Developing compassion for Congress and politicians is a good way to begin practicing the new social activism if you want to make effective changes in the world. Perhaps the most startling new insight of all is that there is no other way to effectively change the world.

A new understanding of power is replacing our old understanding of power as the ability to manipulate and control. The old understanding of power has become counterproductive to our evolution. What used to be good medicine has become poisonous. Pursuit of the ability to manipulate and control now produces only violence and destruction.

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.

Authentic power is the real deal. You can't inherit it, buy it, or win it. You also can't lose it. You don't need to build your body, reputation, wealth, or charisma to get it.

I don't know the true meaning of happiness.

I equate physical activity with happiness not just from the perspective of producing endorphins but also from the perspective of really moving through emotions and getting stagnant energy to move through our body.

Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness, I think, only exists when you're a child and once you go past 11, unfortunately it's gone.

The Czech Republic, severed from its old Slovak half, sits in apparent landlocked contentment, inside the European Union but outside the troubled Euro Zone, set into the new Continental mosaic like one of the small sturdy paving stones, just a few inches square, that form the sidewalks under the visitor's ambling feet.