Turning Straw Into Gold

Discouraging were all the quotations telling us that if we had our good health, we’d have everything. “The first wealth is health,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. That would make me a pauper indeed. Then there was, “Health is worth more than learning,” from Thomas Jefferson no less. Good grief! Read More

In my article, “What Those with Chronic Pain or Illness DON’T Want to Hear You Say,” I shared some of the comments that have been made to me since I became chronically ill in 2001. Many people said they’d been subjected to the very same comments…and more. Here is a small sampling of the feedback I got from readers, telling me what's been said to them. Read More

On "60 Minutes," I met six people who have Superior Autobiographical Memory. They have the rare ability to vividly remember every detail of their lives since they were young children. Correspondent Lesley Stahl would throw out a date—say, April 12, 1992—and they were able to tell her what they wore, what they ate, what they did, who they talked to, who broke their heart. Read More

The purpose of this piece is not to make fun of those whose comments are off the mark; most people have good intentions. I’ve written it partly because I hope it will make those of us with health difficulties feel less alone and partly because I hope it will help others understand how to communicate with us better. Read More

I’ve written before about our ongoing desire to control every circumstance of our lives and how the Buddha identified this as a great source of suffering and dissatisfaction for us. I thought it would be interesting to see just how much control we really have over our circumstances. Read More

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. —Martin Buber Read More

Karma has become a controversial subject. Because I’ve written a book on chronic pain and illness, I hear from a lot of people who want to know why they’re struggling with their health when others are not. Many of them think their poor health is karmic retribution for some past bad action, and that they’ve become sick because they have to work off this “bad karma.” Read More

Not a week goes by that without an article on good sleep hygiene showing up during my Internet wanderings. I know the recommendations are good ones. It’s just that most of them don’t work for those of us who are living with chronic pain or illness. Actually, it’s more than the fact that they don’t work—they’re irrelevant to the life we must lead. Read More

When I saw people on television stranded in the heat and humidity on the cement freeway overpasses in New Orleans after the levees broke, I thought, "I would not survive in that situation." When I see pictures of Sudanese refugees walking days on end to find food and water, I think, "They would have had to leave me behind." It's sobering. Read More

When I experience life from the place of understanding that clinging to an identity is just an attempt to freeze in time what is, in reality, part of the flow of the universe, I feel light and free. My favorite expression of this notion of no-fixed-self comes from the eco-philosopher, Joanna Macy: "I am a flow-through of matter, energy, and information." Read More

Gaetano Donizetti wrote an opera called L’Elisir d’Amore—the elixir of love. I think of lovingkindness meditation as an elixir for my heart. It’s a medicine that heals any irritation, anger, or negative judgments I may be feeling for myself or others. Read More

Labels matter. We quickly form judgments based on them. If we hear someone called lazy, the label “lazy person” attaches in our mind even though we may not have even met the person. The same is true for labels given to many medical conditions. Read More

Some mornings I wake up and there’s no denying it—I’ve got the blues. I may not even be by myself when the blues descend on me, but they always make me feel isolated. I've found that it’s good to have some “blues strategies” at the ready, because the blues are never polite enough to announce ahead of time that they plan to spend the day. Read More

In presenting these New Year's resolutions, I've taken the liberty of putting some of the Buddha's words into the first person and adjusting the language in a few places so the text reads as resolutions. The content is true to his discourses. Read More