We need to talk about the word ‘mad’. They edited ‘mad’ out of Roald Dahl books, along with ‘crazy’. So: ‘The Oompa-Loompas were all rowing like mad’ has become… ‘The Oompa-Loompas were all rowing frantically’. And in the BFG: “Boys are crazy,”...
Reflections
Redefining Success: A Sanctuary For Exhausted Souls
(Image from Izhar Cohen) Whose definition of success are you following? Do feel the pressure of life speeding up, the relentless struggle to keep on top of things? Do you sense some kind of burnout or breakdown looming? Do you ever wonder when...
The Difference Between Effective Altruism and Karma Yoga – As Highlighted By The Fall Of Sam Bankman-Fried
Effective Altruism (EA) is a movement that seeks to apply rational thinking to decide the optimum way to help the most people. This is a quote from the effective altruism website: "This project matters because, while many attempts to do good fail,...
Protecting Your Kids From Social Media Harm – A Guide For Parents
Image by Sam Thomas, Douglas Sacha In the opening scene of Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice is bored and wondering whether she can be bothered to make a daisy chain, when suddenly she sees a white rabbit with pink eyes, a waistcoat...
We don’t know what we’re doing – and that’s ok.
This is a picture of me, in the early days of my love affair with football. 'The beautiful game'. It could also be so cruel. I remember standing next to my dad at Maine Road football stadium in Manchester, as thousands of men sang to the referee...
A Love Letter For You
Peeping Through The Stained Glass: a story about optimism versus realism
So last night in Manchester I was headed to my Five Rhythms class and was really looking forward to it. (For those who don’t know, Five Rhythms is a dance movement practice designed by a brilliant therapist called Gabrielle Roth in the 1970s.)...
Immunise Yourself from The Capitalist Mind-Virus
My Dear Friend, When the world is telling you you aren’t enough. When you have lost touch with a sense of the sacred. When your relationships have become means to an end. When the logic of utility and efficiency have sidled into even the most...
Fall In Love With Your True Self
The myth of Narcissus is at least 2000 years old. Human beings have always had a tendency to fall in love with their own reflection. Snoop Dogg said “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the top dogg of them all.” I’ve noticed a lot of people...
Your Body Is Your Guru
“What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe” - Rumi Your body is amazing. Not the six-pack or thigh-gap type of amazing. Across millions of years of evolution and through billions of tiny...