Here are the top 10 careers that 10-year-olds want to be when they grow up (ranked in order): doctor, teacher, athlete, firefighter, police officer, astronaut, veterinarian, actor/actress, scientist, and chef.

My love of language seemingly knows no bounds. Turning a phrase or punning a witticism never fails to uplift me. I think I was a Mad Man in a past life—a true word nerd at heart.

San Francisco has seen its share of boom and bust cycles: the Gold Rush, the 1906 earthquake and fire, the sexual liberation of the hippie 60s and 70s and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, the dot-com boom and bust, the Great Recession, the Pandemic and remote work phenomenon and, finally, however you would currently describe the “balagan” (chaos in Yiddish) that describes the current state of this 7-mile by 7-mile earthly bardo.

“When you cannot do what you’ve always done, you do what matters most.” Robert D. Hales

Recently, I was being filmed at my home in Galisteo, NM, near our new Ranch campus. It was a lovely late summer day, and I was talking about the “midlife chrysalis,” the subject of my upcoming TED talk, which will go live on November 13.

In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to feel like you're constantly treading water. With endless demands for our time and attention, it's no wonder so many of us feel like we're just on a neverending treadmill, trying to get things done with no end in sight.

Two years ago, the well-known, 78-year-old Christian mystic Richard Rohr who’s written 50 books decided to make the pilgrimage to Baja because one of his idols was leading an MEA workshop.

Traveling through Italy brought up some memories for me, including one that is bittersweet. I was 20 years old and going to college in England for a quarter. Along the way, I decided to trek to Florence to see some college friends studying there. If you can believe it, I wore my hair like Peter Frampton, long wavy curls (yep, I'd gotten a perm). I even carried a guitar with me, playing the role of the melancholy artist—my self-delusion of uniqueness.

If Dick can pluck some strings pushing 100 (sharing a video on Instagram (tinyurl.com/dvd-ukulele), no less), you can become a beginner at something as well. My favorite cocktail party question to someone I've never met is, "In what part of your life are you a beginner these days?"

I was touched reading a philosophy professor share his nearly-end-of-life story in the Washington Post with the title, “As my end nears, I crave the soul-to-soul connection of seeing friends in person.” (https://tinyurl.com/zoom-friends-dying)