It was nearly midnight when my phone rang. That meant it could only be 1 person and the probability of a volatile state ensuing was lofty. "Are you OK?" I…
My great grandma Pearl was big on gardening. She harvested her own black-eyed peas, pickled her own beets, canned cupboards full of summer tomatoes that carried her well into winter,…
Last night I found myself sandwiched between faith and skepticism. I listened to their carefully regurgitated memories. Opinions they inherited to call their own. Perspectives they have never stopped to…
I have written for as long as I can remember. Stacks of notebooks clutter my bedside, a drawer in my dresser brims with notes rather than socks, and one of…
How world-football helped me understand passion.
And for years I have attributed this masochistic pastime to an oral fixation for focus. Hand in mouth equaled mental motors moving. A way to curb my mind from wandering. But I was wrong.
Could the key to happiness be held in one simple question?
We are not born with demons.
They are created.
We learn them from experiences that lead us to then form memories in their honor. Fed by fear and assumption, we give them an illusory life of their own.
We name them.
We construct a story in their honor.
We proceed to retell that story to ourselves and those around us, over and over and over again.
We reinforce the supposed truths within it.
Like the Hindu deity Ganesha, we are the placers of our own obstacles and so, it is only we who can remove them.
But how?
Passion is not hidden in the arrival, it is woven into the process of experience.