Growing up number six in a family with eight kids, I put a great deal of stock in fairness. There was constant jockeying for my share of whatever was on offer—time, energy, dessert, privileges. I remember wailing at my parents more than once, “That’s not fair!” When I think about the engine that drives suffering—be …
Last weekend, in company with a large percentage of western Canada, we stopped in Revelstoke. It was a hot mess: trucks, boats, trailers everywhere; long queues for bathrooms, burgers and gas. We were in the fuel line when someone towing a huge boat decided to back-up from the pump, an activity that snarled traffic as …
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be,” Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said. A whole lot of psychologists and social scientists would seem to have proved this point in the last 30 years. Many of them have made their living teaching other people the five steps, or three …
If I were to tell you the truth—the truth that I am barely willing to allow myself to know—I am almost always afraid. When I wake up in the middle of the night—which happens many nights—it’s because I am seized by fear. Sometimes it’s tied to a specific occurrence: atrocities in the Ukraine, an article …
I have a lovely neighbor who likes to believe that those beer cans by the roadside blew out of the back of someone’s truck on the way to recycling. I’m not so forgiving. I hate that mess in the ditch with a passion, and resent the perpetrators with a purple passion. I feel personally disrespected …
In parts of rural Britain, sheep are said to be “hefted to the land.” After hundreds of years of being herded on common land, the sheep have learned their place. Hefted ewes pass on to their lambs the knowledge of boundaries, choice grazing sites, sheltered folds, the round of seasonal return to their farm for …
I remember the freedom I felt, as a young adult, when I realized that every painful occurrence was not intentional. I read and re-read a few paragraphs from 12-step literature about how we mindlessly “step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate in kind.” I started to understand that my fears—of not getting …
My baby sister had brand new red roller skates. She lurched through the kitchen as I stood silent, radiating envy. The floor trim between the kitchen and the next room was beyond her skill level, though, and she fell on her bottom. I laughed. “See what you made me do?” she screamed. The ensuing squabble …
One of my favorite online resources is the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley. Researchers in the science of happiness and gratitude, they’ve got a bang-up website and tons of free resources. But the relentlessly upbeat tone has irritated me lately: Four Things You Can Do To Help Your Kids During the Pandemic! Happiness for …
Environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy once said, “You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.” Or as one of her students transmitted it to me, “Everything needs to be done, so everyone should do what they’re doing.” I’ve …
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