“We may live in an online world, but we have stone-age programming in our brains.”

              Billy Anderson

Our comfort zone is the place where we are least likely to feel threatened or in danger — it is our safe place. 

We are all wired by instinct and evolutionary programming to spend as much time as possible within our comfort zone, because safety means survival. 

The problem is that when our brain is pushing us to stay comfortable, it’s trying to do what’s best for our survival in the short-term, and neglecting our goals and aspirations for the long-term. It helps us survive, which is good, but most of us want more out of life than to simply survive.  Read More

 

 

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on to the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of spring — these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to bloom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration … In all things, it is the beginnings and endings that are interesting.
— Yoshida Kenko

 

I remember when my mother, doing renovations to her newly purchased home, discovered a wood floor that had been hidden for decades underneath sheets of linoleum. She couldn’t believe that someone before her had decided to cover up the beautiful wood with layers of shiny plastic, and she was ecstatic to get rid of the fabricated material to reveal the Read More

Brecht Vandenbroucke – ‘Everyday We Walk a Thin Line’

Who are you? Answer without: name, job, media, things you’ve done, friends

I came across this question recently, and after thinking about it for a while, it seemed that everything I could come up with fell under the categories of what not to include. Eventually, the best answer I came up with was ‘I am me’. It’s not necessarily a bad conclusion, but it didn’t provide me with anything substantial, and I was left in just as much ambiguity as when I started. It seems like a simple question, but Read More

Out of sight, out of mind. You’re probably familiar with this saying, largely because it tends to ring true. It’s easy to not worry about things that we don’t (or can’t) see. Ignorance is bliss, right? While this may be true sometimes, ‘less is more’ doesn’t usually apply when it comes to knowledge. Especially about yourself. The more we Read More

 

When you consider how much we use and consume compared to how much we actually need, the amount of waste generated is often obscene. That is one reason I wrote a script about the tiny home movement and submitted it to the team at High Existence during a 6-month internship I recently completed with them. High Existence is a truly great resource for forward-thinking, mind expanding material, and I’m proud to say they took my script and created this beautiful video.

It wasn’t until 2011, when I was nineteen years old, that I had what I would argue is a good reason to use social media. That is when I took my first three-month trip overseas to go backpacking around Europe, and while I was away, Facebook became my primary tool for keeping in touch with family and friends back home, and all the people from different places around the world that I would come to meet while traveling. I’ve been on two more lengthy journeys overseas since and have Read More