There’s a quote from Gandhi I love: “To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages.” Read literally, it is humane and compassionate and deeply true. But I also read it as a general principle, which leads me to this …
Last week, I made my first digital story. At the beginning of March, I entered into a new and exciting partnership with the Center for Digital Storytelling to create StoryLab (working title), an R&D wing embodying the power of story to help bring about a democratic and sustainable future. To prepare for our partnership, I’d …
I’ve been taking a break from online dating. I’m not sure how long it will last, probably another month or so (or maybe forever, if you introduce me to Mr. Right). Work is especially engrossing and demanding now, and I want to focus. But not without a certain ambivalence. The writer’s life tends to solitude, …
Much more than sufficient unto the day is the self-delusion thereof. Study of the human subject is always rewarding, but lately, scientists have showered us with revelation, making an ironclad case that what we think we know is mostly dead wrong. Yes, you guessed it: I’m reading Daniel Kahneman’s masterwork, Thinking Fast and Slow, and …
More than once upon a time, mass protest movements have arisen in this country. In some of these, I have been privileged to witness and take part. If you believe there might be something to learn from experience, read on and judge for yourself. In three sections, I describe my personal experience and the collective …
Today’s my birthday. I share it this year with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a calendrical accident that confers the spiritual equivalent of a contact high. But for me, a birthday is always an occasion. Every year has a distinct character and completeness that begs to be understood: I want to hang it on the …
It’s been a busy time for me in online dating world: much fun, new friends, maximizing my exposure to serendipity on the road to true love. I keep being surprised at how much this process teaches me about myself. For instance, I just added another paragraph to the list of qualities I am seeking in …
We’re midway into the new-year holidays sometimes called the Days of Awe, and so midway into the t’shuvah—self-accounting and reorientation—process this spiritual technology enables and demands. I love many things about High Holy Day services: the beauty of the liturgy and music, the communal and individual invitation to learn from experience, correct mistakes, and set …
The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, beginning, once again, to stage the vast (and vastly repetitive) drama that periodically mesmerizes the body politic. Like a huge pod out of Invasion of The Body-Snatchers, it replaces actual democracy with an expensive similacrum. From time to time, I’m going to focus on the culture of …
Judging by the prevalence of advice books on the best-seller lists, a great many of us believe there’s a formula for success in almost every endeavor, and that we can learn it from life’s winners—sports heroes, self-made billionaires, box-office stars, famous lovers. In one way, it makes sense: since they’ve done it (whatever it may …