Thank you to everyone who joined us on our very first 'Buddhist Discovery Retreat'!

​I think my girls were around the ages of five and three respectively when I suddenly became aware of just how much I’d let the housework go.  The milk stains on the lounge, the thick dust along the blinds and skirting boards, the sticky floors and the dried-up food splatters encasing the kitchen cupboards like graffiti art.

​Not to mention the oven that had not been cleaned since we bought it 2 years earlier (yes that’s right, 2 years!).

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​Scrolling through some of the latest online newsfeeds today I could choose to read about 5 Mistakes Companies Make About Growth Mindsets, 5 Jobs in Short Supply, 10 Benefits of Speaking Truthfully, 5 Simple Steps to Stop Kids Bickering   or the 8 Most Haunted Places in my local area.
 
It gets me wondering – why do we need 5, 8 or 10 reasons to read these articles? Can we be drawn to a piece of writing that we would like to read simply because it sounds like an interesting topic? Or is this an impossibly idealistic notion in a world where on average we encounter over 100, 000 words each day via email, text, ads, social media and the rest of our daily experience?
 
Don't get me wrong, I myself have become victim to this style of writing in recent times (and it is even encouraged to writers in the submission guidelines of some online media outlets), so without sounding hypocritical I would like to genuinely explore this rising trend and in particular question its overall benefit to what author ​Maryanne Wolf describes as our 'reading brain'.

​YouTube Credit: Dissolve

I've been following the extremely talented Maria Popova now for a few years, and when I came across this gorgeous clip summarising her first seven years at Brain Pickings it resonated so much with me that I just had to share it (it is a few years old now but still well worth a look).