Rebooting in the Empty Spaces
My freshman year at Franklin & Marshall College challenged me to think more deeply about life. Philosophy 101 was no exception. After much procrastination, the hypothesis I set out to prove was that, “events that don’t happen in our lives affect us just as much as incidents that do happen to us.” Okay, maybe I […]
Read more →
Is American Positivity Dead?
As a child growing up with paralysis from Polio, I intuitively looked for role models to give me strength. Like many boys at the time, Superman held promise and through thick and thin, always managed to save the day. But I also recall nights, crying myself to sleep asking my Catholic God why I was […]
Read more →
Monsoons and Martians
In Asia, the monsoon rains arrive with vengeance, pummeling the earth and all life on it. Like a fire hose, the water douses everything and there is no escaping it. Venturing out in these rains has its merits though. Immediately I feel a comradely with fellow travelers who are also moving about dodging massive raindrops. […]
Read more →
Out of the Sea
Mankind came from the sea. Some 400 million years ago life emerged from its liquid home and took up residency on dry land. Why this happened remains a mystery. Did competition or predators drive creatures to seek food or refuge on land? We don’t know. We do know that the transition was fraught with challenges, […]
Read more →
Olympics Interruptus 2
When Russia invaded Afghanistan, 65 countries protested, boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It was a devastating blow to all athletes who were not allowed to perform on the global stage and demonstrate what years of training and sacrifice had achieved. In America alone, of the 454 athletes denied their chance in 1980, only around 25% […]
Read more →
Hierarchy of Needs
During high school in Holland, I learned about Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. Maslow proposed that everyone follows a similar trajectory in life, transitioning from basic to more complex levels of self-realization. Humans begin their journey seeking to satisfy their basic physiological needs and then we try to obtain a sense of security, satisfying one […]
Read more →
Mantras & Mindsets
Eckhart Tolle observed that if we see a stranger walking down the street talking out loud to themselves, we think it strange and perhaps a sign of insanity. However, all of us do the same thing all the time though we may not verbalize our thoughts out loud. We are constantly talking to ourselves in […]
Read more →
Gratitude
Polio viruses only cause illness in 5 to 10 percent of infections — but the asymptomatic carriers can still spread it to others, who might get the full-blown disease. This is what happened to me in Jerusalem, and this is what is happening now across the planet. Before I could walk, the son of family […]
Read more →
Understand My Silence
As a freshman in college, I lived in an on campus dorm at Franklin & Marshal College in conservative Lancaster Pennsylvania. Though we boasted one of the nation’s largest shopping malls, just outside of town was a sizable Amish community where open horse drawn buggies were the main means of transportation. It was a quiet […]
Read more →
Build a Castle
Eleven days ago I returned from California to Singapore where the Corona Virus contagion has been kept in check. For over a week I traveled to my studio on public transportation and swam in public pools. No lock-down here. Today however, the climate changed. Upon entering my local pool I was presented a form […]
Read more →