Trust the timing of discoveries that guide your path Learn from those who have come before you Look for light; find the gift in darkness Ask questions to clarify the abstract, creating a framework for understanding Care about individuals 🦋 Act on impulses to give, and know your limits Do what makes you shine Bravely show compassion Consider what you can do to feel more alive Be gentle with yourself

In the story of how things come to an end, the moment when each of us began to contemplate how to live our life will have mattered. Collectively we have focused our attention on time, time itself becoming an untouchable cloud suspended in the air before us, the way in…

Sometimes the cherry blossoms tessellate, rotating slowly, inviting your head to tilt to one side or the other, as if the whole world were moving with them. You trace the outlines of their petals for a few breaths, following them into the in-between you’ve created in your mind. You look…

On my desk is a card, framed for the quote beneath the picture of a mouse tiptoeing in front of a sleeping cat: “Do at least one thing every day that scares you.” …

I live very much in my head. On Christmas Eve I sat down to dedicate some time to sorting through the chaos there. Today, on New Year’s Eve, some themes emerged, reflections and intentions in one: №1. Learn acceptance. · Just be, and let things be. · Make time for solitude…

An adapted stream of consciousness from a walk in early December: I live to ask questions and listen, to understand the experience of life I live to ease the suffering of those I love and care about I live to learn what others believe and why I live for rituals I…

A thought flitted into my mind some weeks ago, which is that our thoughts are inherently and unavoidably selfish. We are able only to narrate, with absolute confidence, our own story — and even then, the verities we tell ourselves might be questioned. Joan Didion writes of this in “Why…

What makes anyone more inclined at one point in their lives than at another to appreciate art? On what history must this openness to receiving into our lives what art has to teach us be built? …

Twenty-four is the year I felt like an adult for the first time, which, as it so happens, is also the age at which the prefrontal cortex has finished developing — meaning you are, by brain standards, officially an adult. I have been 24 for 4 months and 12 days…