I was in my late 30s, single and working for my master’s in political science. One graduate seminar course I took was titled “the intellectual history of modern Europe.” The evening 2-3 hours weekly class had initially 15 students but the count dropped to 5 toward the end. It was wintertime, and the class met in a small college building with a fireplace. Some of us had coffee mugs in front of us.

The professor, a man under 50, held forth. I couldn’t help noticing all these white guys with their faces aglow when talking about their intellectual heritage, with humor, love and respect for the towering figures such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Engles, Nietzsche, and at the end of the 19th century, cultural figures like Moliere, painter Henri Rousseau, the Dadaist and the impressionist movements, plus Ravel who wrote Bolero, which departed from the serious and staid symphonies and church music of the time in Paris.

It was an open celebration of sensuality, hormonal exuberance.Today, it triggered a state of mind that made me want to dance with a partner from the past, or an imaginary partner or no partner. Who cares? You are floating in a storm of hormonal secretions in your brain. Ah, the mind – brain dualism no one will ever resolve. Buddha rehmatullah alaih, said: Become one with yourself. How? Meditation. Minimalism in life as in words.