Sometimes it takes a fire hydrant turning into a geyser to remind us that there is somebody there to fix it. In seeing all of the people around us who make systems and services work, we begin to understand what it takes to make a community thrive.
Author
Courtney E. Martin
Courtney E. Martin was a columnist for On Being. Her newest book, The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream, explores how people are redefining the American dream (think more fulfillment, community, and fun, less debt, status, and stuff). Courtney is the co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and a strategist for the TED Prize. She is also co-founder and partner at Valenti Martin Media and FRESH Speakers Bureau, and editor emeritus at Feministing.com.
Courtney has authored/edited five books, including Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists, and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. Her work appears frequently in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Courtney has appeared on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O’Reilly Factor, and speaks widely at conferences and colleges. She is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre. She lives with her partner in life and work, John Cary, in Oakland, and their daughters Maya and Stella. Read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.
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Part of becoming an adult is learning how to lower your expectations. But parenting a toddler brings different gifts — of rediscovering discovery, reuniting with awe, and finding where the mundane becomes miraculous.
When yes is overused it takes what should be a whole-hearted gift and turns it into an anxiety-producing check box. Courtney Martin's argument for saying "no" gracefully and learning to measure life in acts of unhurried love.
Closure may not be all it's cracked up to be. Courtney Martin on the death of a friendship and the insatiable, sometimes unsatisfying, need to create silver linings where none exist.
Researchers are showing that doing it all at the same time is a “diabolical illusion.” If we know this, why does it continue to be so seductive, so alluring? In this technological, overambitious age, a commentary on striving to be focused and whole again.
In a day where more and more wedding ceremonies are not presided over by an official religious figure, there's much to figure out when it comes to designing a ritual. Some practices to consider for modern nuptials.
Making connections can be "life-giving" but they can also reinforce "damaging divides." Courtney Martin is reminded of the vitality of human bonds — and the chasms that remain in this hypernetworked world.
So often it's the quiet moments with someone that cements and deepens a relationship. An acknowledgement (and a bit of a love letter) to the silence that joins us together.
As the siren song of productivity in the new year beckons, our weekly columnist Courtney Martin finds presence and peace of mind in the habits of a less productive but more awesome life.
We don't choose our family, as the old saying goes, but we do choose our friends. An encouragement to discover people to surround ourselves with and scout friends who beget our culture.
The end of year is fast approaching. And with that comes an influx of charitable giving. In this digital age when the basket is now an online form, how do we create a spiritual practice of tithing and discern the "right" way to give?
Lennon Flowers and Carla Fernandez are creating a national movement of dinner parties for 20-30 year olds that are humanizing grief and creating new communities after loss.
With the overwhelming angst of privilege, our columnist confesses to her own inclinations to participate in Twitter testimonies of white privilege. But, it's no substitute for the moral imagination required to acknowledge the emotional lives of others.
With the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown, a school of children's uncommon silence in New Mexico leads the way to expressing grief and finding a role for our anger.
Atul Gawande's new book on the aging and the dying process inspires this column on turning bearing witness to our own instincts and doing things a different way.
Before conscious time began, someone cared for you. And you survived. A call to action to remember that someone showed up for you over and over and over again.
We often desire a sense of adventure and travel. But when a "life of wandering" overtakes a "life of rootedness," we take time away from home and community — and "the ground at our own feet."
Nowadays there are unintended consequences for just about everything we do. An encouragement to strive for curiosity over goodness, to seek gentleness over righteousness, and engage with ethics as a process rather than a destination.
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