Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment, because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.

I was an angry young man, as you say. I was a punk rocker, blaming the government, corporations, and anything external, like my family, for my anger. I was pretty miserable, festering in my own mind. I began to think, there has to be a different way, there has to be another way out.

In the Buddhist tradition, where mindful meditation comes from, anger is regarded as a somewhat unhealthy,unskillful emotion because we can be blinded by it. We don't see clearly and tend to do things and say things that are harmful out of the anger because we don't have clarity.

It's important that we see clearly with wisdom and awareness, but also take action.

With mindfulness, we can be with the experience in more immediate way. When we find ourselves flooded with an emotion that's come after the judgement, we've often missed the very judgment that triggered the emotion.

A baroque art-rock bubblegum broadcast on a frequency understood only by female teenagers and bred field mice.

I often think people on opposite sides of the political spectrum may have similar values around care, around thriving or around independence, or around helping the disadvantaged, but they have different ideologies, different ideas and philosophies about how to go about that. It's important that we start to see each others humanness, while at the same time not losing sight of those differences, views and speeches and actions that do cause harm, that we're clearly taking a stand against.