Recovery. Sobriety. Living Wise.
Once reality gets degraded, it’s really hard to get it back.” ~ Keith Darden Bamboozles are the ways we get comfortable with lies. They comfort us, conform to our prejudices and allow us to pretend we’re bigger, better, and prettier than we are. The writer Upton Sinclair described how some get bamboozled: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends … Continue reading The Great Bamboozle
Where are the Good Men? Charlie Brown has always been for me an illustration of goodness, a kind of compass that points to true north. Before I got sober, I sometimes felt like Alice in Wonderland when she slipped down the rabbit hole: reality no longer mattered, truth had become fiction, good people were now bad, heroes now villains. When I climbed out from my … Continue reading Finding Goodness
“Know thyself.” ~ Socrates In his book on emotional intelligence Daniel Goleman recounts the story of a belligerent samurai who challenges a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. “The monk replied to him with scorn, ‘You’re nothing but a lout – I can’t waste my time with the likes of you!’ “His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, … Continue reading Emotional Intelligence
I’m stunned at the storming of the U.S. Capitol. it was an event so outrageous, so evil, so destructive, that it defies description. What has made it even more maddening for me is trying to say what it was really about, I mean really about. To answer that question I’ve had to explore my own history. I was 12 years old when John Kennedy was … Continue reading An Inaugural Address for the Ages
Last summer while on our evening walk Marsha and I were confronted by a frightened middle-aged man who warned us of a roving band of homeless people headed toward the park near our home, and aiming to set up camp there. The man was insistent and seemed to need for us to acknowledge the impending danger. In the mode of Paul Revere, it’s as though he … Continue reading When Make Believe Is Dangerous