Have you ever wondered how any two people can have a conversation and walk away feeling both like they were heard and believing they heard the other person? It blows my mind how limiting conversation can be. As magical as language is, it leaves so much room for error. Words mean different things to different people. We hear one thing when they mean another. Context matters. We have different life experiences. There are so many…
What went right? Do you ever wonder how we got here? Do you ever think about what has changed over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution? The past few decades have seen exponential growth in technology. Smartphones. Passenger trips to space. Electric vehicles. Lots of crazy new tech. In most of our lifetimes, technological advances have dominated the changes we experience. Science changed the world. Medical advances like germ theory and surgical techniques have…
Ok, I know, this sounds weird but hear me out. Humans are freaked out by death. I’m not saying I’m any different, just drawing attention to this in hopes of reducing our suffering. Today I’m wondering what life would be like if we could change our relationship with death. The Toltec civilization of Central America considered death an advisor like a friend who gives advice. In this way, Toltecs navigated their lives knowing they were temporary.…
Ranking importance is critical to mental health What IS the matter? Matter is an interesting word. It’s a noun and a verb. The noun means something of substance and can be physical or metaphysical. The verb means for something to be important. There’s matter, and there is the matter. I like words like that, but the complication of communication and understanding. The idea of something mattering, as a verb, has been on my mind lately. The…
Are you aware of the stress in your life? Can you FEEL it when stressors are building up and you think you may pop? Do you ever feel like you’re right on the verge of a meltdown? I think most of us are familiar with these scenarios. We can only take so much stress. When I was an ecologist, I had a vision for my life’s work. I planned on studying how aquatic ecosystems resist or…
Spoiler alert? We can’t and we don’t Do ever joke that we’re living in the Matrix? Most of us have done this. It’s funny to think the world is so mechanical or programmed that we’re just victims of the program or the algorithm. I often refer to the movie when talking about the problems of the world. Sometimes it does seem like we’re living in a computer simulation. Or does it? How would we even know…
This week I’ll skip right to the punchline. The ability to see beyond the mainstream and to understand the continuum of whatever feature it is in the world is a special gift. This is enhanced awareness. I wonder if being neurodiverse or atypical or having a sensitive or different nervous system, sort of gives us this ability. In an evolutionary context, I can see how this ability would have been selected for. Hypervigilance enabled some of…
Are you familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn? In short, he’s one of the people who has made meditation mainstream. While I generally don’t like words like ‘mainstream’ and ‘conformity’, anything that makes helpful tools more accessible to the masses is good in my book. Known as one of the creators of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Kabat-Zinn has written a bunch of books and helped teach meditation to all sorts of regular people. This article is inspired…
Have you ever thought about your boundaries? Maybe a therapist told you your boundaries were weak. Or maybe you read something about relationships and how some people might not respect your boundaries. I learned early on that my boundaries are weak. I tend to pay attention to other people’s needs more than my own. Some people in the world will take advantage of this. Many of us struggle to simultaneously love other people while protecting our…
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong anywhere? Do you have a ‘sacred space’ where you do feel like you have membership? For many of us, we have our family. Whether or not we truly feel comfortable in that space, there is a membership based on genetics or time spent together. It is a difficult thing to simultaneously exist as separate and together. We are individuals. Our skin is a boundary separating us from…