fear

The motorist in front of me driving 10mph under the speed limit. An angst-ridden friend on the phone wondering how to increase his company’s sales. The blog post of a young woman bemoaning the absence of a man in her life on Valentine’s Day.…

So here I sit, the center of the known universe, population 1. If I dig and claw and scrape through all of the mind stuff accumulated over the past 47 years, if I burrow deep deep deep into the “known” part of that equation,…

You finish your coffee with a friend, rise and say your good-byes. As you exit the cafe something extraordinary occurs; something that almost always goes unnoticed. The focus of the entire universe gets up and goes with you. Like a spotlit actor moving across…

The 4 a.m. anxiety wake-up call. Shit, not again. The mental engine sparks to life and like that the mind is a whirl of anxious thoughts and fears about this person or that, regrets about the past, apprehension about the future, money, kids, health.…

In the spring of 1999 I and another member of the American Red Cross boarded a flight bound for the Balkan conflict in Kosovo. A veteran of many humanitarian assignments, I felt no particular concern about the trip. But on the evening of my…