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, […]
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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% […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Olympic Interruptus
Now that the decision to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games has been reached, the real pain begins. Like tearing off a Band-Aid, it’s that final separation that hurts the worst. I especially feel for the athletes who have been focused on exacting timelines and regiments in order to peak on the day […]
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Shelter in Place
Much of the world is sitting home, surfing the web, and avoiding the war waged outside their doors. Who could have imagined the fallout from this tsunami, created not by a diabolical dictator but a minuscule virus? Like the nemesis in a James Bond movie that actually gets his way, we are left trapped and […]
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