“It’s about the mindful life.”

Folks are always confused about what the heck Elephant is about.
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It’s about yoga!, folks used to say, with certainty (we started off, 22 years ago, as a yoga-focused magazine).
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No, it’s about green, environmentalism! (That was kinda true, for a time, and still is, a bit).

​No, it’s a Buddhist publication! (Kinda, yes, sorta, still, always).
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Back in 2002, I wrote what we were about in our little mission slogan: “It’s about the mindful life.”
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I like that. It’s about life. It’s about everything. It’s about food, family, bicycling, climate crisis, war, racism, peace, work, craft, eco-caring, yoga, meditation, spirituality that isn’t woo-woo…really anything, from a mindful point of view. And, with 75,000 articles in our library online, now, we literally have an article on everything.
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And these days, folks say, “Why are you writing about politics! I come to you for Pema Chödrön and Brené Brown quotes!”
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And my reply is the same as it’s been for 22 years:
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When life is good, you can sit back in your armchair at the end of a long day with a good book. But if you notice someone’s setting fire to the wall of your home sweet home, you attend to that.

Someone’s setting fire to our democracy. Termites, burrowing in our Medicaid, our relationships with allies, our economy, our taxes, our Social Security, the IRS, our “mission statement” as an ever-improving democracy dedicated to equality and opportunity and being “the good guy.”

So yeah, we’re writing a lot about democracy and the threats to it, these days.

Not out of rooting-for-your-team partisanship, but out of caring. America, as a powerful nation, should care for rule of law, investing in the middle class, supporting those who need a leg up, and calling oligarch elites to play by the rules the rest of us have to.

This approach carries risks. Trump’s corrupt, incompetent Cabinet includes Kash Patel, a lap dog who like Trump himself likes to threaten media. But I’m not running. This is my country. And our country is about more than a flag. It’s about a vision, and our flag represents that vision.

If your favorite mindful, caring community publication writes about smoothie recipes or calorie-counting when the world is burning down, well then, that’s akin to a friend who’s fun when times are good…not showing up for you when times are hard.

Eff those friends. They aren’t friends.

But the friends who love you when you’re down and out and nobody and struggling…those are friends for life.

We’ve been here 22 years, now. Let’s be friends for life. Get our newsletter to keep mindfulness in your inbox on the weekly. Follow us on Blue Sky. Like and share our posts, if they inspire you. Write an article. Subscribe. These are the ways to keep us alive and help us to grow big and influential in a positive, truthful, caring way again. Let’s have a voice for mindful community, out there.

Gosh knows we all need it. This publication isn’t about my voice. I’m about 2% of it, at most. It’s a community. All I do is make sure we’re hewing to journalism ethics, and caring about one another and our planet…and ourselves.

And that’ll never change.