sherwood soley

Something feels off. You know it. I know it. Most of the people around you know it, even if they can't quite name it or agree on why. America is out of alignment. The planet is out of alignment. The systems and structures that have governed our lives — political, economic, social, institutional — are not failing because they were poorly designed. They are doing exactly what they were designed to do: serve a very small number of people at the expense of everyone else. The foundation they were...

There's a version of showing up in the world that looks like presence but isn't. It's performance. It has the right words, the right cadence, maybe even the right intentions — but there's a subtle layer of management underneath it, a quiet effort to appear like we have it together, like we know, like we're in control. Most of us do this without realizing it. One person in our circle this week talked about training new hires at work and how easy it is to drift into that mode — performing...

Start with what you know. The chair beneath you. The coffee going cold on your desk. The phone in your hand. These are physical objects, made of matter — combinations of elements from the periodic table, the basic building blocks of the material world. You learned this in school. It's settled, familiar, unremarkable. Now go one layer deeper. That matter is made of molecules. Those molecules are made of atoms. And atoms, when you look closely enough, are mostly empty space — a nucleus...