Enjoy this 18-minute TED talk with Devdutt Pattanaik on understanding how our different viewpoints of life and the world contribute to the clash of civilizations and have us misunderstand each other.
Tag Archives: life
An Entirely New Game: Life 2.0
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Increasingly I find myself thinking about the word
retirement and whether it has the appeal that it once had for the mature
worker. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my father talking about how he was
looking forward to retirement. After working long hours and raising a family,
there just did not seem much time for anything else. Through much of his
mid-life, my dad’s job (conductor for the
Goodbye Mimi
By Jim Selman | Bio
This has been a sad week. My partner’s mother died at the
age of 94. Even when the end is expected (and perhaps even welcomed after a
long period of decline), it nonetheless has a powerful impact on those who
cared. All of the clichés aside, there just isn’t much to say to the bereaved
other than “I am sorry for your loss.” As we get older, death and dying becomes
a larger part of our day-to-day reality as we lose friends and loved ones.
Benjamin Button
By Jim Selman | Bio
Assuming you’ve been to the museums a couple of times and don’t speak Spanish very well, what can you do in Madrid on a cold and wet winter day except find an English-speaking film? I did, and finally caught up with everyone else and saw The Strange Case of Benjamin Button. Put me down as a fan, but the funny thing is that it is one of those films that you’re not quite sure if or why you like it.
First of all, it is about age. Brad Pitt is born ‘old’ and gets progressively
Boomer Boredom
By Jim Selman | Bio
Of
all the complaints and fears we hear that are associated with aging,
the number one is boredom. After a lifetime of activity and
accomplishment, it is incredible how many of us move into “elderland”
only to discover that we’re unsatisfied and bored. How can this be?
Granted that we might not be as spry as we once were and some of our
libidos are lackluster, but goodness gracious, do we really expect our
circumstances to make
Baby Bloomers
I was writing recently about how I am feeling great about getting older and how, in fact, my life seems better than ever. While I was sharing this with a friend recently I proclaimed, “I’m just a late bloomer.” I don’t think I am unique or alone in finding that my sixties have been an extraordinary time of my life, perhaps the best time I can remember. I’m not yet searching for hearing aids online at EarPros,
Foolishness
Today is the day for fools, foolishness and merry pranks played on friends, colleagues and neighbours. Because of the abundance of April Fools’ hoaxes in the media, many people distrust news reports and advertisements launched on this day. No such luck here at Serene Ambition…although, as in some countries like Britain, we do believe that jokes pulled after noon turn the prankster into the ‘fool’. Instead, we’d like to share a few famous insights into learning how to live wisely.
Life
The Facts of Life
By Shae Hadden | Bio
One of my New Year traditions is to clean up some of the papers that have accumulated around me over the past year. Yesterday, I came across these “Facts of Life” that someone had given me and thought they were worth sharing. Unlike the ‘facts of life’ we normally think about (like ‘the birds and the bees’, death and taxes), these seem fitting for the beginning of a new year, especially since they actually challenge us to look at ourselves and others in a whole new way.
- We are human beings.
- We make assessments of ourselves and others.
- These assessments are usually more or less grounded, but they are never ‘true’.
- We live
Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump
By Shae Hadden | Bio
There’s a place near Fort McLeod in Alberta that goes by this odd name…the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump world heritage site …where the indigenous peoples used to lead the buffalo to jump off a cliff. A place where there’s a very finite line between life and death…and where life comes from death. You see, for thousands of years, the native people would use this natural geographical formation to ‘harvest’ these wild animals and feed their tribes each winter.I’m
remembering this place today because I’ve been reminded—not so subtly
by being in a car accident—that life is the dash between birth and
death. The instant I knew my car was spinning out of control yesterday
morning, the only thought going through my head was “I surrender to
you, God, for I am not in control”. In that moment, I felt like the
buffalo must have felt—as if this was the last spurt in that great
dash. As
Too Late for Later
Thomas Friedman’s great op-ed piece about global warming definitively declares that, when faced with making decisions that have life or death consequences, there is, at some point, no more time for procrastinating, debating and analyzing. At some moment, to continue to procrastinate or put off until tomorrow becomes a fatal decision.
I love this idea that ‘later’ ceases to be an option when the stakes are high enough. When this is the case, we are committed—no matter what we choose. It