We tend to rather blithely categorize times of crisis simply as happenstance occurrences that reflect the frequently volatile and somewhat unpredictable nature of life.  Because we tend to conceptualize crisis in this manner, we readily place times of crisis in this convenient “us-versus-them” category so that our focus is on managing the crisis … [Read more...]

Sometimes we let the nature of the times feed fear and engender apprehension.  We find ourselves swept away on the larger tide of some crisis within which we lose our balance and sacrifice our objectivity.  We become part of the chaos rather than being an instrument to ascertain the gravity of the chaos and thereby bring an ascending calm to it.  … [Read more...]

She walks ‘with’ fear, but she does not live ‘in’ fear.  At nineteen, Anna’s story is less a story and more a most wrenching tale penned of blistering heartache, seemingly unscalable disadvantages, improbable misfortune handily spun on the loom of all things unjust, and hope ground to powder only to be blown away on the ever-restless winds of … [Read more...]

What do you say during times of crisis like these?  You want to say something revelatory and deeply meaningful to buoy the spirits of people and give them sufficient hope to lean into the challenges wrought of the crisis and valiantly press through them.  You want people to be reflective in a way that they are not during the calmer times so that … [Read more...]

We all throw around the idea of having a purpose, or not having one, or wondering if we’re supposed to have one, or whatever we’re wondering.  We wonder if we really need a purpose, and if so do we create it or does it already exist and we just haven’t happened to happen upon it just yet?  However or in whatever way we go about it, we all ponder … [Read more...]

We’re not all too bad at bobbing and weaving.  We’re pretty good at side-stepping and side-lining issues.  We’re quite adept at cutting and spinning, doing a bit of fanciful dodging, as well as deftly running the obstacle course without getting so much as a scratch on us.  We’ve learned to see things coming from a long ways away, and we’ve figured … [Read more...]

Decisions.  Life is quite literally jam-packed with them.  We make them all of the time; literally one after another after another.  Hardly a single minute passes where we’re not thinking through and making some sort of decision.  Some decisions are huge and sweeping, amply possessing both the power and scope to impact our lives for the rest of our … [Read more...]

We hear a lot of things.  A whole lot of things.  We’re incessantly bombarded with sheets and shards and streams of information.  It’s about bits and bytes and boatloads of data that we ingest and digest without even realizing that we’re doing that.  Either consciously or unconsciously we compile all of that sordid stuff into some sort of choppy … [Read more...]

The world is spinning in ways we once felt would only be experienced through fiction penned by authors and portrayed by various screenwriters who themselves lived in dark places and spent their days meandering through deeply foreboding thoughts.  The impossible, the absurd, the irresponsible, the irrational and the improbable were certainly the … [Read more...]

Self-esteem is really the accumulation of beliefs that we have collected about ourselves.  We arrange these many beliefs in some sort of composite much like a tile mosaic.  Each piece is some shard taken from some experience or encounter or event or circumstance that has come our way at some time in our lives.  These many pieces are selected based … [Read more...]