Long Weekend Conclusion

I reach the same conclusion every three day weekend: it would be nice to have this all the time. You feel so refreshed, so relaxed after having that extra day off. I believe we would become healthier and more productive if we switched our economy to such a cadence. Americans have to remember that we work to live, not live to work. We can build cool things together, but it shouldn’t define our existence. Let’s change the world together, 4 days at a time.

Community Action

If there’s one thing we can agree upon, it must be how crazy it’s all become. Whether we recognize it or not, we are still a community. Can we think as one, can we change it for everyone? I believe we can! Let’s go! Let’s go change the world!

Family Learning

We can so easily take family time for granted. I have for most of my life; I just assumed one grew up within a supportive tribal environment. But through the pandemic, and in this brave new world, family takes center stage. We wouldn’t be who we are without our tribe. That resonates deeply with me now, and I long to replicate such a phenomenon across our planet. Because we are all one. One species, on one planet. And we truly can change the world.

Discussion Organization

Political discussions can be fiery and back-and-forth. They can invoke passionate reactions and walkaways. But they are important. How we organize, on a 330 million person level or an 8 billion person level, determines the future of this planet. We can change the world, but we must first organize, and to do that, we must have the discussion.

Children’s World

I walked my dog through my parents’ neighborhood at twilight, and I heard the sound of young children playing. Climbing around the playground, running across the large grassy field of the park, they were simply enjoying the sense of wild play. I remember when I walked through that park at the height of the pandemic, and it was silent. It was an eerie sensation, to not hear the sound of children. They are our most precious component of the human species. They are our future, and our immortality. What kind of world do we want to build for them?

Active Health

Our bodies are connected to our minds. Indeed, our brain is a part of our body, it is our body. As I get older I continue to realize how much my physical health determines my mental health. Eating well and exercising often makes it difficult to be depressed. It adds perspective. When your workout is physically demanding, the other problems seem categorically different. How lucky I can consider myself, to be able to willfully expend calories without regard for hunger—that type of perspective is so easy to lose when not active.

Playing Catch-up

Catching up with important far-away friends helps us gather the bigger picture. Even if just summarizing what’s going on in your life, when you’re telling the person about it, you’re not getting caught up in the day-to-day minutia. Or sometimes you are, if those details really are that important. The conversation makes that clear, as it so often isn’t when we’re caught up in daily living. We are definitely social creatures, and prioritizing that interaction helps us feel at peace, and at home.

Deciphering Timing

There are so many potential paths ahead of us in life. It can feel daunting at times, and we can paralyze ourselves in analysis or consternation. There is a time for consideration and thinking, and a moment for action. Learning to decipher the timing is one of life’s core skills. It’s also a collective skill we need to foster as a species, in order to truly change the world. Without such a knack for organization, we are unable to implement any brilliant ideas or well-intentioned policies that may come.

Map Wonder

I simply love looking at maps. It can be fun while trip planning, to think about what a day would be like in a new place, to see how far different regions are from each other. With digital maps now ubiquitous on our cell phones, I gaze at them at least once a week. The world is so incredibly vast, and there are so many interesting places to visit and explore. Maps can help capture that wonder for the planet, and reinforce that it truly is one big beautiful amazing world.

It’s the People

As time goes on and I add to my collective experience, I recognize it comes down to people. The people in your life are what make it meaningful. And that’s incredibly liberating, because we get to choose the people in our lives. We have complete control over the most important facet of life that derives meaning. It’s the people. Now if we can channel that realization into a global acceptance, then we can truly change the world.

What is a Human Being?

The other day I heard the line, “we can’t quantify a human being, or their impact on others.” I sat with that for a while and really appreciated the truth of those words. I still routinely think about my family members who are gone, and when I do I often reminisce about all the good times we shared. Those times impacted who I am now as a person, and those experiences ripple into eternity through me, and the continuous web of human interaction and learning. In that sense, human beings are magical; we continually add and contribute to the information in the universe. How can we contribute today?

The Constant is You

I haven’t been consistent with my mediation practice for most of this year, but I returned to it this morning. When I started my sit and closed my eyes, I told myself, “this is my time.”

Not my wife’s, not my parents’, not my closest friends’. No one else’s on this planet. This is about me.

And it was then I realized the epiphany I was experiencing was the one constant throughout my life: it will always be me here. I'm never going to be someone else; I will always just be me and my thoughts, and I need to be at peace with that.

Being hard on myself or upset with myself serves no purpose. I need to let that go. If I’m not happy with myself, not at peace with myself, then I can’t be at peace with anything. My internal world can’t be full of strife because it will filter and dampen the external world coming through.

I guess that’s what people mean when they say you need to love yourself—you need to be okay with yourself, you need to accept yourself for all that you are. Your mind is with you all the time, and thus can’t be an impediment; it needs to be a boost, a trigger to motivation and willpower and an open mechanism to the outside world, this crazy experience we call the universe.

Anyway, I then had a crappy meditation, because I hadn’t done it in a while. That’s okay, try again tomorrow.

Considering the Legislature

I find the legislative body of government is not held accountable enough in our society. In a nation of laws, those who make them hold the most power.

We could write many simple laws that would vastly improve our system by leveraging incentive. What if everyone was provided a one-time stipend to pursue entrepreneurship? We could incentivize taking risks and the creation of value. What if we simplified our tax code to incentivize transparency? What if we conceptualized corporations as companies or entities, rather than people? We could more accurately classify the different actors within our system, and perhaps even significantly curb lobbying.

There involves nuance in law creation of course. Laws should be debated and considered thoroughly. But it’s important for us as citizens to recognize the importance of the legislative branch of government. We must demand it to be high functioning and honest. Doing so is one small but significant step towards changing the world for all.

The Unknown Ahead

Despite all the technology afforded to us, we still navigate the unknown, at least today. In a future reality we may well know much more, what’s to come and all the factors of a decision. But today, we know very little of what’s to come. It can be frightening or invigorating for us as a species. We can adopt either perspective.

Letting it go

Sometimes the answer can be to let it go. Perhaps not our sights on climate change, or political reform, or globally accessible education. But smaller, personal impediments that infringe on our ability to work towards those larger collective goals… sometimes the easiest solution is to go around and watch them go by. We get to choose our energy and focus in this life, and as much as it can feel like a burden, it can also function as a wonderful advantage.

Present Moments

It can be exciting to look toward the future, or sometimes terrifying. With our myelinated brains we’re predisposed to gaze ahead. And for good reason: it’s enabled us to survive for this long. But it’s also not where true living lies. We feel alive in the little moments of the present. We don’t have to search for them, we just have to pause and let them come.

Walking the Earth

Nothing like a tough weekend hike to reset and refresh. There’s something alluring about a challenging walk in nature, only your companions for company and the prospect of a good view for a reward. It’s an activity humans have engaged in for millennia. Perhaps following in our ancestral footsteps returns clues to feelings of meaning. We walk the Earth, we live on it, and we have this one opportunity to contribute to its system.

Those little moments

There’s gotta be some quote about life being “a series of moments.” And as corny as that sounds, I think it’s true, once time slows down a bit. It can be with your partner when admiring the time together, or at a baseball game when so many small things are happening at once. It could be while on transport, left to your own devices (without electronics to occupy). All that really matters is we recognize the moments as they come, because they offer an opportunity for perspective beyond our day to day lives. And that is the beginning of something greater in the beyond.

Stress Balance

There are benefits to the eustress resulting from hard work. After pushing yourself to accomplish something, it feels good to be tired. We are meant to be deeply engrossed with problems, with difficulty, during our waking hours. Are we spending our time doing that? There’s a time and place for work and for relaxation, alertness and rest. It’s when we find the right balance that we can truly contribute to the larger system.

Sunrise Sensations

An early morning sunrise can spark joy and a feeling of connectedness to the universe. The canvas on display this morning evoked a sense of calm. The Earth is so incredibly beautiful. And we are a part of it, of the very fabric of space time in this universe. Let’s act with oneness. It will all be alright.