A Mindful Life

They don’t want to have children, they don’t want to be bothered by children, and they’d just as soon not live near children. It’s the child-free movement, and it’s growing: Boston Globe: No Kids, Please It’s already starting. The rise of the child-free, that is. They may put on a sorry face, networking through the [...]

A friend once wrote about her frustration with herself: I’m going through a fierce “period” of “What am I doing?? Where am I headed? What is my purpose? What am I worth? What’s the point?” It may be a period thing, but everything is more intense lately. I think I block this stuff out a [...]

There is no defense against an open heart and a supple body in dialogue with wildness. Internal strength is an absorption of external landscape. We are informed by beauty, raw and sensual. Through an erotics of place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility. –Terry Tempest Williams, “Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place,” from An Unspoken Hunger The [...]

A journey. To where? Water whorls keep secrets well; my oar pushes forth.

Applying [the] ancient science of prayer to living in peace, for example, peace would not be created by praying for peace, in the sense of praying for something that we do not have, and wishing it was different. Peace is created by holding those thoughts, feelings, and emotions firmly within us that we would have [...]

What 28 Days Later had to offer was some amazing scenery: chilling images of London abandoned and in disarray; pastoral green hills dotted with castle ruins; horses running free; long shots of flower fields; mesmerizing kinetics of windmills. The absence of normal human life unfolding intensified the loneliness of the barren landscapes, creating an an [...]

Awhile back, Kat grappled with the question whether to enter therapy, wondering whether it would help her to go, feeling reluctant to spend money on it, and dealing with inertia. This prompted me to reflect on my own experiences in therapy — as a client.

Paul Pearsall, a psychoneuroimmunologist, says that no real therapy can begin until the therapist understands how the client will answer three ultimate questions. These three questions are, why was I born, what is the purpose of my life, and what will happen to me when I die? Pearsall’s argument, as I understand it, is that [...]

If this opportunity had arisen in 1984, I would have married my partner, C, whom I had met the year before. We exchanged rings and vows privately and lived as married for five years. Like many young couples who marry young in this culture (I was 20 when we met), we did not stay together. [...]

The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not [...]