Someone once told me that when a person is stressed, they revert to the worst of who they are.  Not behavior (though I believe that’s true too).  More like, the opposite of their strengths.

For example, my life has been rife with uncertainty the past three weeks, and so instead of writing to you as I most often want to do, I find that every time I sit down with spare time, or paper and pencil or pen, I crunch numbers.  Budgets, bills, invoices, calculations of my “f*** you fund” endurance, time to resolution of this uncertainty…

Math, it’s the reason I’m a writer and not a physicist.

It’s true.  I really wanted to be a physicist once upon a teenage dream.  I even earned a scholarship from the Army to study it in college.  But sophomore year  I was introduced to advanced calculus at the same time I met behavioral science.  And that was the end of my career as a physicist.

Did you know a ball thrown at a constant rate, or even an accelerated one, will always fall in the same predictable way because gravity is predictable?  Turns out most of the laws of the Universe are pretty predictable.  Except people’s’ behaviors.  That’s where science gets interesting, as far as I’m concerned.  And if it means I don’t have to know calculus, then it’s the course of study for me!

So why am I so drawn to math as I sit in the midst of this stress?  Why can’t I seem to find the words to write to you?

I think I’m convinced that the answer to the uncertainty lies somewhere in the math.  Perhaps if I could just crack the code.  If I could just see through the data.  If I could just be certain about something…

After awhile, I have to pour myself a glass of wine or I think I’ll go mad.  I envision myself the Johnnie Depp of Dayton with my curls unruly and a hat perched atop my head as my eyes seem to stretch outside what is visible to seek a saving force…or a return to certainty.  Why is a raven like a writing desk?

It’s not a pretty vision.  And the wine always helps take off just enough of the edge so that I can see that this stress of a thing called consulting—where sometimes the chips are high, sometimes they’re low, and sometimes you have no idea where they may fall—is just a natural part of my chosen career.  I’ll get through it just fine.  I’m not destitute, just not certain about the next step.

Honestly, I even have moments of pure bliss about the uncertainty and where it will lead me.  For it always leads to something…different.  I like different.  Or maybe that’s when I know I’ve had plenty of wine?

Which leads me to a different thought.

Perhaps also, my inability to write is a simple fact that putting on paper the fears and concerns and doubts is far less lovely than putting on paper thoughts and ideas and answers.

As always, the Muses have me covered and a piece of advice floats across my path unbidden “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlights reel.”

I feel immediately better.  But isn’t this part of that against which I rail?  I mean, I believe strongly we should all work on showing our best side.  Etiquette, personal hygiene, fashion, etc.  But I don’t believe in being insincere, nor so inauthentic it alienates us from everyone else.  I don’t believe in airing dirty laundry, but I do believe vulnerability can be immensely beautiful.  And necessary.

But I struggle with vulnerability.  And I make my living on handling sticky situations beautifully.  They’re just usually other people’s’ sticky situations…not mine.

All this swinging between emotions and opposite ends of the spectrum is making me motion sick.  Or perhaps it’s the constant rise and fall of adrenaline in my system as the uncertainty gets bleaker, then better, then worse, then fine.  Or perhaps it’s the unending sense of being perpetually lost in the mist of these swells.  I seem stuck in this vacillation between terrified and calm, shell-shocked and frozen, broken and hopeful.

And when I’ve had enough, I find the wherewithall to do something.  ANYTHING.  Action makes me feel better.  But how odd that something is more frequently math than anything else.  Why can’t I go for a hike?  Why can’t I just march into that networking meeting I’ve been dreading?  Why can’t I write?

I sit back down and try again.  But all I can see is my path strewn before me like the Christmas lights after they came off my tree all tangled and twisted so that I couldn’t even find the ends with which to start unraveling.  And soon, here comes the math again!

I chew my fingernails as I stare at the mess.  I alternately can’t eat a thing and want to eat everything.  I even have to remind myself to breathe.  Again.  Here comes another vacillation.

The thing is, I always envisioned that in these times of uncertainty, I would be the pillar of strength and poise.  Able to sit back beautifully and ride the waves like a professional surfer.  It’s not that I don’t have options, it’s that all of my options are in a constant state of flux at the moment so that they can’t be grasped.  I still have work to do…and therefore pay coming in.

So, why can’t I be that me I wish to be?  Why do I dwell on that which I can’t control?  Why can’t I do what needs to be done, breathe without having to be reminded, then go home and enjoy that which matters to me most.  My family, my friends, my home, my writing…Those things are certain.

Buddha tells me to “lean into my uncertainty.”  Is this what he means?  I try to spend a day embracing uncertainty and moving on as if it’s a natural state.  But then I find a moment to fall apart and instead of letting it happen for a moment and pulling myself back together, I lean into the falling apart bit until I’ve succumbed to the fear again.

“That’s enough!”  I hear myself say it aloud as I once again stare myself down in the bathroom mirror.  Instantly, I’m grounded again.  Perhaps the words are what allow me to fall apart in the first place.  Math merely keeps the words distant.  I relax into this thought just about the time I drift off to sleep.

I dream of bombs going off all around me, of going deaf, of living with black bears.

The dream dictionary tells me dreaming of bears means “overwhelming obstacles; the three-fold cycle of life and death and renewal; the need to get things of your chest.”

As I lay awake at 3 o’clock in the morning, I feel only an overwhelming urge to write suddenly.  To get things off my chest so I quit hiding from it.  So I don’t continue to succumb to the fear and uncertainty.  Perhaps if I see these thoughts in black and white in front of me, I’ll see they’re not so nebulous.

The fact that my laptop is downstairs somehow makes it better too.  The cool air of my sleeping house, the solid steps beneath my feet, the 100-year-old plaster walls against my palms as I search for my writing tools makes me feel more steady.

And then finally…here come the words…

The problem is, soon thereafter as news spread of others following suit and making it a phenomenon, news also began to spread of families rushing out to put things in layaway in hopes they’d get a free Christmas themselves.  And (SHOCKER!) some of the families weren’t in need.

It made me wonder if I could come up with a way of guaranteed cheat-free giving.  It only took me half an hour to determine that indeed I could.

What if, instead of giving a couple hundred dollars once a year to pay off a perfect stranger’s consumerism, you spent a few extra dollars on a weekly basis rewarding those who are working hard to make life easier for the rest of us?

I’m talking, of course, about waiters and waitresses, bartenders, taxicab drivers and other service professionals who get paid squat to deal with all that humankind has to offer.

One of my favorite pastimes is listening to stories of what these service professionals encounter.  Mostly it’s rude behavior, disregard, arrogance and disrespect.  For putting up with it, they receive a wage not livable (nationwide, the average hourly wage for waiters/waitresses is around $3.80 per hour, and the nationwide average hourly wage for taxicab drivers is around $10 per hour, but many have to pay for their own gas out of this pay.  This is, of course, without tips.)

In talking with my service professional friends and acquaintances, the average tip they receive is around 10-13 percent, rather than the 15-18 percent I assumed was the average.

I tell you, knowing this alone makes me want to shift my giving to these people.

Let’s take a restaurant example for a moment.  What if you began tipping 20 percent instead of 15 percent (I’m going to assume you’re a conscientious tipper) as a matter of course?  For a $15 meal, that would equate to a $3 tip instead of $2.25 for a difference of 75 cents.  Multiply this by 52 weeks (assuming you went out to eat and paid for a meal once a week)…$39 would be the incremental cost you incurred by increasing your tip for the ENTIRE year.

I’m  fairly confident this is far less than you would have spent paying off toys and electronics for a family of four at KMart once a year.

On top of that, what if you tried, just as an experiment, to remember that these service professionals are people with stories and histories and feelings and dreams and interests and lives.   You don’t have to be their friend, but maybe remembering their name, smiling, talking to them with respect and offering your best manners with “please” and “thank you’s” would be nice too.  That, my readers, is free.  But, boy oh boy, does it go a long way.

Now, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t still find unique ways of giving to our fellow community members who are struggling (as did the person or persons who started the KMart layaway giving).  I’m merely suggesting that this is a sure-fire way to give (guaranteed cheat-free) to those who could use a little help…all year long… without a lot of extra cost.

I dare you to try it.

Who knew that sitting still and having time to just exist could be so fruitful?  Actually, I think lots of people knew.  I mean I’ve read about it probably a dozen times or more in various Buddhist writings, in Yoga classes and even in Martha Stewart stress-reduction articles.  But it wasn’t until I experienced it myself that it truly became an answer.

I’m sure it’s true for so many things—being told the answers is probably not going to give answers.  Rather, it’s in the discovering it yourself that one finds the truth.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that 2011 being the Year of Action, for me, actually also became the year of answers, because in doing (instead of reading), I’ve actually found so many of the answers I’ve been seeking.

• What is the meaning of life?
• How do you find happiness?
• What is my purpose?
• What kind of tree is in my yard?
• How can I live a meaningful life?
• Are tomatoes used in cabbage rolls in Germany?

With the exception of the tree in my yard (sugar maple) and tomatoes in cabbage rolls (yes, in Southern Germany), my answers will likely not be answers for you at all.

I find that both exciting and sad.  Exciting because it makes life more mysterious and magical—the truth IS in the quest!; sad because it took a lot of angst and energy to get the answers I got and I feel like you, Gentle Penguin, should be saved that same angst and energy.

I can’t help myself…I want to try…

Let’s try happiness.

I do know the answer, with certainty.  The answer to finding happiness resides in returning to a more nostalgic way of life.

By that I mean, living in the real world, not in technology.  Everything from spending more time in face-to-face conversations and less time in e-mail and facebook to walking/running outside instead of walking/running on a treadmill in front of a television.

It means doing rather than delegating.  Everything from hanging the laundry on the line instead of drying it in the dryer to cooking your own food instead of ordering take in or eating out.

It means slowing down and giving yourself breathing room instead of racing through and filling your days to overflowing.  Everything from taking electronic-free weekends to joining the slow food movement to taking 10 minutes to doing nothing more than watch the first snowfall of the season.

It means being grateful for what you have instead of always wanting more.  Everything from being aware of and avoiding the people and things that cause you to feel less valuable, successful or important to learning to connect with you house and yard in a way that feeds your soul, rather than running away constantly to a store to find some form of satisfaction.

It means reducing your dependence.  Everything to relearning how to save up money for something you want (and paying with cash) instead of buying instantly on credit and having to worry about owing money later to relearning skills that make you more capable, like sewing and cooking and baking and gardening.

Finally, it means being more respectful.  To people and nature and property and cultures and time.

But you’ve probably already read things like this before, and so, my reiterating it is nothing more than accumulation of ideas.  Maybe it will sit in the back of your mind.  Maybe someday it will lead you to try something new at some point.  And maybe you’ll discover that the answer is actually something different.

Reduce.

1. a : to draw together or cause to converge
b (1) : to diminish in size, amount, extent, or number
(2) : to decrease  and concentrate the core essence by removing excess

What I already have learned, I have great desire in converging (come together from different points).  It’s time.  I nearly trip over connections happening all over the place without my even trying.

And while I already don’t have a lot of stuff—as an avid follower of Voluntary Simplicity for seven years now, I have already fallen in love with the art and discipline of getting rid of stuff—translating that to my time and energy hasn’t been quite as easy.  I have struggled repeatedly trying to get to the core essence of my values and my life.  Gentle Penguin, I assure you, there is still plenty of excess cluttering up and distracting.

So it was decided.  In 2012, I would learn how to boil out the water leaving the most pure juices of what mattered to me in my life.

The Universe must have been waiting for me to get to this point, because what happened next was nothing short of a deluge of messages about reducing, focusing, finding the core.  The Fates began beating me about the senses with signs and symbols, tasks and trials, stories and songs all to do with reducing and focusing:

A training class for my profession, the new movie I’d been longing to see, the book I was reading, the songs on iTunes genius playlist, the complaints of my daughters, the advice from my business lawyer, my horrorscope three days in a row, the speaker on the entrepreneurs podcast, and even the Buddhist meditation for the week…

“The most important thing in life is to find out what is the most important thing.”

In 2012, I will find out.

And yet, as my colleagues wade through their emails looking for appreciation to document achievements and struggle with ranking themselves on a numeric scale that seems to always be counter-intuitive, I too find myself wondering what I’ve done over the past year…The Year of Action.

According to my journal and the handwritten thank you notes I have carefully tucked inside, I…

• Switched my main client and picked up three additional ones
• Learned about fire safety in factories, retail, office and residential
• Learned about fire regulations in commercial kitchens
• Toured a commercial kitchen and fell in love with the logistics of how they work
• Helped a client merge two companies peacefully and with minimal disruption to their work force
• Created strategies for and helped launch four products (two internationally), three new businesses and three new lines of business for clients
• Learned Data Privacy, Health Care Compliance and Medical Device Software laws in the European Union, Australia, the US, Canada and seven countries in South America
• Negotiated with foreign governments about data privacy, health care compliance and medical device regulations
• Learned about the global Bariatrics market and obesity from the world’s leading experts on weight loss
• Presented at the largest obesity conference in the world
• Began studying Natural Health at the suggestion of new friends I made at the obesity conference and revolutionized my daily routine
• Became a morning person
• Committed to shopping at the Farmers Market solely
• And cooking more of my meals
• Started packing my lunch
• Learned to bake bread
• And Eric’s famous pretzels
• Made my first batch of homemade wine
• Bought a knife that revolutionized my kitchen
• Discovered shredded zucchini could be put into almost anything
• Began hiding other vegetables in our other meals too
• Started making a weekly meal plan and learned to use what I had on hand rather than overstocking my cabinets and fridge
• Wiped off the black from my thumb and made it green
• Helped my family organize our first family vacation
• And kayaked Chesapeake bay
• I ran a 5k with my daughters
• And dedicated myself to a cause
• I finally made it to Germany
• Learned German, Albanian and a little French
• And discovered that having conversations in foreign languages gets easier the more you do it
• Visited Paris, Hamburg, Rome, Tirana and so many more places I’ve wanted to see
• Marched in a parade…or two…
• Took on our local media and won
• Stepped in a big pile of poop with a national media reporter
• Joined an initiative to help my city thrive
• Led the entrepreneurship arm of that initiative
• Walked parts of my city I had long forgotten and discovered gems
• Developed a whole-hearted crush on a Muslim man and subsequently learned that my heart had great capacity for tenderness and strength
• I taught my oldest daughter how to drive
• Dealt with mice in my house
• And thugs in my neighborhood
• Started a neighborhood watch
• Met many of my neighbors
• Got a new perspective on time and distance
• And cycles of the seasons
• Went back to church
• and ballroom dancing
• Attended the Ohio Star Ball
• Pulled an all-nighter with a friend and got drunker than I’ve been in years and years
• And remembered why I don’t pull all-nighters nor get drunk
• I sang on 5 different stages…three of them new to me…(all of them sober)
• Taught etiquette to nearly 300 people of various ages
• Found my peace
• Made peace with my ex-husband
• And all the other people I needed to make peace with…all but one
• Wished I could stop hating that one
• Re-engaged with the client I started off with at the beginning of the year bringing my client list to 7 for 2011
• Pitched my writing to the NYTimes…and had it accepted (publication date TBD)
• Met my idol (Dr. PM Forni)
• And Ken Burns
• Got an iPhone
• And adopted Theo, a dog with whom I now spend at least an hour total outside—rain or shine—and with whom I graduated obedience school with flying colors

In fact, Theo’s curled up on my feet at the end of my bed as I write, snorking from exhaustion.  I feel like I should join him.  Afterall, the year’s not over yet…

I don’t actively seek out that feeling, but I admit, Gentle Penguin, every now and again it rears its oh-so-powerful talons and waits to catch the prey who doesn’t even know it’s prey so it can gloat and feel betterthan.  I should know better than to let it possess me, but then again, I know better than to engage in any philosophical discussion after two glasses of wine and a full stomach.

My past two weeks have been constant battles with my kids, my colleagues, European regulators, punks destroying property in my neighborhood, and even the traffic.  Perhaps I was just stuck in battle mode.  Perhaps I was looking for a fight with the world.  But even when I started I knew it was no fair picking the fight with the 21-year-old idealist who hasn’t been taught to think critically yet.

It was the first of many mistakes I made.  But likely the most critical.

I’d like to say I listened to his idealism.  I’d like to even say I listened to his idealism with skepticism.  But my smugness chorused through my head like a big band parade leaving no room or sound space for anything to do with him.  When he was finished speaking, I pounced with my question in a haughty, razor-sharp manner.  When he didn’t have the answer, I refused him a graceful exit, dismissing him as a thug who was tipping at windmills he couldn’t even see.

I see now that he’ll never know that I actually admire his gumption and passion—it’s a million times better than the rampant disconcert and dissociation among the many—and he’ll likely just dismiss me and the event as a bully…or worse.  So I achieved nothing of value.

The Fates must have been watching and decided to provide their judgment swiftly for I soon found myself in another discussion about my city.  My beloved city that I have adored and hated and adore again.  My beloved city that I give so much of myself to improving.  My beloved city that I would likely have and always will defend with a fierceness akin to warrior defending a kingdom.

When the visitor said he loved the city more than I did, I should have walked away.  There is never anything good, no purpose nor production, in continuing any conversation that includes superlatives over another.  But I was drunk on my self-righteousness and perhaps tipsy from the bullying I’d just pulled off.  And by now I’d finished a third glass of wine.

So I engaged…and as could be soberly predicted, I soon found myself slipping close to the edge of curse words and peaked cheeks and the urge to scream, “Why aren’t you listening to anything I say?!  People who claim to love a city immensely don’t move to another city and speak ills of the one they love, nor do they pull names of people long gone from the town who in net provided little to the betterment of place or time here as their reasons to believe in their ‘enduring love.’”  But he wouldn’t hear my reasoning, he merely insulted my town more, insulted me and then dismissed me as someone who didn’t know what she was talking about, and probably had had too much to drink.  Why wouldn’t he just acknowledge that I love the city too and stop saying derogatory things about it and me?

I was now the prey being squeezed in the talons of a self-righteous bully.  And I didn’t like it one bit.  Why did he feel the need to reduce me?  But I was reduced to the little girl trying to rationalize with someone who merely wanted to throw punches.  I’d been punched a lot as that little girl trying to appeal to people’s critical thinking skills.  And I swore I wouldn’t be her again.  But here I was.  With no graceful escape myself.

I closed my mouth, gathered my things and left.  And like the child I was, I pouted…and I plotted.  I wanted someone to stand up for me, to cause him as much pain as he caused me…

I bet that’s what my prey thought too as he left disgraced, disrespected and defeated.  Like him, I won’t reflect on anything my bully said to me.  I won’t learn anything from him.  I’ll just forever see him as an ass who cared only about his own self-righteousness.

Like I had done just shortly before.

Later, I lay in bed trying to sleep but cursed with the scenes of both discussions playing over and over and over again.  What had the kid wanted from me when I so disrespectfully dismissed him?  Acknowledgement, for one.  And it probably wouldn’t have hurt to let him know I did admire his gumption and passion, how important it is to have ideals.

I vowed to never again engage in passionate discourse over wine (or other alcohol…perhaps also to limit my social drinking to two in order to avoid the temptation to break this vow of not engaging in passionate discourse), to learn to shut my mouth and open my ears far more often than I do…especially when surrounded by new and interesting people, and to apologize for every other self-righteous moment I’ve ever had.

Gentle Penguin, I’m truly sorry.  I still have a lot of work to do to be a better person.

No more bare skin on any part of my body.  Instead I wrap up in layers upon layers to keep my skin hidden and warm.  Whereas I’ve spent the last few months splaying myself out in nature to release as much heat as possible and stay cool, now I find my posture curling inward and an increased desire to retreat inside likewise. 

Except on my morning and evening walks with Theo Barnes & Noble.  I love those times still, though admittedly there are changes there too.  Instead of spending our walking time contemplating the sun—watching it peek over the trees and rootops of our neighborhood and stopping like a ritual to witness the sun set over the Great Miami River and the skyline of my town—now we contemplate the phases of the moon.  The moon is waning, a good time for spells that banish, reduce and release, for breaking bad habits or addictions, for deepening your intuition and divination…if you believed in such things.

My beliefs have changed with the season too.   No more serious drive and ambition, running and pushing; I’ve found myself floating seemingly effortlessly on a breeze of quiet observation and reflection, of opportunities appearing and opening like the pages of a book begging to be read.  And plenty of those still sit waiting for me at home where other changes are taking place. 

My house, once open and airy has now been filled with plants I wish to keep me company, of lights to keep my plants company and of blankets and extra pots and pans I keep stored in the oven when it’s not in use.  Because that is an additional change.  Loaves of bread, dozens of cookies, beef and pork roasts, casseroles and stews appear from the black metal belly of my stove on a frequent basis these days.  And where my counter had been littered with tomatoes, cucumbers and corn, now it’s claimed by apples and squash and honey.

The laughter in my house has subsided into gentle humming as we compare notes morning and night about what songs are stuck in our heads…and how many of them are holiday related.  The girls are preparing for concerts with their respective choirs, and I long to sing too.  So I do.  Even in the Cincinnati offices of my clients, or downtown as I walk amidst the holiday decorations in progress.

Their soft white lights make me yearn for hot chocolate and mittens and coffee shops or the back corner at Dublin Pub where the fireplace has already been lit.  The conversations at the Pub seem much softer and more relaxed…unless American football is on.  Then there’s no conversation, only random rowdy shouts and clapping. 

At home those random noises would scare the birds and squirrels that inhabit my property with me, but they seem to have quieted themselves and become unconcerned with what we’re doing as we rake leaves and string popcorn and cranberries to hang outside.  It’s the toilet paper rolls we’ve coated in peanut butter and birdseed they wait for, to the point that they seem as much a part of my family as Theo has come to be.  Perhaps that’s why Theo takes such delight in chasing them back up the tree or to the gutter where a family of cardinals still have a nest.

But it’s time to move from the sunroom and curl up under a blanket in the living room.  Theo comes bounding in.  He knows I’ve also changed my rule that he can’t sit on the couch since I pulled out the red fleece blanket covered in snowmen.  He can sit on that with me, I suppose, since it gets washed every Saturday.  Besides, my feet could use the extra warmth of him curled up on them while I sit watching the world change with wonderment.

I’ve been trapped inside a book (fiction, for a change) and upon emerging feel a sense of pending doom, a sense of change that must be—a change that may have been known to be coming, but hoped against.

More disquieting is the feeling that the quiet I’ve worked so hard to achieve since before summer has shattered.  I think about that me and see myself with surprise—she was a mere child compared to who I am now as winter approaches.  Why?  What has changed besides my headlong tumble into a Forgotten Garden?

So many choices made, so many risks addressed and so many fears abolished.  A new-found confidence, a deeper comfort in my own skin.  The things I wanted then no longer appeal to me.  They are as meaningless as the maneuvering for status and power that goes on around me now.  Don’t they know that at the top of the ladder is nothing but a desolate wasteland?  You know that right, Gentle Penguin?

But I’ve tired of philosophical ponderings and need a break.  So I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of rereading a childhood favorite and enjoyed it so thoroughly I agreed to try out a new book inspired by it.  My childhood treasure.

And I tumbled headlong into the story.  I’ve always been the type to fall into a book rather than sit outside it and read.  I participate.  It’s true Gentle Penguin.  Mary Poppins was my nanny, the Gnome King my adversary on a few trips to the land of Oz, Long John Silver my mentor and enemy.  I was a princess, a warrior, an orphan, a wash girl, a dreamer, a dancer, a musician, a writer, a pilot, a pirate, a prisoner set free.  Nancy Drew and I solved puzzles with Bess and George; Sue Barton and I learned nursing and shared that skill with people from Harlem to a nursing school in Massachusetts; Alec Ramsey and I trained the Black and his son.  I learned humility, kindness, compassion, empathy, sympathy.  I laughed, I cried…and I cried and cried and cried.

So it was no surprise when the mood shifted from bright to foggy to dark to clear in this fictional garden, as the seasons changed from summer to a sudden winter and back again, so too did I.

I was Lady Adeline, Rose, Eliza, Nell, and Cassandra each in turn as the story pulled me along.  I felt for them, with them, as them.  And somewhere along the way, I learned something important, something for which I’d been searching a long time.  Since my once-upon-a-nightmare.  And the answer, though important and completely expected, is what I was hoping it wouldn’t be.

It was always an important question for me.  I don’t necessarily welcome the truth, the certainty that comes with the answer.  I will be less what I dreamed and more of what I had hoped.  Sigh…

So like someone emerging from a stone cottage sitting behind a stone wall to find myself at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, I feel the need to squint and adjust to the light, the breeze, the unending sound of the waves below.  To steady myself so I don’t tumble down…down…down.

I want to sit quietly for 10 minutes or go for a walk to let its impact strike me, to fill the hole that has been yawning to swallow it.  To understand how it impacts me and changes me the way it changed my characters.

But back here in real life, there are bills to pay, homework to check, work to be done, laundry to be folded, dishes to be washed, plants to be watered, dogs to be walked, children to be run hither and yon…and so the truth sits in the back of my mind waiting for a weekend morning during which I can finally stop, polish it and place it in my compass.

And I will be closer to finding my way.

‘What’s the world’s greatest lie? the boy asked, completely surprised.

‘It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.’” (The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho)

“Everyone has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence – by his own choice.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand)

“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offered sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing:  the last of human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…it is this freedom–which cannot be taken away–that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” (Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl)

“’…one day, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that irresponsibility does not pay.  Life is the unknown and the unknowable, except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we possibly can’ said the Elder Seagull of the Council. … ‘But how much more there is now to living!  Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s reason to life!  We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.  We can be free!  We can learn to fly!’ reproved Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” (Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach)

“’The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated.’ …  His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.  ’ Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.’” (The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay)

“‘I checked it very thoroughly,’ said the computer, ‘and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.’

‘But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything,’ howled Loonquawl.

‘Yes,’ said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, ‘but what actually is it?’

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other. ’Well, you know, it’s just Everything … Everything …’ offered Phouchg weakly.

‘Exactly!’ said Deep Thought. ‘So once you know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.’” (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

“Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught.” (Siddhartha, Herman Hesse)

“Therefore, trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.” (Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson)

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so.” (Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett)

Feliz cumpleaños, mi amigo y compañero pensador.

The top 10 challenged/banned books for 2011 are:

1. And Tango Makes Three
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
3. Brave New World
4. Crank
5. The Hunger Games series
6. Lush
7. What My Mother Doesn’t Know
8. Nickel and Dimed
9. Revolutionary Voices
10. Twilight series

Of these 10, all but one were challenged for sexual content, sexually explicit material; half were also challenged for violence; four were challenged for religious beliefs; four of the books are based on true stories/autobiographies, one was also challenged for being inaccurate, and one was challenged for being insensitive—ironically enough, it was the one about a world in which books are banned.

The top 10 TV shows of 2010-2011:

1. Two and a Half Men
2. How I Met Your Mother
3. Big Bang Theory
4. Modern Family
5. Game of Thrones
6. Glee
7. Breaking Bad
8. True Blood
9. Dexter
10. New Girl

Of these 10, two deal with supernatural powers, four contain violence, and all contain foul language and mature content including hetero- and homosexual themes, sexual relations and sexually explicit information.  Interestingly enough, most of these shows boast high teen viewership.

And just for the heck of it, my local newspaper’s website posts the five most popular stories today as:

1. Police said woman exposed herself in store, on street
2. Driving missing after Huber Heights crash
3. City sues to shut down bar
4. Woman denies theft of bull semen
5. Man sets couch on fire to chase bed bugs

Of these five stories, two contain sexual information, two deal with violence, and all deal with deviancy.

Tell me again why we’re banning books?  I say, “Think for yourself and let others do the same.”