“…And the Pursuit of Happiness”

 “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” said Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers in his immortal proclamation, heralding the independence of our country. Well, life and freedom one can understand but “happiness”? How do we pursue it? What is happiness anyway? Our third President certainly had the resources to be happy; but, he…

Gossiping About Gossip

As I have mentioned many times in the past, we humans are complicated creatures. There exist two separate groups of inborn traits in us, which together make up our human nature:  one making up the individual part of ourselves (selfishness, calculative-ness, aloofness, etc.); and the other making up the social (altruism, compassion, social interactions, cooperativeness,…

Muddy Water

Dedicated to my friend with the angelic smile…   It was a night full of stars and calmness, past midnight. The chill was already piercing my bones. And yet, it was beautiful because it was calm, and my soul was at rest… I was alone, quite alone at the estuary of the Axiós, wrapped up…

Some Thoughts on Our Death

We erroneously have believed in the past that the knowledge of our inevitable death was an exclusive one for we humans. Now we do know that elephants for sure — and probably other high mammals (especially the great apes) — do know about being alive, have a sense of selfhood, and the knowledge of their…

Death of Your Partner

We humans are above all social beings. Our evolutionary success and survival depended on it and still does. A significant part of us prompts us to cooperate, exchange affection, display altruism, compassion, loyalty, ending up feeling belonging to that group or tribe, and addition and in return, we feel joy and meaning in contributing and…

Do Animals Know

We humans are “a many  splendored  thing.” We have enormous intellect, curiosity, creativity, tenacity, imagination, eagerness to “master,” pugnacity, altruism, kindness, cooperativeness, side by side with competitiveness, our altruism side-by-side with readiness to “kill the enemy” of the adjoining tribe, whoever that may be at the time. We are also the only remaining Homo  species…

On Boredom

One monotonous day is followed by another monotonous, identical day. The same things will happen, they will happen again — the same moments find us and leave us.   A month passes and ushers in another month. One easily guesses the coming events; they are the boring ones of yesterday. And the morrow ends up…

Let’s Talk All About Religion

Religious narratives and practices are almost universal. All such narratives share certain characteristics centered around a powerful deity, whether it is called God, Theos, Gott, Dieu, Allah, Elloheim, YHWH, or The Great Spirit, or even worshiping many gods like in the Hindu culture. There must be a universal need written in our nature to create…