head on my arm I fall asleep easily. On my eyes a mother’s breath, from her mouth to my heart: sleep, child, and dream now the sun is gone. —Edith Sodergran The sun goes to sleep early, and so do I. I have a few weeks between ending one life-cycle and beginning the next. So I burrow into the present moment, until I touch the bright well of timelessness. Beyond sleeping, I walk, I read, and I write. I watch rain clouds scud overhead. I eat foods that are simple and wholesome. Beneath the rough surface of the thinking brain, I glimpse realities that are as rich and unexpected as geodes. I do use the computer, and watch movies. I have a dist... posted on Feb 6 2015 (26,341 reads)

the last few years, ‘empathy’ has taken over my life. The fascination with human understanding has become a deep running passion as the result of many long hours of research, countless exhilarating discussions, and increasing experimentations seeking new ways to apply empathy in business, education, social programs, and public policy. At first it was extremely challenging to grasp, with a holistic view of empathy covering fields as diverse as neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy, biology, psychology and innovation (to name a few). Adding to my beginner’s confusion was a lack of coherent definition for empathy – the term has almost as many descri... posted on Feb 23 2015 (27,826 reads)

admit I do it as much as anyone else: see the cool things that others are doing and wish I were doing something cool like that too. You see great travel photos on Instagram and other social media — people living amazing lives, creating cool things, going on adventures. And instantly, there’s the thought that you should be living a better life. But this is the wrong habit. It leads to a feeling that your life isn’t good enough, that you aren’t good enough. And the habit doesn’t end: if you pursue a better life, you will always feel that you should be doing more, partying more, creating more, learning more, reading more, traveling more. You can&rs... posted on Mar 9 2015 (40,488 reads)

like the state of being. Languor settled in. Focused in the OR, the position of the clock’s hands might seem arbitrary, but never meaningless. Now the time of day meant nothing, the day of the week scarcely more so. Paul Kalanithi savors moments with his daughter, Cady. Verb conjugation became muddled. Which was correct? “I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham Greene felt life was lived in the first 20 years and the remainder was just reflection. What tense was I living in? Had I proceeded, like a burned-out Greene character, beyond the present tense and into the past ... posted on Mar 30 2015 (66,056 reads)

compulsive users of the drug. He let them use for fifty-seven days—if anything can hook you, it’s that. Then he took them out of isolation, and placed them in Rat Park. He wanted to know, if you fall into that state of addiction, is your brain hijacked, so you can’t recover? Do the drugs take you over? What happened is—again—striking. The rats seemed to have a few twitches of withdrawal, but they soon stopped their heavy use, and went back to having a normal life. The good cage saved them. When I first learned about this, I was puzzled. How can this be? This new theory is such a radical assault on what we have been told that it felt like it could not b... posted on Mar 24 2015 (27,860 reads)

favorite part of the day?” I continued. Without missing a beat, she looked up at me and replied in total seriousness: “Anytime I’m not pulling water.” 2. The Danger of Walking for Water Eastern Uganda is how I imagine Hawaii in the early 1970s: a less-modern kind of paradise. Lush hills thick with green. Fruit stands packed with pineapple, mango, watermelon, and avocado. It’s beautiful, and just the right amount of hot. But it’s an eerie contrast to life in a rural community without clean water. Women here walk up to six miles along dense, marshy paths to reach a polluted lake that’s home to snakes and crocodiles. Every person in the villag... posted on Apr 7 2015 (19,059 reads)

hustle of family life -- work, school, appointments, practice, homework, dinner, bed -- is constant. We move in and out of activities and commitments with ferocity. Some days, I'm certain all I really say to my children, in one way or another, is "move." As in, let's go -- now! And I know that we move with purpose, balancing meaningful work with practical considerations, valuing studies, deliberately selecting activities that matter. In our world, food, family even and free play have a firm place, often touted as sacred and protected ground. And since our life is designed to fully embrace living it, we have to be mindful of all the pieces that might creep in and occupy ... posted on Apr 17 2015 (17,713 reads)

So I thought long and hard, and I stood here two days ago, and I had my test run, and I had my cards and my clicker in my hands and my pictures were on the screen, and I had my three lessons, and I started presenting them, and I had this very odd out-of-body experience. I sort of looked at myself standing there, going, "Oh, Jimmy, this is complete loads of codswallop. All these people sitting here, they've had more of these talks, they've heard more lessons in their life. Who are you to tell them what you've learned? Who are you to guide them and who are you to show them what is right, what is wrong, what these people have to say?" And I had a little bit... posted on Jun 28 2015 (23,762 reads)

container that would allow an egg to survive a drop from a water tower. I won, but was disappointed that the victory wasn't trumpeted in the next morning's school-wide announcements. That led me to introspect, and I found that: 1) I was unconsciously seeking public accolades for my ingenuity; 2) I felt immature doing so; yet 3) I couldn't think myself out of the desire. I see that moment as the beginning of my conscious adulthood, as well as the defining crux of my life. It has been with me ever since, despite having tried a lot of things to grow beyond it. The only way to let it go, it seems to me now, is a single-minded pursuit of the aspiration until I'm ... posted on Aug 12 2015 (14,179 reads)

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the best-known “number” in economic governance. It drives national policies, sets priorities in the social fields (e.g. there exists a ratio between GDP and how much spending in welfare is considered appropriate by many countries) and ultimately affects the societal landscape of a country (e.g. by determining labour-business relations, work-life balances and the type of consumption patterns adopted by citizens). The type of industrial model supported by GDP dominates physical and infrastructural â€‹geography, from the shape of cities and their relation with the countryside to the management of parks and natural resources. Marketing st... posted on Aug 22 2015 (13,231 reads)

to people about some big happiness boost that they had achieved, or more often a big happiness challenge that they were facing, very often they were pointing to something that, at its core, involved a habit. Somebody would say, “Oh, I’m just exhausted all the time. That’s what’s dragging me down,” which is really about the habit of getting enough sleep. I became increasingly interested in the role that habits play in a happier, healthier and more productive life. Also the question of how we can change our habits, because sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t…. Mogilner: You emphasize that an important step in changing your habits is kno... posted on Sep 6 2015 (20,038 reads)

we muddle through, we don’t feel so alone. Fortunately, this isn’t just wishful thinking about another self-help approach. In fact, there’s now an impressive and growing body of research demonstrating that relating to ourselves in a kind, friendly manner is essential for emotional wellbeing. Not only does it help us avoid the inevitable consequences of harsh self-judgment—depression, anxiety, and stress—it also engenders a happier and more hopeful approach to life. More pointedly, research proves false many of the common myths about self-compassion that keep us trapped in the prison of relentless self-criticism. Here are five of them. 1. Self-compassion... posted on Oct 19 2015 (29,237 reads)

the desert offers no tangible riches, as there is nothing to see or hear in the desert,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his exquisite memoir of what the Sahara Desert taught him about the meaning of life, “one is compelled to acknowledge, since the inner life, far from falling asleep, is fortified, that man is first animated by invisible solicitations.” No one captures this invisible animation of inner life more bewitchingly thanEdward Abbey in Desert Solitaire (public library) — a miraculously beautiful book, originally published in 1968, which I discovered through a passing mention by the wonderful Cheryl Strayed. (How right Laurence Sterne was t... posted on Nov 25 2015 (11,477 reads)

they've given away more than $250,000. That's a lot of money, and it sounds like a big sacrifice. But they insist that it isn't. In her blog, Julia writes, "The things we love most--spending time with family and friends, making music, dancing, cooking, reading--are all things we can do on a small budget. If we gave less, we would spend more on ourselves but probably wouldn't be noticeably happier." She says that giving is one of the most important things in her life, and she does it because she believes that "people--all people, even far-away people--should not have to suffer and die needlessly." I share that belief. My giving is a drop in the b... posted on Dec 5 2015 (10,905 reads)

Ricard, also known as ‘the world’s happiest man’, spent the best part of 25 years in the Himalayas with barely any contact with the Western world he was born into. At 26-years-old he left behind his molecular biology studies and settled into a life of serenity and spiritual training under his Buddhist teachers, high up in the heavens on the other side of the world. However, he is now very much back on the Western scene. When I ask Ricard why he returned, he sighs and says: “When I was in my hermitage I thought, if I can do something useful, maybe I should come down for a bit”. He seems to long for the mountains, but the continued success of his proje... posted on Feb 20 2016 (26,620 reads)

go, patience is a quiet one. It’s often exhibited behind closed doors, not on a public stage: A father telling a third bedtime story to his son, a dancer waiting for her injury to heal. In public, it’s the impatient ones who grab all our attention: drivers honking in traffic, grumbling customers in slow-moving lines. We have epic movies exalting the virtues of courage and compassion, but a movie about patience might be a bit of a snoozer. Yet patience is essential to daily life—and might be key to a happy one. Having patience means being able to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity, so anywhere there is frustration or adversity—i.e., nearly ev... posted on Jun 28 2023 (23,599 reads)

poetry of W.H. Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was among Oliver Sacks’s formative books. When the two men eventually became friends in the final years of Auden’s life, Dr. Sacks was still a thirty-something neurologist with little more than a weightlifting record under his belt, a long way from becoming the Dante of medicine. Auden became an invaluable mentor as the young writer was honing the singular voice that would later render him the greatest science-storyteller of our time. In the pages of A Certain World (public library) — Auden’s terrific commonplace book, that proto-Tumblr of fr... posted on May 20 2016 (8,970 reads)

have always had an interest in living a good life – perhaps a natural attraction towards positive psychology. An experience early on in life eventually taught me the value of seeing the self as far deeper than the finely curated fragments of body and mind that we spend a lifetime trying to conquer. It showed me, albeit exclusively, the faint and subtle yearnings of the soul that often went unheard in the noise and clamour of daily life. The Journey to Finding Meaning On an annual trip to my parent’s home in Pakistan, I decided to honor its call and spend my 2 weeks identifying a needy cause to which to contribute a portion of my time and finances. I did not have to look f... posted on Jun 5 2016 (13,958 reads)

Sagar Kabra was a family medicine resident at Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), an organization dedicated to serving the rural poor in Chhattisgarh, India. He was killed in a road traffic accident on May 9, 2016. In rural India, it is not uncommon for a person to pass before their time, their life cut short by the injustices of poverty, hunger, accident, and disease. Often these deaths go unnoticed, and the stories of these lives unheard. Sagar Kabra was familiar with this reality from his time working as a resident physician at Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), an organization through which he and his colleagues provided healthcare to some of the poorest and most marginalized communities in India.... posted on Aug 5 2016 (18,393 reads)

enlightened beings.  If they are enlightened beings, then so are all beings who serve, holding hands, paws, retractors, thermometers, heartaches, and aspirations.  This conspiracy of enlightened beings everywhere invites an even bigger picture.  What if a secret, sacred love waits patiently in everyone and everything?  And what if this love leaves footprints, evidence of its unfolding eternal care for all of us? Savoring the energy of the eternal, I consider my own life and how love’s footprints left trace evidence.  Yes, I can see the footprints when I look.  There was a path that began in a roller skating rink in 1940’s New York&hellip... posted on Sep 19 2016 (14,945 reads)