There comes a time in life, when we must walk away from some of the unfinished things in our lives. When we must renew our license to dream as it does reach an expiry date after getting relegated or thwarted repeatedly. It also helps to know this fact that every dream has a ‘past its sell-by date’. Knowing this helps us to discard the old and make room for new dreams, and look at the horizon with a bright new hope.   Read more...

It has been awhile since I sent in a blog to Ode. A combination of travel and busy with family on holidays was one reason. The other was that I have been trying to write an article based on thermodynamics, entropy, self regulating systems and the mind inspired by my engineering education of the past and my current inquiry into mind and matter. The article essentially bogged me down. I was obsessed by the topic for some time that I could not think of anything different to write. I have finally come to terms with it, left it aside for now and writing again.

The travel at the end of June has to be blamed on the Ode magazine as I got hooked on the Shambhala Summer Institute on Authentic Leadership in Action in Halifax, Canada. So, I did not worry about how I could afford the $3,000 fee and $2,000 airfare from Colombo to Halifax and back, I just jumped in. It was made more affordable to me by the good Shambhala folk through their scholarship programme and this was one of the best decisions I made this year.   Read more...

Try this experiment for a week - or even just a day: Fix your plate as you normally would, but before you eat, take the time to determine how many servings of food you are taking in. You may be surprised to find out that you are ingesting 3-4x the recommended servings.

Most Americans don't know what an actual serving looks like because we're so used to receiving and eating such large portions. If you find that you're "supersizing" at every meal, you should gradually reduce your serving sizes and chances are that you will be satisfied with less food.   Read more...

Eating alien babies. Dorothy liked the Chinese restaurant very much. The buzzing conversations, the carefully contrived atmosphere of oriental chic. Plus, there’s that waiter that looks like Christian Bale. But she always thought that doing dim sum was like eating alien babies. Cute little monsters that sliver down your throat.

‘My life is effectively over.’ Millie fishes for martian shrimp and is having somewhat of a quarterlife crisis. ‘Today I had a job interview. I think they googled me and found the party pictures my ex-boyfriend posted on facebook, because they had this disgusted look on their faces. It could have been arrogance, I’m not sure. There was this woman, I swear, with the characteristics of a sweatshop manager. She asked me what music I liked to listen to and I just panicked.’   Read more...

The dots between the letters tell you, undoubtedly, that I’m using P.E.A.C.E. as an acronym—a word made up of the first letters of additional words that spells another word altogether. This one comes from the brilliant mind of the luscious Iyanla Vanzant, a spiritual teacher based in Maryland. It stands for:

Please Excuse All Crazy Experiences

Is that not phenomenal? I think it is. So very often when we hold out an ideal for our world, we dangle the ideal. Dangle it? Lambast with it is more like it, but we forget one vital piece of the puzzle. And that is the indubitable how question.   Read more...

Teenage pregnancy is a problem in South Africa. Young single mothers are ubiquitous in my village and the surrounding communities. Sometimes when I visit the post office I find a colorful queue of mothers that stretches far outside. They often have babies wrapped on their backs and some are pregnant. It’s grant day, and they are waiting to collect the monthly allowance provided by the government. Each month on the post office wall a new hand-written sign appears with three dates designated for child grant distribution. A range of years is listed after each date; mothers collect the grant based on their own birth year. Initially it troubled me to see that girls born more than ten years after me were collecting grants for their children. How could a 16-year-old possibly be a mother? I’m 27 years old and don’t feel prepared for that responsibility!

Despite my personal lack of present maternal instincts, I recognize that many women do feel those instincts at a far younger age. But an instinct alone cannot—and should not—explain the alarmingly high rate of pregnancy.   Read more...

Would you sugarcoat your words?

When conversing with one another we try to project truth but how often is the bitter truth disguised as what they say, “ sugar coated pills?” In a direct conversation, the energies are fully conscious, regenerative and articulate, but there is a set of laws that contributes to the archetypal structure of talks.

These set of laws are about being polite, being discreet, politically correct (in some circumstances) and being diplomatic in one’s speech. For example if I need to say something unpleasant to someone I would use the “ indirect speech” such as “ I think we must ‘reconsider’ our relationship, it is hurting both of us.” Rather than “I have stopped loving you, and I want you out from my life.” When I imagine myself at the receiving end of both the ways, I know which one I would prefer!   Read more...

While on a quest for weight loss, we often search for every small advantage we can find. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it leads us to make emotional food choices rather than choosing healthy foods based on proven facts. Emotionally, the following list of foods may sound like great options, but read on to find out why they may fool you:   Read more...

It's late, and dark. We're in one of the many suburbs of Dar, more than an hours drive from the center. The roads are more potholes with some little road on the side then anything else. Houses have space here, there are trees and bushes and it doesn't feel like town. Our passengers have fallen silent, or are asleep and only the driver and me are awake. Every junction we guess: right or left, in an attempt to escape the web of dirt roads and get back to the main road. Families sit at their verandas, eating and talking in the fresh breeze. We talk with long pauses, about work, home, religion, the future and how hungry we are. Then the topic changes to politics.   Read more...

One of the fancy places in Dar es Salaam. A fast food chain, a bakery, internet café and little tables host lots of youngsters and elderly sipping their juices, chatting. I'm talking to Athman, a student of banking, working in his sister's duka, shop, and always looking for new challenges. We discuss the differences between Tanzania and the Netherlands. He has been in Holland twice on an exchange project and is well acquainted with a Dutch family who treat him like a son.   Read more...

When I was in my early twenties, Simon and Garfunkel were immensely popular. We would play their tunes night and day, and revel in the idea of being part of the culture they, and others like them, were ushering into the world. One song in particular that stuck like glue was “A Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. It is still with me. Round and round and round it has played in my head and heart over these many years.

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Dropping from the bus my sandal breaks. The repair shop is right in front of me. Dave seizes the opportunity and makes a place on his bench under a tree. While stitching my sandal, the discussion moves back and forth between the six or seven guys around him. Street vendors that keep their tangerines in Dave's eyesight, a guy selling cigarettes per piece from Dave's pack, others seemingly just sitting there advising Dave on the stitching methods.

"Who taught you to fix shoes?" is one of my curious questions to the young Rastafarian. "Njaa, hunger is the best teacher" is his simple answer "I just knew".   Read more...

Lauren Child, one of the world best known children’s authors and the creator of Charlie and Lola is donating the royalties from her best-selling book “That Pesky Rat” for three years to UNESCO’s Programme for the Education of Children in Need.

UNESCO created the Programme for the Education of Children in Need in 1992 to offer a future to vulnerable children through education. Since its creation, over US$33 million has been raised in private funds and these have been fully and directly invested into immediate support for over 332 projects in 92 countries worldwide.   Read more...

More than 300 colleges and universities give degrees in Peacebuilding and Peace Studies. The current spectrum of our peacebuilding expertise includes leading edge technologies in the fields of conflict resolution, peer mediation, post-conflict reconstruction and many other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Regrettably, current policy-making tends toward reactive, not proactive, approaches to reducing violence. We typically wait until violence has occurred and then ask our already over-taxed police and military to address these symptoms of violence through activities such as imprisonment of offenders and engagement in armed conflict. While such suppression of symptoms is vital, it is incomplete and must be augmented by stronger preventative measures, with a specific focus on the identification and treatment of root causes.

Please join us in saying, "I Stand for Peace." Help us save lives, save money, and save our country for future generations.   Read more...

Try this experiment for a week - or even just a day: Fix your plate as you normally would, but before you eat, take the time to determine how many servings of food you are taking in. You may be surprised to find out that you are ingesting 3-4x the recommended servings.   Read more...

“You will need to marry five men then."

Said Mama, with a poker face and without looking at me. She kept knitting calmly while I sat there with my mouth agape. I looked at her expressionless face and noticed the suppressed smile hovering at the corner of her mouth. From her face, I gauged that she was aware of my torrent of questions that she knew would follow her declaration, and was waiting for me to speak first.

This happened some two decades ago, when arranged marriages were quite prevalent in India and mama told me that they have looked for a match and I must be prepared to get married soon.   Read more...

Life shows “me” that “Eyes” and “Me’s” don’t really matter. What so called individuals want isn’t what happens, what needs to happen and what makes us happy. Happiness seems to fall on to people, in unexpected moments, in unexpected ways and certainly not when worked on by “I’s”.   Read more...

This is a call for license plates from around the world! If you see a license plate bearing witness to peace in any aspect, will you send it to me please at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net? We want to see if we can get them from all 50 states of the U.S.A. and all the countries of the world. So far, we’ve covered Virginia and Massachusetts.   Read more...

Waves of information overload the senses. Awkward truths encourage many to get comfortably numb. Then technology lands us in a strange place, some off-beat world, where legislators sit stunned into silence as the whole of society turns itself upside down.

Now we think sideways and sort by opportunity. We talk in metaphors, because the source-code for public discourse has been hijacked by fanatics. There are no procedures for these circumstances, no maps for these territories. A mediated reality has infused us with simultaneously a sense of loss and a sense of excitement. It is as though the moment has gripped us and won’t let go.   Read more...

Some days, you just won’t feel like working out. Maybe you haven’t been able to get as much sleep as you need or you've been having some stress at work or in your personal life. No matter the reason, sometimes you just aren’t in the mood for moving and sweating. Whenever this happens to you, try these strategies for working up the desire to hit the gym:

Remind Yourself of Your Goals - Start thinking about why you started exercising in the first place and what the end results will be. Do you want to lose a certain amount of weight? Get more toned? Have more energy? A quick reminder of why exercise is important to you can be just the motivation that you need to eek out another set of reps.   Read more...

When I gave motivational speeches to nuclear scientists many years ago, I used to ask them all a question.

Do you think world peace is a good idea?

To a person, they all thought it was rhetorical—every single time. I had to assure them that I didn’t ask rhetorical questions, and I always asked it aloud a second time.

Do you think world peace is a good idea?

A mixed alto and soprano rumble usually began in the room amongst the women present, those who carried into life the sons and daughters who might have to go to war in a world crisis. Then the men in the room would jump on the theoretical bandwagon and agree. The rumble got some tenor and basso notes.   Read more...

Sasaya is a small rural village in Northeastern Japan. It consists of one street with houses on both sides. Behind these long narrow homes runs a river, which considerately divides itself to flow on both sides of the street. The water is crisp and cool, coming straight off the mountain. Locals use it as is for drinking and cooking. And since it never freezes, despite the rugged winters in that area, it is appreciatively used year round.

Behind this small fast-flowing river are huge vegetable patches bursting with summer produce that bring tomatoes and cucumbers, onions and squash, daikon and potatoes to the family table. Since the one and only supermarket is a long drive away, homegrown food is a fact of life, as it has been for centuries.   Read more...