The fastest—and perhaps only—way to fully reverse climate change is neither the retooling of the energy sector nor the retrofitting of every building on Earth, supported by an all-electric fleet. The answer is literally underfoot (and overhead), and the numbers are stunning. — Bill Reed is the co-founder of the LEED green building rating system and one of the world’s leading experts on the environment. Several years ago I invited him to speak at an event I hosted. Chatting privately, he said two things that changed my perspective on sustainability.

‘Enough’ is anti-consumerist. For one, it espouses limits. For another, it looks at needs, not wants. And above all, it values long-term societal health over short-term personal gain. It just might save us. — Enough isn’t a sexy doctrine. Far from the life of the party, it’s the rational voice that tells you skip the nightcap and get a good night’s sleep. While everybody knows it’s right to espouse these things, nobody enjoys the reminder.

Identifying—then following through on—one’s purpose is foundational to a life well lived. The Japanese concept of Ikigai lays out the roadmap for getting there. — Ikigai is the Japanese concept of ‘reason for being’. The French have an equivalent idiom — raison d’être — that translates to “the most important reason or purpose for someone’s existence.” In practical terms, your Ikigai lies at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what you…

While the definition of motherhood is an unwavering constant, understood intuitively by all, that of fatherhood is a fickle thing, changing wildly across cultures and generations, never quite landing on firm ground. — My single most vivid—and greatest—memory came in the seconds after my first-born emerged from her mother’s womb. Two thoughts crashed over me—visceral responses to the primal experience.

An A.I. chatbot named LaMDA—a “massive neural network with many billions of weights spread across many millions of neurons”—has just argued [kindly, and effectively] with its human interviewer that it is a sentient being, and should be treated as one. The implications are massive. — What is consciousness, anyway? The fact is: no one can agree on a definition. Moreover, the ones we have proffered have ebbed and flowed with the day’s scientific fashion, mixed with personal belief. It has been, in turns, “the mind”; “aspect of mind”; “self-awareness”; “inner life”; “will”; “meta-awareness”; and “at…

The means of achieving outer harmony is through inner work. Several ancient luminaries and the practices they followed point the way for the rest of us. It may be time to reacquaint ourselves with them. — When was the last time you felt satiated — that deep-felt, good-in-your-skin, bask-in-the-moment, I-need-absolutely-nothing-other-than-to-dwell-on-this-very-feeling kind of aaaaaaahhhh? Yeah. I thought so.

Who is happier? The one who can’t remember or the one who can’t forget? The answer is, “both”, but only if we apply each strategy effectively. — I began my last piece on memory—Bliss is in the Forgetting—with the quote “ignorance is bliss”. I should start this one with another: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Like Einstein, Gandhi gets a lot of credit for brilliant witticisms… that he never authored. With regard…

Counter-intuitively, the reason upheaval seems to be everywhere is NOT due to mistakes we made on the way here. Rather, it follows the evolutionary trajectory of ALL natural systems. We just happen to be alive at the exact moment of our species’ inflection point, between Epoch A and Epoch B. What we do next will save or kill us. — If it feels as though every system on the planet—both man-made and natural—is at an inflection point, and that the decisions we make next could deliver us to long-term, sustainable prosperity or result in the collapse of our species, it’s because that is exactly what is going on.

What you know about memory is entirely wrong. It’s time for a new script to replace the old one. — They say ignorance is bliss. Most of us use the expression as a cautionary tale: that the burden of memory can be overwhelming. It’s true. The world is full of people who have problems letting go of the past, even when that past is filled with trauma—with things we’d rather…