I was enlightened once but I walked away.  I rarely talk about it because the past is useless.  Today, as I reconnected with my writing for the first time in a few weeks of confusing distractions, I thought about that moment again.  I could feel it for a second once more.  What was it like? 

We used to teach kids how to think in America.  Now we don’t.  The problem started with envy.  We looked at other countries and saw their standardized test scores and we got nervous.  We started to worry that we weren’t turning out enough math and science students.  Eventually an insidious idea took root, that we

Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is probably the best non-fiction book I’ve ever read.  In fact, it’s probably the best one ever written.  The sheer amount of information in it is utterly staggering.  It so well researched that when I hit 69% on my Kindle, I’d reached the last page.  What the

In life and in art there ain’t no steps you can skip.  I know because I’ve tried to skip them all at one point or another but now I know every single one of them is essential and equally important.  To get good at your craft, you’ve got hundreds of skills to learn and you

Sometimes you just make a shift in life and you understand so much more about everything around you in an instant.  You suddenly see clearly after years of being deaf and blind. When it happens then is you find yourself wanting to address all the things you’ve been avoiding up until now.  At the same

One day I woke up and I was sick of being sick.  And that one moment changed everything. Some of what I am going to tell you here will be like telling the ancient people that the world was actually round and not flat.  Just come along for a little while and listen.  See if

One of the writers in my long term writing group sent out this video of John Cleese on the 5 Steps to getting into a head space where creativity can flourish. I liked it so much that I dug up a longer version of it for you. The whole lecture was 36 minutes and there

TED Talks posted this video of Job’s 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech, which takes on even more poignancy in the wake of his death.  It needs no more introduction.  It speaks for itself, as we all should.  

My Alma mater NYU puts out a great series of recorded college courses called, appropriately enough, The Great Courses.  Every year they do a 70% off sale and include some of the best courses.  They pull in professors from all over the country.  It’s not just limited to NYU profs.  They search for the greatest

How much of your life is spent wearing a mask?  How many times during the day do you make decisions that you would never make if you were truly free?  When someone asks you “how are you doing?” do you say “I’m fine” or “not bad” or “doing great” when you really feel horrible or

My girlfriend is fantastic at delivering messages I don’t want to hear, in a way I never want to hear them.  The worst part is, she’s usually right. The other day I bought a 30 inch monitor and some high end video cards to power it.  It was an ostentatious purchase, no question.  Today I

Whenever I talk about meditation most people have one or more reasons why they can’t do it.  Usually they don’t have time for it, or they’ve tried it but they felt like they weren’t doing it right because they couldn’t get their mind to stop talking.  I say nonsense.  These are excuses, to be dropped