Jeff Hamaoui

Chip’s Editorial Comment: Jeff Hamaoui, one of my co-founders, is a poet and deep thinker. I always feel blessed when he channels something like this and WhatsApp’s it to me.

We are living longer. Today, if we live to 50 in America, we can hope to live well into our eighties. This demographic shift in life expectancy and the fact that we have not only increased our lifespan but also our healthspan means we have to radically reimagine our lives. Beginning with midlife.

This November, I spent an incredible week exploring purpose with Chip and Richard Leider and a group of amazing souls led by Thérèse O’Neill, who is a magnificent facilitator and teacher, and Caitlin Allen, our expert experience facilitator. Our week was a joyous exploration of some of the content we created for purpose over the years at MEA and testing some of the new content we have created for next year’s purpose pillar and core curriculum. The week was deep, provocative and creative. We explored the nature of purpose and our own individual purposes and found dozens of ways to learn from each other on our purpose journeys, we even did some art, drawing, dance and moving our way to clarity.

Meet Unicorn, a Diné Churro (four-horned sheep) traditionally cared for by native peoples in New Mexico.

"The world envies our ability to spin out long meals with eternal sobremesas (over the table conversations). Sobremesa is a custom that unites us with family and friends around that which we love doing most. Eating. This is because in Spain, happiness is pronounced 'sobremesa.'" - Alberto Piernas Medina

New purposes require new questions.

On the day after America’s Stars and Stripes holiday, we offer this simple, lovely poem from MEA cofounder Jeff Hamaoui, our poet laureate.

“Language is the house of Being . . .” - Martin Heidegger

The word mindfulness is profoundly contradictory. I suffer from mind-fullness. Apparently that will get better if I practice mindfulness.

I have spent my entire life feeling like an impostor. As a kid, we moved around a few times from country to country, culture to culture and I became adept at fitting in wherever I was.