Life

Many concepts can be explained concisely, in simple language, and we should all strive for clarity. But the aphorism is a mistake, for a number of thoughts approximate the carpenter’s craft, and to meaningfully reveal them requires time and attention. Sometimes these cannot simply be told to another at all, they must be grown. For a topical example... See more

when someone tells me to keep writing, it feels like a command to keep living.

We think in questions. If knowledge is a complex web inside the mind, each node is a question, and each connecting line the information you’ve picked up on the journey from node to node. The pursuit of knowledge is the accumulation of questions. They shape our identity as much by being asked as by being answered.

“Life runs on sunlight. Life rewards cooperation. Life builds from the bottom up. Life banks on diversity. Life recycles everything. Life builds resilience through diversity, decentralization, and redundancy. Life optimizes rather than maximizes. Life selects for the good of the whole system. In short, life creates the conditions conducive to life.... See more

I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, b

... See more

it is absolutely certain that if you bump into the world in some way, it will bump back, often unpredictably and to a greater extent than you think. Just do anything that’s even slightly interesting to you, without paying too much attention to what you’re trying to achieve. You will find that the world will throw behavior at you, and, at some point... See more

I embrace harmonization as the art of living, as sacred play – a cosmopoietic dance that liberates us from being trapped in one song or story; it opens up vast, pluri-dimensional horizons that diffract into more ways of seeing, more ways of tuning, more ways of healing, more ways of creating. And being a good dancer requires patience, practice and ... See more

“work” is not just what you do to get paid but everything you do to live your life fully.

If you have an intractable, long-running problem in your life, and you’ve tried everything you can think of as far as running at it headfirst—try switching tracks, leaving that problem aside for awhile, and getting really , really into whatever pops into your intuition. Have you been meaning to learn everything there is to know about Indian cuisine... See more