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A bolt of panic stole my breath It’s the bullet you never see shot Deal with the devil direct Where facts are faced but not fought All love is saying yes to something All love is saying yes to something All love is saying yes to somethingAll love is saying yes to something What does this feeling want from me? To give us a gift of a low Play…

Human beings, by nature, demand resolution.  It’s part of our existential quest for meaning. We want answers now, and if an answer isn’t readily available, we’ll happily and expeditiously manufacture one.  Wiesel’s award winning book on the fiery souls of ancient religious leaders writes about this very issue: For the believer, there is no question; and for the non believer, there is no answer.  It’s an interesting binary. One…

It’s easy to have agency over joy when life is good.  But allowing ourselves the luxury of delight when things aren’t going well, that takes real skill.  Because in the back of our minds, we feel that we’ve haven’t earned it yet. We haven’t worked hard enough to deserve joy. Only after the cosmic scale of justice is done tallying our happiness credits, can we finally exhale.  It’s a…

Moore’s research on the soul’s journey from misery to ecstasy teaches us: The dark nights of the soul have many important gifts for us. Even the most deeply disturbing episodes can become precious moments of transformation. Painful restructuring experiences that force us to alter our basic views and values for the better.  And so, the goal isn’t to give all our efforts and get the darkness off of ourselves in two weeks…

Insurgent, the second book in the bestselling dystopian trilogy, presents two schools of thought on the relationships.  Peter, who gets sick to his stomach at the idea of being indebted to another person, believes that people only do things for you for one of two reasons. If they want something in return, or if they feel like they owe you something.  Typical cynic. Chronically paranoid about who’s winning the…

The industrial revolution was a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, it pioneered the idea of free enterprise, skyrocketed productivity, boosted industrial growth, created new job opportunities and made mass transit cheaper, easier and cleaner.  But it also profoundly changed the thinking of the western world.  Because a few centuries later, we now tend to see everything as if it were a machine. Especially in the workplace, where…

Patchett’s immortal advice to writers was a philosophy I always appreciated.  Be funny, be clever, and you will scrape by, she said, because cleverness, once learned, can be the staircase that takes you down to more interesting places.  What’s interesting is, this creative strategy can be applied to our psychological life as well.  Consider anger. It’s the emotion with perhaps the worst reputation in history. Its destructive powers have…

Cartoons made my creative life possible.  From an early age, animation provided a source of deep inspiration, joy and meaning for me. Schultz, more than anybody, shifted my inner geography from day one.   The documentary about his creative process captured my imagination like nothing else. Snoopy and friends actually made me want to become a cartoonist myself.  And so, I bought the books and took classes and even started my own…

What scares me about technology is, it’s turning us into a generation of problem avoiders.  Thanks to the magic of search engines, there’s no need to wonder anymore. Thanks to the power of geo positioning, there’s no way to get lost anymore. And thanks to the magic of smartphones, there’s no reason to turn to the stranger next to us and ask for directions anymore.  This can’t be healthy…

One of the great relationship breakthroughs is accepting that it’s okay for other people to be angry and disappointed.  It’s simply a matter of trust.  On their end, we trust that they have the ability to cope with a wide array of feelings. We trust that they’re not going to abandon us just because we said something that upset them. We trust the communication process and believe that the people have…