Why nostalgia is important? Nostalgia is a shield against existential challenges. Evoking positive experiences and feelings from the past can help you cope better with the present and the future. January for me is the month to think about what happened the year before. To make a balance, to see what went well and what … More Why Nostalgia is Important?
Hi, all. Not long ago, I was contacted by “Ay,” a blogger who asked if I’d mind being interviewed. After we’d corresponded a bit, she sent a list of interesting questions that I responded to. The full interview can be found here. After checking out my responses, you should look at Ay’s piece about pointless … More I Was Recently Interviewed
The value of silence … More The Importance of Silence
A field guide to wonder and awe … More The Awesomeness of Awe
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity Simone weil Our lives are the collective sum of what we choose to pay attention to. Each passing moment a spotlight is cast into the world and reveals to us what we focus on. In one sense nothing can be more important than cultivating one’s attention, … More Attention – A Gateway to the Mysteries of the World
I’m curious to know what some of your favourite things are? But also, why are they your favourite things? For example, why is your favourite colour blue? Or why is your favourite band, say, the Beatles? Why is your favourite food strawberry ice cream? Is it just because, or is there a deeper meaning behind … More These Are a Few of My Favourite Things
In our day to day lives, many of us are preoccupied with completing the tasks on our never-ending to-do lists. Life quickly passed us by but we rarely take the time to reflect and contemplate on the deeper questions of our existence. When asked what do we want to get out of our lives, many … More The Search for the Good Life
When I was about 8 years old, my family and I went over to our next-door neighbour’s house for dinner. After dinner, their daughter offered me a sweetie. So, she led me into her room and opened up her “sweetie draw.” What she had done was save up her sweets over months and months to … More The Sweetie Draw
I heard someone years ago make an interesting distinction. She said that she ran, but was not a runner. It stuck with me once I heard it as a way I could differentiate doing something and without claiming that I was any good at it. I ride bikes but I’m not a cyclist. I plant … More A Distinction That Makes a Big Difference
Life as a Stoic … More Stoicism as a Way of Life
The common definition of narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s idealised self-image and attributes. Narcissists are people who believe to be unique, superior to others and masters of a wonderful existence that no one can imagine. As a result, they may be bullies and arrogant. They need constant … More How to Identify a Narcissistic Personality
Scrolling down our various social media profiles may give us the impression that everyone that we know is having the time of their lives 24/7. Glowing smiles of newly formed relationships, exotic foods, sculpted flawless bodies all exemplify the perfection that they have achieved. One puts down their phone and is immediately filled with a … More The Perils of Perfectionism and the Joy of Being Ordinary
The Parable of the Second Arrow According to the Buddha, any time we suffer misfortune, two arrows fly our way. The first arrow is the bad event itself, which certainly can (and often does) cause pain. The second arrow is our reaction to the bad event, the suffering we attach to our pain. This secondary pain, he tells us, is … More Escaping the Emotional Rabbit Hole
The words you use can change your reality. Language actually generates changes in your brains and changes your perception of the environment around you. Language is linked to emotions. Your words are constantly sending messages to your brain. According to neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, negative words cause the increase of cortisol, the … More Why You Are the Words You Use
Why is it that we spend so much time and effort pursuing goals and desires that go against our natural intuitions and inclinations? Motivated by the longing for external praise and validation, we chase lofty ambitions which ultimately feel inauthentic and unnatural. This is akin to trying to swim against rather than with the flow … More The Flow of Life: The Wisdom of Wu Wei
Leonardo da Vinci was the most creative genius in history. Of course, saying that I learned things from Leonardo is perhaps a bit risky, because in fact Leonardo is the very embodiment of genius. As we know, Leonardo lived in a particular era for humanity, the Renaissance, when literature, philosophy, science and the fine arts … More What I Have Learned from Leonardo da Vinci
Like many, I used to think that the subject of philosophy was dull and filled with abstract intellectual concepts that had little relevance or significance in my life. Staring aimlessly out the window in a high school philosophy seminar, I thought to myself, what can I possibly learn from these books that were written thousands … More The Value of Philosophy in the Digital Age
Life is constant change, Buddha and Aristotle already said it: change is a fact of life. But change has also been accelerating in recent decades. Massive disruption across the social, technological, political and environmental dimensions of our lives means that we are constantly trying to figure out how best to manage uncertainty. And for someone … More How to Embrace Change
I write to call myself a writer and be called a writer, because that means more to me than words could ever convey. … More Why I Write
11th September 2021 marked twenty years since that fateful day when terrorists attacked the US. It also marked twenty three years since the terrorist attack on the American embassy in Nairobi on 7th August 1998. In both countries, what was designed to instil fear instead evoked fortitude. What was intended to sow discord instead brewed … More WE SHALL NEVER FORGET