly late in my career — of studying play in a broad sense, I started with the animals in the wild and learned a huge amount about sort of the spectrum of play behavior in the animal world. Ms. Tippett: I've looked at some projects you were involved in — an issue of National Geographic, some of the visuals, there are these remarkable images of cheetahs and cranes and bears and mountain goats who seem clearly to be playing. Dr. Brown: Well, I think there is no doubt, at least to us onlookers, that they're playing. And my gue... posted on Jul 18 2014 (32,383 reads)

loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.” The light of the world has grown a little dimmer with the loss of the phenomenal Maya Angelou, but her legacy endures as a luminous beacon of strength, courage, and spiritual beauty. Angelou’s timeless wisdom shines with unparalleled light in a 1977 interview by journalist Judith Rich, found in Conversations with Maya Angelou (public library) — the same magnificent tome that gave us the beloved author’s conversation with Bill Moyers on freedom — in which Angelou explores issues of identity and the meaning of life. Reflecting on her life, Angelou — who rose to cultural pro... posted on Jul 22 2014 (27,760 reads)

years ago, Minneapolis’s Washburn Center for Children, provider of mental health services to about 2,700 youths each year, decided a new facility was needed to replace the old building. This morning, the business journal Finance & Commerce reported on the Center’s coming Grand Opening — and on Washburn’s pioneering idea. “One of the keys to treating … children is connecting them with nature…” wrote Brian Johnson. “Large windows, abundant natural light…curved hallways, high ceilings, extensive landscaping and strong ties to the outdoors jump out at visitors… On the outside, a large playground with gra... posted on Jan 7 2015 (27,755 reads)

Kitty Edwards, left, and Patti Pansa, right] In May 2013, Patti Pansa, a professional engineer and life coach, contacted me to assist her in her journey towards death. She had taken care of all the literal preparations for death: she had spoken to her family members about her wishes for end-of-life care; her last will and testament, advanced health care directives, and medical durable power of attorney were all signed and delivered to the appropriate people; a list of her important accounts with passwords sat in a folder next to her computer. But Patti wanted more. She wanted to leave a legacy for her family and friends. Perhaps most of all, she wanted to discover way... posted on Mar 4 2015 (49,674 reads)

Babbar wanted to walk to the Freedom Tower. This cold day in New York City marked the end of her first trip to the United States. She had visited in Washington, D.C.; Reno, Nevada; the Bay Area; and now for a few days, New York. For six weeks, Gitanjali had been a U.S. Department of State Professional Fellow, broadening her already deep knowledge of sex trafficking by observing how it manifests in this country. The night before she had visited a Manhattan strip club, hoping to talk with or at least observe the interactions of the women who worked there. The workers in the strip club seemed lonely and competitive compared to women in the Indian... posted on Jun 30 2015 (10,520 reads)

poverty persists, there is no true freedom.” - Nelson Mandela What fosters true freedom? Ashoka Fellow Kim Feinbergbelieves the answer to this essential question is a holistic education: Kim Feinberg’s story starts with fostering empathy in South African school children through oral history lessons on discrimination and intolerance. But as her story unfolded, building empathy became just one component of her work to educate and empower the country’s most vulnerable, resource-starved youth. Through her organisation The Tomorrow Trust, Kim sees a way forward into true post-apartheid freedom for young South Africans. In 1997, after working for the Sho... posted on May 21 2015 (8,910 reads)

was curious to push some edges within myself by going into places where I didn’t feel comfortable, as a way of growing”, reflects Brian Bergman, a yoga teacher from Cape Town. “And prison, certainly there was a lot of fear for me going in, a big unknown of what’s going on behind those walls.” Trained in the Bihar School of Yoga in Munger, India, Brian sought to deepen his own practice by exploring opportunities for seva, Sanskrit for service. As a result, he co-founded SevaUnite, a platform that encourages service in South Africa. In the process, Brian found his own purpose in serving in prisons. It took a lot of persistence – 1.5 ye... posted on May 9 2015 (15,528 reads)