A Passion for Yoga Creates Serenity and Inspiration
What does it mean, “to love”? Usually we associate the word with living creatures and feelings and the actions that transpire between them. A parent feeding an infant. An old man walking his also aging dog daily. A tribute to a particularly valued teacher. But “love” can describe any fierce attachment that goes beyond words, any passion that is dictated by the heart. I have written on love of one’s work, and will address love of one’s home and love [...]
Inspiration and Mastery Expand Love
At Yogaworks, teachers sometimes talk about a “goal pose” for a class. When I was twelve, I first heard Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and fell in love with the music. The piece quickly became my “goal piece” for the piano lessons I had been taking since third grade. By my senior year in high school, I was able to trill the beginning and make my way through a reasonable facsimile of the first movement. The better I could play it, [...]
A Continuum of Compassion from Personal to Cultural
A neighbor from the days when our children were small recently sent me the obituary for the woman who had lived next door. I had known Paula as the woman who gave out particularly treasured Halloween treats and who played the piano, sending musical beauty across our lawns when spring days led us to open our doors and allow screens to permit more transparency. I also knew that she had been an accomplished nurse and had continued to work at [...]
Why You CAN Marry the Right Person!
Alain de Botton wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times “Sunday Review” on May 28, 2016, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. The article sparked a slew of letters in response. Because I am convinced that I married a man who was and is very much the “Right Person”, I want to add my own voice and reflection – along with a song by Linda Worster – that captures my own dissenting opinion. Mr de Botton makes [...]
Six Roses from Stop and Shop Say I Love You
David brought the six roses home from Stop and Shop ten days before we flew to Paris. Meal after meal, we watched the buds turn shades of pink from pale to petulant, their evolution gracing the table where we ate breakfast each morning, lunch at noon, and dinner at night. Perhaps because they had space to breathe in their vase on that table, they opened slowly, each flower with room to spread while we provided water and the surrounding windows [...]
Mysteries of Communication in Long-Distance Loving
When David and I began our long-distance romance in March of 1996, neither of imagined that our future would knit us and our lives ever more closely together. Like vines that learn to grow around each other, we have brought each other new people, pleasures, passions, and processes for dealing with conflict, and we have grown closer as the years have passed. Perhaps the most astonishing thing that we have brought to each other, or a gift that has been [...]
The Roots of Empathy Lie in Temperament and Attachment
To the best of my knowledge, the mother of six week old twins took the video below, documenting empathy, without the help of Photoshop or any other video-altering aid. I cannot imagine it as being staged. Six weeks old babies simply would not tolerate being tinkered with in such a manner, even to please the one who provides their care. I found the video remarkable because, at an age in which learning is mostly about how to recognize caregivers, smile as [...]
Measurement Affects What We Believe
The last four years have seen two major breakthroughs from astronomy that will forever alter our world view. In March of 2013 the CERN officially announced the results of two sets of experiments at its Large Hadron Collider that had been unofficially publicized several months earlier (http://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson). A new particle named the Higgs Boson, perhaps occurring in different variations, was identified as responsible for mass and its transformation. The Higgs Field in which it occurred was not an electromagnetic one. [...]