I recently needed help.  I asked for it, which was hard.  And I got it.  Which was wonderful.

I was amazed at how the people I know who are helpful to others seem to be the happiest.  

I wonder why that is.

They are not the most successful or the most popular.  But they are the happiest.  Which is a pretty good sign of inward success. 

Now that man spread a lot of light while he was here on earth.

I have laughed so hard at things Robin Williams said that I have had water come out my nose.  He made the Vietnam war a topic that could be approached through his healing gift of comedy and his great love for humanity.

He did some amazing things with the spotlight he had on his life.  Having a spotlight on your life all the time cannot be fun or easy. 

I do not know what his mental health status was.  But he seems bipolar to me.

I can gnaw on a thought for a long time.  Like some old pit bull, I can lie around worrying some bone I have to pick with someone for a long time.  I can spend a lot of my life being right. 

The question is this, though, "how much energy am I wasting being right?"  Is it worth it to be right this long?  How much of my life passes by with me worrying, fighting, obsessing, feeling sad and unworthy?  Is there another way?

Yoga offers some wisdom about this.  In the Yoga Sutras (a 2500 year old book of poetry in Sanskrit that is something like a bible of yoga), there is a verse that talks about this.

Life seems to have a destination, but sometimes the path is unclear.  That perfect relationship, that perfect job, that harmony and ease are over there, always over there, just out of reach.

I played clarinet in band in middle school.  I remember how terrible we were.  And I remember my teacher telling us to play the wrong thing and go ahead and play it loud!  He was dealing with our angst as we hesitated our way through each piece.  When we started playing and making the mistakes, we got better.

The events of the past few days have left me wondering about our world.  Three young women held hostage and tortured for ten years in a basement- in Cleveland, Ohio? By a bus driver?  This world seems filled up with madness and it sometimes seems like it just keeps on coming. 

My many years as a massage therapist have helped me listen to others very deeply.  I have taken myself to therapy several times, sometimes for years at a time, in order to become my more authentic self.