What does the concept of “home” really mean to us? Does it mainly refer to a place that gives us a feeling of utmost security in our surroundings? And, whatever it might mean, as we age, is it possible to transfer our sense of home to another spot on the map? In my mother’s case, circumstances are forcing her to…
In my childhood, I spent many afternoons at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My father loved the exhibition pavilions there, and to keep me occupied and not bored when I was too small to understand intellectually what I was viewing, my parents gave me a sketchpad and crayons or colored pencils and I would sit and draw. At…
Over the years I have known people who participated in weekend workshops with popular, charismatic self-help gurus whose message, when you boiled down the rhetoric, videos, and promotional literature, was pretty simple: Just do it! They encouraged participants to leave the unhappy relationship, declutter their minds and homes, make that positive change in their lives, and become the people they…
As a middle school teacher, I try to be aware of the big picture—the curriculum—as well as the tiny shifting reactions of my students. I have to be conscious of how each child grows and changes over time so I can help all of them stay motivated and engaged. By the end of most days, my mind is tired yet…
My husband and I have an infuriating problem when we need to leave the house together. We play a strange, relay-race game with time, but rarely do we find time for doing nothing. He’ll be ready to go, for example, but I’ll still need to find my shoes or brush my teeth. So he gets on his computer. I appear…
I was terrified of running when I was a kid. I’m talkin’ somebody-grab-this-girl-a-paper-bag-to-breathe-into scared. My mom is asthmatic. I’m not, but when I ran and felt my breathing quicken, I associated that with my mom’s health condition. Anxiety would take over, my throat would constrict, and just as if I had asthma, I’d lose the ability to breathe. During graduate…
I recently attended Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation, an intensive three-day retreat with a panel of brilliant experts that included scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist thinkers. The conference was held at Upaya Zen Center, nestled in a quiet valley surrounded by mountains in the heart of Santa Fe. Upaya, founded on a vision of Buddhism, is based on the…
You hear it on talk shows. It’s mentioned in every romantic comedy at least a trillion times. And it’s something we men have been told we have a problem with since the dawn of time. It’s intimacy, of course. I recently attended a class on “developing deeper intimacy in our relationships,” a proposition that both intrigued me and, as it…
