"In some of my research on cochlear implants, I learned that when they are turned on for the first time, patients often say the sound is kind of 'digital' or 'mechanical' sounding, which is entirely normal. I guess the ears and brain eventually normalize the signal and things begin to sound more natural. I thought that was entirely fascinating, so I made it a part of my song."

~ Ryan O'Neal, from "HearingI & How It Was Made"

"The idea that reality is not real or what you sense and feel is not authentic is something I’m very skeptical of."

~ Bill Nye

"I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent." 

~ Lisel Mueller

If you know what to expect, and try not to take these initial attentional challenges personally, they will actually help train you to be more clever about relating to a wider variety of mental, physical, and emotional discomforts.

"Poetry helps us imagine one another's lives."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

"Maybe it's what we don't say
that saves us."

~ Dorianne Laux

"Just like muscles, our mental muscle, if you will, responds to exercise. It’s just which exercise you’re going to do."

~ Dr. James R. Doty

"If one practices the skills of well-being, one will get better at it." 

~ Dr. Richard Davidson

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?

~ Lisa Mueller

"The paradox here is that mindfulness is just about being really interested in getting close and personal with what's actually happening in our bodies and minds from moment to moment."

~ Dr. Judson Brewer

"As conscious human beings, we know we die, and we therefore know our clock ends on, some level. So time just seems foundational. And I think a lot of the gymnastics that we do as human beings has to do with our relationship to the clock, or lack of a relationship to the clock. We squander time until it’s too late, et cetera. I love looking at the building blocks, the raw material, the irreducibles."

~ B.J. Miller

"I cannot imagine how we forgive ourselves for all of the things we didn’t say until it was too late."

~ Doc Luben

the strangest things can conjure up the past,
and forgotten time will find its long way back. 

as thin as air, as light as snow
some combination of the unknown,
but it doesn’t matter, i just know i need more.

~ Sleeping at Last
 

a game we played

so many times
I finally taught my sons,

not knowing what it was,
until too late, I’d done.

~ Patrick Phillips

"When you penetrate a mystery, it doesn’t become less mysterious. It becomes, if anything, more mysterious."

~ Stephen Batchelor

We’re nothing less than a work in progress,
sacred text on post it notes.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.

~ Albert Huffstickler