We want people around us who accept us as we are. We choose to not spend time with people who point out our frailties, inconsistencies, sins, bigotry, unfairness, insensitivities, and prejudice, or who push our buttons in real time. So we unfriend and avoid those who do not feed our worldview, beliefs, biases, and bigotry. We end up creating a wall of friends to reinforce and support our prejudice.

We humans love our ignorance. Our ignorance allows us to have lazy brains that relish the patterns we learned in childhood. We are adults now, responsible for our lives, our actions, our movements, our beliefs, and our ability to love. We have the power to change our path. All the power to change our path is in our actions.

I saw no weakness, infirmity, or surrender in old people when I was young. And I don’t see weakness, infirmity, or surrender as an age thing today. Lots of young and old people have surrendered to drugs, alcohol, video games, work, overeating, bigotry, hate, biblical laziness, and sloth, or the five principal Kleshas of Buddhism, namely: attachment, aversion, ignorance, pride, and jealousy. Age was not the cause of choosing a path of unfulfilled surrender.

YESTERDAY, I unsubscribed from The New York Times, Washington Post, and a few other news outlets. I am not trying to drop out of knowing what is going on. Rather, I found myself just wasting time. It is not productive and it does not feed my soul to read or see that President Trump did another stupid thing, told another lie, or ridiculed another person. It also does not help if I mindlessly repost another Facebook cartoon condemning all the things, we’re doing to destroy our planet.

One thing that can really make ripples is if a person is essentially “on assignment”—acting as a participant journalist. For the anniversary of Spirituality & Health, we want to cocreate great stories— to put our readers on assignment to do good works. And so we’ve partnered with the Utopia Foundation to make that happen. When confronted by “Who are you? Why are you here?” you may be able to say, in all honesty, “I’m on assignment!” This blog post explains how.

I lived in what would be considered an intentional community from age 18 to 25. I think the community worked because of a few key things: We were selective and ruthless about who we let in. We prohibited drugs and alcohol on the acres. We expected members to keep commitments—or get out!

My definition of retirement is working when you want, how you want, if you want, and where you want.