How to speak with heart
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow-men; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects” ~ Herman Melville Throughout my journey as an environmental leader, I’ve learned that communication is essential. The words we say and the ways we interact contribute to our karma in ways that can harm, and ways that can heal. The tools of empathetic attunement, resonance, and...
Read MoreRecipe for success
My best guide in life is a mixture of joy and terror. These feelings, when woven together, produce a powerful sense of aliveness and purpose. Without the joy, what’s the point? And without the terror, how can I grow and expand? These are the feelings I can always recognize as the threshold to an expanded consciousness. I felt this way before I chose to move to the place I now call home, when I applied to graduate school to go after my dreams, when I first adopted my dog-baby Dilly, before...
Read MoreOpening up to welcome in the world
I consider privacy to be a favorite luxury. I currently enjoy a life of independence, a supporting role behind the scenes, a hermitage of clandestine study. I love this life. I love the attention I can give to reading, sleeping, meditating, writing, and walking my dog. I love the relationship I have cultivated with myself. And, I also want a life of love and healthy relationships. My desire for a vibrant relationship trumps my desire to have my home to myself, and so, I recently opened up...
Read MoreBoost your sustainability by diversifying your bottom line
There are many ways to measure success. Businesses look to their finances and profits, nonprofits look to their relationships and societal impact, and environmentalists look to their ecological footprint. But a deeper look reveals something much more soft to measure. In our hybridized world, a singular and narrow bottom line is no longer enough. Customers now look to their business partners to have a positive social and environmental impact, and donors and foundations want to ensure their...
Read MoreAll the time in the world
Time is a flowy, circular, and rather paradoxical concept. Relative to region, culture, age, sense of spirituality, belief, and even altitude, time can feel different for everybody. I have experienced many diverse quickenings and hinderings at different moments in my life, depending on inner and outer circumstances. Some have been expansive, some universal, and some uncomfortably constrictive. Elizabeth Gilbert captures this notion of time eloquently in her new novel, The Signature of All...
Read MoreDeceiving ourselves with our own masks
Owls, tigers, raccoons, monkeys, humans. We all wear masks of some sort. We could call these masks personality, identity, stories we tell of ourselves to ourselves, our social media profiles, our clothing, our jobs, our titles. Masks are a tradition for tribal peoples, celebrations like Mardi Gras, and storytelling in theatre. They are a way of coming to terms with death, a way of understanding our common stories, of expressing creativity and energy. Masks are a way of escaping from our...
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