Mindfulness

As you know, I’m fascinated by words. Here’s one that has multiple meanings: “hermitage.” Separately, it speaks to being at the hermit’s age when you may want to seek a hermitage. And, yet, The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is anything but a place for asceticism.

Recently, I posed the question about whether your truth might be embedded in another language. I’ve long been fascinated by the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, partly due to my love of their hot springs (onsen) culture. This led me to buying, renovating, and reopening the Kabuki Springs and Spa in San Francisco’s Japantown nearly two dozen years ago.

This post’s name is the same as a recent TED Radio Hour podcast focusing on how we can bring what's been dormant back to life, more than a year into the Covid crisis. All the featured speakers are amazing, but I think you’ll find psychologist Guy Winch’s recommendations particularly prescriptive and valuable as we try to find new footing in this new normal.

I grew up on a big wheat and soybean farm in Kansas. It’s a place so rural, the nearest fast food and movie theater is almost an hour away. It was quiet in a way that you could hear the rustling and songs of meadowlarks and quail, and the coyotes at night. You could hear the constant wind rushing through the tall grass. You could hear your own thoughts.

I’ve been reading academic Dr. Dilip Jeste’s recent book, “Wiser: The Scientific Roots of Wisdom, Compassion, and What Makes Us Good.” In his book, he offers the reader one particular study that gives evidence that wisdom is more correlated with spirituality than it is with intelligence.

My father grew up on the shores of a small town in Puerto Rico. A little town fondly called Boca Chica. Small mouth. He often referred to it however as “small kiss” as the memories from that beachside town still softly kiss his forehead everyday.

Thanks to my friend Alain de Botton’s School of Life for this question. No disrespect meant to those who strictly follow an existing organized religion. We’re just dreaming a little here. If you were to start your own religion, what would be your commandments (or, at least, “suggestions” if “commandments” feels a little too commanding)? How can you start living those commandments today?

Today is my 69th birthday and I am jolted in ways that continually serve as signposts along this path of modern elder-ism. Yesterday, a dear friend, who became a collector of my photographs over the last 12 years, informed me he was closing his office and wanted to return all the images he procured from me due to no space.

Today’s video says it all, so I’m not going to write much today other than offer these three principles: Nature is our teacher. As Alice Walker suggested, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.”

Breathing new energy into old ego patterns can sometimes ‘ventilate’ habitual entanglements that we have built up over a lifetime. Ventilating these built-up patterns is important for disentangling complex ego defenses that have in fact served us throughout our life, however, without the ability to self-reflect, our own minds can become an obstacle to wisdom and growth.