Natalie Audelo

It was not fun to walk around with my ghosts, despite what my positive memories wanted me to believe. I think this is because inherent in “revisiting” is the palpable reality that everything ends, the reminder that soon the way you are experiencing your present moment will be the past; it too will end.

We are so burned out by our data-heavy, screen-based, supposedly friction-free lives that we no longer have the time or energy to engage in the kind of small, unfabulous, mundane, place-based friendships or acquaintance-ships that have nourished and sustained humans for literal centuries.

The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw th

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In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don't have much time? Scale it down. Don't have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day.

Adaptability is the way of consistency.

We shrink our dreams in public, as if protecting them from the harsh light of scrutiny. But I've come to believe we're not really protecting our dreams from others' judgment. We're protecting ourselves from the vulnerability of wanting something we might not get.

This planet is tended by innumerable invisible hands. When progress feels undetectable, I remind myself that much of life plays out on unseen stages. We must all tend to our inner gardens, as well as the gardens that we are but one small part of. To be human today is to exist at many scales at once, stories we can grasp and ones much larger than us... See more

Encounters with strangers can be a humbling reminder of the vastness of the world and of each other, the impossible-feeling truth that each one of us contains an entire universe of inner life and a singular perspective, that as a species we have an incredible capacity for kindness, cruelty, courage and creativity.