“The amazing, the unforgivable thing was that all his life he had watched the march of ruined men into the oblivion of poverty and disgrace—and blamed them.” -The Weapon Shops of Isher, A.E. van Vogt In the previous essay, I discussed the role of chance in artistic success. In Salganik’s discussion of his…
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family. Older than great white sharks, they hunt everything from seals a tenth their size to moose…
“…only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.” Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning…
A habit is a spell you cast upon yourself that only you can break. “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil,” William James wrote in his pioneering treatise on the psychology of habit. What we habitually let in — ideas into the mind, people into the heart — shape what we become. In…
It’s tiny wardrobe time! But only if you want to save time, money and energy. If you’ve ever thought, “I have nothing to wear” while staring at all of your clothes, give a tiny wardrobe a try…. The post Create a Tiny Wardrobe: 10 Gentle Steps to Simplify What You Wear appeared first on Be…
Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for meaning, will lavish you with metaphors that become backdoors into the locked room of your most urgent reckonings. In my nascent adventures in pottery, I have observed with great fascination how two different glazes, when combined, produce…
The most assuring thing about life is that we can change, that things can change, that they are always changing. The most maddening is that despite living in a universe that is one constant transmutation of energy and matter, despite living in bodies and minds whose cells and ideas are constantly being replaced, we so…
An earlier version of this article appeared March 13, 2020 Do you like spring cleaning? I hear the Questioners saying, “Why do this in the spring? There’s no magic to that season. It’s an arbitrary choice!” True. But one of my clutter-clearing aphorisms is “Things that can be done at any time are often done at…
