reflection : The Art of Non-Conformity

Life

What Do People Say At the End of Their Lives?

If given the chance, what do people choose for their last reflections and comments? A veteran hospice chaplain gives an unflinching answer:

"They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave. Often they talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally.

They talk about how they learned what love is, and what it is not.

This is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence."

Link: What People Talk About Before They Die

Life

A Year in the Life of You

I came back from Tuvalu and my gym was packed with dozens of people I had never seen before—an influx of New Year's Resolutions. "How many of them will still be here in February?" I wondered. Whether you're pro- or anti-resolution, there's nothing inherently special about a new calendar year. If you don't like the western calendar, there are plenty of others.

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Life

2012 Annual Review: Looking Forward

I did it. I made it to Tuvalu, the penultimate country! It took a while to get here, but that's to be expected.

Someone said they spent 20 minutes reading the Tuvalu Wikipedia page the other day. I said I was surprised it took 20 minutes—that's the same amount of time it took me to run the length of the entire island of Funafuti last night.

Anyway, 192 countries down. File under your choice of: Wow, WTF, tired, or awesome.

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Life

Famous Last Words

Soon I'll begin an abbreviated version of my Annual Review, where I look back on the events of this year and make plans for the next. In recent years, many of our readers have completed this process in their own way, and everyone is welcome to join in. This year my own review will be a bit shorter than previous years due to a lot of things being stacked up—the India tour finished a few days ago, and then I went to Singapore and Hong Kong for meetings. Now I'm heading to Africa via Heathrow and Lisbon. Blah, blah.

Life

Around Here: Notes from Thursday Afternoon

Whenever things are going well, it's always good to ask yourself “How could I improve? What could I do better?” Never rest on your laurels! Always be thinking: OK, great. What's next? Yesterday I woke up early and went for a quick run around the park. Then I went for a morning biscuit at Pine State, where I visit a couple of times a week whenever I'm home in Portland. Then I came back and got ready, and then we sold 1,000 WDS 2013 tickets to fun people all over the world. I looked back at the screen and thought, wow, that was exciting. Then I went for sushi.

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Life

5 Short Notes on Gratitude

When I wasn't getting extorted or doing drugs in Yemen, I enjoyed touring around with my fixer. Several times, I noticed that when we passed a beggar on the street, he took a small amount of money from his pocket and gave it to them. Observing this behavior caused me to think. I'm supposed to give to the poor, but do I really?

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Life

The Free Lunch Movement

You may have heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is untrue on every level, and also a terrible lie. Over and over throughout our short lives, all of us have been given something for nothing. We don't deserve free lunch, yet it continues to arrive on a regular basis. No charge, ma'am. This one's on me, sir.

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Life

34 Things I’ve Learned About Life and Adventure

Want to become wiser? It's fairly simple and closely resembles Brian Tracey's formula for being luckier: “Luck is quite predictable. To have more luck, take more chances.”

To become wiser, therefore, take more risks and stop letting fear rule your life. Change it up a little.

In honor of last week's dual birthdays, here are 34 things I wish I knew years ago ...

Travel

Runway Running

When I boarded the flight to Nauru, I felt like I was going into exile. The airline that flies to Nauru is called “Our Airline,” which could go down as the most comical airline name I've ever heard. (Runner up: "Jubbah Airways" in Somalia.) I had previously been informed by my visa service that no visa is required to visit Nauru. Unfortunately, that fact turned out to be untrue—pretty much everyone going to Nauru needs a visa. After an earlier failure, I regrouped and made another attempt last week. This time, the visit was successful.

Travel

It’s Time To See the World

I said I was heading to the airport, and someone said they hate flying because of the TSA. "I just can't stand to travel anymore!"

I said I was passing through LAX, and someone else said, "Ugh, LAX. What a mess."

It's OK, I told them, I have a one-night layover in the city before moving on to Asia.

"My sister lives there," I heard, "and I don't know how she stands it. The traffic is terrible!"

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Life

What to Do About Those People Who Sidetracked Your Life

This article doesn’t have much to do with travel hacking or unconventional work. And in fact, it will only apply to a minority of the people who read it. If you’ve always had a great life and nothing truly unfair has ever happened to you, feel free to skip this one. There’s lots of other great reading out there elsewhere. But for the rest of you—this one goes out to everyone who has had terrible things happen to them that weren’t their fault.

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Life

2011 Annual Review: Looking Back

Greetings, everyone. I'm finishing up my latest trip to Africa, and I hope you're well wherever you are. This is the first part of the 2011 Annual Review. Two notes on this year's series: first, at the end of each post over the next few weeks, you're invited to leave your own response.

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Life

2011 Annual Review: The Beginning

Every year since 2006, I've set aside an entire week in December to review the year that has almost passed and look ahead to the next one. I certainly haven't got everything in my life figured out, but I can honestly say that this exercise has been the most helpful exercise in all that has happened in the past six years.

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Life

The End Is (Always) Near

Have you heard the one about the end of time? Yep—it's on the way.

Every day, we lose another 1,440 minutes that will never return. Farewell, minutes! Goodbye, opportunities.

The other day I noticed I had been thinking "I'll do that in the summer" about a lot of things.

Then I realized, hey, it's late August already ... seriously? How did that happen?

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Life

What Are You Looking Forward To?

It's a fairly self-explanatory question: what's coming up in the near or faraway future that you're excited about?

I'll start. In the short-term, I'm looking forward to getting home from another long trip. It's been fun, beautiful, thrilling, and exhausting. I live on the edges and sometimes they catch up to me. But that's OK, because I'll be happy to do it again soon.

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