In today’s world of misinformation, moral dilemmas, and cultural clashes, we search for what’s right. To find the answer, we can start from a simpler question: what’s true?
This book, ‘The way of Life: Aligning our self, community, and society with Life on Earth’ (TwoL) is my response to the toxicity that we see today – discrimination, toxic narcissism, pollution, mass extinctions, climate change, systemic oppression, fake news, toxic masculinity, negative thinking, intrusive thoughts, downward spirals, schadenfreude, the list goes on… Overcoming these threats to our wellbeing requires us to come together and find a common basis. We must understand how to discern the truth so that we can’t be convinced by lies. My search for the truth led me to write TwoL. It contains my beliefs, concepts that I’ve been made to believe (e.g., social norms), those that I want to believe (e.g., mental constructs), and those that I’m still testing (e.g., hypotheses). In reading it, I beg you to keep an open heart and broad mind. Even the most convincing and logical statements could be speculative. Use your intuition to guide you through. For the statements that seem unreasonably harsh, I’m sorry for your discomfort, but still sit with it. Remember that the purpose of sharing my thoughts is to provoke your own. If something interests you, the citations will help you dig deeper. And here are quotes and songs that have also contributed.
What’s it about?
TwoL is about how to align our self, community, society, and life on Earth (Life). Life survives, evolves, and flourishes through its lifeforms. By aligning our own way of life with the way of Life, we can flourish too. We flourish when everything we depend on is thriving – including our self, family, pets, houseplants, friends, colleagues, the plants and animals we eat, and the micro-organisms we drink and breathe. Even inside our body, trillions of micro-organisms work together to keep us alive – we’re a whole ecosystem! Expanding this system to the scale of the Earth, Life too is made up of trillions of organisms who depend on each other. From the individual to the global scale, we’re interdependent and interconnected. It’s in our best interest to practice self-care, and by extension, care for our interdependents. We start by celebrating our existence and empowering our uniqueness. TwoL is an inside-out wayfinding tool that illuminates our journey toward inner alignment, social resonance, and a society that flourishes with Life.
Writing this book has been an exercise in defining how I want to live my life, and why. It has improved my life already. I hope that reading it will help you cultivate your own way of life. Enjoy!