Things are tough in the United States right now. According to the kind of motivational slogans people wear on t-shirts, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. They don’t falter. They don’t whine. They put on their game-face and rise to the challenge. Good for them. But what about the rest of us? … Read More
Here’s a great epigram I saw recently on a tee-shirt: … Read More
Medieval monks fought acedia, or sloth, while they chanted psalms for hours. Later, nineteenth-century philosophers sneered at ordinary people who found daily life boring. According to Nietzsche, “Is not life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” According to Kierkegaard, “Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be … Read More
Thoreau writes in Walden (with delightful consciousness of his irony) that he has “traveled a good deal in Concord.” This spring, I too have been traveling a good deal in my hometown. And like Thoreau – and a lot of other people now – I’m doing most of my traveling on foot. Luckily, I live … Read More
I had intended to put a post together about how beautiful New England has been during this pandemic spring. Even those of us who suffer from pollen will agree that May has been lovely. June probably will be, too. But this week it’s hard to focus on anything except the rage and sorrow of our … Read More
Most of the time (the times when I’m not fretting), I’m happily embedded in the mundane. I set the table, enjoying the tulips in a vase and the way they pick up the colors in the place mats and the posters on the walls. Then I walk back into the kitchen to see my husband … Read More
Today is May Day, the traditional European festival of spring and renewal. Yesterday, while I was out on my daily walk, two geese and five goslings paddled by. Today, under the eaves outside our bedroom window, a couple of Eastern Phoebes are hatching eggs. They’re domestic-looking birds, plump-bodied and unobtrusive in their brown and cream … Read More
As the weeks of quarantine drag on, I read about people who are ploughing determinedly ahead with big projects: reading War and Peace, learning a new coding language, or writing their novel. Those people are steady of purpose, patient, disciplined, and determined – temperamentally suited to the long haul. I admire and envy them, but … Read More
I am married to a Marie Kondo nut. Ten years ago, he took a week off work and went through the house top to bottom, in what we decided to call a “crap-ectomy.” I was under the gun at work that week (and even if I hadn’t been, I would have pretended to be), so … Read More
If you’re like me these days, you are feeling a little caged, but doing everything in your power to remain informed & safe, kind & gentle with yourself & others, open to the present moment (but not overwhelmed by it), reasonably healthy, reasonably creative, and reasonably sane. And also like me, you’re probably succeeding at … Read More