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There are numbers we calculate with, and some numbers that find us . 444  belongs to the second category. You notice it on a clock - 4:44. On a license plate. On a receipt, a stock ticker, a page number you didn’t expect. At first, it feels like coincidence. Then it happens again. And again. Eventually, you stop dismissing it. Why 4 Matters at All Across cultures, the number 4  has long been associated with structure , balance , and   order . Four seasons. Four elements. Fou

Every generation leaves fingerprints on language. Some are elegant. Some are clumsy. Some are deeply irritating to anyone over the age of about forty. And every so often, a word, or in this case, a number , appears that feels less like communication and more like a shared wink. In 2025, that word was 6-7 . Or 67 . Or six sev-uhn . According to the annual Banished Words List  from Lake Superior State University, 6-7  has officially been declared cooked , 1 a slang term that i

You hear the word everywhere now. Spat out as an insult on cable news. Dropped casually at a dinner party. Used as shorthand for everything I don’t like about the world right now . And yet, for a word that gets so much airtime, woke  has become oddly hollow. More signal than substance. More heat than light. So, it’s worth pausing to ask: what does woke actually mean? Where the Word Came From Originally, woke  wasn’t political branding or culture-war theater. It came from Bla

We all know someone who prides themselves on being sure . At first glance, certainty looks like strength. It feels like a solid floor under our feet. But certainty without adaptability  - the refusal to adjust when reality changes - is less like a solid floor and more like concrete shoes in a rising tide. That’s the heart of the idea behind the phrase: Certainty without adaptability is a dangerous illusion . Psychologically, certainty is warm and comforting. Certainty: Reduc

A close friend who I have known for many years considers me to have well-developed perfectionist tendencies . He was being polite! He recommended a book ( Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff) in which author Richard Carlson suggests that perfectionism is more often a source of quiet suffering than excellence. As I look back on a fortunate life and career, I realize that Carlson has a point. Perfectionism often disguises itself as virtue. It tells us we have high standards, that we

Facts about India are plentiful. Useful facts are earned. This piece is not about superlatives or trivia. It is about what makes the difference between merely getting through  India and truly experiencing it. Much of what follows comes from personal experience - mistakes made once, sometimes twice, but never again. Think of this as practical wisdom. India Is a Continent Masquerading as a Country India’s scale defies intuition. Distances are vast. Cultures shift dramatically

One of my favorite things to do in India is street photography. Its unlike anywhere else in the world. Colors that don’t merely decorate the scene but structure  it. Saffron, vermilion, indigo, turmeric, dust, rust, sunlight. In India, color is not esthetic garnish. It is language. It signals devotion, work, caste, celebration, grief, season, intention. For a photographer, it is irresistible. But India is not a place where you simply take  photographs. It is a place where you

People rarely speak of grace when they first leave India. They speak of exhaustion. Of noise. Of heat, crowds, delays, things that did not work the way they were supposed to. They speak of how difficult it was. How relentless. How unlike anywhere else. And then, quietly, often weeks or months later, something shifts. Grace arrives late. What Remains When the Hard Parts Fade The discomfort fades first. The frustration loosens its grip. What remains are moments so small they al

India does not meet you halfway. This is the point in the journey where many travelers stiffen. Where carefully learned rules about food, water, family, and faith collide with something less containable. Noise rises. Crowds thicken. Plans dissolve. Systems you rely on - time, order, efficiency - begin to wobble. India pushes back hardest here, not out of hostility, but indifference. Time as a Suggestion In India, time is elastic. Trains arrive when they arrive. Meetings begin

In India, faith does not lower its voice. It rings bells before dawn. It burns incense at street corners. It spills into traffic and interrupts schedules without apology. Here, belief is not something you carry discreetly. It is something you live visibly, publicly, and often without explanation. To the visitor, this can at first feel overwhelming. And then, slowly, it feels instructive. A Majority Faith That Isn’t Quiet Hinduism is not just one belief system among many in In

In India, you are not hosted. You are absorbed. There is a subtle but important difference: Hosting  implies a boundary: a start time, an end time, a sense that you will eventually leave and life will resume its usual shape.   Absorption  has no such courtesy. Once you cross the threshold of an Indian home, you are inside the organism. You are family now. Whether you asked to be or not. The Guest Is God The phrase Atithi Devo Bhava - the guest is God  - is often translated p

You can admire food from a distance. You cannot do that with water. Water enters you quietly. It slips past intention and habit, past years of unthinking trust. In India, water is never neutral. It is watched, boiled, filtered, carried, bartered, worshiped, feared. It is life - and it is risk. You learn this not from a warning sign, but from the pause before you brush your teeth. Water Is Everywhere & It’s Rarely Innocent In much of the world, water is invisible infrastructur

Before you travel in India, you must learn how  to eat. Not what  to eat - that comes later - but how . Slowly. Deliberately. With respect. With restraint. And with an understanding that food in India is not merely nourishment, but culture, religion, family, and ritual layered onto a plate. India teaches this lesson early. Sometimes forcefully. The First Truth: India Is Generous With Food Food in India is everywhere. It arrives uninvited. It is pressed upon you. It is shared

In the high desert of New Mexico, where sunlight paints the mesas in gold and red, a simple yet powerful image radiates across the landscape. The Zia Sun Symbol . To many, The symbol is instantly recognizable from the New Mexico state flag: a red sun with four groups of four rays extending outward on a golden field. But to the Zia Pueblo , this symbol carries a far deeper meaning rooted in spirituality, harmony, and respect for the natural order of life. Origins in the Zia Pu

Last Sunday morning, I noticed her in the church yard of the San Albino Basilica in Mesilla, New Mexico, 30 miles from the border. A delicate, black, lace mantilla draped over her head and shoulders, almost blending with her hair. The mantilla has long been a symbol of faith, femininity, and tradition across Spain and Latin America. In Mexico, has its own unique identity. A blend of Catholic devotion, indigenous artistry, and social expression. The mantilla’s roots reach bac

I went to Istanbul to talk about old dogs’ brains and came home thinking mostly about cats. Back in May 2002, Hill’s Pet Nutrition put together a European speaker tour on Neurological Problems of Old Dogs . Seven talks, each about ninety minutes long, marching across the map: Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Istanbul, Toulouse, Paris, and beyond. At the time, Hill’s had just launched a new therapeutic diet, Prescription Diet b/d , the first commercial food designed specifically to

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI quietly released what it called a research preview   of a conversational AI system. The instructions were modest; internally, staff were told not to treat it like a product launch. The rest of the world didn’t get the memo. Within weeks, that low-key experiment – ChatGPT - had become the fastest-growing consumer app in history, crossing 100 million users in about two months. But what is ChatGPT? Is it a search engine with better manners? A glorif

If you wanted to explain Roger Federer to someone who has never watched a tennis match, you could start with a single, startling piece of math. Over a 25-year career, Federer played 1,526 singles matches and won 1,251 of them - a towering 82% win rate , one of the best in the history of the sport. He collected 20 Grand Slam singles titles and 103 career titles along the way. And yet, in those same matches, he won only 54% of all the points he played  That tension - dominance

The ginkgo leaf holds two distinct lobes on a single stem. You can think of one lobe as the independent practice  and the other as the corporate practice . They look separate, even pull in slightly different directions, but they’re joined at the same base: the veterinary profession’s oath to relieve suffering, protect animal welfare, and serve the bond between people and their animals. Hold the leaf up to the light and you see those veins radiating out like a river delta. Tha

There is a Ginkgo tree at the end of my street .... In summer it is almost forgettable. Just another green shape among poles and power lines. But in late autumn it does something extraordinary. Overnight, the leaves turn a clear, unwavering yellow, and then, sometimes in a single windy day, they let go. The footpath becomes a carpet of fan-shaped coins, as if someone had spilled a jar of sunlight at the cul-de-sac. Standing there with a rake in my hand, it’s easy to think thi