The news is so very terrible, it is weighing on everyone we know. Then we stumbled on some heartening messages from Yoko Ono in our archive that help to shift the view.
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Essential Principles of Nonviolence to Live: Martin Luther King Jr. and The Dalai Lama
What would Martin Luther King, Jr have done in response to the brazen murder of a black man by a white policeman? As waves of protest, some violent, sweeping our country, we found the answer in King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence* and again in The Dalai Lama’s Essential Teachings.
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How to Practice Gratitude In Dark Times (W.S. Merwin)
We know lots of poems of gratitude but only one that manages to express thanks amidst the very hard things that befall us in life. It is remarkable and hard and heartbreaking and heartening, echoing perfectly that which we are living now… ‘Thank you’ helps us navigate.
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Ai Weiwei: On Home, Living in Isolation, Hope
Ai Weiwei’s thinking on purpose, home, isolation, hope are an insightful lens through which to consider our current circumstance. And especially, how the impossible becomes possible.
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Kevin Kelly’s 68 Bits of Seriously Good Advice
To celebrate his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly compiled some of the gold he’s learned over his seven decades. The brilliant list provides a roadmap to wholeness and positivity.
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W.S. Merwin On Hope and What to Do On the Last Day of the World
In this short video, the renown poet and activist speaks eloquently about hope and our interconnectedness, two themes so many are working to encompass.
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Practical Ways to Alleviate Toilet Paper Anxiety and Hoarding
We’ve read a lot theories for the toilet paper hoarding that has marked the Coronavirus pandemic. We have a few of our own + viable alternatives.
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5 Short Fierce Statements that Help ‘Dig a Cave into the Future’
In the face of relentlessly bad news, I randomly came across some powerful statements that snapped me awake from the daze I found myself in. Maybe they will do the same for you.
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Sonny Rollins on Losing Yourself In the Divine and His Sabbatical Playing on the Williamsburg Bridg
This sublime short film is about “saxophone colossus” Sonny Rollins’ two-year musical sabbatical playing on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge and what he found there.
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Sea Change Can Be Contagious (Susan Dworski, W.S. Merwin)
In posts and emails, I shared the questions fueling Improvised Life’s new architecture and many changes. Among the deeply affirming messages I received from readers, the most interesting was from long-time contributor Susan Dworski. She wrote of the contagious aspect of this sea change.
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What is Your Medicine?
Recently, a doctor I know asked me the remarkable question “What is your medicine”. The answers have nothing to do with pills and are unique to each of us, surprising and powerful.
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Li Ziqi’s Soothing, Addictive Videos Portrays Living ‘in the Flow’
On Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi’s mesmerizing YouTube channel. she doesn’t speak and there are no how tos or manic hosts,. Instead she evokes a quiet, very pastoral, very ancient way of life whose effect is deeply soothing.
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Ideas to Steal from Le Corbusier’s Tiny, Modernist Le Cabanon
Le Cabanon, Le Corbusier’s odd, spare, modernist cabin in the South of France is like a cross between a hermit’s cabin and a boat with a great deal of style. It offers ideas to steal no matter what size home you have.
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Gifts that ‘Encourage Wonder and Reflection’
The recent post about Mister Rogers got me thinking about how to give gifts that “encourage wonder and reflection? Here are some gift books that do just that.
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Be a Friend
After over a decade of publishing, I am thrilled to hear that Improvised Life remains a source of inspiration, ideas, and change in readers’ lives. And that they love its clear space, without blinking ads or branded content. I hope to continue publishing new articles and maintain Improvised Life’s vast archive ad-free for years to…
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Patti Smith: “The Secret to Improvisation I Have Accessed My Whole Life”
As we work to move Improvised Life to a new form, we came across this passage from Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of finding her artistic voice: the secret of improvisation she learned from Sam Shepard.
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Wendell Berry on The Real Work We Do
We know quite a few people who are making major life changes these days, living with the question of what to do next, waiting for the path to become clear. What’s the mindset to embrace in limbo: all questions, few clues, no answers?
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Gary Snyder On Doing The Work You See For Yourself, ‘Mind Like Compost’
We’d never thought about guarding against the “lesser talents” we all have until we read Gary Snyder, whose practical counsel and poetry on the creative process is seriously clarifying.
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Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette’ and Ted Talk ask: “What Is the Purpose of My Human?’
In her TED talk and HBO special, “autistic, pathologically shy” Hannah Gadsby tells how she came to be the most talked about comedian on the planet. It started when she asked herself an essential question:
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Varieties of YES: A Zen View, John Cage, Mary Oliver, James Joyce and the Katz’s Deli Orgasm
Thirty + years ago, the world witnessed Meg Ryan’s perfection of a faked orgasm in Katz’s Deli, we’ve been thinking about great, transformative yeses we’ve written about or experienced.
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