The conversations became louder and more intimate as the wine continued to flow into the third hour of our ladies retreat happy hour. We had spent the day bonding, hundreds of feet above the forest canopy, zip-lining at 25 mph from tree to tree. We hiked the dewy Washington woods, bathing in the smells of…
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One of my projects during quarantine was reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It’s a hefty novel, my translation running around 1,200 pages. I read it relatively fast because I didn’t want to keep forgetting the numerous characters and multiple nicknames for each character. I must have referred to the character list at the…
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I found myself startled in the 20th chapter, of Yuval Noah Harari’s book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The chapter was titled “Meaning”, and in it, Harari explains the human tendency to create meaning through stories and how this kind of thinking is flawed. He begins with the fact that we are story-telling animals…
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I tend to be over-serious about my spirituality, an introverted contemplative that keeps my spiritual life to myself. Tosha Silver, author of Outrageous Openness, on the other hand, is so “outrageously open”, as she describes it, that I felt suddenly liberated and free to “bother” God with finding a good parking spot, painting just the…
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I remember feeling particularly disgusted with myself one day, reprimanding myself for not fostering children, not volunteering at the school, not participating in the neighborhood association, not being charitable enough. Serendipitously, this Taoist text showed up in my life that very day. It read: Stop being holy, forget being prudent It’ll be a hundred…
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Who’s hungry in there? You just had a delicious lunch and you’re feeling full and happy, but then you smell your kid’s french fries that they’re still working on, so you snatch a few and start munching. That’s nose hunger. Or maybe you’re trying to save your appetite for the dinner party at your friend’s…
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Anchored to Wise 