Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
In the 1985 book, Habits of the Heart, sociologists Robert Bellah and Richard Madsen interviewed a young nurse, Sheila Larson, about her religious beliefs. “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my
For my first week of my Epicurean month, I successfully avoided watching TV (with the exception of Sunday, where I caught up on Homeland and Newsroom). Instead of watching hours of whatever is on, I’ve done the following: Read books, drank mint tea, and listened to Christmas music Caught up on a few work/project related
A few years ago, I was in the unfortunate position of having gained about 15 pounds of fat. I had been living in Portland for about 6 months and my workout program was…minimalist while my Portland food-cart indulging program was…maximalist? Not sure if that’s a word, but you get the point. Anyway, I moved back
I started skateboarding in eighth grade. There was no purpose to it. It just looked like fun. So I bought a skateboard (or rather, got my parents to buy me a skateboard). I taught myself to ride it without wiping out. I then learned to Ollie, which is the first “trick” you learn and is
A few months ago I read the excellent book Shopcraft as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. The author, Matthew Crawford, examines the nature of work, what it can teach us, and why the crafts (loosely defined as manual trades) are significantly more satisfying and enriching than the typical office job. I decided
I sometimes struggle with Impostor Syndrome. Though this is typically the domain of the successful (a group to which I don’t claim to be a part of), I do, occasionally, suffer from its symptoms. For example, over the past few months, approximately 250 people have subscribed to this blog, and a handful of these readers
The concept of detachment has been a recurring them throughout this project. The Stoics were, of course, huge advocates of the concept, and every religious tradition I’ve explored since teaches some form of it. So you would think that after 6 months or so of studying detachment in various traditions that nothing in the world
Employee engagement is the latest fad in organizational culture/HR world. Engagement is loosely defined, in this NYT article, “Why you hate work” as “involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy.” Researchers have confirmed an obvious point: engaged employees improve companies’ bottom lines. For this reason, companies want get all their employees engaged. However, engaged
This week has been a bit crazy. I’ve been seriously procrastinating at work, and had a bunch of things to do to hit a few hard deadlines before I headed off to Portland, Oregon for a few weeks (the place where young people go to retire). To get everything done, I had to pull a
I’m still working on grad school apps so I’m holding off on publishing my “real” posts, but a question came to mind this morning that I thought would be interesting to pose to my readers. Much of modern advice is predicated on the idea that your current life situation is shitty, or at least, unsatisfactory, and