Can community campaigns stay positive?
I just came home from a City Council meeting in Mt. Shasta, CA, where I live. I’ve been working on a community initiative since last year called the “Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights Ordinance.” Tonight the city councilors voted to publicly oppose it by writing an argument against it for the November election packet that all residents receive.
Choosing to be in awe
Yesterday, my partner and I went for a walk along the McCloud River. It was the first time in my life that I had seen a black bear on a trail. Let me be more clear – the bear was on the same trail that I was on. Yikes!
Inspired by late spring
When I was a kid, I rarely interacted directly with nature.
I did catch grasshoppers in ball jars in the tall grasses of an empty lot across the street from my house, and I helped my grandparents find “nightcrawlers” (worms) in their backyard for fishing. But I hadn’t helped plant a garden until I was in my twenties.
Can we be “too compassionate?”
While I don’t believe we can be “too compassionate,” I do think sometimes imagining being in someone else’s shoes can become “too real.”
For some of us, empathizing with someone becomes so real that we take on another person’s energy, burdens, or even illness. We can even take on a society’s problems, to the point where we imagine they are ours alone to solve. Does this sound even vaguely familiar?
Walking in someone else’s shoes
Recently, I did a marathon.
No, not the 26.2 mile sort. Instead, I went on a TED marathon . . . as in getting mesmerized online for hours and hours by videos from the TED Conferences (Technology, Entertainment, and Design, though their motto of “Ideas Worth Spreading” says it better).
The courage to hug a stranger
While I was driving around town running errands a few weeks ago, I saw a young man walking around with a piece of a cardboard box. I could tell something was written on it in bold black marker. My guess was that this teenager was in desperate need of some cash. The light turned green and I turned left before I could read his message.
The artistic universe
My friend Alex Champion, who creates earth labyrinths, occasionally sends me wonderful NASA photos of our universe. I find this photograph – taken on April 11, 2010 – particularly inspiring and beautiful. It resembles one of my favorite childhood art projects and is aptly named Spirograph Nebula after the drawing tool used to create colorful geometric shapes.
Optimism as a radical act
Imagine deciding to live without creating any environmental impact for a year: no trash, no carbon emissions via car or bus, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no flush toilets. This is what “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan, his wife, and daughter pursued last year in New York City and filmed as a documentary. Radical? Yes.
The “fun theory” in action
Happy April Fools’ Day! Upon seeing this video, I immediately felt gratitude for the existence of creative and intelligent playfulness. Fun is often “underrated” and yet it is so essential to our well-being and desire to be fully alive. Enjoy!
An optimistic funeral?
Not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but the word “fun” just so happens to be in funeral. How on earth did that happen? An oversight or intentional? Is there such a thing as an optimistic funeral? From my experience, I’d have to say YES.