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In an era when people form and reinforce their opinions entirely within a chosen bubble of like minds, any earnest quest for truth seems almost quaint. How did truth become so passé?
A Zen Buddhist teacher I know recently shared with me a famous saying from his tradition: “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”
They say the best things in life are free—and I believe it. No amount of money can buy a sense of real belonging with your family, friends, and community, or assure health in body, mind, and soul. As I think about my own life, there is almost nothing that I really care about that I earned, planned, or even expected. It has all been a gift.
Back in August, my wife and children convinced me to take them to see the total solar eclipse. So I took the day off work, we drove two and a half hours south on rural Kentucky roads, and we found a great eclipse lookout spot—out in the country on the lawn of a small missionary Baptist church near Russellville. We felt the strange weakening of the sun’s warmth as the eclipse grew. At the moment of totality, we saw the colors of sunset all around the horizon and the sun’s blazing corona emanating from behind the black moon.
For our son Eli’s 9th birthday, we got him an honest-to-goodness magic kit: a top hat, wand, red sequined vest, black cape, and a number of props. One of the best parenting memories I have is of Eli—with the help of his 12-year-old twin sisters—performing a laugh-and mistake-filled magic show for my wife and me, in front of a makeshift curtain rigged out of an old blanket.
Let’s Not Blow the Budget
A few years back, financial analysts and scientists alike began to figure out a “global carbon budget ” we would need to stick to if we want to avoid radically overheating our planet. In other words, there’s a fixed amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide we can emit globally by 2050 at the time, it was about 565 billion tons (gigatons, or Gt) total. Currently, human activity produces about 36 Gt of carbon dioxide a year.
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