Meditation was a huge leap of faith for me. You have to do it a long, long time to get the sense that it’s working. And then, you have no control group, so it’s hard to say that it’s helping. Did I react better because I’ve been meditating? Or did I just happen to be… Continue reading A Leap of Faith
Recently I marked the second anniversary of the death of my beloved cat, Barnacle Pete. Wasn’t he handsome? I know, this bougie white childless lady is obsessing about her cats way too much. As Groucho Marx says, “I resemble that remark.” Hey, we’re all working with what we’ve got. Pete was a friend who was… Continue reading When Bad Things Happen
“When each moment of our lives is an opportunity to practice [mindfulness], work is not some tedious burden that saps our energy and dictates our lives. Instead, work is yet another opportunity to be mindful.” -David Gelles, Mindful Work Mindfulness at work. I love the playfulness of this phrase. I have seen mindfulness at work… Continue reading Mindfulness at Work
Our attention is all we have. You’ve maybe heard, “Time is all we have.” That’s not exactly right. I’ve spent plenty of time doing something and paid zero actual attention to it – watching TV, petting the cat, spending time with family – and had it pass by without me truly noticing it. It’s right… Continue reading Time and Attention
Worry, my friend always says, is a useless emotion. I worry a lot – I ruminate over problems I can’t solve because they haven’t happened. I spin off into future problems like how I will respond when I miss deadlines I haven’t missed yet. I wring my hands over decisions I will have to make… Continue reading Stopping the Rain
Finding compassion for people who you feel are contributing to your suffering is really hard. Unless we are very enlightened, all of us have that person, or maybe several persons, whose behavior makes us grind our teeth, and our deepest wish for them is a lifetime of having their vanilla pudding turn to mayonnaise on… Continue reading Let’s Get Metta-Physical
Our animal friends don’t move through life with the benefit of understanding what their life is. They just live in it. They just exist and do their animal thing. They haven’t studied eye cells to understand how they work; they just see and respond. They haven’t examined musculature; they just move. They don’t know how… Continue reading Animals or Scientists?
