Category Archives: india
Be Grateful!
These past few days, I have been reminded both directly and indirectly, that to be happy is to be grateful. And vice versa.
For silly reasons and serious ones, you are undoubtedly as guilty as I am for often feeling emotions that bring us down – anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, irritation, stress, worry.
Often we just let these negative emotions run their course – for a few minutes or many days – until something happens that lifts us out of our various funks to make us feel better.
This weekend, I listened as a Buddhist monk gave one answer to address this: Don’t wait for something to happen, instead train your mind to have a different attitude. Be mindful, be happy. It’s intrinsic, not extrinsic and we are in complete control about how we feel. If we only know it.
The best articulation of this advice that I heard was in a TED talk that I watched recently.
Have a watch, and listen carefully. Hopefully, you won’t be sorry. Instead, perhaps it can be a life-changing fourteen and a half minutes? I hope.
Filmed June 2013 at TEDGlobal 2013
David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude. An inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you’re going, and above all, being grateful.
Stop. Look. Go.
And don’t ever underestimate gratitude!
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Happy Birthday, Gloria!
“This is no simple reform.
It really is a revolution.
Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends.
We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned.
We are really talking about humanism.”
― Gloria Steinem
Gail Collins reminded us this weekend that Gloria Steinem turns 80 on Tuesday. Eighty years old! That sounds unbelievable. And what she has accomplished in these years, against all odds, is something that we can’t help but be in awe of.
“Don’t think about making women fit the world — think about making the world fit women.”
― Gloria Steinem
Along with millions of other women (and many men), I would like to thank her from the bottom of my heart for all she has done, and for all that she continues to do for women, and humankind the world over.
“Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.”
― Gloria Steinem
For those who live our ordinary lives today, it is almost like the word “feminist” was invented because of her. She was the leader of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s so for many of us who are able to reap the benefits of what she accomplished, she has become a visible icon of feminism.
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”
― Gloria Steinem
And as much as conservatives (still!) rue her work and her very existence, I would like to think that many more of us cannot help but celebrate her. Thank you, Gloria. And many happy returns on your 80th birthday!
“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
― Gloria Steinem
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The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 