When Mom left this world not long ago, the emotional upheaval and profound sense of loss and loneliness was something I had never experienced before. Five months later, I still find myself expecting her to round the corner or ask me to check out one of her new artistic creations. Both of those are cherished […]
Finding the Light In a Sea of Sadness
I spent fifteen years in a self induced relational coma, convinced that a former lover’s painful words were my truth, rather than her reality. That’s roughly 5500 days of consciously avoiding intimacy with women. And even though it would be easy to view those days as lost time, it would be a mistake because everything […]
What’s Your Answer to Life’s Most Important Question?
Lately I’ve been thinking alot about the two primordial emotions of life, Love and Pain, and all of the sub-emotions that arise from them. And what’s interesting to me is that, even though love is our nature and pain is learned, we tend to live in pain and long for love. At first you might […]
Why Are You Here?
The pitch-black sky matched my mood as I stepped out the back door of the hotel to stare at the ocean. This trip to Cotonou had been a last-ditch effort to make sense of my life. But after being swindled out of my last ten thousand dollars, the only good thing about being in West […]
Masahide’s Barn and the Meaning of Life
After watching his barn burn to the ground, 17th Century samurai and poet Mizuta Masahide wrote the following haiku: “Barn’s burnt down now I can see the moon” Masahide’s quote came to me, as most God-winks do, at a time when I was struggling to see the half-full glass in front of me. I’d recently […]
How to Raise Your Average
Every morning at the gym I run into Dan, a young, hard-working guy with a lot of potential and the desire to pursue his dream of becoming a fishing guide. But like most of us, he spends way too much of his time hanging around the people that like him just the way he is. […]
B.B. King Got It Right
I reached a watershed moment in May 2010, when my desire to do work that mattered became greater than the fear of the unknown. The job and the house were no longer enough of an incentive to keep me from making a difference in the world. So I got rid of the vestiges of my […]
Forward Slowmentum
Have you ever wondered why the things we want most in life always seem to take longer than we expect? In my experience it’s the Universe’s way of saying, “You’re not ready to handle what you’re asking for!” And if our “wants” involve major life changes, there are lessons to be learned along the way […]
Life In the Shadows
We are meant to live our lives in the light of work that feeds our purpose, and with people who encourage us to be more than we would accept if left to our own devices. But in a world where too many of us live in the shadows of banality and busyness, how do we […]
The Power of Courageous Vulnerability
Recently I watched Sarah, an older woman with Parkinson’s, climb onto a stage to read her poetry. “I’ll do my best to read,” she said softly and smiled at the audience. “In spite of the shaking.” Suddenly I realized I was witnessing what it means to be courageously vulnerable. It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t […]
