Welcome to the Comian podcast.

My name is Jeff Krasno.

Many of you may receive my weekly Sunday commusing article, where I address a breadth of issues

from the spiritual to the physiological to the sociopolitical.

And on occasion, I will also record an audio version of these articles

and release it here as a bonus episode. This week's episode is written and recorded by author,

poet, and spiritual teacher Danielle Laporte. It is excerpted from her outstanding new book,

How to Be Loving.

Now, here's a short preamble that Danielle's essay inspired.

We are anchored to our sense of self through a feeling of physical and psychological continuity.

We look more or less the same day to day, though, of course,

there have been billions of cellular deaths and rebirths since our last gander in the mirror.

A mirror flip through a photo album is enough to demonstrate that nothing about my physical corporeal organism

is permanent. Am I the cherubic baby, the disheveled college student, or the more distinguished

denizen of middle age that records this podcast? Of course, I am none of those things. I am a process,

spontaneously emerging moment to moment. Psychologically, the stories we tell ourselves,

about ourselves day to day, also more our self-identity. But upon closer inspection, our personal folklore

is as transient as our gut bacteria. Our opinions, our priorities, our affiliations, they're fickle

over time. Even our most personal stories bend to comport to the human we want to be

on a particular day. Every experience of the past is happening in the present. And in this way,

the present creates the past, like a boat creates the Kelvin wake behind it.

Being moored to our past chains us to our narrative life.

...