Bolte Taylor, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy and Chef Grant Achatz are an unlikely trio. What do this brain scientist, late eye surgeon, and a leader of the molecular gastronomy movement [yes there is such a thing] have in common? At a takeoff point in their careers they were each dealt a sucker punch -- one that robbed them of what was arguably their greatest gift. Yet none of them threw in the towel. And each would rise to greatness after mining their unthinkable experience of loss for deeper insight into the human experience. Loss. Consider the paradox of how that one word, brief as a seed, can swallow our world whole. We’ve all experienced it, in ways that range from the m... posted on Apr 25 2012 (32,641 reads)

I awoke early with a good bit of unfinished business on my mind. My first scheduled appointment for the morning was at 9AM, and there I was awake and alert considerably earlier than I needed to be. I decided to take advantage of this early morning awakening and energy surge. I got up stimulated by the possibility of arriving at the office early and getting the jump on the day by tying up those loose ends that needed attention before the formally scheduled work day began. As part of the preparation for this flurry of activity, I prepared my preferred morning eye-opener drink. This high powered beverage is a blend of a vital green powder, which began as algae and seaweed, augme... posted on May 6 2012 (9,414 reads)

living through an experimental cancer treatment my sister Barb was left unable to work. When she was offered the opportunity to do a mission trip in India if she could come up with $3,000 - she was left thinking there was no way she could go. No way to raise the funds. She asked me to brainstorm with her as to ways she could raise money. "The only thing I can do is hug," she told me - and thus her adventure began.   I designed a "Hugs Around the World" card for her which she used to solicit donations. For any amount donated, she promised to hug a person in India. On the back of the cards the donor could write their name, below which it said “..... posted on Jul 18 2012 (16,279 reads)

visited the Bay Area, where she lived on a horse ranch south of San Francisco. The exposure to the beauty of the place—the coast, the hills, the redwoods—made a deep impression. One day, as she stepped out of her house, she looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk soaring above her. “As I stood looking up at the hawk, in a voice as clear as day, I heard these words: ‘Tell my story’.” Rosen’s drawings and sculptures are born from the perennial questions: What can nature show us? And what is seeing? Her work shows us something about that. I met the artist at her studio and ranch in San Gregorio, California to talk specifically about seeing&hel... posted on Jan 19 2014 (24,423 reads)

Obrist: Lately, the word “curate” seems to be used in an greater variety of contexts than ever before, in reference to everything from a exhibitions of prints by Old Masters to the contents of a concept store. The risk, of course, is that the definition may expand beyond functional usability. But I believe ‘curate’ finds ever-wider application because of a feature of modern life that is impossible to ignore: the incredible proliferation of ideas, information, images, disciplinary knowledge, and material products that we all witnessing today. Such proliferation makes the activities of filtering, enabling, synthesizing, framing, and remembering more and more... posted on Jan 14 2014 (35,076 reads)

a 13,000-year-old eucalyptus tree reveals about the meaning of human life. “Our overblown intellectual faculties seem to be telling us both that we are eternal and that we are not,” philosopher Stephen Cave observed in his poignant meditation on our mortality paradoxAnd yet we continue to long for the secrets of that ever-elusive eternity. For nearly a decade, Brooklyn-based artist, photographer, and Guggenheim Fellow Rachel Sussman has been traveling the globe to discover and document its oldest organisms — living things over 2,000 years of age. Her breathtaking photographs and illuminating essays are now collected in The Oldest Living Things in the World (publi... posted on May 29 2014 (20,051 reads)

startling physiological effects of loneliness, optimism, and meditation. In 2013, Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted a mind-bending debate on the nature of “nothing” — an inquiry that has occupied thinkers since the dawn of recorded thought and permeates everything from Hamlet’s iconic question to the boldest frontiers of quantum physics. That’s precisely what New Scientist editor-in-chief Jeremy Webb explores with a kaleidoscopic lens in Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion(public library) — a terrific collection of essays and articles exploring everything from vacuum to the birth and death of the universe to how the concept of zer... posted on Sep 13 2014 (27,257 reads)

beautiful meditation on how we learn to stand at the gates of hope in troubled times. “How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say OK?”Maira Kalman asked in pondering happiness and existence. What is it that propels us to get up after loss, after heartbreak, after failure? What is that immutable rope that pulls us out of our own depths — depths we hardly knowuntil that moment when the light of the surface vanishes completely and unreachably? That’s precisely what the Reverend Victoria Safford explores in a gorgeous essay titled“The Small Work in the Great Work” fromThe Impossible Will Take a Little Whil... posted on Dec 15 2014 (23,162 reads)

“every walk is a sort of crusade.” “Go out and walk. That is the glory of life,” Maira Kalman exhorted in her glorious visual memoir. A century and a half earlier, another remarkable mind made a beautiful and timeless case for that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity. Henry David Thoreau was a man of extraordinary wisdom on everything fromoptimism to the true meaning of “success” tothe creative benefits of keeping a diary to the greatest gift of growing old. In his 1861 treatiseWalking (free ebook | public library | IndieBound), penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that prim... posted on Jan 2 2015 (30,464 reads)

means different things to different people. But for the majority of us, regardless of our definition, the road to success is paved with challenges and tests. It can be a roller-coaster ride filled with highs and lows and fruitful learnings. One thing is clear -- all those of us who reach for the stars and actively stretch towards our dreams emerge from our efforts transformed. If you have a dream and are working hard to see it realized, be assured, the journey counts just as much, and sometimes more than the destination. Our failures are not a waste of time, humble persistence can sometimes serve us better than strokes of genius, and great heights can, and have been re... posted on Apr 2 2015 (20,307 reads)

have to learn to recognize your own depth.” In 1985, mythologist and writer Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904–October 30, 1987) sat down with legendary interviewer and idea-monger Bill Moyers for a lengthy conversation at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in California, which continued the following year at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The resulting 24 hours of raw footage were edited down to six one-hour episodes and broadcast on PBS in 1988, shortly after Campbell’s death, in what became one of the most popular series in the history of public television. But Moyers and the team at PBS felt that the unedited conver... posted on Jun 5 2015 (19,328 reads)

Palmer’s Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life “Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself… When you are able to say, ‘I am … my shadow as well as my light,’ the shadow’s power is put in service of the good.” In 1974, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford alumnus Chögyam Trungpa founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado — a most unusual and emboldening not-for-profit educational institution named after the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa and intended as a 100-year experiment of combining the best... posted on Nov 3 2015 (59,948 reads)

a world that has been relentlessly primed to favor the myths of independence and certainty over the truths of interconnection and mystery, the practice of reverence can seem foolish and unfashionable. But no one here exists independent of all others. And the vast complex of our knowledge, though impressive, is erected on the shores of an ocean of unknowns. Reverence is a glad acknowledgement of these realities. It does not require you to be religious, or part of an organized faith. If there are any prerequisites for reverence they are only this: The capacity for wonder and love. And an awareness in the heart, of the dignity and worthiness inherent in this earth, this life, this moment... posted on Apr 23 2016 (17,938 reads)

I first began hearing about Mark Dubois, his name was mentioned with a note of awe. “You’ve got to meet him, Richard!” People like giving me suggestions and I’m grateful for them; this one, however, had a different energy about it. But then nothing further happened. It wasn’t until two years later that I met Dubois at a ServiceSpace gathering. One doesn’t forget meeting Mark. First, he’s taller than almost anyone you’ve ever met. And second, you receive the longest hug from a stranger you’ll ever run into. It makes an impression. The man is a force, an embodiment of a special dimension of love that manifests in an irrepressibly physi... posted on Feb 13 2017 (10,798 reads)

in an age where we seem to be more connected than ever, research shows that we are lonelier than ever. Inspired by the writings of Thoreau, Steinbeck, and the teamwork of his community garden, David Levins decided to break down the barriers of isolation, one conversation at a time. In 2012, he initiated A Kind Voice, a nationwide, volunteer-run phone line where people call in anytime for one-on-one conversation. Simply for the sake of sharing and being kind to one another. In this Awakin Call conversation with Bela Shah, we had the privilege of hearing David’s insights and stories from sowing seeds of down-to-earth, human-to-h... posted on Aug 7 2017 (9,493 reads)

Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating 1930s Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want “I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.” “One must know what one wants to be,” the eighteenth-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet wrote in weighing the nature of genius. “In the latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.” And yet that inner knowing is the work of a lifetime, for our confusions are ample and our missteps constant amid a world that is constantly telling us who we are an... posted on Jan 1 2018 (13,851 reads)

Your Whole Self to Work: How Vulnerability Unlocks Creativity, Connection, and Performance (Hay House Inc., 2018, 224 pages). Portions of this essay are excerpted from the book with permission from the publisher. Have you ever wanted to speak up about an issue or situation at work, but were afraid to? Or wanted to share something about yourself, but worried people might judge you? Or pretended to understand something professionally that you really didn’t? If you’re anything like me and most of the people I know, you could easily answer yes to some of these questions. However, to truly succeed in today’s business world, we must be willing to bring our&nb... posted on Sep 30 2018 (8,174 reads)

is the story of an ordinary man. He was an outcast, a landless labourer who had to trek across an entire mountain every day, just to reach the farm that he worked on. It was a treacherous trek, and led to accidents often. His people needed help, there were lives at stake every day. He decided, if no one would help his people, he would. Then, without pausing for a thought, he went ahead and did just that with his bare hands. This is the story of Dashrath Manjhi: the man who moved a mountain, so that his people could reach a doctor in time. The Comunity of Gehlour It was 1960. Landless laborers, the Musahars, lived amid rocky terrain in the remote Atri block of G... posted on Oct 9 2018 (19,449 reads)

hours or seconds, she couldn’t tell or remember. It was her secret for many, many years, through the difficult times at home. She felt she couldn’t share it with anyone-- because how could they believe that she disappeared with the water when she was under water? Part II Many, many moons later when she was an adult and didn’t believe anymore in mermaids, she found herself again on the beach. She looked at her feet, sand, people, sea, and suddenly all became clear... the images were there but she was gone...she and all became the same…The mermaid in the story, and the story in the mermaid…It’s that, looking at itself, through itself, as i... posted on Jun 24 2020 (6,038 reads)

then translated into English by somebody else—then you turn it into a Coleman Barks translation. Can you tell us how that process goes for you? CB: Well, it’s a little mysterious. I go into a kind of a trance, reading the poem in its scholarly translation, and try to—well, [there’s] nothing marvelous about it, it’s just kind of a trance that any reading involves—where I try to feel what spiritual information is trying to come through Rumi’s images and then I try to put that into an American free-verse poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman and many others. So that’s the general liniments of the process. TS: Do you ever h... posted on May 29 2021 (5,369 reads)