“This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man – if man is not enslaved by it.” ~Jonas Salk

Last week while navigating the endless freeways connecting Southern California, I was overcome with wonder and gratitude for the advent of GPS technology....

“Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can “be”, that is, persons who...

Although this is the day of new beginnings for me it is also a point of reflection about how to sustain the positive changes that have begun to reinvent my life. Years ago when I was 20-something I lived in France and memorized the fifty principles of miracles that make up the first several pages in the Course in Miracles. One of my good friends and I learned them all and had to keep repeating...

“Courage is a kind of salvation.” -Plato

Years ago I gave my son a children’s book about courage that illustrated the many small ways that we learn to find courage as we grow up. Everything from standing up and giving a speech in front of the class to saying goodbye to a close friend who is moving away. Starting new schools, new jobs, or new habits all take courage.

Endings take courage too. At...

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”  -George Bernard Shaw

I have been making a traditional Slovenian rolled bread called Potica every year on Christmas Eve for almost thirty years. It is a long process of making giant batches of dough that rolls out to the size of the dining room table and turns out baked into 10 loaves. I have been following the same recipe year after year, but...

“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.” –...

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want, and what I fear.” -Joan Didion

This daily discipline of coming to terms with my daily life and myself in its midst could be called an exercise in self awareness. I have recognized more of myself – both the flaws and the gifts of who I am from this year of writing than probably any other...

“Hope begins in the dark,  the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.  You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”  -Anne Lamott

Some days the best you can do is show up. You agree to not make any big decisions about the future on these days. You are happy for busy work and the small acts of efficiency that can come from moving things around...

“Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.” ~Vilfredo Pareto

As the last days of the positivity quest dwindle to a close, I thought I would use as many of the remaining posts as possible to outline the foundations of creating a positive life. I will be looking for the major thematic units that have woven the...

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there  is of you.”  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It has been just over two months since I spent a couple of nights with my son in the hospital, wondering if life would ever be the same. It was a miracle, and remains one- even now 60 days later that life could be so much back to normal. For all outward appearances, except for a significant scab on the back of his...

“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I was overcome with the visceral gratitude that I have long been seeking. I have been struggling with unexplained pain down my arm and was thinking the worst… or at least researching the range of ailments that would...