A place to be not at home, not at work – just human.

I told a friend recently that I fear I’m becoming cynical. She said, “Yeah, cynicism is so easy. Having hope is hard work”.

I recently spent 8 days in silent retreat, sleeping in a tent below the mountains of North Carolina practising mettā (loving-kindness) meditation.

7 ways to spot consumer self-care.

We were sitting around the dinner table last week, when Triton’s ever profound mother declared, “All I want is less”. Leading up to the astutely titled silly season, we’ve been considering her sentiment.

I occasionally cry after reading the news. No doubt some of you have too. Staying porous to both local and global events is hard heart-work. As planetary citizens, we’re confronted by stories of despair and collapse. We are fluent in the narrative of catastrophe. And while that is very real, it’s not the only story.  

On the banks of the Peruvian Amazon, butterflies are drinking the tears of river turtles. The basking reptiles tolerate this fluttering kaleidoscope, luckily for the butterflies, because these tears are the tiny flying herbivores’ only source of vital salts.

My inner critic is a real bitch. I call her The Trunchbull (à la Roald Dahl’s Matilda, pre-censorship).

Distraction is the default mode of modern culture. We ingest a daily barrage of images, media and news intentionally designed to hijack our focus and turn us into information addicts.