thinking thursday

mind

What is the cost of loneliness? “Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone…  The top 1% own 48% of global wealth, but even they aren’t happy. A survey by Boston College of people with an average net worth of $78m found that they too were assailed by anxiety, dissatisfaction and loneliness. Many of them reported feeling financially insecure: to reach safe ground, they believed, they would need, on average, about 25% more money. (And if they got it? They’d doubtless need another 25%). One respondent said he wouldn’t get there until he had $1bn in the bank…. For this, we have ripped the natural world apart, degraded our conditions of life, surrendered our freedoms and prospects of contentment to a compulsive, atomising, joyless hedonism, in which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. For this, we have destroyed the essence of humanity: our connectedness.” -from “The Age of Loneliness is Killing Us” by George Monbiot in The Guardian

Well, you know I love this.

body

Something amazing happens to your body in water. (And I love Sue Austin’s deep sea diving in a wheelchair)

Why you don’t want to practice yoga: “When you really start practicing Yoga, there will be moments you’re going to wish, to beg, that it was that temporary and that you could go back to before, but you can’t. When you step on that mat, with a true teacher in an authentic studio, be warned, a giant storm is headed your way… Yoga is about looking at your sh*t; your garbage, those putrid and rotten pieces of youthat you deny, repress and continuously reject in other people. It’s about the neurosis and habits that you catch yourself indulging in behind your own back, that you hide in Tupperware containers in your closet, and even those parts of you that, on reflex, you would spit on, if they were openly displayed by a stranger you passed on the street. What’s worse, the practice doesn’t make any of it go away, like a good quick fix should, but instead lays it all out on the front lawn for you and all the neighbors to see, and arms with you two of the most perplexing questions for the human mind to struggle with: Who am I? and What now?” Sounds like exactly what I need in 2015, finally.

Several people have turned me on to Kitchari recently. I’m going in.

Nice compilation of non-meat burgers. Going on my list.

Do you remember these?

spirit

This is why my Camp is limited to 150 people each year–it’s a village: “One-hundred-fifty is the number that comes up time and again in the types of social interactions that work smoothly. We see it throughout history — whether we’re talking about the number of people in traditional hunter-gatherer societies, Neolithic villages, an English country village or the number of Christmas cards we send out. These are people with whom you have strong enough ties that you could ask to borrow $10 until the next payday.”

 word

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.