In recent years, Thomas Sowell has been a staunch advocate of stricter immigration policies. Which is ironic, because this passage from his Compassion Versus Guilt has stuck with me for thirty years: When I travel through California’s vast agricultural areas, the people I see working in the fields under the hot sun are usually Mexicans. …
Tag: compassion
Looking in The Mirror, I See…
It’s funny how words get stolen, perverted, and end up meaning the opposite of what they once meant. It’s how we ended up with “conservatives” who want to trash things worth conserving, with tight-fisted, thieving “liberals”, and with regressive “progressives”.
A Simple Technique for Launching Your Project in 20 Minutes
I ran across a friend who’s been dreaming about starting his business for years … and he feels stuck. Like many people who want to start a business, write a book or a blog, or launch some other kind of creative or entrepreneurial venture … he’s stuck in overwhelm, indecision, inaction.
Lyft and Uber Rides are the New Marketplaces for Ideas
It’s interesting to watch (and participate) in what can happen in a philosophical or political conversation on one of these rides. I had a conversation yesterday with someone who casually confessed to me that he was a democratic socialist. I perked up when I heard that. It’s not every day you meet a self-confessed socialist.
On Spanking II
Aside from the fact that spanking is abuse, it’s also unintelligent, lazy and selfish, and unnecessary.
A Case Against Optimizing Your Life
Many people I know are on a quest to optimize their lives — some of my favorite people in the world will spend days trying to perfect a productivity system, get things automated, or find the perfect software for anything they’re doing. They are on a continual search for the perfect diet, the perfect work routine, the perfect travel setup. Optimizing can take quite a bit of time and energy. What would happen if we let go of optimizing?
Proglodytes and Conservatrolls
That’s what I see all around me when I look at how people interact with each other. Of course, the simpler name for proglodytes and conservatrolls would be “statists”, but that just leaves them staring at you with no comprehension in their dull eyes. Most don’t understand that word any better than they’d understand the more fun descriptive terms.
How to Be Mindful All the Time
I often get asked about how to remember to be mindful more of the time — how can we remember to not only be present more, but to be compassionate, to drop into our bodies when we’re feeling difficult emotions, to have a beginner’s mind, to relax into the chaos of the moment?
How to Thrive in the Midst of Personal Turbulence
Two people wrote to me recently (a stranger and a good friend) who are going through some pretty turbulent times in their lives. The stranger is going through family chaos and health issues, just barely keeping their head above water, just trying to survive. The good friend is going through a time of feeling down,…
Your Feelings Are Not the Enemy
Feelings are not demons to be exorcised. They’re muses to be channeled. When it comes to so-called “negative” feelings, I prefer the aikido method: Redirect the energy instead of resisting it.