One thing I know about happiness is that it comes from the narrative of our life. The story we tell ourselves. But too often, we let others write that story for us. Unhappiness and discontent inevitably follow. The only person who can write the story of your life properly is you. In order to change our narrative to an authentic one, one we write ourselves, we must change our perspective, and thus our perceptions of our world. This is not a new idea. Plato explained it in “Allegory of the Cave” over 2,300 years ago. A small change in perception can mean a huge change in what we see. And changing how we see lets us write a new narrative. The Dalai Lama also explores this idea of the relationship between perception and a good life in his book The Art of Happiness (99¢ in the remainder bin . . . maybe you can buy happiness after all!).
I Wanna Take You Higher The plane kept dropping into the darkness. I strained to see some sign of San Francisco. Runway lights, the bridge, any sign that we were landing safely instead of plunging into the Bay. Nothing but black. I looked around the cabin. Everyone was awake and trying to see out of […]
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All Along the Watchtower I stood at the urinal, penis in one hand, specimen cup in the other. It was hot, but I was hotter from the embarrassment. The PFC who literally had a ringside seat to my dilemma finally spoke up. “Can’t go?” “I need to,” I answered. I really did. I had downed
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Crimson and Clover As I watched the pink soap bubbles floating on the dirt, grass, and clover, I couldn’t get over how pretty they were. “Shit,” I said, staring at the ever widening pink puddle. TJ, Captain Brown’s driver and whose jeep we were scrubbing, nodded. “Nobody back home will believe this,” he said. TJ
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Love the One You’re With It was hard getting to know the Vietnamese on a personal level. Language was certainly a problem, but culture and economics made things far more difficult. These people had been at war for centuries. They had been invaded by the Thais, the Chinese, the French, and the Japanese. Sure, Ho
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With a Little Help from My Friends “Don’t cuss at it so much. You’ll never fix it that way.” “What the fuck do you know,” I said. I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder. It was hot in the bunker, and I had already spent three and a half hours trying to reprogram Freddy
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Thanks, Bob, wherever you are. “Where in the hell is your hat soldier?” The colonel demanded. I did a slow burn as I pulled my hat out of my pocket and put it on. I knew better than to expect a thank you from the grey-haired, crew-cut, skinny officer standing in front of me. But
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