These short reflections and insights range in length from twitter-length to short essays. They’re free, so what’ve you got to lose but a few moments?
My brain seems preoccupied with problems. Evolved on the savannahs once we began walking upright, no evolutionary biologist can really say why we developed a cortical brain, which can reason and use language, develop mathematics and compose music. It’s five times the size of the more primitive mammalian and reptilian brains on top of which […]
When we teach our children about death, we try to be gentle. We may tell them that the deceased is sleeping, or that they went to heaven. Yet what do we teach ourselves about it? That death is irreversible. That death is final.
Mainly, perhaps, we communicate our fears surrounding it, for the fear of our […]
I’ve had some pretty dirty jobs in my life. There was that summer working in the back of a butcher shop, bagging chickens, separating necks from hearts and livers into piles. Try doing that hungover during a heatwave at 7:00 every morning. There was that time I worked as a grease monkey cleaning up a […]
As human beings, we really don’t understand death, either its transformative power or its nonfinal nature. When I say that death has a transformative power, I’m referring to that aspect of death – to that kind of death – which is not the end of the body. Rather, it’s the death we each need to […]
In your life, out of all the instants and experiences, of all your deeds and perceived sins, you’re the only one who sees it all. You’re the only one who’s been there for everything, to witness every moment of it. Your prime relationship is, therefore, with yourself. I don’t mean this in a […]
I think there’s something to learn from the Shakers. The Shakers were a religious sect back in the 19th Century known for producing chairs that it’s said will last a thousand years. Yet none of the craftspeople took credit for their work. They believed that the act itself was its own reward, and invested themselves […]
I went out for a hike with my good friend, Ben. Before the pandemic, we’d go out every Sunday up Horse Gulch or down the Animas River or even just stroll through Durango, addressing and solving the problems of the world. Today’s hike was a little more significant for me. I was hiking, sans mask, […]
People sometimes ask what the difference is between anger and resentment. Anger, we all know. In acting, they say that anger’s the easiest emotion to portray. In life, it’s the safest emotion to feel.
Anger is energy. We can use it to motivate us. It can be justified, but most anger – which always feels justified […]
We can’t really know what love is until we pass it on. Whether it comes from a lover or from a friend or out from us toward a brother, love dies it’s shared. Love is within and flows from us. It pours through us but ceases its decant until we empty ourselves of it by […]
It’s sometimes said that we’re not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. If we are spiritual beings having a human experience, then our grief for having lost all those we loved is a waste of time and a deprivation of joy. To live as spiritual beings means not […]