Fishing Lessons

Here’s a little experiment in enchantment. Pick a number between 1 and 31—any number that gives you a quiet smile. That’s your day. Your lucky day. Your self-care day. Ink it onto the calendar, whisper it to your friends, say it out loud when you wake: “On the ___th , the universe and I have an appointment.” Now, this is not superstition; it is participation. You see, what we call “luck” is often the mind finally agreeing to notice the river it has always been floating in. Marking a day is a way of saying to life, “I am ready to see you.”  Look at the day as a  permission slip : a playful ritual that lets you give yourself consent to believe what is already true—that your state of being tunes your experience. So choose your number, and let that day be your practice of benevolent expectation. On your lucky day, wake as if the world has conspired for your well-being. Let every green light be a wink, every delay a nudge, every coincidence a breadcrumb. Meet the day as a magician ...

We human beings have a peculiar habit. We sit down at the kitchen table, a pen or pencil in hand, and decide to take inventory of our lives—often by drawing up two neat columns: things to feel bad about and things to feel good about. It sounds so reasonable, so tidy almost mathematical.  We Assign different weights and values to the line items of 'our' possessions and experiences.  Once we are done, we look at a dozen or so items and use those line items to decide if it is logical to feel.. rich or poor in the moment.  Yet, to even begin such a list, one must first commit a most remarkable act of amnesia—voluntarily or not. You must forget about the infinity of miracles humming all around you. You must overlook the impossible chain of events that led to the pencil in your hand: the tree that swayed in the wind for decades, drinking sunlight and rain; the human ingenuity and yes, the anxious persistence—that felled that tree, milled it, shaped it into paper; the centuries ...

It is a curious thing that in our rush to be positive, we have invented a new phrase: Toxic positivity. As if to say that by insisting on brightness, we have turned the very sun into a blinding glare.  You see, to be in a positive state of mind is not to declare that bad things are somehow good. That is nonsense. It is not to pretend that shadows are made of light. Rather, it is to stand in the right state of mind so that what is dark, what is difficult, what is painful—can be used in a way that becomes constructive. Not denial, but alchemy.  For what is the alternative? To drown in despair? To be consumed by bitterness?  The quickest way into the present moment when faced with negative, or seemingly negative, information is not to paste a smile over it, but to pause—and notice what you already have. And when I say “what you have,” I don’t mean just your possessions or even the people in your life. I mean the endless stream of miracles that hold you together: your breath,...

As a child, perhaps you dreamed of portals into other worlds. You imagined uncovering a hidden book of spells that could bend reality. But as the years passed, that sense of wonder often faded. The thought of stumbling upon magic seemed childish. Yet  stumbling  is the right word—because the treasure you seek has always been close enough to trip over. Since you were a child, you have been casting spells—altering reality with the simplest two-word incantation:  I am. These words are not casual. They are a key, a turning of the lock that opens into a parallel dimension where what follows takes shape—as surely as thought becomes breath, and breath becomes body. Think of how quickly one falls into darkness when speaking:  I am sad. I am angry. I am lost.  These phrases feel heavy with proof—thick with emotion, drenched in memory. Speak them, and they surround you so convincingly that you can no longer tell whether you shaped the words, or the words shaped you. And y...