A friend recently recommended a book to me—Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. I am passing this recommendation on—read it. It is about what Hyde calls a gift economy, which is the economic environment for the vast majority of human civilization. Hyde estimates that well over 90% of people in human history have lived in a gift …
Many years ago, a long-time AA member I knew introduced me to the Shit Fairy. The Shit Fairy is the little voice on my shoulder that fills my ear with shit–bullshit, horseshit, and chicken shit. If I listen to this long enough, it turns my life into shit. What I say is bullshit, what I …
An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice …
The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as one of the inalienable rights. This is not the pursuit of collective happiness, and the Declaration does not openly urge us to work altruistically for the happiness of others. The happiness referred to is clearly individual, and perhaps “pursuit of happiness” is a …
To let ourselves feel anguish and disorientation as we open our awareness to global suffering is a part of our spiritual ripening. Mystics speak of the “dark night of the soul.” Brave enough to let go of accustomed assurances and allow old mental comforts and conformities to fall away, they stand naked to the unknown. …
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? –Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” What is this thing called mission or purpose? To me, mission is not an idea, not a statement of purpose, not a promise …
I don’t read emails or blog posts, I scan them. The idea of slowing down and staying fully present with a thought is very difficult, very foreign to me. If you’re like me, you might notice a persistent voice, right now, telling you to hurry through this post, to grab the point that Simmer is …
The temerity. The arrogance of a website that proposes to address the issue of life purpose. Who is this dude who believes he has something to say to me about the meaning of my life? I admit it—if I ran across this website, I’d be skeptical, even offended. Write a blog about raising foster children, …