Natalie Audelo

The meaningful middle is where everything that matters actually happens.

We’re not meant to be independent creatures, all alone. We’re meant to depend on each other. It’s an unsettling truth: the less we depend on each other, the more we depend on the market. We summon eggs to our apartment via an app instead of simply asking a neighbor. We hire a therapist—incapable of loving us back by design —and forget to call our f... See more

Why would rational and intelligent people want to contort their lives like a hyper-kinetic yoga instructor jacked up on an all-day energy drink?

Surely, it has something to do with our obsession with doing, over just being, and the endless pursuit of excitement, which we mistake for happiness. Add to this our collective fear that we will run out of... See more

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in w

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Self-loathing is a rampant virus in our contemporary culture — so prevalent as to have become the default setting in most of our minds. Seldom do we even stop to question whether it is normal or healthy to live within a consciousness that is constantly attacking, judging, and insulting itself. But to condemn yourself as unlovable is to swallow a te... See more

In the early 20th century, Rilke wrote a wonderful series of letters to a young poet in which he counseled, "Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart." He said, "Try to love the questions themselves as though they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language." He said, "Don't try to reach for the answers which could not... See more