WONDERINGS
 

"Plus ! Plus ! Plus ! More ! More ! More ! " In June, we had a neighbors potluck. I was seated next to two young medical interns. One woman said to the other: “Today I had a guy come in, a nurse, saying he wanted a prescription for Ozempic. He’s thin as a rail. He told me he started taking it to ‘understand what his patients were experiencing’ and that it makes him feel so great now he wants to take it full time. I told him: no way, you do not need this drug!” ***

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” -Shunryu Suzuki When my son Max was four, he asked me: “Was I at your and papa’s wedding?” I laughed and said, “No, Max. You weren’t born yet.” He considered this for a second. “So where was I then?” and then, in a flash, he answered his own question: “Oh! If I wasn’t born, I was dead.” Fully satisf

On New Year’s day I was the first one awake. I’d thought I’d heard someone downstairs. Since I wanted to be a good guest I stayed in bed for a bit and when I figured whoever it was had had enough time to wake up in peace I went down. But there was no one there. Maybe I had heard the cat. *** Memento Mori: a central concept of Stoicism. In remembering death we remember to live. *** I love this photograph because it feels exactly like what it felt like that morning in the kitch

Sometime over the summer I became suspicious of the word “trying.” The seemingly benign phrase: “I’m just trying to [fill in the blank],” began to sound off to me, like a cracked church bell, heavy and effortful. Trying at work, trying at home, trying in our relationships with children, parents, partners, trying to get over a loss, trying to keep the peace, trying to let someone down easy, trying to “manifest” the life we want for ourselves (a topic for another time), try

One evening, several months ago, my son Max and I were having dinner together. His brother Leo wasn’t there, at a friend’s I guess. We had been talking about I don’t remember what, there was a moment of silence, and then, out of the blue, Max said: “Wonderers like us eat slowly.” Which is a very strange thing to say. “Did you say, wonderers ?” “Mmm.” “Huh... What’s the difference between wondering and thinking?” “Wondering is asking questions. Thinking is fi