Month: May 2025

The monarch also had a ‘frightening’ health update.

Many of us, as we advance through the decades, begin to ask deeper questions: What really matters? How can I make peace with the past? What will help me stay steady amid life’s changes? For thousands of years, Buddhism has offered what I have come to cherish as a gentle and enduring response to these questions. Its insights might have been formulated in ancient India, but they are remarkably relevant to our lives today, especially for those of us at a life stage where the quest for achievement is beginning to give way to a need for understanding.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”—Dhammapada

Looking Within to Let Go

Buddhism began with the journey of one man: Siddhartha Gautama, whom we all know as the Buddha. He might have been born into great privilege, but he was keenly aware of the suffering he saw in the communities and society around him. The easy path would have been for him to count his blessings, turn away from the misery he saw, and surround himself with the comforts of his class, as his social peers no doubt did.

But no. Deeply troubled by what he knew was going on outside his own bubble, he walked away from his life of affluence and began to search for meaning. What he discovered is, in my view, as essential to grasp today as it was back then: peace doesn’t come from avoiding pain, but from learning how to live wisely with it.

The Buddha and his adherents had a unique proposal for acting on this insight. Rather than offering commandments or asking for blind belief, Buddhism encourages us to look inward, gently and honestly. The conclusion that those who do so tends to be this: everything in life – joy, sorrow, even our very sense of self – is temporary, constantly shifting. This can be a liberating thought, especially at a time of life when we are asked to let go of many things, from roles and loved ones to expectations and, sometimes, physical capacities.

A Compassionate Way of Living

I would argue that at its heart, Buddhism is not about worship; it’s about awareness. The Buddha’s core insight was that suffering is part of life, but that we can learn to meet it with clarity and compassion. He taught what are now known as the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life involves suffering, major and minor.
2. Much of that suffering comes from our clinging to people, to outcomes, to ideas of how things “should” be.
3. If we can learn to let go, suffering lessens.
4. There’s a path to help us do this: mindfulness, ethical living, and thoughtful reflection.

These ideas are simple, though as I and many others who have tried to embrace them have discovered, they’re not always easy to act upon. But if you can filter what happens in your life through them, you are rewarded with an empowering insight: each of us can shape our experience through how we choose to respond to life.

Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life

If, like me, you aspire to make room for calm and clarity in daily life, Buddhist practices can be quietly transformative. I could write pages and pages about these practices, but for your sake and mine, I will confine myself here to a top three:

• Mindfulness invites us to return to the present moment, without judgment. Whether we’re sipping tea, folding laundry, or walking through a garden, we can learn to be fully there.
• Meditation helps us make friends with stillness. Just a few minutes a day of sitting quietly and breathing gently can ease anxiety and sharpen awareness.
• Kindness and ethics are central. Buddhism encourages us to act with care: not to harm, not to lie, not to take more than we need. These simple precepts create harmony both within us and in our relationships.

Even rituals – you might choose Eastern ones such as lighting incense, bowing, or repeating chants, but you could just as easily formulate ones grounded in your own culture and lifestyle – can become comforting acts of intention, especially when practiced with a sense of quiet reverence.

Why Buddhism Speaks to So Many Today

For a faith that is more than 2,500 years old, Buddhism feels surprisingly modern. There’s a good reason why its tools – especially mindfulness and meditation – have entered mainstream life: they help people manage all kinds of woes, from stress and grief to chronic illness.

But beyond stress relief, many people in their 60s and beyond find that Buddhism offers something deeper: a way to age with grace. A way to welcome change. A way to sit gently with sadness, without letting it harden into bitterness.

My Final Thought

Buddhism doesn’t promise miracles. It doesn’t ask us to pretend that life is always easy. What it offers is a calm, compassionate, and thoughtful framework for meeting life as it is, not as we wish it to be. As we grow older, we may discover that peace doesn’t lie in changing the world around us, but in softening the way we hold it.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” —The Buddha

Let’s Discuss:

Have you researched Buddhism and what do you know about it? Do you think it has a place in today’s culture? In what ways?

Did they tie the knot yet?

When I feel frustrated with life, I want to be able to call my best girlfriends and meet them for something to eat or drink – whenever I need, and whenever I feel like it. (Think Friends or Sex and the City!) I want to go and have a few laughs, witty conversation, and have all my problems solved in 30 minutes; well actually 20 because there are no commercials in real life. And, like the people on TV, I want to have nice clothes to wear, hair and makeup done to perfection, and be able to wear anything and look good.

If life imitated art, at the very least, we’d all have a group of friends at the ready, to go, to do, or just to be… together.

Real Life Relationships – Are They Extinct?

It seems as though we don’t have (or make) as much time anymore to get together for breakfast, lunch, coffee or whatever. Quick texts have replaced actual human contact. These are the microwaves of conventional communication. In less than five minutes you too can exchange a heartfelt sentiment, make a dinner date, or console a friend. Unfortunately, it just isn’t the same as a slow cooked conversation.

It appears that many of our ‘IRL’ lives have been preempted by engaging instead with our technical devices. Time is flying by quickly with forwarded jokes and memes sent to show someone is thinking of you. And when we remember that our smart phones are smart enough to also make a phone call, sometimes our only time to connect with friends and loved ones is from the car.

This Is Life in the Fast Lane

I call it ‘windshield time’. We’ve gotten so busy that catching up is more like giving the cliff notes version of our lives instead of taking time to share our whole story.

I guess windshield time is better than no time at all, until you get bumped, not from the speeding car behind, but for another seemingly more important call. Beep, beep, your windshield time is now over.

How is this affecting the quality of our health? Our lives? Are we losing touch (literally) and missing out on spending time with the people we care about? Are we oblivious to the rambunctious routine into which we have fallen? What will be the fall out?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions cannot be wrapped up in a 30-minute sitcom, or here in 800 words, or in a story, bookended by “once upon a time” and “they lived happily ever after.”

This Is Real Life; Not a Sitcom or a Fairy Tale

And the good news is that life is not like a fairy tale. Honestly, who would want an evil queen summoning some guy to go rip out our heart?! Or an evil witch who throws travelers and little kids into her oven to eat them?! And news flash: there is no prince who will arrive on a white horse to give us a kiss and make our life pure bliss.

Whether it’s bedtime stories, primetime stories, rom-coms, sit-coms, or good old-fashioned reruns, it is make- believe.

And I propose that we make believing a way of life. (See what I did there?!)

Believing in the ability to make time for friends and in the healing a hug from a friend can bring. Believing that most people are good and not evil and believing that we can write the script for our lives and then let go and let it play out allowing for organic, orgasmic, cosmic, serendipitous magic to happen.

What Would You Choose?

I asked in the beginning if you wished that life could be like a sitcom or comedy series. The truth is, I’m guessing we probably wouldn’t want laughter that comes from a can or for things to be wrapped up neatly in designer clothes and tied with a sparkly bow in 30 minutes; would we?

While those shows are a great escape from some of the devil in the day-to-day details, isn’t it the ordinary imperfect moments that we truly treasure? The moments when we’re in our sweats, bras and make-up off relaxing, sitting with people we love laughing and crying, crying from laughing or doing nothing in particular at all. Aren’t these some of the moments when we feel most connected, carefree and comfortable?!

Maybe we need to take time out from being behind all the screens and instead create more time for meaningful real-life experiences, with real-life face time, in real time?! What do you say?

What Are Your Thoughts?

Do you make time for people who are important to you? Do you text more than talk on the phone? Are you too attached to your phone?

Bachelor Nation is blaming Jenn Tran and Grant Ellis.