Airport Insecurity

Flying provides a steady stream of frustrations: the crowded isolation of DIY check-in, the sock-footed walk on eggshells through TSA, the hypervigilant tracking of an elusive ETA.

All the inevitable discomforts of air travel make it a fertile attentional fitness opportunity. I’ve been developing a strategy that transforms the situation from hell into heaven. Okay, maybe more like a really productive purgatory.

Friendliness Resistance, Magnanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 21, 2017friendliness, metta, empathy, self/other, compassionComment

One Another's Lives

"Poetry helps us imagine one another's lives."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Friendliness ResistanceDaron LarsonFebruary 17, 2016Naomi Shihab Nye, poetry, kindness, attention, self/other, connection, empathyComment

All The World's a Self-Reflexive Stage

"Our brains evolved in such a way as to render us all eager but flawed mind readers."

~ Michael Bérubé

Daron LarsonJanuary 25, 2016self/other, theory of mind, brain, mind, empathyComment

Happiness is Home

“Happiness doesn’t lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap..."

~ Dennis Lehane

Daron LarsonJuly 12, 2015Dennis Lehane, home, happiness, empathy, connectionComment

The Communal Process of Falling

Someone explained once how the pieces of what we are
fall downwards at the same rate
as the Universe.
The atoms of us, falling towards the center

of whatever everything is. And we don't see it.
We only sense their slight drag in the lifting hand.
That's what weight is, that communal process of falling.

~ John Glenday

Daron LarsonMarch 22, 2015poetry, John Glenday, nature, science, empathy, self/otherComment

Knowing You Know Nothing

Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination.

~ Leslie Jamison

Hear Out, Feel In, Magnanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonFebruary 16, 2015empathy, feelings, self/other, pain, imagination, questions, medicine, listening, Leslie Jamison, uncertaintyComment

Accept Your Non-Acceptance

Everyone is doing their best, even when it seems like they are doing their worst.
Everyone is dreaming or having a nightmare, battling with pain you may never understand.
You don't have to condone their actions.
You may not be able to wake them up.
You don't have to like what happened.
Simply let go of the illusion
that it could have been any different.

~ Jeff Foster

Feel Around

"Because I write poetry, I can sit down and write things that I don’t have proof of, or even know the end of the sentence. I can feel around and nobody gets hurt, right? It’s a poem. And so I wrote this poem out of grief and an attempt to make it very plain to myself, the argument that I’d come up with."

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht

Feel In, EquanimityDaron LarsonSeptember 29, 2014Jennifer Michael Hecht, suicide, TRBQ, conversation, poet, poetry, grief, writing, empathy, feelingsComment

A Hint

"We do still believe in the gut feeling." ~ HERAKUT

Feel In, See OutDaron LarsonSeptember 17, 2014HERAKUT, art, artists, feelings, emotions, senses, instincts, humanity, empathy, sufferingComment

Powerful Empathy Machine

"Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else's life for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief."~ Roger Ebert