Sahar

Any attempt at description of Ryan Thoresen Carson inevitably becomes a failure of language, the very thing he made his life’s work, but it would be a greater failure to not try.

I had thought of him as funny, but that wasn’t what he was. What he was was responsive. He was fully attuned in any conversation he had. He heard what the others were saying in a way that few people do, and could, without missing a beat, wring out a genuine and fitting thought from himself.

Is this the kind of person that, if they were old and ugly and had soiled their pants and needed your help, then you’d still say, Yes? “Yes, I would love to. I want to give this person my care so they can unfold their life with dignity.”

That is a friendship of virtue.

The practice is called jhanas, and it is sometimes described as the inverse of a panic attack. I have only ever entered the first jhana, once while spending an hour putting our four-year-old to sleep and meditating on how wonderful it is to lie there next to her. It was really weird and beautiful. If you want to know more about these sorts of... See more

Everything worth having lives on the other side of effort.

Everything good requires tending. Everything beautiful demands maintenance.