Category: Witness
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Why Do We Rush to Make People Feel Better?
Someone starts crying. Don’t cry. Someone is worried. Everything is going to be okay. Someone is disappointed. Maybe it happened for a reason. Someone is grieving. At least you had all those wonderful years together. Someone is angry. Try not to let it bother you. Most of these things are said with love. We see…
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Why Do We Fight Tears?
Think about what you do when you feel tears coming. Your throat tightens. You change your breathing. You blink harder, look upward, swallow. Maybe you clench your jaw or take that strange little breath meant to pull everything back under control. Your body has begun to cry. And almost immediately, another part of you tries…
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Not Everything You Feel Is Yours
Something strange happens when you finally get quiet. You start noticing how noisy everyone else is. Not loud. Noisy. You walk into a room feeling perfectly fine and ten minutes later you’re tense. Someone rushes into a meeting carrying urgency and suddenly everyone is moving faster. You spend an hour with someone who is angry…
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When Did We Stop Doing Nothing?
Try to remember the last time you waited for something and did nothing. Not meditating. Not practicing breathwork. Not listening to a podcast. Not checking email or scrolling on Meta. You just simply waited. That’s getting surprisingly hard to do. Stand in an elevator and watch what happens. Wait in line at a coffee shop.…
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How Do You Know a Good Human When You Meet One?
A friend recently told me something about his brother that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. His brother is one of those people who leaves a wake behind him. Conflict. Hurt feelings. Broken relationships. Illegalities. Messes that other people somehow end up cleaning. And yet he keeps moving forward—unscathed. Things work out. Opportunities…
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How Do You Know a Good Human When You Meet One?
A friend recently told me something about his brother that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. His brother is one of those people who leaves a wake behind him. Conflict. Hurt feelings. Broken relationships. Illegalities. Messes that other people somehow end up cleaning. And yet he keeps moving forward—unscathed. Things work out. Opportunities…
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The Conversation You’re Having Before the Conversation Even Starts
Do you ever stop to wonder why we spend so much time preparing for a conversation leaving little room to be truly present in the conversation? Think about how often we do this. You’re driving to work and already having the meeting. You’re in the shower explaining yourself to your spouse. You’re walking toward someone’s…
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Engineering Human Flourishing (Part 1)
The Forgotten Purpose of the FoyerWe rarely notice foyers. They’re simply there. The entrance to a hotel. The lobby of an office building. The waiting room before a doctor’s appointment. The gathering space before a wedding. The reception area at a yoga studio. The quiet hall before entering a funeral. They exist in nearly every…
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The Practices of Remembrance
If you’ve read the previous essays, you already know I believe the veil isn’t built all at once. It accumulates. Layer by layer. Every disappointment. Every fear. Every certainty. Every adaptation that once helped us survive. Which raises another question. If the veil naturally thickens… what thins it? I have come to believe humanity has…
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The Witness and the Wheel
There is a part of you that has been working tirelessly for as long as you have been alive. It learned to anticipate danger before you knew what danger was. It learned which words earned approval. Which mistakes carried consequences. Which parts of yourself felt safe to reveal. And which parts were better kept hidden.…