This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 3/16/21 Went for a walk last night and found a hawk feather. (A little gift from nature. If I’ve identified it correctly, from a Cooper's hawk.) I love walking. Of the many kinds of exercise I enjoy, walking is tied, perhaps most intimately, to my [...]
Tag: psychology
On Collecting Things
When it comes to collecting behavior, I wouldn’t describe myself as a tried-and-true hobbyist. In fact, there isn’t one particular object or category of objects that generally fascinates me for long. And while I might go through phases in which I’m enamored by, say, watches, vintage magazines, or vinyl records, the likelihood that I would [...]
The Miraculous in Everyday Life
Over the Hills, paper collage, 2020 I dedicated my last post to defining what it means to perceive the world as miraculous. It is a style of experiencing, or way of seeing, that is central to my belief that life is a miracle (as opposed to, say, “life is love,” “the world is dangerous,” or [...]
Life As Miracle
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein The notion that life is a miracle is both an attitude and a style of experiencing. More precisely, it is an attitude that's rooted in a particular [...]
Beyond Suffering
I felt compelled to write this post because of a conversation I had yesterday with fellow blogger, Gabriela. In responding to issues I raised in a recent post on religion and personality, she asked me how I felt about the notion that “life is suffering,” especially as it relates to the central meaning I ascribe [...]
On Religion and Personality
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know my self-study in psychology has taken me some very interesting places. Self-actualization. Creativity, perception, mysticism. Various topics in humanistic and existential psychotherapy. Religion, too, has been a part of these discussions; although, I admit, I’ve never been particularly interested in religion as a course of [...]
This must be the place.
This must be the place, paper collage, 2020 This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 11/10/20 Had a significant insight into my own creative process. It happened on Sunday morning, as I was having coffee and reading one of John Muir’s Wilderness Essays. Experienced a flood of positive emotions as I was [...]
Dressing Games
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 10/15/20 Something magical about the moments between wakefulness and sleep. A time of vivid, free-floating images, words, phrases. I get some of my best creative ideas then—just before drifting off to sleep or upon waking. Rollo May talks about this phenomenon in The Courage to [...]
Raising Butterflies
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 8/2/20 Woke up and took care of the caterpillars. How striking they are to look at. Such vibrant stripes of yellow, white, and green. It’s amazing how they’ve grown in the past four days, since I first discovered eight—now fourteen—little ones on a dill plant [...]
On Low Living
It occurred to me about two or three weeks ago that I was, perhaps, in need of a change in habits. Spurred by feelings of stress, overstimulation, and an overwhelming desire to tune out— to reclaim a firmer sense of autonomy and personal well-being during such chaotic times, a yearning for a simpler, quieter, lower [...]
