Mindful Matter
Autumn.
We just came across this beautiful reflection from Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist poet and peace activist, on life and falling leaves: “One autumn day, I was in a park, absorbed in the contemplation of a very small but beautiful leaf, in the shape of a heart. Its color was almost red, and it was barely hanging on the branch, nearly ready to fall down. I spent a long time with it, and I asked the leaf a lot of questions
Learn moreYou were once a child, too.
Mister Rogers famously said, “You were once a child, too.” The long-time American TV personality was responding to a group of doctors asking how they could better comfort their concerned pediatric patients. When I first read this, I thought it was such a
Learn moreTransitions.
It seems like every day, I encounter someone who is in transition. A friend looking for a new job, a co-worker moving into her own apartment, a cousin starting at a new school, a family member preparing for a mid-life career change and another preparing for retirement — all of these pivotal and magical moments setting the stage for an exciting if unknown future. Fabian, our best friend and third Holstee co-founder, embarked on his own journey of
Learn moreLove words.
Knowing the right word for something can make a tough concept easier to understand. So when I learned about the range of words used by the ancient Greeks to describe different types of love, I was excited. It offered me a new way to think about the different relationships in my life and how they can morph over time. I want to share three that I found particularly useful
Learn moreGroundhog Day.
A few years ago, I watched the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Inspired, I wrote the following thoughts originally posted in our online magazine, Mindful Matter. I have never thought much about Groundhog Day until a few days ago. On February 2nd as it snowed outside my apartment window, I decided to
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Homesick.
While living in New York’s East Village, I became familiar with the Village Voice and, as a result, with “Ask Andrew W.K.” — a newspaper column in which rock star Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier answers reader questions. I was always inspired by the thoughtfulness and depth of his answers. I recently returned to one of the columns on being homesick — a feeling I can relate to, living in Amsterdam far from family and friends in the U.S. The reader asked Andrew:
Learn moreWhat questions are you answering?
One of the greatest (and unexpected) benefits of starting Mindfully Mailed is the wonderful connections I have made with many of our daily readers. Ruth in the UK recently responded to our “Ask Us Anything” email with the question: “I am interested in what are our questions? Is our life a way of answering the questions we perhaps arrive with?" I didn’t know what Ruth meant at first. So I replied, “When you say ‘what are our questions’ — I am curious and I want to better understand. What makes you think we have any questions that need answering?” Ruth responded
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Man’s Search for Meaning.
A few years ago, I read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning”. Though it’s a brief read, I learned so much from it. Frankl is a great storyteller. He takes the reader with him as he struggles to adapt to life in a World War II concentration camp. From his training as a neurologist and psychiatrist, he has a unique perspective toward the challenges he faced while surviving the Holocaust. When confronted with the horrors of his experience, Frankl turned to the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning (or the “Why” as Nietzsche calls it) — in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. He famously wrote: “You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” Here are a few of the other lines in the book that resonated with me: “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.” “..everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.” Dave RadparvarCo-Founder, Holstee P.S. Frankl is an inspiration and an embodiment of the theme of Resilience. Our Curated Resources for Resilience include other good reads from the likes of Epictetus, Brené Brown, Ryan Holiday and Cheryl Strayed. Become a member to get access →
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