The Overstory by Richard Powers is one of my favorite books. I’m borrowing a metaphor borrowed by the book. Say the planet is a body. The plants and trees and algae are the lungs, breathing for us all the time. The oceans and rivers and all the bodies of water are the circulatory system, keeping… Continue reading Humanity’s Big Fix
A Phil Collins meditation – cue drums! No, seriously, Phil Collins is the worst. There is so much going on in the simple air we breathe. This is a meditation on looking closer at what, at first, appears to be nothing.
“We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air.” – Evangelista Torricelli There was a time before air. There was a time when what we saw around us between the ground and the sky was a void, comprised of absolutely nothing. We still kind of see things this way – in her wonderful… Continue reading The Science of Nothing
It’s everyone’s favorite – flow. Video gamers know it. People who are super-into their craft know it. Athletes know it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did the research and thinking that defined the condition, and described it as a state that “occur[s] if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to… Continue reading Addiction and Flow
I like experiences where I think about all the steps and resources and people it took to get a bag of Quest Nacho Cheese Protein Chips in front of me right now. These supply chain reveries give me a deepened appreciation for the power of human specialization, a sobering glimpse of the precarious world of… Continue reading Walking Through the Neighborhood Meditation
Hi there. We are here. You and me. And you. And you. This planet has been here 4.5 billion years. 3 billion years ago, there were microbes, enterprising little living things that somehow invented the ability to replicate themselves. 250 million years ago, weird swimming lizards and amphibians appeared on the scene. Forests covered the… Continue reading I’m So Glad You’re Here
The mind can be a terrible place. The chorus of thoughts running through our heads can be abusive, needling, relentless, and cruel. “My partner must not reciprocate my love, how dare they act like that.” “The cat didn’t eat well this morning, they must be dying.” “Does my best friend love me back?” “My boss… Continue reading A Tempest in a Teapot
