Starting in the 1970s, the plastics industry spent millions promoting the idea that consumers should be responsible for recycling plastic. This was a brilliant form of blame-shifting: instead of asking companies to stop producing so much waste, ordinary people like you and me were taught to feel responsible for getting rid of it. But you can’t get rid of what has been produced. That’s the point. We tend to approach our minds the same way. When anger, sadness, or jealousy aris

I recently read an article called “Instagram Is Training You to Leave People Who Love You.” The author argues that social media has become a kind of third party in our relationships, turning temporary conflicts into fixed judgments. You have a fight with your partner, watch ten algorithmically chosen reels, and suddenly you’re evaluating your relationship through someone else’s lens of “avoidant attachment” or “emotional labor.” We’re not only outsourcing our ability to judge

There’s a Buddhist story about some monks who were meditating on the unattractiveness of their bodies. The practice was supposed to make them less obsessed with physical beauty. But their meditation turned into self-disgust, and some committed suicide. When the Buddha learned what had happened, he taught the remaining monks a different practice: mindfulness of breathing. Most of us aren’t intentionally contemplating unattractiveness, but we’re remarkably good at making our bo

There’s a passage in the Pali Canon where King Pasenadi and Queen Mallika are having an intimate conversation. King Pasenadi asks Queen Mallika, “Is there anyone you love more than yourself, my queen?” hoping, perhaps, that she’ll say, “Yes, I love you more than I love myself, O king.” But instead she says, “No, there’s no one dearer to me than myself. How about you?” And King Pasenadi also has to admit that there’s no one dearer to him than himself. Struck by this exchange,

The philosopher John Locke defended the right to private property by arguing that, if a man puts his labor into an empty piece of land, he naturally owns that land. Unfortunately, the main example Locke used was the European “discovery” of the New World, which he knew very well was already settled by indigenous people. It’s a good reminder that when folks start throwing around words like “mine” or “property,” they’re usually rewriting history to make it seem as though others

What does it mean to feel truly seen? Sometimes I ask my clients, “What would you like me to see in you?” They’re usually baffled by my question. Because as much as we want to feel seen by others, we often don’t know how to see ourselves. We live in an American Idol-culture where “being seen” is confused with being best. We know what it means to be picked from a crowd, but that kind of recognition is unsustainable. If your significance is based on someone else’s insignificanc

Rumi tells a story of a saint who knew what his visitors needed without ever having to be told. If a visitor lacked a particular amount of money, the saint would give him exactly that sum. When asked how he knew, the saint replied, “I have swept the house of my heart clean of both good and evil, so whatever else passes through it is immediately recognizable.” Rumi then develops the metaphor: when you see a date palm reflected in clear water, he says, you know the tree isn’t a

There’s an old Norwegian fairy tale called “The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body,” in which a prince rescues a princess held captive by a giant. The giant’s heart is located outside his body, inside an egg on a faraway island. The prince finds the egg, crushes it, the giant dies, and the prince and princess live happily ever after. People say we live in a selfish world, but that’s not exactly true. Much of what we call selfishness comes from having our hearts located outsid

A client of mine recently went on a retreat where the facilitators asked participants to share something traumatic they’d been through. My client didn’t feel particularly safe, so she said she’d like to pass. But the others kept pressuring her. At one point, they started chanting, “Op-en up! Op-en up!” like a mob at the Colosseum. She stormed out of the room. I told her I was proud of her. There are so many things wrong with what happened to her. But the story also exposes a

Someone recently made a video compiling all the times The Atlantic ran a headline beginning with “The End of”: The End of Men. The End of Human Rights. The End of High-School English. On and on. Of course, we are witnessing the end of important institutions. But apocalypticism is also a great way to manipulate people: it seizes their attention, keeps them reactive, and feeds the capitalist fantasy of disposability — the idea that things simply go “away” because we’ve declared

My friend was recently ranting about how no one is “cool” anymore. At first, her use of the word bothered me: it sounded like a high school popularity contest. But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed. Meta glasses secretly filming women. AI-generated vocals. Bots running people’s Hinge profiles. Who knew the future would be so uncool? At forty-eight, I’m well aware that I might not get what younger people are into. But there’s a difference between changing tastes a

Leonard Cohen once said that he supported a certain kind of “race-ism.” He wasn’t defending racism, of course. He meant that when people know who they are — their own race and culture — they are more capable of respecting other races and cultures. It made me think of Resmaa Menakem’s argument that white supremacy has roots in white people's own unrecognized histories of European violence. But understanding who you are isn’t just about historical research. It also lives in you

When I was eight, I asked my father for vegetable soup. He said, “There’s minestrone in the kitchen.” But I didn’t want minestrone. I wanted vegetable soup. After failing to convince me that they were the same thing, my father gave up, heated the minestrone, and served it to me as vegetable soup. I devoured it happily … until later, I found the can marked “MINESTRONE.” I was beside myself with rage! I tell this story because we live in a world where people constantly justify

My mother told me how, as a child, she was bullied for not being “Jewish enough.” Despite being the child of Holocaust survivors, she had a Catholic mother who dressed her in Austrian dirndls. For this, the Jewish kids at her Manhattan school picked on her mercilessly. I grew up targeted from both directions: kids at my Catholic high school threw pennies at me for being Jewish; people in the Jewish community shunned me for not being loyal to Israel. By adolescence, I’d conclu

The Buddha said that every evening, when you see the sun set, you should reflect: “What if this is the last sunset I ever see?” But he also said: No matter how long you’ve been lost, if you can come into the present moment for just an instant before you die, that would be worth a great deal. In other words, the spiritual path isn’t like a path through the forest, where a wrong turn means retracing every step. No matter how far you’ve wandered, it only takes a moment to return

I always ask my clients what they’d like to get out of a session with me. Often, they reply: “Clarity.” It sounds nice, but I’ve learned to push them to ask for more. Because settling for clarity can be part of a pattern of gazing at our lives without changing anything. Analyses, interpretations, and theories can become opiates that numb our pain and put off the real work. Back in college, my friend coined the term “Zentertainment” to mean using spiritual concepts (particular

Every so often, I see someone argue that travel is a colonial practice. There’s truth in this critique, but I worry that our awareness of inequality can become a way of protecting ourselves from having to see our own place within it. Ideally, travel means going to places where people may rightly be suspicious of you, and discovering, in the midst of that mistrust, something deeper than your comfortable self-image. An American friend of mine moved to Colombia after a crisis fo

I recently heard a quote attributed to August Wilson: “The first job of an artist is to survive.” I don’t think it means simply that you have to pay rent before you write. I think it means that an artist has to make sure the artist within survives. It’s surprisingly easy to kill that person. You become so busy managing life that you stop creating it. You become a consumer rather than a producer of your experience. Eventually, songs, poems, and paintings start to feel like mem

There’s a Buddhist story of two acrobats, male and female. The female acrobat was standing on the male acrobat’s shoulders when the male acrobat looked up and said, “You take care of me and I’ll take care of you.” The female acrobat replied, “No, you take care of yourself, I’ll take care of myself, and in that way we’ll get along.” They got into an argument and went to the Buddha, who said the female acrobat was right. But he added, “We practice for ourselves and others.” We

Years back, I rode the train home from a long silent meditation retreat with an older man I deeply admired. There’s always an awkwardness after so much silence, but at one point he turned and asked, “So what are you excited about these days?” The floodgates opened. I told him all about my band, my travels, my girlfriend. Eventually I realized how long I’d been talking and said, “Sorry, I should ask you. What are you excited about these days?” He paused and said with a smile,