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Tag: invitation

  • 5 Lessons on Vanity: An Invitation to Awareness and Letting Go

    5 Lessons on Vanity: An Invitation to Awareness and Letting Go

    I was once considered beautiful. Perhaps, by some, I still am.

    At fourteen years old, I took a modeling course with two of my girlfriends. The ultimate in turning the body into an object to be adored. After three weeks of learning how to walk, sashay, and twirl, we sat down to paint our faces. The palate consisted of endless brushes and shadows—pinks, browns, golds, and glimmering sparkles. 

    Now, I think of it as war paint. We were being trained in the art of disguise, heightening our beauty, to use sexuality as an enticing weapon, and as a means of power. But at the time, it was playing dress up, like a six-year-old getting into mum’s make up and smearing it all over her face, making garish designs that can look cute on children. I didn’t understand the implications. 

    As part of this evolution, thin eyebrows were a necessary part of the mask: pull out all those unsightly and unwanted hairs to create a narrow arch of both surprise and slight disdain, to disarm with a slight tilt of the head, gazing upward and flirtatious.

    One of the instructors, Mary-Anne, was moon-faced, large lipped, and fish-eyed, with long lashes. She came at me with relish, gleeful, saying, “I’ve been waiting for weeks to get at you.” 

    As she carefully tugged out each hair my eye muscles contracted into an excruciating spasm. The tears poured out of my tortured left eye while I endured this in the pursuit of iconic beauty. 

    Lesson One: Vanity Is Costly and Finite

    This was the first indication, although I didn’t get the message, that vanity has a price. 

    This attachment to the body, the idealizing of our skin bag, ultimately comes at great cost. 

    Women so often are defined by, and get their power from, physical characteristics that have a built-in expiry date. But at fourteen we can’t fully know this. It is impossible to feel what will become inevitable; we understand it as happening  to others but not to us. 

    Smiling, she handed me a mirror. I looked and saw that I was a little more hidden—that what I thought of as me, was not really me. 

    So, I sat very still, passive, while my eye cried, fascinated that this eye had a mind of its own. Finally, the teacher finished. She examined her creation and was proud. Smiling, she handed me a mirror. I looked and saw that I was a little more hidden—that what I thought of as me, was not really me. 

    Lesson Two: Desire Leads to Suffering

    When I was fifteen, Judy Welch, a diva of the modelling scene, and the owner of an agency, entered me in the Miss Chin Bikini contest that took place annually on Centre Island in Toronto. 

    We were twenty-two heads of cattle going up for the beauty auction. While uncomfortable, I was still too young to know what I was feeling. I still didn’t fully realize that we were up for scrutiny and judgment. Each of us was an object of comparison, to see who would be most valued. 

    It was 1971, and I wore a white crocheted bikini with daisy-like nipple coverings and brown platform strappy sandals. The contestants lined up before the judges in a back room behind the stage. We were twenty-two heads of cattle going up for the beauty auction. While uncomfortable, I was still too young to know what I was feeling. I still didn’t fully realize that we were up for scrutiny and judgment. Each of us was an object of comparison, to see who would be most valued in this competition of the female form. 

    Following this inspection, we swished along the runway in that contrived, lithe and pseudo-sexual manner to catcalls and Italian exclamations, and it was finally dawning on me that I am an object. It felt a little dangerous. I came in third place. Not the most beautiful, but still in the running. I won a bottle of Baby Duck that I was too young to drink, and my picture was in the Toronto Sun showing me walking, ash blonde hair, sharp jawed, bikini clad. I was a success.

    Obscene breathy phone calls followed this win, until they stopped. Some version of me was wanted. I was repulsed and afraid, but clearly also wishing to be seen. It was confusing to do what was being asked of me  and then putting myself at risk. 

    Thankfully, even then, the news was short-lived. Everything passes. This was the second lesson on vanity: As we attach, so do others, and this grasping is problematic. 

    Lesson Three: The Need for an Inner Life

    The third lesson came when I went to see a photographer to create my modelling portfolio. 

    Every model needs a book of photos to display her various looks to potential employers. These are her wares.

    Derek told me to go into the bathroom and ice my nipples and then put my tight black, ribbed cardigan back on. He directed me to partially undo my sweater. Dutifully, I complied. Already, I knew to do what men tell me. I was fifteen years old. The photographic image conveyed something unrecognizably coquettish in black and white: long hair, head tilted and mouth in a pouty kiss. 

    I see now how quickly we get lost in the appearance of things, hooked by the illusion of sex for sale, reinforcing the manufactured desire of the viewer. 

    It became important to cultivate an internal life so that when I ultimately arrived at the invisibility of middle age and beyond, there would be something more than the loss seen in the mirror. But this was a slow and painful learning.     

    My very brief modeling career soon ended after that experience. I didn’t have what it took to pretend in this way, to completely buy into the dream. 

    I realized early that my moment as a focus of male attention, and the power this gave, was time limited. It became important to cultivate an internal life so that when I ultimately arrived at the invisibility of middle age and beyond, there would be something more than the loss seen in the mirror. But this was a slow and painful learning.      

    At 28 and 34 years old I was pregnant, becoming a woman of substance, gaining 65 and 45 pounds respectively. I stopped traffic in the street when crossing, because I believed I was indestructible. 

    It was a fascinating time. My body was not mine. It did what it wanted and there was freedom in this choicelessness. The body was morphing while these creatures grew inside. I was a temporary accommodation for them. We were symbiotic while they were both inside and out, until they started running away. 

    Mindfulness and parenting are wonderful ways to develop an inner life. You come to know your experience inside and out.

    Lesson Four: Learn to Let Go

    Motherhood is a continual process of letting go. It is unfortunate that I didn’t let go of my attachment to my body and its changing appearance when I had that first opportunity. 

    Varicosities abounded as a result of pregnancy. I had one long, wriggling and twisting vein that traversed my lower leg removed for an obscene price. 

    In my forties, I started running long and fast away from the Grim Reaper, following my husband who is five years younger than I am, trying to hang on to a youth that was already gone. 

    I ran four marathons, culminating in Boston in a 90-degree Fahrenheit heat wave. I finished. So many do not. I have perseverance and pacing. I managed to develop a bleeding gut, from dehydration, and a bacteria called campylobacter picked up a month before in Guatemala. It turned my body into a vomiting, excretive, bloody mess. When this healed, I got pelvic cramping whenever I ran more than five kilometers.    

    Many years have been devoted to the mirror. I sometimes now think of hanging a black cloth over it so I can stop the compulsion to look and mourn the loss of my good looks. 

    I asked an esthetician friend of mine what she thinks are the best anti-aging products or techniques. She says, “Honey, hold back the hands of time and stop them before they start moving.” 

    Every day I examine myself through the looking glass and take in each tiny detail—the fine lines around the mouth, the darkening under the eyes, the fat herniation in my eye lids, and the gentle sagging of the jaw. 

    I asked an esthetician friend of mine what she thinks are the best anti-aging products or techniques. She says, “Honey, hold back the hands of time and stop them before they start moving.” 

    We could also consider accepting the inevitable. Just let go of hanging on to what is already gone. But we revere our youth and beauty, as do others, for so many reasons. If females need protection, it is much more likely we will get it if we are young, gorgeous, and reproductively viable. We can avoid presenting the reality of sickness, aging and death that we desperately want to ignore. Our culture, unlike some, hates aging and the aged. They are a frightening reminder of our end. We push away what we don’t like. We behave in defiance, avoiding the unavoidable truth: that we are mortal. 

    We push away what we don’t like. We behave in defiance, avoiding the unavoidable truth: that we are mortal. 

    I note every wrinkle that has begun to engrave its way into my face and see the effects of gravity over time. I see the development of the estrogen pouch as my waistline thickens. The varicosities increase, and my skin thins. Sunspots creep over my hands. Red dots pop up on my chest and belly. Thank medicine for liquid nitrogen. We can burn a lot away. Hairs sprout from my face.

    I make a pact with my friend that she will pull those hairs out of my chin if I am dying in a hospital bed. Why stop then? I see my nails thicken, skin dry, my hair grey, my libido decline. 

    Lesson Five: Acceptance Is More Helpful Than Resistance 

    I look good for my age. In that sentence there is the gripping on to that which is passing before my eyes, the need to look makes me feel good. I never tell people to guess my age. What if they are right? 

    Unable to let go, I hang on with hair colour, tweezing, exercise, vitamins, estrogen, testosterone, vein removal, facials, botox, and filler. I am careful not to cross the line into looking freakish. No duck lips or chipmunk cheeks for me. I want to look natural. To pretend on top of pretending. 

    A lack of willingness to embrace the impermanence and decline of the body is an expensive practice. Acceptance would be far more skillful than resistance, and this absurd continuous re-modelling of an aging bag. I am still chained to this body and an idea of who I think I am or who I think I should be. 

    What is acceptance if not resignation? I don’t understand it is not a battle.

    Three of my friends are turning fifty. I have three gifts for them. A care kit for the future. These are: a magnifying mirror, Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck, and Larry Rosenberg’s Breath by Breath. 

    The mirror is such an interesting companion on this journey, and avoidance of its reflection is as much an act of hanging on to your view of self as is the gazing at and manipulation of your image. It can also prevent eye trickery if one can see clearly. The books have two functions. One is for lightening attachment to the body with humour, and the other is an instruction for working with the truth that change can be a friend, rather than the enemy. 

    I have understood this lesson in acceptance, but there is still the looking glass, and I remain bound to its glitter and my image.

    This futile attempt to freeze the march of time on my face and body is the cause of suffering. Intellectually, I know this, but the idea of giving up on my body is currently aversive. The cosmetic surgery business is booming. Women in their 20s and 30s are taking the plunge into myriad injections, surgical removals and implants, spawning a generation of females who are more like Barbie than Barbie herself, with their immobile faces, large eyes, and protruding lips. If only the body were perfect, we would be happy—and yet another part of me knows this is not true. 

    I have understood this lesson in acceptance, but there is still the looking glass, and I remain bound to its glitter and my image.

    I am in my 60s now, still measuring myself against my cohort. I see these bulges of back fat, falling biceps, and increasing fatigue. My bones and muscles, however, carry me lithely and my sight and hearing are still almost perfect. I await the time when I can no longer keep up with the maintenance and am completely unseen. It would be a good time for a second career as a spy.

    Alternatively, as an 80-year old woman I knew once said, I could let it all go, “…wake up every morning, look in the mirror and laugh, shake my head, and say, How did I get here?”



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  • The Walk for Peace: An Invitation to Reimagine Where Peace Begins

    The Walk for Peace: An Invitation to Reimagine Where Peace Begins

    The Walk for Peace has been, in many ways, easy to miss. There are no slogans, no signs held up, no calls to action. 

    Instead, there is just walking. One step, then another. Breath moving in and out. Bodies moving steadily through places designed for speed.

    After 108 days and over 2,300 miles, the Buddhist monks and their beloved dog Aloka have arrived at their destination in Washington, D.C. On February 11, 2026—Day 109—they will host a global loving-kindness meditation at 4:30pm EST. 

    Our current culture is shaped by loud, frantic things: urgency, outrage, and constant stimulation. This long-distance pilgrimage across the United States offers something distinctly countercultural. It is quiet, steady, unassuming, and attentive.

    It’s a (sometimes uncomfortable) reminder that our ideas about peace are often future-oriented and externalized. We imagine a time that’s not-now, where the horrors that plague us are gone, and we can finally feel okay. 

    I live in Minneapolis, right in the city. It is not peaceful here right now. We’re surrounded daily by realities that are destabilizing, uncertain, and frightening. Smack in the middle of that, people here are also quietly nurturing a web of care that extends to neighbors and strangers alike, that is stubbornly insistent on the possibility that we belong to each other.

    What I notice is that we are starved for gentleness in a world that glorifies dominance and control. We ache for compassion in a world that keeps telling us that softness makes us weak and defective.

    This past month, I’ve found myself multiple times a week checking in with the Walk for Peace. I watch videos of such tender interactions as people go to watch these monks pass by, sometimes offering flowers or just an encouraging hello. They spontaneously weep, and I do, too. 

    What I notice is that we are starved for gentleness in a world that glorifies dominance and control. We ache for compassion in a world that keeps telling us that softness makes us weak and defective.

    It’s difficult, but also strangely empowering, to sit with the truth that the monks are embodying. Something shifts in me when I begin to think of peace, not as something “out there,” but  as a thing that starts as a tiny kernel in each of us—something we tend like an ember, ignite with our own breath and attention, and then intentionally carry and share with others—moment by moment, step by step.

    What Is the Walk for Peace?

    The Walk for Peace is a long-distance walking journey across the United States, led by a small group of Buddhist monks and supported by volunteers and community members along the way. The route of the walk has stretched over 2,000 miles, beginning in Fort Worth, Texas, and ending in Washington, D.C., crossing ten states along the way.

    While it draws from contemplative Buddhist traditions, the walk itself is not a religious event. It is a lived experiment in mindfulness, compassion, and nonviolence—expressed through the simple act of walking.

    At its core, the walk is a moving mindfulness practice. The participants walk attentively, often in silence, allowing each step to re-anchor them to the present moment. For observers and those who join briefly, the experience can feel unexpectedly grounding. There is nothing to argue with, nothing to agree or disagree with. It’s just people moving through space with care, which is on the surface completely unremarkable—but somehow it feels like the most revolutionary thing.

    By walking attentively through public spaces, the participants model an alternative way of being—one that does not require agreement, belief, or affiliation. With each step, they seem to be simply saying, Notice your breath, notice your pace, notice the people around you. 

    Unlike marches designed to persuade or protest—and of course those also have their place—the Walk for Peace makes no demands. It invites reflection rather than reaction. Many who encounter it describe a sense of calm or curiosity. It’s a noteworthy pause in the usual mental clutter of daily life.

    Rather than addressing specific political outcomes, the walk focuses on something more foundational: how people relate to themselves and one another in everyday life.

    As an intentional mindfulness practice, the walk has highlighted several key principles:

    • Slowing down in a culture that rewards speed
    • Embodied awareness, using movement as an anchor to the present moment in a culture that often uses distraction and numbing
    • Compassion, practiced through respectful presence rather than persuasion
    • Nonviolence, not only as the absence of harm, but as an intentional orientation toward care

    By walking attentively through public spaces, the participants model an alternative way of being—one that does not require agreement, belief, or affiliation. With each step, they seem to be simply saying, Notice your breath, notice your pace, notice the people around you. 

    Peace, in this context, is not an end point, but a capacity that grows with practice.

    The monks have been accompanied by Aloka, a stray who found them in India on another peace pilgrimage. Photo credit: Aloka the Peace Dog

    The First Steps

    Walking has long been associated with reflection and insight. It naturally regulates the nervous system, invites awareness of breath and sensation, and brings attention out of abstraction and into the body. By choosing walking as their medium, the organizers grounded their response in something universally human.

    The Walk for Peace began with a simple question: How do we respond to a world marked by division, stress, and suffering without adding more noise?

    In an informational ecosystem shaped by influencers and social media, we’re accustomed to slogans and sound bites, having people talk at us, trying to shape our thinking and feeling. But these monks aren’t delivering a message to people; they’re living out a practice among them.

    Instead of issuing statements or organizing events, they chose to walk—slowly, visibly, and consistently—through the very communities shaped by the pressures and pains of modern life.

    Portions of the walk, through places like Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, were tracing steps taken by leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

    What is it like for us, generations on, to watch humble people radiating compassion and healing over so much painful ground, to watch them bear witness to realities and tend to wounds that we, collectively, still haven’t fully contended with?

    The steady gaze, pace, and breath of people like the monks remind me [that] no one person is bearing all of this alone. They’re carrying and surrendering, rejoicing and connecting, witnessing and walking, together.

    I drive through Minneapolis and see in real time the trauma of racialized violence: weary but resolute people holding signs on street corners, begging for mercy and humanity; “closed” signs in business windows where workers have been taken; a car parked askew on the road, driver’s side window smashed, door still open. Did someone see it happen at least so that the owner’s loved ones can be notified?

    It is so painful to witness, to look this moment in the eyes. I want to turn away. In my chest, it feels like I’m drowning. But the steady gaze, pace, and breath of people like the monks remind me of two important things.

    First, the longer we resist offering our attention to these unhealed places, the more we will keep living through the reverberating echoes of those same wounds over and over and over again. Different possible futures are only made possible by first giving our loving awareness to what’s happening right now—even (maybe especially) when it surfaces sorrow, hopelessness, or anger that we’re not sure we can handle in the moment.

    Second, no one person is bearing all of this alone. There’s no hero doing all the work. They’re carrying and surrendering, rejoicing and connecting, witnessing and walking, together.

    A large crowd gathers behind monks in orange robes at a Walk for Peace outdoor event, united to reimagine peace together.
    A crowd gathers in South Carolina. Credit: Walk for Peace Facebook page

    How Do People Respond? 

    In many communities, people have gathered along the route—sometimes in the hundreds, sometimes in the thousands—drawn less by promotion than by word of mouth and curiosity. 

    Some offer food or encouragement. Some walk quietly for a stretch, or just stand and watch.

    Online, the walk has attracted millions of followers. Photos and short videos of monks walking through rain, heat, and traffic circulate widely, often accompanied by comments describing a sense of calm or inspiration. 

    Some people express skepticism, questioning whether walking can have any real impact in a world facing complex systemic challenges.  

    This tension is familiar within mindfulness circles, as well. Practices that emphasize inner awareness are sometimes dismissed as passive or insufficient. I understand that skepticism, even as research and lived experience increasingly suggest that attention, regulation, and compassion are not luxuries—they are necessary for wise action.

    Many people who encounter the walk haven’t reported dramatic transformations. They describe something smaller and maybe more sustainable—a softened interaction, an experience of being deeply seen, a reminder to slow down. Again: we so often come looking for drama because we’re conditioned for it—but perhaps what heals us shows up in a thousand quiet, un-social-media-worthy moments.

    Being Peace When Peace Feels Absent

    The Walk for Peace does not claim to solve global problems. It does not promise immediate results. 

    What it offers instead is a living question: What changes when we choose to move through the world with awareness and care?

    Peace is not something we wait for, hoping for external conditions to improve, but something we practice within the conditions we have. 

    Mindfulness practice is rooted in such elemental things—the breath, the body, the next moment. The mind wanders, as it always does, to other things. I think these days of my neighbors, my friends, my worry and anger, the work that needs to be done, what will become of my city, my country. 

    My practice has never been fancy, and even over years now, I have always been more earnest than skilled. Tears sometimes spill over, and my practice is like a cool hand on my forehead, like a reassuring mother, calling me home. 

    The walk has embodied this return home on a collective scale. It suggests that peace is not something we wait for, hoping for external conditions to improve, but something we practice within the conditions we have. 

    I know the walk is coming to its end. In all honesty, I’m going to miss the images and the videos. They have been a kind of nourishment over these long, dark weeks.

    I also know that something real has passed between real people. Maybe for the first time in a long while, we’ve had a glimpse of what happens when we just stop, even for a few moments, and notice one another. On the surface, it’s so tiny it’s almost nothing, just a breath or a blink or a step—but I swear I can sense that spark of compassion leap from one person to another. I’ve felt it here, and I know it matters.



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