writing : blog
I flew home from San Diego on Sunday after two amazing engagements there–a speech to the California Association for the Education of Young Children and a workshop that Jane LaFazio and I created, combining writing and art-making about grief. Full, intense, wonderfully tiring days. Then up early in pouring rain and whipping wind to take an o’dark-thirty flight to Houston….
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If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let’s ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big world out there, ripe for the dancing and for the…
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Man need only divert his attention from searching for the solution to external questions and pose the one, true inner question of how he should lead his life, and all the external questions will be resolved in the best possible way. – Leo Tolstoy In 2008, I will end each day by inside looking. Naikan (nye-kahn) is a Japanese word…
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“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe In 2008, I am going to be here now. When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day. I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I…
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Sometimes we have to retreat to move forward. The next 37days retreat is scheduled for September 28-30, 2007, and registration has just opened for it. Limited to 14 people, I hope you can be one of them. I’ll be joined by my business partner, David Robinson, in facilitating the weekend retreat. He’s magical and brings so much to the gathering….
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“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” -WH Auden, 1907 A few years ago one December, as I prepared to leave for a business trip, my husband John (aka Kurt Vonnegut’s Mr. Brilliant) went into the basement to install insulation beneath…
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“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all.” -Jock Falkson I once designed a three-day conference on diversity for a professional organization whose members are school food service personnel—by their own definition, they are the…
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"Do or do not do. There is no try." – Master Yoda Something floated to the surface of my consciousness recently, vying for frontal lobe space, squeezing into precious real estate needed for phone numbers, due dates for 8th grade science projects on water pollution, and the first verses of “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” which so often…
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“Surviving a loss and letting go is only half of the story. The other half is the secret belief that we will find, in one form or another, what we have lost. And it is that potential, shimmery as a star on a clear night that helps us survive.” – Veronica Chambers “You can’t make pancakes without breaking eggs.” –…
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“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson In the park where we play, there are nicely laid out concrete paths, leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, from the water fountain to the bridge, from here to…
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Patti Digh is the author of six books, including bestsellers Life is a Verb and Creative is a Verb. She travels the world teaching others about mindfulness: to live fully, love well, let go deeply, and make a difference. Patti's comments have appeared on PBS and in The New York Times, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the London Financial Times, and many other international publications. She writes a thank you note every morning.
