Researchers have located a new tribe! People who find themselves in very tough places in life, yet they don’t just survive. They actually thrive!

Who are these folks? Maybe they’re like that woman we sing about in “Delta Dawn,” sweet but addled… “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you’ve got on?” Or like Forest Gump with his “life is a box of chocolates”? Or maybe like one of the Sisters of Mercy carrying on Mother Teresa’s work around the world? No, this tribe are just normal folk who are sensible, awake, uncompromisingly honest. So what makes them different?

Well, let’s start with how thrivers approach life: as students and philosophers, not as patients, victims or even warriors. If thrivers are students, what are they studying? If they are philosophers, what do they philosophize about? 

Thrivers come up with new ways to view a situation they have found themselves in during difficult times. They learn to apply a new explanatory system to what happens to them, creatively disputing default ways of thinking and inventing new views of the situation. They think like philosophers, asking questions such as, “How can I make sense of this? What can now, in this circumstance, give my life meaning?” Thrivers reflect on where they find themselves at this present moment. They know absolutely that it is in their power to construe-explain, interpret, translate, define-what happens to them in life. And only in their power. (more…)

One thing that makes life so much more pleasant is to avoid making things more significant than they need to be. Some people are experts at reading undue importance into decisions, timing, and choices. They ask questions such as these: “Why did she decide to do X this year when last year she turned down Y which was very similar? What does this mean??”

Something I saw a few days ago in the Arts section of The New York Times gave me a fascinating reminder that assigning importance to that decision or this timing may be completely irrelevant.

The story was about Maestro Riccardo Muti. Maestro Muti had just announced that he would become the musical director of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was big news in the music world. The Times put it like this: “In a classical music world of diminishing grandeur, the orchestra has hired one of the last lions of podium glamour…” Mr. Muti had been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980-1992. He most recently had been music director at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan until he resigned in 2005. (more…)

Ah, the wisdom of Johnny Depp. We can imagine Johnny’s saying the words in the title above (which quotation sites do attribute to him) in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies where the good guys must cross big expanses of ocean to fight with the bad guys or to find a safe haven for themselves. But can’t each of us imagine calling out–“Now, bring me that horizon”—as a way of living our lives? The origin of the word horizon is from a Greek word that means bound or define and is akin to the Latin word for boundary. Dictionaries remind us that one use of the term horizon relates to the limit of a person’s mental perception, experience, or interest.When people want to “broaden their horizons,” they want to broaden their “outlook, perspective, and perception.”

What determines how far out are our individual horizons? Someone said once that we all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.Personally, I’m glad we don’t all have the same horizon…because I like the variety of what all of us see “out there” in front of us. I like a miscellany of perspectives and perceptions and areas of interest among the people I know, the authors I read, the commentators I listen to. (more…)

All of us have some special location that speaks to our hearts. A field of corn as far as the eye can see. A mountain that draws our eyes upward. A beach or seashore where we gaze toward a far-distant horizon. A valley of wildflowers. An old homestead where even the footprint of an old structure stirs warm memories.

All of us, too, have had the experience of watching a place change in a way that destroys its specialness for us. A highway comes too close; toxic waste clogs a stream; developers cut off the top of a beautiful hill; smog obscures a distant vista. Something very important is lost to us. We feel sad.

Researchers in Australia assert that this is a new type of sadness. When parts of our landscape change in detrimental ways, we lose the sense of “home” that these locations provided us previously. A name has been coined for this phenomenon: solastalgia. Solastalgia comes from the root word that means comfort: solacium and from the root word that means pain: algia. Solastalgia is the condition when we long for a natural setting that is now changed forever. As one researcher put it, this is a form of homesickness we experience even while we are still “at home.” (more…)

Imagine this:

You are driving into a town in the Netherlands called Makkinga. There is a traffic sign that reads “Verkeersbordvrij,” which translates “free of traffic signs.” This means there are no stop signs, no road markings, no parking meters, no pedestrian crossings. There are no stopping restrictions nor even any lines painted on the streets.

Instead of traffic rules and signs in Makkinga, there is the idea that streets are shared by drivers and pedestrians on equal grounds. The assumption that drivers own the road is replaced by the assertion that everyone has the same access to the public space. The thought is that if drivers are going to have to pay attention to pedestrians and bicycle riders and other vehicles—with no help from traffic signals and road signs—they will slow down and be more alert. (more…)