This time last year my aunt died. Two years ago my nan died. It feels strange to write, but these were the first deaths I grieved in a way that feels… healthy.

My uncle died after an unexpected and brutal fight with cancer when I was 13. My girlfriend’s mum died, also from cancer, when I was 17. Over the years, all my grandparents have passed on, plus another uncle. And that’s only family members.

After my uncle’s death, I saw the pain in the eyes of my mum, my dad, my sister, and the rest of the family. I…

What does it mean to chase a dream? A chase hints at desperation: I think of X-Factor contestants who feel they have a God-given talent, only to open their mouths and insult Simon Cowell. What separates the deluded from those who find success after multiple setbacks, because they didn’t stop believing?

All dream-chasing contains a seed of delusion, but at what cost? The chase implies the dream is moving away, that if you don’t follow, it’ll disappear. Perhaps the chase is the ego’s attempt to make a dream a raison de vivre, or a way of feeling worthy or special.

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The ineffable is impossible to capture in language, yet poetry offers an attempt to translate. Merriam-Webster defines poetry as: “ writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.”

The word poetic is a symbol for something of indescribable beauty or magnificence. Experiences that shake us to the core, move us in immeasurable ways, or simply catch us in a moment, suspended in time. Poetry speaks in states of wonder, awe, and fascination.

Disillusionment, disenchantment, material science, and apathy towards the divine strips the…

Story Spotlight

The urgent issues facing humanity in 2021 require solutions on multiple levels: the transcendental and the personal, the individual and collective, the vast and the precise.

How do we coexist in harmony and create a better world? How do we protect the planet and look after ourselves? How do we work towards individual happiness and togetherness?

Philosophy has the power to illuminate, inspire, and offer solutions, all of which adam dhalla demonstrates in “The Right Philosophy for Our Times.”

Evoking the “crisp autumn air” of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, Dhalla explores the nuances of transcendentalism, painting a…

Wave. /weɪv/. Noun: 1. a long body of water curling into an arched form and breaking on the shore.

August 2020. I tilt my birthday card back and forth. Waves, formidable and frozen behind plastic, shift, ever-so-slightly. They’re foreboding and grandiose, captured at their peak, foam overlapping seabed before the inevitable crash.

I’m not sure if I’m mesmerized by the image, simultaneously familiar and new, or the lenticular effect. Or both.

On the back of the card is a handwritten note. Ever-thoughtful and imbued by her effortless poetry, Sanya refers to a metaphor from Joseph Campbell: “The psychotic drowns in…

The human impulse to seek truth is like a plant’s impulse to grow towards the sun. It’s an innate part of our DNA. But what represents the sun? What are we instinctively drawn towards? It’s our true nature, the self residing not in the sky, but in the soul.

However, the sun is obscured. We are taught to direct our truth-seeking impulse out there. The world, now more than ever, is full of paradoxes, assumptions, conflicting information, and outright lies. Externalizing the truth-seeking impulse causes confusion and overwhelm.

Here, I’ll explain in detail the truth-seeking impulse and the distinction between…

From a dream, or a half-sleep state, the magician awoke in communication with God. God told the magician that he was about to tell him all there was to know about life, the Holy Grail of truth.

However, there was one caveat.

The magician, in writing down these ideas and insights, had to collect all of the world’s knowledge, and the knowledge of the universe, into a book. The Book of Secrets. Then, upon finishing the manuscript, the magician had to bind the book in a sacred ritual, filling each page with divine intent.

Once the book was complete —…

The word petrichor is as beautiful as nature itself. It combines the Greek petra (stone) and īchōr, which in Greek mythology is the “ethereal fluid that makes the blood of Gods immortal.” Petrichor describes the sweet scent of freshly fallen rain, a smell somehow grounding and expansive.

As clouds gather before a storm, there’s tension in the sky and tension in our bones, as if we’re intuitively hardwired to sense an incoming downpour. After a storm, the air changes. The clouds clear. Petrichor fills the air, and we’re hardwired to enjoy the sweet scent of relief.

This natural phenomenon can…