⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🔗 Radical Belonging in an Age of Othering: This essay invites us to consider whether we are sick from loneliness or from not belonging — to each other and ourselves — and how gratefulness offers a remedy. Read it here.

🧠 How memorizing poetry can expand your life: “I was always a reluctant reader of poetry, but memorizing a poem every week gave me a new understanding of myself.” Read it here.

🙏 How to find new spiritual practices: Even if religion isn’t for you, there’s a world of rituals and tools to lift yourself up and connect to something greater. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

Lake Hillier, located in Australia's Recherche Archipelago, captivates with its striking bubble-gum pink hue that remains constant year-round, even when bottled. Unlike other pink lakes whose colors are well understood, the cause of Lake Hillier's unique coloration remains a mystery, with theories suggesting a combination of high salinity, algae, and bacteria. While safe for humans, the lake is off-limits to swimmers and can only be viewed from helicopters due to its research-only status.

 🐰 4 Years of Rabbit Holes

This marks issue 208—four years of rabbit holes. 208 consecutive weeks without missing a single one. Through all the changes in my personal life—both joyful and challenging—this project has been a constant companion, anchoring me in a sea of flux. It's pushed me to dig deep into the things that spark wonder and wisdom and share those discoveries with you.

In many ways, this has been an ongoing research project—a quest to reclaim a sense of wonder that often hides in the cracks of daily life. Whether it's through links to fascinating ideas, images that reveal the hidden beauty of the natural world, or words that help us reframe the familiar and see it anew, each week has been an opportunity to invite wonder back into our routines. I've shared my own thoughts, along with insights from writers and speakers I deeply respect, all with the hope of inspiring you to look at the world through a lens of curiosity and amazement.

As we celebrate four years, I'm more committed than ever to continuing this journey. Much like completing a degree, this feels like a moment of transformation—a signal to dive even deeper. I’m excited to share that I’ll be focusing on building a closer connection with a smaller group of subscribers, where we can move beyond simply tasting wonder and begin feasting on it. I’ll be offering new ways for us to explore this together in a more immersive, hands-on way.

Before I move forward, though, I’d love to hear from you. How have these weekly explorations shifted your perspective? What moments of wonder have you uncovered in your own life? Your reflections will help shape the next chapter of this journey, and I can’t wait to hear what’s surfaced for you.

Stay tuned—there’s so much more ahead. We’re just getting started.

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😨 Scared To Be Human

Enjoy this poetic reminder from Whitney Hanson:

“I think we spend too much time being afraid of our own mediocrity

We don't want to sing too loudly in case someone finds out that we don't have a voice like glass

We don't write music because we aren't Mozart

We don't paint because we're not Picasso

We don't tell people that we love them because our voice might shake when we say it.

We try to be pretty criers.

We don't dance because we aren't that good.

The reality of our humanity is that we are all a little bit average at a lot of things.

The truth is that we're all not that good.

So stop holding yourself back from enjoying the things that you love because you're not a prodigy at everything.

Scream the song at the top of your lungs and confess you love.

And let your voice be shaky.

Cry big ugly tears.

Dance really badly.

Because life is too short to be scared of being human.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Wabi-sabi: Finding beauty within the imperfections of life and peacefully accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

10 Timeless Reasons Why Your Life Matters

If the world has ever attempted to lasso your soul and pull you into a pit of nihilistic hopelessness, consider this a memo from the universe zapping you with an electrical current of meaning.

There is an inextinguishable significance to your life. Yes, specifically YOUR life. This significance does not exist purely because you wish it into existence. It is not a matter of make-believe. It is real and there are timeless reasons for it.

My hope is that reading this will plant the seeds to help you feel your significance in your bones. That it might burn so vividly that others can see it shining in your eyes. And, who knows, they might even catch a glimpse of their own significance reflected in your gaze.

1. You are loved.

Every human is loved.

We might not believe that we are but that does not eliminate the existence of this love. The people in our lives might not be skilled in displaying their affection but it still lives in a subterranean current flowing through your interactions with them, underneath the years of conditioning that has hardened their expression. It is there.

And if you still claim that you are not loved, remember that there are human beings who can, in a single encounter, find a depth of kinship and empathy for shared pain. They can walk away from an interaction with love in their hearts for a random passerby on a someday lost to the pages of a calendar. You’ve had these encounters in your life even if your memory betrays you.

And dear reader, if you are sitting somewhere feeling unloved, my heart goes out to you. I might not know a single detail about your life but I don’t need to know to feel for you. If you’re in that place, I’m sending you my love.

The thing is, you almost certainly do not have an accurate accounting of all the love in your life but the numbers don’t need to add up for the love to be there. You are loved. And this love changes people…

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