Magazine
Find your own way
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 Whether they choose traditional or alternative therapies, cancer survivors all embrace these six habits of mind. By Laura Bond When Laura Bond’s mother, Gemma Bond, was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancer in March 2011, she refused chemotherapy and Read More...
Invest like a bee
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 Biomimicry teaches us that a well-functioning system relies less on balance sheets and more on human ingenuity. by Katherine Collins We are all investors. We invest our time, our energy, our money. We invest every single day—as citizens, as consumers, as Read More...
Humble Inquiry: Ask, don’t tell
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 All too often, leaders think their job is to tell others what to do. But true leadership means asking questions. The other day I was admiring an unusual bunch of mushrooms that had grown after a heavy rain when a lady walking her dog chose to stop and tell me Read More...
Rock on Buddha
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 By Elleke Bal Stay awake. Watch and reflect. Work with careful attention. In this way you will find the light -within yourself.” This instruction for novice monks comes from the Buddhist -Dhammapada scriptures, but such careful attention also applies to the Read More...
Clearing the air
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 Forget the airpocalypse—the skies are getting cleaner. Hopeful signs from Mexico City, no longer the world’s dirtiest. On a cool Saturday morning, I check the air quality report on Twitter before putting on my running shoes. “Good,” the tweet says—as Read More...
Inspiration: A year without processed food
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Megan Kimble, a journalist based in Tucson, Arizona, decided to spend one year eating only whole, unprocessed foods. Her book Unprocessed: My Busy, Broke City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food tells about her journey. Why did you decide to stop eating Read More...
Ode to Guilin and Lijiang River National Park, Guangxi, China
Protecting China’s natural heritage From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2915 “The river winds like a green silk ribbon, while the hills are like jade hairpins.” So wrote the Chinese poet Han Yu (768–824), in praise of the area surrounding the Chinese city of Guilin, at the banks of the Read More...
Ode to Abeer Seikaly, Amman, Jordan
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 A new kind of mobile home People move. It’s what they have always done and what they will keep doing. Architect, artist and cultural producer Abeer Seikaly, from Amman, Jordan, designed an elegant and practical home for people who are forced to move on to a Read More...
Possibility: Let nature run wild
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Commentary by Fred Pearce, a London-based environmental writer, is author of numerous books, most recently The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, from which this is excerpted. Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating Read More...
Possibility: One Last Thing: “We find the void in our minds”
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 At sea, Henk de Velde has discovered something on his many solo voyages around the world: the void. Now the Dutch sea-farer tries to find it on the land as well. And he recommends everyone do the same. What do you mean by void? “Void is space. I Read More...