These days, there’s so much coming at us from all sides. The noise of media never stops; it comes with a chirp on our phones, with the never-ending ticker tape running across the bottom of the television screen, with flashing billboards that cram two or three ads in the time it takes to drive past them on our morning commutes. Where is the high ground, the safe space that offers rescue and rest from the deafening storm of modern life?

Modern life isn’t providing a multitude of ideas akin to brainstorming. The pace of it is too rapid to be absorbed or digested. The response is to hunker down, to weather it.

So what can we do, how do we aim for more than surviving this modern life? The answers are ancient: breathe. center. cultivate silence.

Will we miss out on some interesting things by doing these things? Absolutely.

Will it save us from drowning in the maelstrom of things tearing us apart? We’ll only know by trying…

[Robert Kegan wrote this book in the 1990’s. His main point: it isn’t enough to be a good person and a skilled, dedicated worker to live a successful life. Modern life demands critical thinking skills never required in past decades. And our society is not fostering those skills.]