Fishing Lessons

Ah, civilization—this delicate, shimmering veil stretched thinly over the raw and untamed nature of humanity. We take it for granted, assuming it is a solid foundation beneath our feet. But in truth, it is a mirage—one that vanishes the moment the conditions shift. Recently, I found myself in what I can only describe as a rehearsal for apocalypse. One moment, the world hummed along with its predictable rhythms; the next, everything stopped. No power. No water. No way to communicate. No information to explain what had happened or how long it would last. I was alone, surrounded by silence, and cut off from the world as if I had been stranded on an island. The roads—those lifelines of civilization—were gone, blocked, erased from function. And in that void, something fascinating began to unfold. At first, there was a kind of peace, a return to something ancient and pure. The distractions that normally consume us had evaporated, leaving behind only the present moment. There was joy in the s...

You see, emotions are often mistaken for the thing itself, rather like mistaking the ripples on a pond for the movement of the whole sea. People chase emotions, analyze them, suppress them, or indulge in them—but rarely do they inquire into their source. Where does an emotion arise from? What gives it weight, significance, and the peculiar hold it has on you? If you trace an emotion back—any emotion, whether joy, anger, sorrow, or fear—you will find that it flowers from a belief. It is not the world outside you that dictates your feelings, but rather your interpretation of it. And what is interpretation but a system of beliefs? Imagine, for a moment, that you are feeling anxious about an upcoming conversation. The anxiety does not exist in the mere fact that words will be exchanged. The anxiety arises because you believe something must happen in a particular way—you believe you must be perceived a certain way, or that some consequence must be avoided. And it is that belief, not the con...

The modern world—an endless buffet of information, a ceaseless tide of stimulus. The mind, restless as a monkey swinging from branch to branch, clings to every new scrap of data, every fleeting sensation, convinced that to stop would be to die. And so, we do not stop. We press forward, consuming information like a starving man at a feast, never questioning the quality of the meal. And when exhaustion sets in—when the mind begs for rest—what do we do? Do we sit in the silence of our own being, allowing the world to settle around us? No. Instead, we pick up another screen, another drip of dopamine disguised as "rest." A Trojan Horse of relaxation, we say. “This is not distraction; this is education. This is the news. I must stay informed! I must not be an ignorant fool!” And yet, the anxiety lingers. The distrust festers. We wonder, “What is wrong with them ?” But rarely do we turn the lens inward, to ask: What am I feeding my mind? Who is the chef in my kitchen? Who decides ...

We are often trapped in the illusion of duality—the notion that life is split into good and bad, light and dark, fortune and misfortune. But this, my friends, is only a trick of the mind. A cosmic sleight of hand. There is no such thing as bad, only "about to be good." Nature has never made a mistake. The tides do not fight the moon, the trees do not resent the winter, and the caterpillar does not despair at the cocoon. They simply are , because they know —not with anxious waiting, but with deep, intrinsic knowing—that the next cycle is already written. To resist what you call bad is to resist the very soil from which good must grow. You are like a gardener cursing the compost, failing to see that decay is not the enemy, but the nourishment for what comes next. A storm is only frightening to one who forgets it brings the rain that fills the rivers. Look to the yin-yang , that ancient symbol not of conflict, but of harmony . The dark swirl does not struggle against the light; ...