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Driving with the Brakes on Uphill

September 10, 2021

I have no brakes on
…analysis is for those
who are paralyzed by life.
Anais Nin

A scary thought: Do people live their lives the way they drive? I wonder sometimes. Having taken a basic course on the Sebring racetrack, you learn the techniques to be efficient and fast. When to go slow, when to hit the gas and when to brake. Kinda like life. As I have been traversing mountains of late, I have noticed how some drivers brake up hill. Constant application of the brakes while going up the mountain. Used to bother me but now it fascinates me. How fear, lack of competence, and perhaps unfamiliarity can trigger such non-intuitive living, I mean driving.

Island Fever

August 18, 2021

Separating ourselves from the “other” has been the plight of humanity and part of our storied evolution. Tribes, territories, and Darwinian strategies to cull the herd. I think therefore I am. There is no WE in survival. I must separate myself from the “inferior” people who dilute the march towards progress.

Covid, voting, giving time, money, religion, parenting, social media, race, gender, disability can spawn mythical islands of isolation and separation. Dream-like places where we are all powerful, we control everything and conveniently eliminates our dependency on so many people and resources. An island oasis that is superior because it has exiled the unwashed bad apples.

The Sanity of Stillness

August 10, 2021

We desperately need to calm ourselves. To achieve some stillness and quiet. To let the lizard mind subside and let the heart take control. Inner peace is an amazing source of energy.

Ready to go

July 28, 2021

Always have to be ready to go What do we take with us? What do we have to show? Leaving is never easy Our luggage

When you are born you begin to die

July 27, 2021

How do you read this quote? Optimist, pessimist, fatalist?

Yet we know that birth portends death. There are a finite number of grains of sand in the hourglass.

As Stephen Covey advised, “Begin with the end in mind.”

But how do we use this to our advantage?

Some of us romanticize death, many fear it, and most deny it.

Career Pre-nuptials?

June 11, 2021

It makes me sick as I am counseling people making career changes, leaving one job for “greener pastures”. So consumed with leaving they can’t really remember how they grew as people. They can’t tell a credible story about how they optimized the time there. “Too busy”, “Too much stress” “office politics” so many reasons why they did the minimum work. Work good enough for the position, but not extraordinary experience of learning and growing. And some do not depart with the most basic milestones—a better resume, a better human development story, a better mentor, and a better network.

Ego: The Enemy of Empathy

May 17, 2021

For the Ego kills the ability to feel the pain of others. For this is the test of our own struggles. Do we feel in our hearts and our bodies what others are experiencing? Or do we rationalize it? That is the Ego doing it’s dirty work, making the tragedies of the world explainable, justifiable and fixable. And therefore not MY problem. The further we remove ourselves from the ills of the world, because we can’t let them interfere with our self-important pursuits, our true inner selves are submerged beneath our separateness from the world and each other. And our best self, our virtuous self, gets sedated and suppressed.

The Checkbox Life

April 21, 2021

We like to read lists. We like to make lists. When we cross things off a list we feel productive. We are getting stuff done! Check the box. Complete a task. Keep moving forward.

The list never ends and we are busy.

Check, check, check

We like checkboxes to give us the illusion of control over the world and yet we miss the big picture.

When we reduce to life to checkboxes we can miss what is happening around us. We miss the serendipity, the possibility and any awe and wonder that the world—that’s all 😊

Back to whose normal?

April 14, 2021

Most of us are trying to avoid the phrase, “return to normal”. Even newscasters, pundits, leaders of all types are making awkward statements about “a partial, a semblance, a return to some normalcy….”

Part of this recognizes the mountain ranges of reality that now exist between the valleys of our ignorance.

Our collective awakening, our shared despair, guilt and confusion make a return to “normal” impossible.

These powerful forces and circumstances have brought us to this moment, to this place, and we can never go back.

Barcoding Our Hate

March 22, 2021

We just don’t know what we don’t know. The more we learn the more we must unlearn. We think we know things until we turn

Driving with the Brakes on Uphill

The Sanity of Stillness

Ready to go

When you are born you begin to die

Career Pre-nuptials?

Ego: The Enemy of Empathy

The Checkbox Life

Back to whose normal?

Barcoding Our Hate

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