I always stumble a bit with the word 'newsletter'. Our curiosity jumps right at the external world of events and feeds the addiction circuits of the brain to seek more news for the sake of more news. "I bought a new car." Aha! .... "And my cat died." Oh! ... "The roof had to be replaced." Oh no! .... "My uncle came to visit." Hmm! .... "I received a nice bonus." Great! "My new book just got published." Remarkable! .... etc. What else? What's the next news you can devour as a means to stay on the surface of reality?

No news is painfully boring - "So what's new?" Nothing. No events worth narrating. Here is what's really new: "I had breakfast this morning!" Huh? Yes, this is my news: This morning I had breakfast (cool). I then drove to work (groovy). I saw the same patients I saw last week (amazing). I ate lunch (awesome). I walked down my hallway to the washroom twice (magical). I dictated a letter (profound). I drove home (extraordinary). Now comes the most exciting part: Parked in my garage, I opened the car door with my left arm and hand, then lifted the left leg first and placed it on the garage floor, before I then engaged in a complex bend-and-torque movement of the spine to climb out of the car seat and end up standing on my two feet next to the car - a whiff of garage smell sweeping by my nostrils with a view of my driveway from where I stood.

All that was mindbogglingly new! So new in fact that it had never happened before and will never happen again! Even more flagrantly new and extraordinary when I think that I could have a stroke which paralyzes my left arm forever! Another few seconds gone by like the sand of an hourglass inexorably slipping through its waist - seconds we tend to overlook as inconsequential and not worthy of any particular awareness. Exciting? Hardly. Meaningful and original? Absolutely!

Our most newsworthy news - I am trying to suggest - is internal rather than external, the complex set of new neural pathways just activated, accompanied by a rich landscape of subjective experiences that this writing in this moment produces, both in me and in you. Wholesome news, as opposed to the addictive one, does not easily arouse curiosity, nor does it stimulate the cortisol and sympathetic nervous system alone to keep barreling down the stress highway of busyness. No, wholesome news wants to be found like the shy white tiger hiding in the vastness of inaccessible mountains. Wholesome news is not so much exciting, as it is rather awe-inspiring, both stimulating and calming, expanding and grounding, feeding us deeply where we so profoundly starve - our lack of time and presence to the only time we ever have, this present moment.

Maybe a better word than news would be appropriate here: Originality. The movements of my hand and fingers typing in this moment are original in the sense that they are creative and absolutely unique, once-in-a-lifetime processes, one of a kind like nothing else you will ever find in the known universe, radically novel and never to be repeated again. THAT is news-worthy, because it shines on your life, giving it a life-affirming, warm glow like the sun onto the landscape.

What's new? What's novel? What's original? My waving hand.

What's new is that I am now with you unlike any other time I have been with you, through a different style of text from what I ever wrote before, moving, changing and transforming with you on this universal journey to nowhere.