Do you know how to learn? Life is always trying to teach you a lesson. It may not be what you want to hear. But you are well advised to listen. The game is never fair. The rules are always changing. The lessons are always there for you to learn, if you choose to heed […]
Recent Posts
Three ages of play: Doodles, poodles, apple strudels
Why is play often seen as harder to justify as we get older? Play is both a luxury activity and an essential one. Play sets the imagination free. This is captured perfectly in 2014 cinematic masterpiece The Lego Movie – the purest depiction I’ve seen of the joyous, light-speed leaps and bounds of the mind […]
The essence of everything
“Impermanence is the essence of everything,” says Pema Chödrön in When Things Fall Apart. “Impermanence is a principle of harmony.” I’ve been thinking a lot of late about impernance and the fleeting nature of things and of life. The lifespan of a flower is fleeting. The picture at the top of this page is the […]
Twitter’s perfect compromise?
If you tweet, what do you think of this week’s radical new change to Twitter’s very @-ness? Gifting us more characters to play with, or a disturbance in the Force of what Twitter is all about? “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied." These words are widely attributed to the great Larry David […]
Like nobody is reading
If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?* Is the true Zen wisdom of blogging to be found not in whether it speaks to an audience, but in the purity of writing itself? Moby has been there and done that. In a fascinating chinwag […]
A little hate must fall
Into every life a little hate must fall. It’s what you do with it next that counts. Former Outkast gent Andre 3000 has the most wonderful voice. Listening to his NPR Microphone Check podcast appearance, it’s easy to imagine loving everything he says. But no matter who you are, what you say, or how you […]
When did music begin for you?
Gentle reader: When and how did music come into your life? When did music “begin” for you? The tinniest little noise can spark a lifelong love. For most of us, there will be a moment when the magic of music reveals itself fully for the first time. It might be one single song clicking like […]
100 tiny hearts, three wise words
What’s keeping you going in 2017? Nuts as the world might seem, goodness, love and good sense haven’t gone away. I present to you four exhibits from the past week to back up my case. I wrote back on Christmas Day that throughout 2016 there had been “much to make a heart feel heavy and […]
#Womensmarch: ‘I saw the future and it was pink’
I am honoured to host the words of two wonderful women – Laurie Ruettimann and Leticia Sanchez de Garzón – on their experience of the Women’s March in Washington, DC on Saturday 21 January 2017. Watching from afar, last weekend’s Women’s March moved me to tears. It was a remarkable and powerful event, uniting hundreds […]
How do you deal with your frustrations?
You can’t always, as the song suggests, get what you want.* You might even find that, in a very real sense, you get what you need. How do you deal with frustration? Frustration is an inevitable part of all our lives, probably to a greater extent than most of us would be comfortable admitting. My […]
MJCarty 