Dr. Doner’s Blog

A Year to Live

“On the day that you were born, you began to die.

Do not waste a single moment more!”

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

In the past I’ve hosted Vision-Board parties in the New Year for friends. As we intuitively cut out pictures from magazines and glued them to poster board, our sub-conscious minds made visible our longings. It has helped us to dream creatively with others and set goals for the future. Many of our poster board desires actually did come true!

It seems as if my whole life was goal oriented. It’s not a bad thing. How else does one get through medical training, set up a successful solo practice and raise children? How else does one take the courageous leap to eventually sell the practice and develop a Hypnotherapy career? (The hospital administrator who helped me find a doctor to buy the practice told me that I had the “tenacity of a pit bull!”) I’ve even accused myself of “achievement addiction” since accomplishments always got me the self-esteem I needed.   

But a switch got flipped in me this year. Maybe it’s a shift in energy as I’m just a little over the mid-life hump and sliding down. Maybe it’s a decline in hormones or is from being humbled with the economy and somewhat under-employed. Or maybe it’s just wise woman wisdom. But the planning for the future is no longer as interesting. “Success” is no longer what’s it’s cracked up to be.

So, this year I’m challenging myself to consider death. Of course, we all know about going against our American workaholic tendencies by “living in the moment” and we’ve heard of teachings about “The Power of Now” – good advice from all of the spiritual/wisdom traditions. But this is different. This is about taking the possibility of death seriously! (How about the certainty of death?)

Inspired by Stephen Levine’s book, A Year to Live, I’m asking friends everywhere to ask themselves: “How would I live differently if I knew I just had one year to live?”

Probably we’d all resolve to fully live each twenty four hours. Resolve grudges with forgiveness. Take our highest values seriously. Pray and play more … worry and work less…

Theoretical is fine but how would this play out in day-to-day decisions? Would we buy gorgeous clothes or empty our closets? Go on a diet or eat dessert first? Meditate more, dance more? Live recklessly, as in the movie Bucket List, or just focus on simple acts of kindness? Sincerely talk with the proselytizers at the front door or say you are too busy writing poetry? Floss more consistently or donate your dental money to feed orphans in Haiti? You don’t really know until you take the challenge seriously and notice your choices.

I believe that letting go of the illusion of “no death” will change how I live. Distilled to the essence, it’s about how to live as if death were sitting over my left shoulder. (Which it is.)

I’ve already thrown out my mismatched Tupperware and cleaned the refrigerator – why live with ugliness? I even chose not to go through the boxes labeled “to be filed” (they’ll just get thrown out anyway by my survivors). Instead I grabbed my three young grandchildren and we built a Valentine’s Day bon-fire, drummed and danced. (“This is how I want you to remember me to your children,” I instructed.)

So, I send out this challenge to all those who are exploring “flipping your switches” from old ways of living to how you truly want to live. (Even considering the possibility may change your life.) One friend has booked four trips this year, just after hearing the question. Another has called to say she’s climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

This year the party will have fewer participants, since some consider the life and death focus a bit morbid. But I will still throw out this challenge to the group: “How would I live differently if I knew I just had one year to live?”

As I wish for all of us:

“May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for.”

From “A Morning Offering, “

To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’Donohue

I Took to the Mountains

I thought I “took to the mountains” for rest and relaxation in July. I did enjoy the 9 day meditation retreat outside Boulder, Colorado. Then, I camped throughout Colorado for two weeks by myself. Going wherever I wanted to go and doing whatever I wanted to do, with no restrictions, sounded like absolute freedom. Or so I thought before the “triple whammy.”

The first glitch involved my right knee. I’m used to fearlessly following my goals. Seven years post-graduate training to become a doctor?  Sure. Divorce, full-time medical practice and two children, OK – I can do that. Sell the practice after 21 years and pursue a holistic healing vision? I’ll make it work out. Like the “Little Engine that Could” I chugged my way past every challenge. “Climb every mountain” was my motto. Will, force and determination had insured success to date.

But on the camping trip I found I couldn’t hike! The meniscus surgery seven months ago did not give me the  strong painless knee I expected! Sure, in Florida I could walk on level ground but not up and down a Colorado hill, let alone a mountain. This was a profoundly rude shock to my belief system. Will and exercise alone could not reverse the aging process. It was also a rude shock to my identity. Vacations revolved around hiking. Who was I if not a hiker? And how would I take vacations with my hiking boyfriend?

The second surprise happened one morning, after soaking in a natural hot-spring the night before. I woke up with one-quarter of my left breast, just above the bathing suit line, beet red! As a physician this was terrifying. There were only two explanations. Either it was a cellulitis that I could possibly treat with antibiotics in the first-aid kit – or – it was inflammatory breast cancer and I could die! I could live with the first possibility but wasn’t ready for the second. And even if I didn’t die how could I continue to work and pay the bills while undergoing surgery, radiation and chemotherapy? Many people do it but I never thought it could happen to me! My body would change drastically and perhaps my romantic relationship!

The redness resolved after the antibiotics but my relationship with my body didn’t. It was no longer trustworthy. Neither was my identity. This was extremely disorienting and frightening.

The third unexpected occurrence was when I returned home and took a quick look at the accumulated e-mail. “A memorial service for Deborah…” What? Deborah died! She’s younger than me! She just dropped over dead with no known medical problems. I’ll never see her sunny smile again. I can never call her up to see a movie. She just got engaged to the man of her dreams and now she’s gone.

Three aspects of my previously well-running life had stopped functioning as ordered. My body and its abilities, my identity, and my friendships. Poof! In just a few weeks changed forever.

And then I got it that the meditation retreat was not about being blissful and stress-free. It was about understanding the truth of reality. That my body, my identity and my relationships are impermanent. I can only depend on the fact that they are always changing. That Death is always around the corner. That, in fact, Death is impermanence and is always operating in the process called “life.”

This is the way it is. And to truly live with this knowing is actually liberating! I can be grateful every morning I wake up with two breasts. I can appreciate however strong my body is right now. I am determined to love my friends more passionately and forgive them more quickly because we will be attending each others’ memorial services.

Something has profoundly shifted in me. The flowers smell sweeter and anger is more regrettable. The old belief in willful bravery has been replaced with true courage to accept life. I now realize that this is the lesson I had unconsciously requested from this vacation. It turns out that along with the Colorado mountain maps for the trip, I had also packed a quote from the sage Milarepa:

“In horror of death, I took to the mountains –

Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death,

Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind.

Now all fear of death is over and done.”

Dying without Forgiveness

I like to think of myself as a “nice” person. You know – the kind who sends thank-you notes, gives unknown children a boost up the playground set and compliments the check-out girl in Wal-Mart. In my more self-glorifying moments I like to imagine that I am a little sunbeam of cheer, radiating my way through each day, touching whomever I meet…

And yet when all delusion is put aside, I’m aware of the insanity of my own mind. I make up stories that aren’t true. I look at a person and instantly judge him, based on appearances and mannerisms. (Actually these perceptions are based on whatever is already in my memory banks that is being triggered by that person. Probably none of it is true!)

And so I come to the story of George.

George was younger than me but looked older and definitely unfit. He was at least 40 pounds overweight and a smoker – instant judgment on my part. The worst feature of George was that he was a terrible leader on the dance floor! You may think that is a minor and forgivable detail, but if you were being man-handled by George the way I was, you would agree with me!

One evening during a West-Coast Swing dance class George kept trying to teach me a step that I already knew, the wrong way, while the teacher was teaching it the right way. “Let’s listen to the teacher,” I politely suggested. He kept on pulling me this way and that way. I finally resisted and he rudely jerked on my arm remarking, “I’m the leader. You have to follow me!”

Admittedly the dance floor is the last bastion of male supremacy. Since I insist on equality in my daily life, conflicts can happen and I have learned to usually shut-up and tolerate any incompetence on the man’s part. After all, we are still learning. But George was over the top with his arrogance and ignorance!

So I learned to avoid him. I came to realize that his insecurity made him bossy and he enjoyed himself the most with completely submissive women. A little compassion could have crept in but every time I saw George on the dance floor I thought, “Jerk!” What’s more I enjoyed thinking, “Jerk.” “Jerk, jerk, jerk,” must have been going on all evening as internal dialogue. Amazing, isn’t it, how this story telling can feel good in a perverse sort of way? It made me right and him wrong. I’ve heard this labeled “negative pleasure.” I had absolutely no motivation to forgive the man.

Last week I avoided him again. And then he went home and died. That’s right! A case of indigestion that was really a massive heart attack and he is no more. No more dancing for him and no more opportunity for me to forgive.

It was sad. Those who mourned related how kind he had been to them. How much fun he was. How dancing was the central pleasure of his life.  (And how he’d never been a Marine drill sergeant, as I had projected.) Wrong, wrong, wrong! All my stories had been wrong and self-serving! Guess I’m not such a “nice” person after all.

The dramatic wake-up call for me was that I could have died just as quickly on I-95 driving home. If I had died then all of my unforgiveness would have gone to the grave with me! And if there is heaven or hell or karma or whatever, the “Jerk” thinking would have been like a permanent stain. Also, since I’m not dead yet, then I have to consider how these thoughts affect my neck tension and disposition.

And so, I’m learning to be more suspicious of judgment. “Is it true? How can I be sure? Do I really want to indulge in this negative pleasure?” These questions break up the concrete of rigid habitual thinking. They give room to all possibilities. They are freeing! I can then ask to understand that person and all the causes of their behavior, with the ultimate goal of compassion and forgiveness.

My daily practice is to notice each judgment and the accompanying physical tightness or internal frown – whether it is about a poor landscaping job or a pre-teen girl almost running me over in the woods with her four wheeler. And then to remind myself: “Aware of the negative consequences of this thinking on me, I choose to let it go.”

And just as I reserve the right to not let a man physically hurt me on the dance floor, I give myself mental safety by protecting my mind from the lies I used to make up. In the end, whenever it may be, I’m determined not to die without forgiveness. That’s far more enlightened than just being a “nice” person.

Kathy Doner, MD

I know what’s best!

That was my old belief bred from years of medical practice. Of course! People paid for me to tell them what to do! And I was usually right.

Trouble is, unless someone is asking (especially paying) for my opinion, they really don’t want it. I keep trying, though. I try it on my adult children, their spouses and my grandchildren. And after 14 years I still inflict it on my poor boyfriend. (Am I a slow learner, or what?) And consistently they either turn a deaf ear or feel annoyed. It is insulting, I suppose, to have one’s “faults” pointed out by someone hell-bent on improving them.

Part of my current life-phase, e.g. birthday and new decade, is to be of “service.” The timing is convenient with the down economy. Less income and more free time.

So, wanting to be of service to children, I gathered my slightly arrogant bravado, masked as do-good-ism, and called a local community group. They provide after-school care for children from an economically depressed area beset with drugs and violence. I thought I could teach them meditation, anger management, self-esteem and visioning for their life. And I could – I’ve done it for those who paid to see me. After three phone calls I finally reached the volunteer psychologist in charge and was politely told that they didn’t need me.

Slap in the face! I offered it for free! It could really help! But they turned me down. They rejected my commitment to service and especially my belief that “I know what’s best.” I had assumed that I would be the wise teacher and they the adoring and grateful students. Not! (The fact that it stung meant that perhaps just a little bit of my ego was involved.)

It was while feeling the sting that I realized that “offering yourself” can be tantamount to telling someone that you know what they need.

True and humble offering starts with the asking, “What do you really need?”

How to know what someone needs? I learned about “getting on the same wavelength” with someone by watching my 4 year old grandson the other day at the beach. At that age he does not approach a child and introduce himself. He sidles up to a friendly 5 year old girl and wordlessly begins imitating her. She slaps the waves, he slaps the waves. Pretty soon she is holding his hand and they have a grand ole time. Later, when he is very interested in a 3 year old boy’s monster trucks, he shares his truck and they play side by side. He then rolls down a sand dune, covering himself in sand, over and over, delighting in gravity. Soon the 3 year old joins in. No conversation – just noticing, learning from each other, mimicking… We adults call it “rapport.”

Before we left the beach that afternoon I felt in rapport enough to ask the father why the little boy didn’t play in the water. “He’s scared,” I was told. So, sensing an opportunity, I cautiously gave him my hand and with generous praise showed him how to jump into a 3 inch wave. He applauded and beamed!

Knowing that I couldn’t possibly know what was best for him, I was willing to wonder what he needed. I adopted an attitude of respectful experimentation. He then learned to take a baby-step towards bravery by holding a stranger’s hand. That’s apparently what he needed and that’s what I gave him.

That was service.

April 3, 2009

The Gift of Failure

This last year I’ve been given the “gift of failure.”

 

The economy has tanked. I can’t retire at 62 as planned. And what was I going to do with all my energy and knowledge and skills anyway? Just keep busy? I’d been a bit concerned about a sense of purpose during retirement. Now I’ll have to work until 70, doing work I love. What a gift!

 

My hopes of speaking tours (and who knows—a book, TV spot?) have been dashed. No one wanted to attend my very well publicized workshops in Sedona. All that effort wasted! So now I get to enjoy my home and can stop hard-selling my persona to the over-sold public. It was all ego anyway, not my true self. I now have the time to dig my pond deeper for swimming, plant trees and take children camping. What a gift!

 

Finances are totally uncertain. Security has vanished with the plunging stock market. Business has slowed like small business everywhere. But there is a steady trickle still coming in. I know it’s unpredictable, so I welcome every referral and I kiss every check. “Thank you, thank you,” for every opportunity to help a client. “Thank you, thank you,” with every bank deposit. No five year plans for me. Just a spontaneous practice of daily gratitude. What a gift!

 

No more mindless spending either. Gone are the frequent restaurants, art purchases and gifts. The occasional European vacation is a thing of the past. Every meal out is celebrated, every purchase is treasured and every trip is thoroughly relished as special. What a gift!

 

My right knee failed me when I tore the meniscus in Sedona. It was just repaired and has a doubtful future. No more back-packing or jogging, I was advised. No more heedless jaunts around the neighborhood, unconscious of my body’s movement. I focus on the steps, an enforced mindful walking. I wish for my health and others’ health with every twinge. What a gift!

 

I’ve been receiving failure after failure. I’ve been humbled. I had become a victim of my own success, which only bred more self-preoccupation. Now humility is breeding awareness and gratitude. I’m connected with everyone else who’s having a hard time and concerned for their small businesses and for their knees.

 

And so I wish for all of us continued “success” at finding the gifts in failure. May all of our sufferings soften us. May all of our hearts open and connect us. May all of our failures turn to blessings.

 

Kathy Doner, MD     3-2-09-09

 

 

Have you ever wondered if your life really mattered?

 

I’m preparing to turn 60. The career climb is over and the kids are raised. The new generation doesn’t want to listens to my advice. A life of experience has distilled into priceless wisdom and yet it sometimes feels as if no one wants it.

 

I remember my Dad turning 60. He usually wasn’t a complainer but something about this milestone was bothering him. Mom bought him a red leather Lazy-Boy recliner for a birthday present. That did not help his nagging feeling of waning vitality!

 

Recent funerals have also fueled this angst in me. We honor the dead, we miss them… and then life goes on. What did it all matter? Occupying this life is like occupying a house. Lots of decorations and getting the appearances just right, then POOF, time to move on. Time for the next person to occupy the space.

 

The distress came to a head last week. “What is this discomfort really about?” I cried . “It’s really about not wanting my life to be a waste! I have so many gifts and abilities. I don’t want them to just lie there, not used. It’s OK for a field to lie fallow for awhile but it’s not OK for my life not to be fully harvested!!”

 

With this freshly felt unease I planted my Mother. She’d been lying in the casket above ground for a month until the rains stopped and Florida soil drained. Now we finally laid her to rest. The celebration and hugs of the actual funeral were past. There was no more solace of food and friends or the illusion that she is just lying there asleep in a lovely purple outfit. Now she was simply lowered into a hole and covered with dirt, to get wet with next summer’s rains. She’d used her body well and now it was over.

 

“It’s now or never,” I thought. “Either I use these 60’s well or I don’t. Because someday I’ll return to the mud. How can I make my life matter?”

 

After the burial my sister and I visited our childhood home. We thought, “Why not knock on the door and see who is occupying it?” The owner was very happy to hear our old stories. We asked about remembered trees and plantings.

 

“Yes,” he assured us. “Our sons also had a tree house in that old oak.  But your mango trees froze and the orange trees died. There is something curious, however, that I never understood. Every spring a patch out front erupts into Easter lilies. My sons want to mow the area but I won’t let them. Each year we marvel at this magic and wonder where they came from!”

 

Those were my Easter lilies! I’d rescued them from the church after Easter. I remember carefully separating the bulbs and planting them at age 13. Idealistic even then, I had hoped that I was doing something permanent. That I was planting beauty that would never end. That what I was doing really mattered.

 

Yes, I’ve moved on, someone else was occupying my former space, but the lilies keep coming up.

 

Those Easter lilies had been symbolic of life after death. Now they were the answer to my current anguish. That there is resurrection of life within life. That all we ever do matters. We are all always planting bulbs, always affecting the people around us, always making a difference. We can’t control the outcome, just as Mom couldn’t control her kids. But there is always a consequence and there are great grandkids that keep bursting forth.

 

To want the 60’s to produce great accomplishments is just pure ego. To appreciate the time and space that it provides is my more enlightened vow. That I use it well to grow and to give– that’s all that really matters.

Kathy Doner, MD

copyright 2009

 

 

 

 

Times can be unbelievably harsh.

 

It’s relatively easy to adapt to small changes, mustering internal bravado or getting help. But what about when the rug is pulled out from under you, when the very ground shifts … when your entire identity is destroyed?

 

Such was my situation a few years ago. I thought I knew who I was – a wife of 21 years, a mother of two young children, the home-maker of a beautiful home and a physician with a stable practice.

 

It all changed much too quickly. A hostile divorce threatened my children, home and finances.

The hospital at which I practiced was in serious danger of being sold and turned into a nursing home.

 

And to top it all off, a drunk driver rear-ended me, spun the car around, totaled it and almost killed me! Now, no car, no money, and possibly no job, house or custody of children!

 

With many bitter months ahead in court I knew I had to pull myself together. But who was this “self”? She was no longer a wife or a full-time Mom. She could no longer depend on this man or this savings account. The sanity of other drivers was questionable. It was a very disorienting time. I needed to discover a “self” that could not be destroyed by outside forces.

 

So, to get the answers I went camping in the Everglades by myself for a week. It was my version of a “vision quest.” I got up at sunrise to greet the sun emerging from the pink and golden bay. I trudged through mangrove thickets, fought mosquitoes, and kayaked amidst alligators. I marveled afresh at the variety of birds and practiced calm presence with water moccasins. In short, I was just with my body and the elements and my form of prayer.

 

Finally, on the last day’s tromp through the swamp I got “it”.

 

“Even if I lose all those things that I thought were me – the material stuff and even precious relationships – I will still have my breath. I will still have these two arms swinging along. I will still have my wonder at this beauty around me. I can take refuge in the process of life that reawakens each delightful dawn. And I trust that I am a part of the dynamic whole.”

 

Now, someone could have told me this but it wouldn’t have helped. I had to have the experience. By learning how to center myself and feel a pure indestructible core of being, I got through the long dark time ahead. We all “survived” but, more importantly, we “thrived” as we grew from these challenges.

I still practice breathing, calming and smiling every day. And because I believe it is the one thing that can keep us all sane, I teach it—to every client, at every workshop and in every CD.

 

May we all know who we truly are.

I needed a rest—a long rest.

Almost six years ago I had had enough of Internal Medicine. I loved the patients and office staff but was no longer mentally stimulated by the actual tools of healing, namely drugs, tests and surgery. And being on-call 24/7 was much too confining.

So, I sold the practice and am now technically only “working” three days a week as a Hypnotherapist.

But somehow all of the details of life crept into the supposedly “free” time. Days that I was going to devote to creativity, spirituality, family, fun and service were cluttered with the inevitable to-do list. Soon I was “working” every day.

Even worse was my inexhaustible list of ambitions. Unfettered by the pager and emergency room call, my desires knew no bounds! I wanted to create this CD, give that talk, etc…

The result? A cluttered mind and a restless spirit. Certainly not the inner peace and sense of joy I had been craving.

Something had to shift in my consciousness. So in May of 2008 I took the rest my doctor-self prescribed and went searching for whatever it was that I needed – on a solo camping trip in Arizona for three weeks.

And there in the dusty Catalina Mountains, high above my Tucson birthplace, a life-changing insight found me.

Do you remember the Sabbath? Do you keep it “holy”?

I met a couple that does. Over a camp-fire they shared their life-changing decision. That once their weeks were like mine – detail after busy detail but no real rest. And then their rabbi (they were Jewish) reminded the congregation to keep the Sabbath. He promised that it would be better than a day at a spa, every week!

They compiled a list of “not-to’s”: shopping, emails, computer, mail, housework, yard work. And a list of “do”s”: worship, enjoy family and friends, play music, enjoy nature, have fun… The result? “Happier than ever”, they claimed, as we leisurely enjoyed the Sabbath together.

So, I took the vow to keep the Sabbath—whatever that would mean for me. When I got back to Florida it was hard at first. (They told me it might be.) How would I ever get all the work done if I took a full day off each week? Withdrawal from compulsive activity felt like withdrawal from an addiction, leaving a strange void.

And then it turned delightful. Joy filled any void. My Sabbath rules give me permission to play, to spend a whole day with my grandchildren, to spend a morning meditating in nature, to write, to read and to pray.

Initially, I wasn’t sure who I was without the restlessness of ambitions and cravings for success. But after just three months, the Sunday practice of inner peace slowly began creeping into the workweek. My life has become imbued with contentment. No longer tied to accomplishments, satisfaction has become more of a natural way of life.

This is a delightful practice. Perhaps it’s a little different and takes time and commitment to grow into. But the result is worth it. And as I am, you may just find yourself “happier than ever.”

 

Recommended reading: “Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest” by Wayne Muller.

“The hurrider I go, the behinder I get.” 

Recently I decided that the pace of my life had become much too fast. If the cause of the frantic urgency of my days was the outside world, then I reasoned that withdrawing from it would help immensely.

 

So, trying to regain some inner peace, I took myself to a four day silent meditation retreat. It was held at a beautiful center in North Florida, Chinsegut Hill, where the centuries-old oaks stretch out their moss-draped arms and the azaleas and camellias bloom pink and red.

 

The problem of striving for tranquility by not hearing anyone else’s conversation is that the chatter inside your own mind gets even louder! It’s downright embarrassing to hear your thoughts. And the emotions that pop into awareness are extremely childish, even selfish.

 

One night I was walking towards MY coveted hidden spot—a tree house high in an ancient oak. The gentle moon showed the way and I was also back-lit by an antique lantern. But  meditative calm was shattered by inner urgency when I noticed a shadow of a figure approaching the tree too, in front of me and closer.

 

“Oh no! It’s MY special place!  Must get there first!” screamed my primal competitive brain. Automatically my stride accelerated. But faster still the figure glided. And quicker and quicker—we both raced to the goal. But it got there first and merged into blackness, climbing the steps, I presumed.

 

So I rested and waited for it to descend and give me MY turn. But it didn’t, so I waited, but still it didn’t. So I got curious and respectfully tip-toed up the rickety stairs, peering around the corner, and discovered — no one.

 

The shadow I was racing against had been my own!

 

The problem of my life’s urgency, I discovered, did not have its origin in the outside world. It had been inside of me all along.

   

I don’t know about you, but 2007 contained a lot of fear for me.  

As the stocks dipped, so did the safety net of savings. As people had less disposable income, less was spent on non-essentials. People resorted to well-known comfort measures—food and cigarettes, not powerful change techniques such as Hypnotherapy.

 

My income suffered as has the income of millions of Americans. Construction is down, so I meet licensed electricians bagging groceries in Wal-Mart.  Restaurants are hungry for customers. And we don’t even have to mention the roadside signs of struggle–foreclosure signs, “Will mow your lawn”, or “Fill dirt cheap.”

 

We are tightening our belts and we are worried.

 What to do with fear?

We all have our strategies. Turning to action— such as better marketing and skill-building. Feeling safer—such as not-spending, hoarding, trying to control what we can control.

Positive thinking, prayer, imagining success, denial, complaining, bonding with others…

Whatever our time-tested coping techniques have been, we use.

 My question is always this:How can I use this adversity to make me a better person? 

Just asking the question every morning brings answers everyday.

 

For example, that we are all in this mess together and I shouldn’t take it personally (sort of like the hurricanes). And, although this uncertainty is nothing compared with terror in Sudan, I can relate to their suffering with more compassion. And it’s easy to imagine just how little bad luck it would take to actually end up as a homeless family here in the US, living out of a car. If nothing else, this loss of financial security blows away any illusion of security.

 The results of this adversity can be compassion and wisdom. 

Although trying really hard to accept the current situation and work with it, I found myself still wallowing in fear while getting ready for taxes.

“What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you meet your financial goals last year?” I harshly judged.

So, I asked the question again:

“How can I use this undesirable situation to make me a better person?” 

Have you ever just picked up a book and found the answer?

There it was. The perfect paragraph that would get me up above the whining to a clearer view. And this new perception was in alignment with a value much higher than “Total Income” on the 1040 IRS form.

From the Tears of the Giraffe, the story of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, set in Botswana, Africa:

“She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. That figure in her accounts would be a very large one, she thought.” 

The riches that count…maybe even the riches that are free… the riches that can’t be taken from us by circumstances…

Happiness. And it’s moment by moment job.

Kathy Doner, MD 2-11-08