Essays on becoming by Chris Barclay
I was in line at the grocery check-out and noticed that all the lifestyle magazines featured bucket lists. You know, the 20 places in the world you must visit before you die, the restaurants you have to try, the ultimate experiences that define a well-lived life. And I thought, really? I must? And if I […]
Continue ReadingEver wish you could change the past? Because if you could, you change who you are now and what’s possible for you in the future. This isn’t science fiction. Who we believe ourselves to be and what we’re capable of is not about events of our past, but how we respond to those events. Every […]
Continue ReadingWhat do you do in your free time? We ask this harmless question to better know a person by their interests or when we want to steer the conversation away from work. I pose it when I sense that people aren’t inspired in their career, because of the way they say things like, “It’s just […]
Continue Reading“We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one’s aim is a dog’s death. But there is no shame in this. This is […]
Continue ReadingOne winter in college I was visiting Paris, sitting at the bistro near my hotel just watching people. An American couple came in and the husband, in an accent I would best describe as “Chicago detective” (the word “Paris” came out sounding like “Pears”), called the waiter and tried to get “Two diet cokes”. The […]
Continue ReadingSince I started writing on UnboundedLife, I’ve given a thought a lot to what freedom is and what it means in the context of human nature. One theme that I’ve come back to repeatedly is mobility; designing a life from a purposeful future, versus living out an extension of the past. It’s a lofty idea […]
Continue ReadingThis week I’ve been devoting considerable mental bandwidth to wrestling with yet another paradoxical facet of my human nature. On the one side is my desire for simplicity. I did a stint as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka years back, that’s how much I dig the minimalist lifestyle. But this ascetic existence didn’t really […]
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