God died the other day after a long battle with leukemia. With his death god took all the answers with him, the ones that might have helped me to understand why he bothered with the whole creation thing if he was just going to be endlessly disappointed in the results. Why? It's the one-word question so [...]

How often I feel like a fish trapped in a bowl, a prisoner to something called life. To an outsider this sounds depressing and at times I suppose it is. But it's all I've ever known. Like a 3-legged dog, I've only ever known hopping. Fifty-two years of hopping proves one thing: all that 'you' [...]

At a recent holiday gathering I briefly found myself in the company of a precocious 9-year-old, a child I've known for quite some time now and who - along with her parents - I admire quite a lot.This little girl provided me with the best 15 minutes of conversation I've enjoyed in years - conversation almost [...]

It is said the worst punishment that can be meted out to a prisoner is solitary confinement. Lock someone in 'the hole' long enough and he starts to go mad (note the metaphorical connection between 'hole' and burial/death). Seems rather clear to me now that this is pretty much the way each of us experiences life - [...]

An avid reader as a child, at some point I remember being intrigued by a rather simple discovery: that most of the really interesting people in life came from difficult circumstances. I don't remember any notable personalities, artists, writers, etc., emerging from the antiseptic world of suburban America (or any nicely developed stretch of society). [...]

In the sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," our heroes discover that most of the once-familiar faces around them are, in fact, hostile aliens in cloned human costume. The story resonates precisely because it taps into that most primal of human fears: that each of us is truly alone in a hostile universe. This is [...]

Sitting on the beach last week, watching the waves rise and fall, rise and fall. The tide rolling in, receding. Clouds building, abating. Birds (and humans) coming, going. Any or all of it a perfect metaphor for life, for existence itself. Little wonder that the mystics so often use the ocean and its waves to explain [...]

A lot of people have been pretty upset about Robin Williams's suicide. Many reasons for their unhappiness are given. Ultimately, I think it boils down to this: If someone like Robin Williams - a man who ostensibly 'has it all' - finds life unworthy of the effort, what chance do the rest of us have? Be [...]

It is said the greatest of all human addictions is that to one's self, which is to say, the addiction to an I that stands separate, alone, and ultimately doomed. Looking back it's pretty clear that the way I reinforced and ensured that addiction - the way all of us do - is by snatching [...]

As children we learn to trust the authority of the twin deities called 'mom' and 'dad' and then, a bit later, that same authority is transferred to the school gods known as teachers. As young children even our friends serve as erstwhile thought leaders, since they shed light into worlds (the homes around us) about which we [...]