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Category: Meaning

  • All We Ever Seek Is Freedom — But It Changes Its Face as We Grow

    Freedom is one of the most important ideas in human life. At its heart, it means the ability to live, think, and act without unnecessary limits. But it’s not just about doing whatever we want — it’s about having the space to choose, and the strength to live with those choices. What’s interesting, though, is…

  • The Universe ‘I’s: Alan Watts on Death, Consciousness, and Being

    Isn’t it remarkable that from the vast nothingness of what you don’t remember—your past before memory, before birth—you find yourself here, alive, conscious, watching, listening, being? Alan Watts, in one of his most haunting and poetic monologues, delves deep into the mystery that most people avoid thinking about: death. But rather than fear it, deny…

  • Respecting Time: Beyond Showing Up on Schedule

    When most of us hear the phrase “respecting time,” the first thought that comes to mind is punctuality. We believe that if we promise to meet a friend at 6 p.m. at a café and we show up at 6 p.m. sharp, then we’ve done our job. We respected time. While that’s not wrong, it’s…

  • The Dance of Roles and the Silent Witness

    Life often feels like a stage on which I am endlessly shifting roles. When I travel for work and step into a workshop or meeting, I become the professional self—engaged, focused, fully absorbed in tasks, conversations, and responsibilities. In that moment, it feels as though this is the truest version of me, the role that…

  • If I Could Turn Back Time: A Meditation on Youth, Memory, and Moving Forward

    At 42, I find myself often caught in a quiet, persistent thought: I wish I was 20 years younger. It’s not an unusual yearning, I know. The desire to rewind time is one of the most human longings there is. But even as I say it, I understand how impossible it is. Time doesn’t play…

  • More Than Happy: Embracing the Four Pillars of a Meaningful Life

    We live in a time where happiness is marketed as the ultimate goal. It’s on magazine covers, in self-help books, and on Instagram feeds. But what if the secret to a fulfilling life isn’t happiness at all, but something deeper—something steadier? Writer and positive psychology researcher Emily Esfahani Smith offers a profound answer: the key…

  • From Regret to Wisdom: What the Dying Teach Us About Living Fully

    When we imagine the end of our lives, we hope to look back with peace, not regret. But for many, the final days bring clarity—and painful reflections on what truly mattered. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent years caring for patients in their final weeks. In her book The Top Five Regrets of…

  • The Everyday Science of Meaning in Life

    For as long as humans have reflected on their existence, the question of life’s meaning has hovered at the edges of philosophy, religion, and literature. Is life meaningful? And if so, how and why? While these questions may sound like the domain of poets and mystics, modern psychology has quietly built a robust science around…

  • How Do We Measure the Meaning of Life?

    What makes life feel meaningful? Is it having a clear sense of purpose, achieving personal goals, living according to one’s principles, or perhaps feeling that life itself is inherently valuable? For decades, philosophers and psychologists alike have wrestled with these questions, and in recent years, the quest to understand and measure “meaning in life” has…

  • Occupying Death: Why We Must Take Back the End of Life

    Death, once a part of everyday life and openly discussed within families and communities, has become a medical event hidden behind hospital curtains and euphemisms. Dr. Peter Saul, an intensive care specialist with decades of experience, challenges us to reclaim the dying process from the high-tech medicalized model that now dominates how we leave this…

  • What It’s Like to Be a Bat: Why Consciousness Still Eludes Science

    In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel published an essay with a title that sounds like it belongs to a children’s book: What Is It Like to Be a Bat? But behind this seemingly playful question lies one of the most profound philosophical challenges of the modern age: the mystery of consciousness. Specifically, whether we can ever…

  • The Lobby of Echoes: What David Eagleman’s “Metamorphosis” Tells Us About Death

    What if death wasn’t just the end? Not of breath, not of body, but of story. That’s the unsettling, poetic lens David Eagleman gives us in Metamorphosis, a story from his book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. In a deceptively simple narrative, Eagleman transforms the abstract weight of mortality into a strangely mundane yet…

  • Fluke: How Chaos, Chance, and Randomness Shape Everything We Do

    In his fascinating book Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, Brian Klaas invites us to fundamentally rethink the nature of cause and effect in our lives and societies. Rather than seeing the world as a tidy sequence of deliberate actions and consequences, Klaas shows that randomness, small events, and chaos are far…

  • The Hidden Cost of Comfort: Why Seeking Discomfort Might Just Save You

    Imagine standing at the edge of a vast frozen wilderness. The cold slices through every layer of clothing. Your breath turns to crystals in the air. There’s no phone signal, no Wi-Fi, and certainly no cozy couch waiting at the end of the day. It’s just you, the elements, and a primal need to survive…