My wife and I are similar in a number of ways, but we’re completely opposite in how we feel about trying new things. I resist and often fear it, while she positively craves it. For as long as I can remember, I haven’t even liked trying new foods (an aversion my family and friends have alternately found amusing and consternating), preferring instead to eat what I already know I like. My wife, in contrast, almost never orders the same thing twice. Continue reading…
 THE UNDEFEATED MIND Fall 2012 |
I asked him what was stopping him. He thought about it for a moment and then said: “I don’t have anything left to give.” His answer took me by surprise. I thought his reasons would have been the same as mine: it would have been too disruptive to his life here, too frustrating to go down and be ineffective as a physician without adequate infrastructural support, and too personally uncomfortable or even risky. But what he meant was simply this: he was too tired. Continue reading…
Why? Because even though ideas flit in and out of our heads like mosquitoes, ideas that are believed cling with electromagnetic power. Once we believe an idea we develop an emotional connection to it, not to mention a commitment to it—as if to a person—and often become attached to it with a strength we often don’t realize has little to do with the merit of the belief itself. And once we’re attached to anything—whether a person, place, thing, or idea—giving it up is extremely hard. We will always grieve over a loss, no matter how small. Continue reading…
Or so he’d described to me. Though he’d managed, over the years, to paint a clear picture of her personality and character, I couldn’t personally verify any of it. I’d never met her. Continue reading… |
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Copyright © 2012 Happiness in this World - All Rights Reserved
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Several years ago, someone I know told me he was contemplating divorcing his wife. I wasn’t surprised. He’d been unhappy in the marriage for some time—and, in my opinion, with good reason: his wife was jealous to the point of being neurotic, often behaving in ways that were shockingly inappropriate, offensive, and stress-inducing.
