existential pain. But let me throw in a specific curveball…  What if they are suffering yet there is not much that you can do about it?  This challenging scenario can arise for many reasons. Sometimes, the solutions are not known or available. Sometimes, your ability to help is limited.  Sometimes, the person cannot receive your help. One of the toughest aspects of unconditional love, is this ability to care about someone’s well-being and happiness, yet also be able to bear witness to their pain. Of course, we want to intervene because we don’t want them to suffer.  We want to take action, roll our sleeves and get invo... posted on Apr 15 2022 (11,230 reads)

child, and the whole group was looking forward to her having her baby. And she took some time off after the baby was born, and then she came back, brought the baby with her, and she talked about it. She said, When I became pregnant, everybody said, Congratulations, great, great, great, great, great. And when I had the baby, everybody said, Congratulations, great, great, great, great, great. Nobody told me that I had at that point mortgaged my heart for the entire rest of my life, because my happiness now depends on this baby being well and healthy and nothing bad happening to it. Nobody tells you that. They don’t say, when they hear — they don’t say, Uh-oh, brace you... posted on May 8 2022 (4,324 reads)

Those root words are, you know — [laughs] it’s connected together. The humus is the foundation of the forest. It’s where the decay happens. It’s where the nutrients are. It’s where most of the carbon in the soil is. It’s an absolutely fundamental part of the being of the forest. And humor, [laughs] for example, is — that is also our, what makes us fundamentally happy and interesting people and gives us — makes us relax and enjoy our lives; happiness; to be human. [laughs] And I love that you’ve made that linkage together. That is brilliant. I love it. Tippett:[laughs] Oh, OK. Well, thank you. I’m happy to discuss it with ... posted on Jun 1 2022 (3,863 reads)

about poverty, racism, or sexism—three cancers of the modern Western world with serious health impacts that are thoroughly documented but seldom discussed. For example, the average life span of people living in areas of Chicago that are just a few miles apart can differ by close to 30 years. The Myth of Normal—written with the help of Maté’s son, Daniel—prescribes a more authentic self that breaks free of the world’s expectations of us, offers a path to happiness, and also promises to alleviate physical ailments, because, as Maté reminds us, the mind and body are not separate. The former physician, now approaching 80, has spent decades expl... posted on Oct 2 2022 (6,107 reads)

the idea that good things happen to good people. I research a form of Christianity nicknamed "the prosperity gospel," for its very bold promise that God wants you to prosper. I never considered myself a follower of the prosperity gospel. I was simply an observer. The prosperity gospel believes that God wants to reward you if you have the right kind of faith. If you're good and faithful, God will give you health and wealth and boundless happiness. Life is like a boomerang: if you're good, good things will always come back to you. Think positively. Speak positively. Nothing is impossible if you believe. ... posted on Nov 7 2022 (7,209 reads)

as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly. And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been. I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful. Congratulations, Class of 2013. I wish you great happiness, all the luck in the world, and a beautiful summer.    *** For more inspiration, join an 11-day Kindness Challenge, hosted by ServiceSpace, that starts this weekend. M... posted on Feb 11 2023 (49,847 reads)

in their later years. Binge drinking, depression, violence -- all these rates go down. You wouldn't think of that when you're thinking of the dining table because you're just having a meal together, but those relationships start to have all these ripple effects. Robert Waldinger, at Harvard, is the director of one of the longest studies on the good life. After 75 years of studies, they issued one major finding: good relationships are the key to better health and to more happiness. It comes down to relationships. And we don't have to go farther than Robert Putnam's seminal work, “Bowling Alone”, to see that this is actually in decline. We used to b... posted on Apr 19 2016 (50,856 reads)

teaching on awakening mind, he is able to demonstrate how a mindful self “bootstraps its way” deeper and deeper into responsive and hypervitalized reality, the “presence” so universally cherished among mindfulness afficionados. Conceptual knowing is indeed a powerful analytical and problem-solving tool; Western civilization rose on its back. But the difficulty arises when we try to use it to attain the one thing it manifestly cannot deliver: lasting personal happiness. The reason for this failure is ultimately attributable neither to human sinfulness (as Western spiritual teaching has tended to emphasize) nor to human illusion (as the Eastern tradition ha... posted on Mar 13 2023 (3,384 reads)

bit about that? Chelan:  Mmm, yeah, I’m so glad you bring that up. Yeah. So, gosh, it was another thing, it was so strange. I just decided to spend a summer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with Michael Penn and his amazing wife, Kathy Penn. And I was just so attracted to both. I’d met Michael and Cathy briefly, and I was so incredibly attracted to them, on a spiritual level. I just needed to be near them. That summer was profound in many ways. It was really an experience of happiness that transcended these mental, emotional deep struggles. And it really gave me an experience of -- just that environments could be created that were so spiritual in nature that you could sti... posted on Apr 1 2023 (4,302 reads)

aspects of the insect have long intrigued humans of a more mystical bent. The man’s research revealed that dragonflies have held special meaning in cultures around the world and across time. Some peoples have revered the dragonfly, others have feared it. Of course that says more about us humans than the insect. What struck him as especially peculiar is that Asian and Native American cultures have traditionally associated the dragonfly with positive qualities—prosperity, harmony, happiness, good fortune, and purity—while a number of European societies considered it to have a harmful and even demonic nature, calling it such things as the witches’ animal, devil&rsquo... posted on Apr 6 2023 (5,020 reads)

was thrilling to me, day-planning on such a primitive level. Because I was so ill, nothing was demanded of me by other people: no performance, no self-sufficiency, no multi-tasking. Just me living and breathing. I began to look out at the world, at everything, from the point of view of my body. And this looking out from inside my body, fully inhabiting it, living in its needs for sustenance and comfort rather than in my ego desires -- this shift was the most important in terms of my subsequent happiness. I've often heard people who have to live with an extraordinary amount of anguish or physical pain in their life say, "I know it would be better if I could accept my situation, a... posted on Apr 26 2023 (3,219 reads)

So you call forth something beautiful by asking a beautiful question. Whyte:Yes, you do. You do. And then the other part of it, too, is that there’s this kind of weighted silence behind each question. And to live with that sense of trepidation, what I call beautiful trepidation, the sense of something about to happen that you’ve wanted, but that you’re scared to death of actually happening — [laughs] that’s — yes; none of us really feel we deserve our happiness. Tippett:I want to ask you, before we hear some more poetry, this ancient, animating question, what does it mean to be human? I mean, that’s something you have reflected on with lan... posted on Jun 18 2023 (4,157 reads)

like an infant to its mother. Something called my eye upward and there. Hanging above me like a nightmare kite, a man-ape shape, backlit against the brilliant sky, arms dangling. It leaped and cavorted about on the sheer rock above me like a monkey raging gloriously in a tree. I clung to my niche and watched in open-mouthed shock as this image of primate ecstasy joyed toward me and appeared nearer to be a young man in a shabby jacket, his healthy face glowing in a glory of unabashed happiness. What my face expressed to him, I can’t imagine but as he got closer to me, he smiled at me, danced around me as I lay there and said, “Just call me your friendly neighborhood sp... posted on Jun 19 2023 (2,836 reads)

laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded him for literature that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. The writings he left behind — about the key to strength of character, about creativity as resistance, about the antidotes to the absurdity of life, about happiness as our moral obligation — endure as a living testament to Mary Shelley’s conviction that “it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilize... posted on Sep 1 2023 (3,333 reads)

a do-it-aheader, and we’ve got a joke in our family about thanking Karla from the past. We’ll find some job I finished weeks ago, or unearth finished pieces to a project that’s crucial, or we’ll find important papers in my filing system, and we’ll say, “Thanks, Karla from the past, for making things easy!” Clearly, this thankfulness is a great motivator, because in each day, I think of all kinds of cool projects and jobs to do for the future happiness of my friends, my family, and myself. It’s a total win-win. It’s time travel that works! Before I heard Dr, Lamia, I would have said that I didn’t have anxiety... posted on Oct 5 2023 (19,054 reads)

up connecting her to a wonderful and generous community of kindred spirits, a second family.             What I wish for those hoping to publish is simple. Pleasure in whatever acclaim and riches the world bestows on you. Heaps of positive reviews, easily dismissable poor ones, and good writer friends to weather all the storms with you. I wish for you the honest, quiet, and enduring satisfaction of finishing a job of work. The child-like happiness in beholding something you have made, a unqiue manifestation and expression of who you are, and then, the generous joy of giving it away... posted on Nov 29 2023 (2,532 reads)