Tag: personal growth
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Productive Perceptions
Perception, paper collage, 2022 When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending. Thich Nhat Hanh It occurs to me that, in every situation, I am capable of viewing other…
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On Being Alone
For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed being alone. Maybe it’s because I was an only child. Or perhaps it’s a matter of disposition. Or both. Whenever anyone asks me if I miss having a sibling, even now, I think, What a ridiculous question! A sibling would have inevitably interrupted my much-cherished…
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On Being a Late Bloomer
We all know those people. Those people who have the rest of us convinced the world was tailor-made to help them succeed. Who seem to flow from life phase to life phase with little difficulty. And who always seem to be moving up. Those folks who seem to have figured it all out by the…
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On the Art of Innocence
When considering what it means to experience a second naïveté, my thoughts generally center on the mechanics of seeing. That is, what it means to see with fresh eyes: to be privy to the kind of penetrating and revelatory perception that is capable of discerning the magical in the everyday. A kind of unitive, playful,…
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On the Art of Wildness
The more I contemplate issues of purpose and meaning—and have contemplated them historically, as finding meaning was the quest that brought this blog into being—the more I seem to move definitively toward purposelessness. That is, the more I begin to understand that it’s the need for such a quest that’s the problem. And that struggling…
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In Creative Combination
There are moments in which I believe I exist within tightly defined limits. Moments in which I am conscious that I must expand my conception of myself, of my capabilities, and the bounds of my personality. In these moments, I experience a heightened awareness of self–of the woman I am and am in the process…
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Pendulum
I arrived at yoga class this morning with the hopes of losing myself in the pause. Of immersing myself in the kind of restorative quiet that is often necessary for the achievement of insight. For the mental clarity required to imbue this post, with which I’d been struggling for the past few days, with meaning,…
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On Being an Original
I view the striving for originality as, first, a struggle for life. To preserve, expand, and affirm oneself. To actualize one’s inherent, energetic potential. About a year ago, I published a post titled, When You Have Too Much Life…, in which I discuss what it feels like to have one’s creativity, attempts at expressing the…
The Used Life 