Happiness in this World

A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were discussing the devastation in Haiti.  He told me he thought he should go down there to help out—but that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  His heart went out to the people suffering there, he said, but apparently not enough to get him to [...]

When I was in grammar school learning about World War II, I remember thinking how grateful I was that society had finally matured to the point in the intervening years that war no longer ever broke out.   Today I can hardly remember what bizarre thought process led me to conclude that people had actually become [...]

As I wrote in an earlier post, The True Cause Of Cruelty, for me seventh grade was a disaster.  I was persecuted by anti-Semites and so traumatized that my parents endured owning two houses at once for six months in order to get me into a new school.  I left seventh grade mistrustful, fearful, and [...]

Life continuously presents us with difficult choices.  Do we start our own business or stay in our (relatively) safe job?  Do we absorb the high cost of health insurance or risk going uncovered because we’re healthy now?  Do we get the screening colonoscopy?  Do we get married?  Do we have children?  Do we choose what’s [...]

Mr. Sikes (not his real name) came to me complaining of swelling of his ankles (worse as the day wore on), shortness of breath climbing half a flight of stairs, and sudden awakening in the middle of the night from shortness of breath that resolved after several minutes of sitting upright.  I didn’t even need [...]

Few concepts are as misunderstood or difficult to define as the concept of karma.  Like love and happiness, it seems to mean something different to everyone, even as most would probably agree it has something to do with the principles of destiny, fate, predeterminism, and even reincarnation.  If we define karma according to the philosophy [...]

In seventh grade I once found myself in the school gym locker room changing before class when a group of my classmates began bullying a boy named Pino for having breasts (a condition called gynecomastia that sometimes occurs in young boys at puberty, usually resolving spontaneously).  I failed to rise to his defense, too afraid [...]

Several weeks ago, my now 15-month-old son developed a fever to 103.5 F.  Usually a champion sleeper, that night he woke several times with a frenetic look in his eyes and a jerkiness to his movements that frankly unnerved me.  The heat coming off his little febrile body almost made me start sweating myself.  He had [...]

In a previous post, Evil Triumphs When Good People Do Nothing, I argued that justice exists in the world only because good people stand up against injustice and that we should fight small injustices with as much fervor as we fight large ones.  Several commenters, however, suggested the anecdote I used at the beginning of the post was [...]

The following is an original work adapted from a short film I wrote with a long-time friend.
Athena stood before a full-length mirror in her drab one bedroom apartment, an attractive woman in her late twenties, staring at her image critically, scanning it for flaws.  She was dressed in casual evening wear:  short skirt and [...]