“I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy…
“Action expresses priorities.” – Mahatma Gandhi We each default to our foundational identity. It’s just who we are, demonstrated in action and prioritization again and again. This is either beneficial to our current and future self or detrimental. To change requires deliberate focus on habit formation and environmental changes like not buying cookies for the…
“Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out…
We didn’t mean to walk in the rain. We’d hoped to get it in before the skies opened up, but our timing proved wrong. Amor fati. We accepted our fate and carried on. The drizzle soon turned to a shower, and then a downpour. She shook off the water accumulating on her coat and looked…
“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” — Rumi When you break down distances into bite-sized chunks, they don’t seem all that bad. To walk 250 miles over the course of roughly two months I needed to average 35 miles per week,…
“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.” — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago A few days of sailing had the desired effect. The stress accumulated, overflowing and leaking out of my pores, revealed in comments and…
“This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden…
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both…
August of another summer, and once againI am drinking the sunand the lilies again are spread across the water.I know now what they want is to touch each other. — Mary Oliver, The Pond As we head into the dog days of summer, I find myself with a good dog to share walks with. Puppy…
So easily forgotten are the most important thingsLike the melody and the moonlight in your eyesAnd a song that lasts forever, keeps on gettin’ betterAll the time— Keb’ Mo, Life Is Beautiful Walking a lot of miles lately, I’ve come to see the town I live in at ground level, turning corners into places I…