Happiness isn’t a state of being.

It’s not a permanent feeling, a goal you can reach, the result of a pill, or the absence of pain and negativity.

Happiness is actually a fleeting, temporal impression.

That’s not to say you don’t enjoy the things you enjoy!

Feelings of happiness can be found everywhere, any time, and from anything. Connecting with nature, receiving a thoughtful present, finishing a project before the deadline…

All of those things certainly produce physiological happiness responses!

Blushing, faster heart rate, involuntary smiling, goosebumps, etc. But it’s important to understand why we’re having those reactions.

Philosophical musings aside, happiness feelings occur when you trigger…

Until 1967, installing a microwave in your home kitchen was prohibitively expensive — in some cases, the tune of $11,000 in modern-day dollars.

In fact, the first viable models — created after researchers found corn on the cob would pop if it was even around the power tubes of radar sets (called magnetrons) — were designed for commercial use.

Huge, lumbering contraptions for restaurants and airplanes, that weren’t meant for individual meals.

Now, they had the technology as early as the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. …

Everything you’re doing now is rooted in what you learned in your childhood home.

That may be a tough pill to swallow, but only if your listening is defensive.

Perhaps you read that sentence and had the thought, “I’m an adult. I’ve modified my behaviors as I’ve grown up! I’m not childlike anymore!”

In reality, we’re all childlike — the idea that adults mature to a magic number and pupate, crawling forth from their cocoons and emerging into perfect and complete adults couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even in the ways we rebel from our childhood selves, we’re basing…

In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine you’d have spent the last year begging your children to stare at a screen for eight hours during virtual class time while you try to make lunch, supervise, and get your own work done?

Probably not. How could you have?

Parents have been lamenting the state of the educational system for years…

From complaints about lack of funding and poor heating during the winter months to the banality and rote memorization required in standardized testing and even to the wacky way kids are taught their multiplication tables these days.

And when the…

As Robert Frost so eloquently put it many years ago, “nothing gold can stay.”

True as it was in Frost’s poem — “So Eden sank to grief, so dawn goes down to day” — the sentiment holds up against our experiences within the natural world all around us, as well as the natural world inside of us.

During the height of the pandemic, we were advised that our most vulnerable citizens would be the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.

That’s because as you age, the systems in your body naturally wear down, and the accumulation of years of toxins…

Fatigue is such a broad umbrella, getting to the bottom of it sometimes involves your doctor giving you the third degree.

But that’s because generalized fatigue can be caused by any number of colluding or omitting factors.

Not enough of this, too much of that, too much this without enough of that to balance it out…

Do we all have to be doctors ourselves in order to manage our own health?

Well, no. But we should have a basic understanding of how our bodies work and which areas to service in order to cause a ripple effect of whole-body health.

…

Much like manicured and homogenized lawns and yards, golf courses are something of an oddity when considered within the context of the natural world.

Since enormous acres of tamed landscape don’t exist in the wild, curious minds have asked the question —

Just how much work does it take to maintain what doesn’t make natural sense, and at what cost to the surrounding ecosystems?

More than a million acres of land on Earth are being split between around 35,000 golf courses all over the world, about half of which are in the United States.

Out of about 37 billion acres…

At a certain point in the Western world, it can feel like your doctor has given up on finding solutions for the creaks and strains your body experiences with growing frequency as you age.

Have you ever heard your doctor say, “Ah, yes, that’ll be happening more now that you’re over 40”?

Or worse, have you ever made an appointment concerning a vague set of symptoms (fatigue, poor sleep, loss of drive, low libido) and been advised by your doctor to just…

Get used to it? This is life when you’re over the hill.

If we didn’t have the internet…