Reflection on Kindness and Generosity

On this cozy Christmas Eve of 2025, as the world softens by candlelight and a forecasted blanket of snow, I am wrapped in gratitude for the simplest, most heartfelt factoid of the season.
Amid this joyful pause, let's notice something truly beautiful about us humans: how naturally our hearts turn toward kindness, giving, and sharing.
We bake extra cookies for neighbours, linger longer in conversations, offer a helping hug or a listening ear.
We share our time, our stories, our homemade treats, and we do it freely, without keeping score or expecting applause.
These quiet acts form the “giving economy”, the generous and unseen foundation that holds our world together.
We can have shops and pay checks only because the paid system rests on the deeper layer of our natural tendencies toward kindness and generosity.
Without the unpaid care that feeds stomachs and souls, mends hearts, and renews us all year round, there would be no money-based economy at all. Or civilization. Or humans, probably.
This holiday season shines a gentle light on this fact, reminding us that true abundance isn't found in more things, but in open arms and meaningful connections freely offered for the betterment of all living beings.
And the beauty of simple living is that we don’t have to wait to live this way.
In simple living, we lean into this truth. 
We choose presence over presents, and find deep joy in realizing our natural tendencies toward kindness.
I hope your evening is filled with laughter around the table, the scent of cinnamon or pine, and the quiet knowing that your kindness matters more than anything.
May the many small acts of giving and receiving warm the world tonight, and year round.
First, give the gift of being kind to yourself. 
Next, extend it to others.
Repeat.
This makes everything else possible.

Nature Never Lies: Quiet Simple Truths

One who strives to make Truth home

May at times be lonely.

One who fawns on the powerful and influential

Will know the chill of solitude for ages.

The superior person peers deeply into

Transcendent reality,

And thinks about the body

They will have after this one is gone.

Rather should one suffer a temporary loneliness

Than the solitary chill of ages.

— Hung Ying-ming

Ying-ming's words settle quietly in my mind, like the sound of one hand clapping. 

For years I have listened skeptically to the voices that promised certainty: the reports, the pronouncements, the endless noise of official explanation. 

They spoke with certainty, yet the words felt as substantial as a vaporous breath on an icy cold day.

Gradually I have stopped listening. Not out of anger, but because my heart found no sanctuary in those places. 

Now I sit with what nature has revealed to me.

The wind moves the branches without apology.

The stream directs the flow without asking permission.

The breath rises and falls, steady and unconcerned with opinion.

Here there is no need for deception, no need for playing make believe to force things to be true. Nature simply shows itself.

And inside, the same stillness waits — the quiet knowing that does not need to be convinced.

The mind, of course, is skilled at weaving its own tales, at building walls of belief to feel safe. It is a lonely and brave quest to surmount those walls. 

Yet the loneliness of seeing clearly still feels lighter than the burden of living inside a narrative that is not one’s own.

The chill of ages comes not from solitude, but from clinging to what was never truly yours.

So I return, again and again, to what is already here: the trees, the breath, the silence between thoughts.

No explanation is required.

Much can be found in what is already here, in the quiet moments, in a sunny blue sky, in the simple pulse of being. 

What does nature, outside you and inside you, whisper to you these days?