Wise Wednesdays

 I couldn’t help but feel a chill down my spine. Still no interest in going trekking but I offered a relational Deep Dive for my coliving-coworking group and have been getting to know the people and culture around me more deeply. Interesting - and sometimes arresting - insights emerge.   The Pokhara citizens are relieved that rained has finally arrived again. Precipitation patterns have become unpredictable due to a combination of factors. The Pokhara Valley itself – the second largest in Nepal – is thought to have been carved out by an ancient flood. With droughts, catastrophic floods, melting glaciers, urban sprawl stripping away protective forests, and black carbon darkening the skies, it’s hard not to feel a sense of impending doom.  Photo: Water. Stillness. Peace. Lake Phewa, Pokhara, Nepal.   I felt a sense of familiar powerlessness in the face of monumental forces beyond my control and the sense of life’s fragility – the fear of not being able to change anythi...

  [Reflections from Nepal, 2025] “Things have improved so much in Tibet!”, enthused our hotel manager who has been looking after our co-living and co-working group. “The Chinese government has invested a lot in infrastructure and even monasteries are open.” I wanted to believe him. But my own experience of global geopolitics gave rise to a different intuition of a more complex picture. Seeing a discreet Free Tibet (and Free Gaza) sign, the absence of Tibet on official maps, and my own knowledge of what it’s like to be a second class citizen with limited rights to work, travel, and access land provoked some grief. The persisting injustices in the world, rising polarisation within and between nations, intensification of ecological disasters are likely to increase the number of refugees and disenfranchised people in the world in the coming years. THE WISDOM OF UNCERTAINTY With the enormous shifts taking place in our lives politically, economically, and technologically, the uncertainty...

 "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?", asked the journalist. “Because it’s there!”, answered George Mallory - the mountaineer who disappeared trying to reach the summit of Everest in 1924. His remains were found in 1999. His body was facing uphill and his arms were in a grasping position, as if he were trying to arrest a descent that was out of control… As I began settling into a month-long co-living and co-working project in Nepal this week, I noticed a quiet resistance to enthusiastic propositions of trekking in the Himalayas. I thought of all the stories of adventurers braving the Himalayas and wondered if I’ve just grown too comfortable? Perhaps.  But I feel strongly drawn to nature and discovery. So on reading an article en route to Pokhara about the growing damage that tourism has done to local resources, I realised that I also felt misaligned with the idea of climbing a mountain ‘just because it’s there’. For the recovering overachiever in me, the need to prove ‘I...