What if You Had a Stroke of Insight?

Sometimes, we get so caught up in the daily grind that we forget what could or might be.

Sometimes, we get so jaded that we forget to ask, "What's my life purpose?"

Sometimes, we get so burnt out... we lose touch with each other, thus losing touch with ourselves.



What matters most?

What's the bigger picture?

What's the shared human experience?



I love this TedTalk by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor.

Check it out and share in her experience of having a stroke. And listen to the revelations it brought about.


Does such a traumatic event have to occur in order to wake up to what truly matters?

Hopefully not, or else it might be too late.

It's Perceiving Time

How do we perceive the passage of time?

There's no quantum leap from childhood to adulthood. We experience millisecond after millisecond...even right...

NOW.

How we visually imagine the continual flow of those seconds can invoke a wide range of emotion. Busy people think time moves too fast. Some people feel time speeding up or slowing down by life stage. And a ticking clock often symbolizes deadlines, due dates, or new beginnings. 

Can we truly define the nature of time? Einstein said, "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubborn persistent illusion."

Only one thing is certain: how we feel about it, how we interpret it, and how we spend it varies by person and by culture.

Are you ready to explore the illusion?

If yes, then fire up some candles, turn off the lights, get comfortable. Listen to this radio segment called the "Time Kaleidoscope."

A Postcard from the Crossroads

Doubt is good. It makes us step back and re-evaluate. It forces a pause so we either move forward with confidence or take a detour.

Thanks to doubt, I am now at my own personal fork in the road. Almost like clockwork, it marks my fifth year in Seattle and is a couple years shy of turning thirty. So I'm taking time out to figure out what my next move will be. Should I stay or should I go? Tough to answer because my late twenties has brought renewed perspective. 


It's odd...young adulthood can be liberating or stressful. We're free to do as we please, yet under societal pressure to establish the rest of our lives: find someone to love, start a career, buy a home, have kids.

I'm focusing on my career and postponing "settling down" for as long as I can (to my parent's disappointment), but I wonder...When did you realize you were no longer an adolescent but a full-fledged adult? I don't think having a family or buying a house has anything to do with it. It has more to do with when you realize that time is finite. Teenagers think they're immortal; adults want to make every moment count.

It's funny how tradition dictates we celebrate Sweet 16 or Quinceañera when the age 30 shift is waaaay more a coming of age. It's when we ask, “What have I done so far in my life? Where do I go from here? Is this the right direction? Am I being authentic to myself?”

Thankfully age is just a number. People have and will continue to shift careers, find true love, or establish families at any age, even late in life. But it takes courage to reassess your life and change direction along the way.

I cherish the privilege to set my own course and while I can't predict where it may lead, I am inspired to travel it. And above all, I look forward to affirming that path (or changing it) at the crossroads.

Planning for a Rainy Day

I heard a story on the radio today. To summarize for you:

After two miscarriages and a severely complicated pregnancy that ended in abortion, a woman gave up.  It was a devastating experience to share with her husband.  One minute filled with hope as a mother-to-be, the next…overwhelmed with empty grief. And she couldn’t take it anymore. So she and her husband decided to accept life sans children.

With time, they began to focus on their new life as a childless couple—going to happy hours, hosting dinner parties, planning exotic vacations.

And then totally unplanned (even on the pill)…she got pregnant.

You’d think she’d be happy, right? No. She was angry.

She went to a therapist to dissect the anger and said, “I’m upset because this pregnancy wasn’t in the plan.”

To which her therapist replied, “What are plans really, but figments of our imagination? People make plans to give themselves the illusion that they can control the unknown. But each moment unravels regardless of your plans.”

This made her think of her past plans. All the past plans that she had made for her deceased children never came to fruition and she couldn’t handle it. It was hard to let go. In the end, she did give birth and before I turned off the radio she said, “Loss makes you appreciate what you have.”

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For me, this story perfectly captures pain’s complex power.

People make plans to avoid pain and become happy. I acknowledge that planning is a survival skill that works in my favor—it helps me prepare for the winter or plan for my future.

But can planning also work against me? If I get lost in planning and define my life in terms of milestones, how could I ever truly enjoy the present? There’s got to be balance between planning for success and then letting go of expectations.

Now switch it up.  Say I undergo great loss and am suffering like the woman in the radio segment. The last thing I would ever want to do is fully embrace the moment. I mean, if the moment is painful who wants to fully absorb that?

But when you deny the moment and the pain, those feelings don’t just go away….they end up manifesting in other areas of your life.  They affect your relationships, your health, your sleep, your well-being.  

Frankly, I became a lot happier the moment I decided to live day by day. Whether that day is peaceful or painful, that doesn’t matter to me because it just IS. And there’s always beauty to be seen.