7 posts tagged with "presence"
On the difference between the symbol and the thing it stands for — why money is just a unit of measurement, why your identity is a patchwork of stories other people wrote, and why the buck has to stop with you, right now.
Hand yourself a magic wand and total control over reality, and something strange happens: it gets boring. On why surprise beats certainty, why maxed-out pleasure curdles, and why 'I don't know' might be the most freeing thing you can say.
We keep deferring our lives to a future that never quite arrives — the next promotion, the next blender, the someday we'll finally feel alive. On the hoax of the future, why your to-do-list version of yesterday is a ghost of the real thing, and why the anxious self you're straining to fix was never actually there.
Life only feels complicated because you keep trying to explain it — and the only tool the mind has is a knife. On why the flower isn't complicated (the botany is), why every solved problem just relocates our worry, and why the night sky is less a question to answer than a firework display to enjoy.
There's a parable about a beggar who spent thirty years asking strangers for change while sitting on a box full of gold. On why discomfort is unavoidable but suffering is optional, why you are not the voice in your head, and why one small question — am I being present? — reliably ends the misery.
How do you fall in love with a universe that is, on honest inspection, a bit of a horror show? On the trap of cosmic detachment (lawful, perfect, and faintly sociopathic), the opposite trap of an unguarded heart, and the strange skill of standing in both at once — heartbroken and serene in the very same breath.
There's a kind of room inside you that the noise in your head has been renting for free for years. On why the old Eastern traditions care about taste rather than footnotes, why 'heaven' and 'sky' are the same word in so many languages, and how to find the spaciousness your thoughts have been borrowing all along.