All Articles

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate… to have made some difference that you have lived and lived well.”— Ralph Waldo Emerson One of my favorite ways to drift into sleep is a quiet little ritual you may recognize as a loving-kindness meditation. It’s a simple practice — offering kind wishes to ourselves and others: “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be at ease.” When I'm lying in the dark, I start with myself,

“I have come to love the thing I most wish had not happened.” — Stephen Colbert When Stephen Colbert said those words in a 2015 interview, the audience went silent. He was speaking about the tragedy that shaped his childhood — the loss of his father and two brothers in a plane crash. It’s hard to imagine loving such pain. Yet Colbert said that without the tragedy, he wouldn’t have become who he is. Somehow, heartbreak became... a portal, a doorway to something very big. I'm

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.  Anaïs Nin I wrote most of this blog in the past, but wanted to re-visit it because first, John and I have just celebrated an anniversary, fifty two years of marriage. It’s a big marker for us.  We lived through several renditions of ourselves along side of each other. Second, because relationships, both struggles and successes are the basis of most all our human problems as well as the primary route to flourishing.  Ver

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” — Socrates Not long ago, psychologists ran a simple test. Participants were told to imagine a friend calling to say he couldn’t go on living. What would they say? It wasn’t a cruel exercise but a study in wisdom. Researchers weren’t measuring IQ or cleverness. They were looking for something deeper: the capacity to make sound judgments guided by empathy,