Making Sense as a Second Language

Making sense is our second language.

Sensing comes first.

Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJanuary 15, 2018uncertainty, learning, growing up, imagination, sensing, sensesComment

How to Be Perfect

"Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the
street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped
in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic.

Be good.

Walk down different streets.

Backwards."

~ Ron Padgett

Practice in Life, MagnanimityDaron LarsonJanuary 1, 2018Ron Padgett, poetry, perfection, perfectionism, heuristics, guiding principles, growing upComment

Until The Sound Ceases to Convey Any Idea

"Linguistic repetition, you learn from an early age, can give form or take it away, because it forces a confrontation with the malleability of language and the world we build with it, build upon it."

~ Ben Lerner

Hear Out, Hear In, ClarityDaron LarsonDecember 3, 2017Ben Lerner, poetry, language, uncertainty, learning, growing up, mysteryComment

What You Missed

"Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer."

~ Brad Aaron Modlin

Daron LarsonSeptember 17, 2017Brad Aaron Modlin, poetry, growing up, learning, life, paying attention, awareness, self-awareness, memory, FOMOComment

I'll Do Better

"I will always hold you close,
But I will learn to let you go.
I promise I’ll do better."

Sleeping at Last

Daron LarsonAugust 4, 2017Sleeping At Last, Andrew Boon, music, music video, fireworks, wonder, awe, light, self-awareness, self-control, growing up, parentingComment

What Makes a Place Feel Like Home?

"Home is a place where you feel accepted, whether you are Jacob leaving Egypt to be buried in his true home, or a young teen who desires to feel accepted by family and society. I urge everyone to continue to strive for good character and to accept people who may look or act differently. In this way we will all experience home; we will all receive blessings."

~ Eleanor Teweles

Daron LarsonJanuary 29, 2017ritual, growing up, Judaism, favoritism, blessing, jealousy, Torah, bat mitzvah, character, home, homelessness, joyComment

Release

“What led me to mindfulness was my own relationship to anxiety. So for this particular film, I felt it was important for the viewer to be able to experience the transformation a mindful meditation practice can have on an individual’s state of mind.”

~ Julie Bayer

Enjoy the Contradiction

"I've come to believe that part of being who I am is being uncomfortable."

~ Claire Hoffman

Daron LarsonAugust 25, 2016Claire Hoffman, Transcendental Meditation, meditation, memoir, religion, belief, doubt, community, family, growing up, fundamentalismComment

Turn Toward the Problems

"In my experience, there’s just no substitute for actually going and seeing things."

~ Matt Damon

Practice in Life, MagnanimityDaron LarsonJune 24, 2016Matt Damon, commencement, actors, wisdom, life, growing up, education, self/otherComment

Things We Are Saying To Ourselves

"An inner voice always used to be an outer voice. We absorb the tone of others. A harassed or angry parent. The menacing threats of an elder sibling keen to put us down. The words of a schoolyard bully or teacher who seemed impossible to please. We internalize the unhelpful voices, because at certain key moments in the past, they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodge in our own way of thinking."

~ The School of Life

The Past Alive

a game we played

so many times
I finally taught my sons,

not knowing what it was,
until too late, I’d done.

~ Patrick Phillips

Daron LarsonJanuary 16, 2016Patrick Phillips, poetry, childhood, growing up, parenting, power, death, memento moriComment

Our Shadows Fall Away

This brilliant light is brighter than we’ve known,
Without our darkness to prove it so.
Still, we can’t help but to examine it,
To add our question marks to periods.

~ Sleeping At Last

Daron LarsonAugust 24, 2015Sleeping At Last, music, shadow, growing upComment

Is This What Being Vulnerable Feels Like?

i’ll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness.

~ Sleeping At Last

Beginning, EquanimityDaron LarsonAugust 19, 2015Sleeping At Last, music, musicians, self, memory, growing up, struggle, risk, intimacy, hope, vulnerability, equanimity, liberation, Martin KlimasComment

Before You Know It

"How’s this poem for its ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of fifteen short lines?"

Daron LarsonJune 2, 2015George Bilgere, poetry, childhood, aging, growing up, time Comment

We Differ

Me — a teenager?
If she suddenly stood here now, before me,
would I need to treat her as near and dear,
although she’s strange to me, and distant?
Shed a tear, kiss her forehead
for the simple reason
we share a birthdate?

~ Wisława Szymborska

Daron LarsonMay 6, 2015poetry, growing up, Wisława Szymborska, self, time, agingComment

The Only Calibration that Counts

"That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember."

~ Ted Hughes

Magnanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 14, 2015Ted Hughes, childhood, self, identity, growing up, life, surprise, fear, suffering, emotion, connection, relationships, poetsComment

We Forget

"We are not at home in the world because we imagine it is as we have become, full of nothing but yearning and forgetting and hoping for something so raw we can't describe it."

~ Simon Van Booy