When Its Time To Say Goodbye To Our Furbabies
It can be difficult to say goodbye to our pets, but can we be guilty of avoiding the necessary? Continue reading When Its Time To Say Goodbye To Our Furbabies
Category: Self-awareness
Repost: Experimenting with Self-Discovery in Real Time
I don’t think this is going to be anything like any of my other blogs. Actually, I’m not for sure what this is going to look like or how it might turn out. That’s why I’m calling it an “experiment.” I will conduct my experiment by asking a series of personal, self-discovery questions and then answering them. Each response will be used to generate another … Continue reading Repost: Experimenting with Self-Discovery in Real Time
Let’s Talk and Think about Skin Color
Note: A version of this post was published earlier. As America gears up for the 2024 presidential campaign, a variety of Republican contenders, chief among them Ron DeSantis, are doing their absolute best to dethrone the Grand Poohbah, otherwise known as “The Donald,” the man who gives lie to the statement “It can’t happen here.” To achieve this difficult task, these campaigners are going … Continue reading Let’s Talk and Think about Skin Color
Repost: What Vladimir Putin’s War Has Taught Me
Before I get into the body of this piece, I’d like to say that the conflict in Ukraine is especially interesting and tragic because I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland during the mid-nineties, not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was sent to Rzeczpospolita Polska—I still remember quite a lot of Polish—to … Continue reading Repost: What Vladimir Putin’s War Has Taught Me
The art of knowing oneself
Knowing oneself is, to me, the key to the path of spirituality or on the ladder of awareness. Continue reading The art of knowing oneself
A Sad Day, a Happy Day
Exactly one week ago, on Saturday morning, my wife and I got into the backseat of my father and stepmother’s car, in Georgetown, Texas, pulled out of their garage, and headed eastward, to make the hour-long trip to the small town of Rockdale, Texas, population 5,323. Our goal was to attend a memorial service to commemorate the life of my uncle, a man I’d always … Continue reading A Sad Day, a Happy Day
The Cat Conundrum
I had a friend who claimed she was clairvoyant. Let’s just say for the sake of this post that she was, because I’m on my way to making a point and you don’t have to have an ability to see the future to know that. And I’d say from my experience that my friend had a gift of extraordinary perception. She saw things differently than … Continue reading The Cat Conundrum
Repost: Others
Life is like a great meandering stroll through a vast wilderness of ever-changing scenery. Such a long tramp is bound to change us, so it’s highly likely we’ll undergo one transformation after another as we travel. I was an only child during the earliest stages of my “journey.” I spent the first few years of my life living in a quiet, rural setting where neighbors … Continue reading Repost: Others
The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What On Earth Are You Thinking?
What On Earth Are You Thinking? What is External Self-Awareness? Most people think about self-awareness the same way they do sex. They believe they’re great at it when, in reality, no-one knows where on God’s green earth the G spot is (or that there even is one). One of the major components for building self-awareness is understanding what other people honestly think about us (including our ability … Continue reading The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What On Earth Are You Thinking?
Repost: Can Happiness Be Cultivated?
I’ve been writing about happiness recently. This is the third (and final) installment in a series of pieces on this subject. The first installment can be found here and second one, here. While prepping myself to write this, I began to think of analogies. Can happiness be cultivated in the same way a farmer prepares for a good harvest? Think about it; a bumper crop doesn’t just happen … Continue reading Repost: Can Happiness Be Cultivated?
The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Feeling?
What on Earth Am I Feeling? “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal Disconnecting the autopilot is the practise of noticing when you’re distracted and then actively bringing your attention back to the present. But there’s a problem. It’s called turbulence. (Namely, your emotions.) This is what happens when a pilot takes the autopilot … Continue reading The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Feeling?
Can I Tell You a Secret?
After I wrote the post about my mother, The Choices We Make: My Mom The Spy, my friend Eric was over at my house and read it, so my seven-year-old daughter wanted to a turn to read it. She said liked the part “Instead of secret meetings at night, she was called to hold our hair when we threw up and calm our fears when … Continue reading Can I Tell You a Secret?
Why I Went To A Taylor Swift Concert
Do you know how hard it is to get Taylor Swift tickets? You literally have to win a lottery. Well… Continue reading Why I Went To A Taylor Swift Concert
The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Doing?
The Three Areas of Self-Awareness According to Tasah Eurich – author of Insight: The Surprising Truth about How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think – there are 3 major blindspots to self-awareness. Those are: Behaviour blindness is being oblivious to your own actions. Not noticing when you are getting distracted or why. Emotional blindness is … Continue reading The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Doing?
The Ladder of Enlightenment
I came across something called the Map of Consciousness in a book I’ve been reading recently – Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins. In it he talks about the different emotional levels we operate on. He presents them in a way I’ve never seen before – as a kind of ladder that we can climb. Starting with depression at the bottom … Continue reading The Ladder of Enlightenment
I Wish You Well, Omar
A few days ago, I had a Zoom meeting with Omar, my nephew by marriage. It’s been a while since I last mentioned that I married an Egyptian woman—a truly beautiful person named Azza—a little more than twelve years ago, back when I was living in Cairo, Egypt, and teaching at the American University in Cairo. Omar is Azza’s sister’s son. He’s in his early … Continue reading I Wish You Well, Omar
Sharing is Caring
Dear, Readers, I’m speaking for all Wise & Shine writers when I say that we so appreciate your continued support of this blog. To show how thankful we are, we want to ask you to share a link to your blog or site in the “thoughts” or comments section at the bottom of this page. Please feel free to include a statement about what inspires … Continue reading Sharing is Caring
Life Is A Midway Horse Racing Game?
Controlling our judgemental impulses. Continue reading Life Is A Midway Horse Racing Game?
The Automation Paradox
If there’s one aviation disaster that darkens my knickers more than most, it’s AirFrance 447 – the scheduled passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1st, 2009. In a very simplified nutshell, this is what happened. Approximately 2 hours after takeoff, AirFrance 447 entered a storm system that caused the instrumentation that measures the aircraft’s airspeed … Continue reading The Automation Paradox
Is the duvet day something we should all benefit from?
Have you ever been tempted to have a duvet day? Find out when I snuggled down with my duvet for a break Continue reading Is the duvet day something we should all benefit from?