Journey to the End of the Earth
"I realized quickly, after just having traveled to various villages in rural India, that distance is relative. Hailing from a city like San Francisco, going even a few hours outside of town is far - but twelve hours outside of a major city? I half expected to run into another country. The remote place in mention is Achham, a tiny hillside region in far west Nepal. Sitting like a giant amongst its ... posted on Apr 15 2012, 10,758 reads

10 Keys To Happier Living
Based on the latest scientific research on happiness a group based out of the United Kingdom has identified ten "keys" that tend to have a consistently positive impact on people's overall happiness and well-being. The first five keys relate to how people interact with the world outside, while the latter half are concerned more with the inner life. This piece shares the ten keys (that together form... posted on Apr 14 2012, 91,514 reads

Caine's Cardboard Arcade
Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store. The adorable 9-year old worked for months to perfect the game designs, making displays for the prizes, and creating elaborate security systems. Unfortunately, his dad's store is in an industrial part of East L.A. that gets almost no foot traffic. So Caine had exactly zero customers ..... posted on Apr 13 2012, 5,091 reads

The Memory Project: Portraits of Compassion
At the base of a volcano in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, there's an orphanage. Although developing world orphanages aren't normally festive places, on this day, at this time, there was reason to celebrate: the arrival of a young man named Ben Schumaker. Schumaker comes from faraway Wisconsin, and he comes bearing gifts. He carries a suitcase with 62 pounds of portraits -- portraits of the kids, a... posted on Apr 12 2012, 4,581 reads

The Pursuit of Silence in A World of Noise
Writer George Prochnik says he's had a passion for silence as long as he can remember. "I can't sit in my house without hearing air conditioners. I worry about this layer of noise that's placed on top of infrastructure noise." In his new book, In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, Prochnik leaves the noisy confines of New York City and goes on a global quest to find tho... posted on Apr 11 2012, 6,328 reads

How To Think Like An Ecosystem
"A new way of seeing that is opening up to us can form a more life-serving mental map. I call it "eco-mind"-- looking at the world through the lens of ecology. This worldview recognizes that we, no less than any other organism, live in relation to everything else. As the visionary German physicist Hans-Peter Durr puts it, "There are no parts, only participants." This fascinating article from Yes M... posted on Apr 10 2012, 27,996 reads

How to Attend A Conference As Yourself
"I often feel awkward when I go to a conference. Reluctant to sidle up to a stranger and introduce myself, I roam, like I did at college parties, self-conscious, seltzer water in hand, not fitting in. In the midst of a sea of people chatting away enthusiastically, I am uncomfortable and alone. But when my plane from New York landed in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest, the music, film, and inte... posted on Apr 09 2012, 0 reads

Building a 'Muscular Empathy'
"'We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.' In attempting to empathize, we're actually missing the point if we are judging at all. Because then we are more concerned with being knowledgeable, being right -- or even being good -- than we are with actually feeling another person's reality. But even moral imagination, operating creatively from a place of first putting ... posted on Apr 08 2012, 16,912 reads

The Power of Self-Compassion
Are you your own worst critic? It's common to beat ourselves up for faults big and small. But according to psychologist and author Kristin Neff, that self-criticism comes at a price. For the last decade, Neff has been a pioneer in the study of "self-compassion," the revolutionary idea that you can actually be kind to yourself, accept your own faults-- and enjoy deep emotional benefits as a result.... posted on Apr 07 2012, 74,729 reads

Wisdom From Alice, Age 108
At age 108, Holocaust survivor Alice Herz Sommer still practices piano for 3 hours every day. At age 104, she had a book written about her life: "A Garden Of Eden In Hell." At age 83, she had cancer. Alice survived the concentration camps through her music, her optimism and her gratitude for the small things that came her way - a smile, a kind word, the sun. When asked about the secret of her long... posted on Apr 06 2012, 15,218 reads