“On Being”, a podcast series by Krista Tippitt

by Teri E. Popp & Laura Chin, Tastemakers in Residence

In these difficult times of social distancing due to the current pandemic of SARS-Cov-2, and the resulting COVID 19, how does a person feel worth in just existing? For it’s first-ever socially distanced event, W3 Book Club chose to visit this question and more via a Zoom meeting. And our host, Muffy, provided the perfect surprise to our evening; an online visit with a special guest.

Instead of focusing on a book for this particular meeting, we listened to a series of podcasts hosted by Krista Tippitt called “On Being.” Ms. Tippitt, a recipient of the National Humanities Award Medal presented by President Barack Obama, is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur. “On Being” is dedicated to: “Pursuing deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy, to renew inner life, outer life, and life together.”

For this special evening, we concentrated on her podcast dedicated to how to deal with this historic moment in time, and how to feel like “just being” is enough when she spoke with listener Anna Bondoc for: “Living the Questions—At home, frustrated, and stressed — is ‘just being’ worthy right now?” To listen to this enlightening conversation, you can go to https://onbeing.org/programs/living-the-questions-feel-okay-when-we-arent-doing/.

And our hosts’ special surprise was a question and answer visit with the “On Being” host herself, Krista Tippitt. In the end, Ms. Tippitt quoted her friend and author, John O’Donohue, by entreating us to “be exceedingly kind” to ourselves in this new world, and she shared the wisdom of Buddha: “You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

I invite everyone to visit Ms. Tippitt’s web page online to listen to her podcasts at https://onbeing.org/series/podcast/