-
How to put up with the little annoyances to get what you really want in life
Western societies have a huge problem when it comes to living a meaningful life. In the last fifty years we’ve seen two huge shifts further towards individualism, first with the swinging sixties, and then again with the have-it-all greed-is-good eighties. If you ask all but the very old, most folk today will say that living a good life means being able to do what you want, having plenty of good experiences, having friends, etc. This is pretty different from a couple of generations ago when lots of people would surely have used elevated phrases like “pillar of the community” and “a real gentleman”. Those ideas were about service to others.…
-
Those hippie words we use
I was on holiday last week so I gave myself permission to write something a bit different; to discuss a topic that’s close to my heart though it makes a lot of folk squirm. Let’s talk about spirituality. I meditate regularly and have done so for nearly two decades. I have attended Buddhist events. I have read English translations of Buddhist texts. I don’t believe everything I read, not least because I think a lot of the language is very metaphorical. I find myself fascinated. Buddhism in particular (which Alan Watts often described as Hinduism stripped for export) seems to be a highly advanced unscientific psychology. I believe a lot…