Healing Circles and individual sessions in Glastonbury and Brighton

For specifics, contact: channeledgrace@aol.com

Tuesdays, come to one; come to all.  7:30 - 9:00 p.m.    $20 per session

Esoteric meditation is a guided meditation; it is a journey that allows you to reconnect with your soul and remember who you are.  In ancient times, esoteric studies were limited to the purview of the temple initiates.  Today, our world calls for all the help it can get. And that includes an understanding of the mysteries of ourselves and our connection to Spirit.

Parking is behind the church. Follow the signs to the church and church school (cemetery side of the building) and enter the door to the church school. Head down the stairs, first door on your left, room 104.

Sunday, 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Open to all

Have you met anyone recently who isn’t tired? It seems to be a national, if not international, pandemic. Most everyone is a bleary-eyed, caffeinated automaton who is putting one cranky foot down after the other. Even the kids with their over-scheduled days and burgeoning back-packs can relate.

There is some statistic about five days of not enough hours of sleep leads to day six, where your body feels as if it has pulled an all-nighter. That makes sense to me. Think of all of your good intentions to clear your desk on Friday when the office is quieter; yet, you can barely make a coherent sentence because you are so brain dead.

Now, of course, the exception to this may well be those lucky devils who are on their two week vacation, and it’s Day 10. I say Day 10 for a reason.

Remember Michael Keaton’s movie “Multiplicity”? Keaton’s character literally multiplied himself on the copy machine because he couldn’t do it all in a day – too many roles, too many tasks.

Prepping to leave the workplace, and even your home, before vacation is akin to juggling multiple flaming swords. It’s an intense, focused effort with a keep-it-all-moving strategy. One out-of-sync, descending sword-on-fire and it can get dicey. This leads to a high probability that all the flaming swords will come crashing down – on you. And, then, you can find yourself, metaphorically speaking, hoisted on your own petard with your clothing in crispy tatters and your hair smoking and singed. Not a pretty picture.

In other words, can you spell s-t-r-e-s-s? Like a row of dominoes, it all comes tumbling down. Before you even finish packing your suitcase, you are frazzled to the nth degree.

Research tells us that it takes a full 10 days for vacationers to unpretzel their knotted, stressed, overworked and travel-ambushed bodies. At which point, they can now take a full breath and not pass out from the rush of oxygen to their brains. Heaven is at hand.

And, heaven can be a relative term.

If you are a daring-and-risk-taking type, there are those outward-bound-extreme-adventure varieties of vacations where you face challenge after challenge, and your dopamine receptor sites, as well as your body, get a great workout. This is one kind of heaven. The adventure-bound eschew the serotonin-enhancing vacation ahhh’s of watching the waves on the ocean, spa treatments or settling into a hammock. Their vacation mode is go, go, go; full speed ahead; the more daring, the better. The soother-serotonin types want frosty beverages served to them from the lanai while they read a book and intermittently watch the clouds make animal shapes.

And, then, alas, there are those who have the dreaded Bad Vacation Karma (BVK). Wherever they go, whenever they go, you can be certain that there will be calamity. It does not matter what swell destination is proudly printed on their itinerary; their vacation will look like another National Lampoon movie at the very least or, at worst, a bad episode of Survivor. No electricity, hunkered down in a shelter, stranded in an airport while their luggage bobs in the ocean or gets a tan on the tarmac. They come home with nary a souvenir, but plenty of great believe-it-or-not disaster stories.

Whatever your personality type and preference, the mere thought of a scheduling a vacation usually brings a smile to the face.

Today, given gas prices and the economic riptides of the financial markets, the new word for vacation is “staycation.” That’s right; you make your hometown and neighboring communities your holiday destination. It’s a clever thought; practical, too.

Think of the possibilities: You can high dive off your roof. You can unearth the ossified treasures from the depths of your basement-cum-rain forest. You can actually visit all those neat places in your area that only the visitors see.

And you can … are you ready? You can take a nap – a real, live snoozle in the sanctuary of your home and your familiar surroundings. You can sink into your very own, dream-encrusted, comfy-cozy bed. Ahhhh, that’s heaven.

Or, even better, you can be very audacious, forego the “to do’s” and try a mid-day nap on the couch. You can stretch out, position the pillows and find the groove to release and relax and slide into the land of nod. The thought is enough to make a grown person swoon with the delight for the sheer extravagance of time and pleasure.

On that note, I am plumping my couch cushions and gearing up for little down time. I am going to take my grumpy, crabby, overtired self on “staycation” and try a home-brewed nap.

Meet you in the dream state. 

April 22 was Earth Day. You do anything to celebrate or honor the occasion? Me either — and I say that with a touch of chagrin and remorse.

Here is our blue-green planet bobbling away in this great galactic soup. She is holding up her place in the multiverse, rotating regularly, and keeping us all afloat, but like many of us, Mother E. is very tired, very depleted and having difficulty maintaining her balance.

All you have to do is to think of the crazy weather patterns of extreme heat, rogue snow storms, avalanches, hurricanes, tsunamis, siroccos, flooding, volcanic activity and dry-tinder, combustible forest fires to know that balance is out of the question. 

Mother E is at her wit’s end. Her glaciers are melting; her ozone layer is tattered; and her waters are polluted. Not to mention, her forests and mines have been stripped; her landfills are clogged with plastics, packaging, disposable diapers and Styrofoam bits that will outlive us all. And she is inundated with toxic chemicals. It’s enough to make a grown planet cry.

One person recently shared with me that he had learned that all of our oil drilling (and think huge energy consumption by Western civilization, especially the USA) was undermining the tectonic plates of the earth as the oil reserves acted as a cushion for these structural formations. That’s a new one on me.

I don’t know enough about the science to speak to the credibility of this assertion, but I do know that everything, and everyone, is connected. Think of that television commercial where the butterfly in Japan flaps its wings and how those tissue-thin, small wing beats cause discernible reverberations right in our own backyards.

Remember Mad Cow disease and the Bird Flu? The global boundaries and demarcations often seem more like ink-drawn maps blurred and fuzzy with splashed water rather than concretized entities. We, as a planet, are a pulsating mass of energy that continuously interacts with one another. The idea of separation is a huge illusion. What we do, or don’t do, has consequences. 

This brings to mind Chernobyl, which has been called the worst human-made disaster. If you recall, a nuclear reactor exploded in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986. It has been said that 9 million people were directly affected by exposure to the radiation and estimated that 65 million people worldwide were indirectly affected by eating contaminated food stuffs. Today, there are increased thyroid cancer rates as a result of this increased radiation. The explosion may have been in the Ukraine, but its impact was global. To repeat myself, we are all connected.

Years ago, a dear friend told she heard the trees cry. This friend is a super-sensitive type; I wondered if, perhaps, she was projecting some of her own sadness onto the trees. Then, a bit later, totally unsolicited, another person volunteered that she, too, had the same auditory acuteness. This time, I paid attention.

Be it the tears of the trees, the increased deaths of whales, the distorted patterns of bees, nature is clearly trying to get our attention, but our listening is selective and self-serving.

Like flossing our teeth, we know recycling, using less electricity, buying local – all those things that reduce our carbon footprint are good, but to most of us they can seem too much trouble. Our environmental consciousness is still being raised; we have yet to really feel the ongoing pinch that will make us squirm and egg us on to change. Going green has not yet become a mainstream part of the culture.

Remember when we used to smoke cigarettes? We could smoke in the office, on airplanes, in restaurants and bars, almost everywhere. Then the education started, and our cognitive dissonance increased as we became more health conscious. In effect, we woke up to the very negative consequences of smoking, and, over the years, many of us stopped smoking. The tipping point had been reached.

Today, I see us en route to mainstream environmental consciousness. Unfortunately, this runway is very, very long. It leads us towards that moment when the collective consciousness agrees and accepts that Mother E is in dire straights and needs all the help she can get from us, her thoughtless, rude, slovenly, disrespectful inhabitants who, by the way, created this mess.

The indigenous cultures believed in the sanctity of nature. Their relationship with Mother Earth and her elements was their portal to the divine. They cared for the earth; they valued the connection. The physical world was not taken for granted; it was revered and perceived as a symbol of the invisible realms.

Today, Mother Earth is more often viewed as the hard-working servant. We treat this mother with little regard; there is no reverence, and respect is at a minimum. She has become our dumping ground. We have become master consumers; we have created a disposable society and, as such, garbage and detritus abound.

Don’t you think it’s time we cleaned on our rooms here on earth and give Mother E a break? Every little bit we can do to reduce the toxic load on the earth as well as our physical bodies helps.  

And while we’re at it, let’s give Mother Earth a place of honor at the table. No more crumbs for our Mother E. She deserves a standing ovation for all of her hard work.

Thanks, Mother Earth. I’m sorry for all my messes, and I promise to do better.

Unlike most babies who come screaming into the world, Amma arrived smiling on September 27, 1953, in Kerala, India.

As a child, Amma continued to beam – and show her unique approach to life. Hers lips were constantly moving in silent prayer and mantras. Or she was singing impromptu devotional songs she created at will.

At a young age, Amma felt compelled to help those less fortunate. She bathed and tended the disenfranchised elderly in her village. She fed the hungry poor. She was forever giving away items from her own lower-caste home to help those in need, much to the dismay of her family, who thought their daughter was not quite right and relegated her to completing simple domestic chores.

Amma’s brother was apoplectic when his sister began hugging others, including those of the opposite sex, which was considered a taboo. It is said that he considered stabbing his sister to stop her hugging.

These days, hugging is not a problem.  It has been reported that Amma has individually hugged over 50,000 people in one day and 25 million people in three decades of service.

Around the world, people have stood in lines for hours for the grace of one of Amma’s hugs. Amma has received her petitioners for hours on end, late into the night, without pause or intermission for as long as needed. Given her desire to tend all who request a hug, Amma has been known to go 20+ hours at a stretch.

Timothy Conway, Ph.D., author of the book, Women of Power and Grace, wrote, “Just her stamina - embracing these millions of people one by one, day after day, without a break, all over the world - is some kind of divine gift. No mere human resources could accomplish this.”

Amma is considered a walking embodiment of compassion and unconditional love; and her hugs are just that, embraces of love and acceptance.

Amma says, “My sole mission is to love and serve one and all.”

Not only does Amma hug, Amma has, to quote the Christian Science Monitor, “spurred a host of humanitarian activities in India and elsewhere. They include charitable hospitals and hospices, free housing for the poor, a widows pension program, orphanages and schools for destitute children.”

The wide reach of Amma’s heart brings to mind another arm of Amma’s charitable outreach — the epidemic of farmer suicides in India.

I quote from Amma’s website (www.amma.org):

“Due to economic pressures leading to irresolvable debt associated with continually failing crops, many farmers have been committing suicide by drinking the very pesticides that no longer work on their crops. Especially in South India, with the growing rise of climate changes and other factors, crop failure has become more and more common causing suicide to spread like an epidemic amongst the suffering farmers. For example, in 2006 in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra alone, there were 1,044 reported suicides - one every eight hours.”

That would be 3 suicides a day. That would be three families who were constantly struggling against the elements; who were knee-deep in defeat at ruined crops; and who went to bed with hopelessness and hunger. Now, these families are shattered with grief and trauma at the loss of one (sometimes two) parent(s)/spouse.

In 2007, Amma pledged massive financial relief to the hard-hit agricultural areas, but she allowed that would not be enough: “The problem cannot be solved through economic packages alone … what is needed is social and spiritual interventions so that the farmers realize that suicide is not the way out. In fact, it only further aggravates the problem for the families.”

Amma, then, did her magic. She spearheaded counseling and education programs, and created scholarships for tens of thousands of farmers’ children who live below the poverty line. She also established vocational training for thousands of women, many of whom are wives who inherited farm debt from their deceased husbands. Amma is committed to decreasing the risk factors for suicide in this and following generations.

However, there remains the GMO and pesticide factor as detailed on www.amma.org:

 “Currently many non-organic, commercial foods are genetically modified. Genetically modified organisms (GMO) present a profound danger to humans as well as the ecosystem. Many species of animals, such as the monarch butterflies are becoming extinct due to the GMOs. For vegetarians, GMOs pose another problem, as they are frequently spliced from animal DNA. It is hypothesized by many experts that the GMO food will eventually even alter human DNA. As GMOs are a recent creation their long term effects are unknown.

In India and other developing nations, western based GMO / pesticide companies are aggressively promoting extremely heavy use of chemicals for farming. This is leading to serious depletion of soil and contamination of the water. Many insects are developing stronger resistance to pesticides and sometimes even huge amounts of chemical are ineffective. ….many farmers have little or no yield, year after year.”

Amma suggests we support organic farmers. And her point is well taken; whatever chemicals or other toxicities we put into our earth and waters will ultimately make their way into our physical systems – and with great alacrity — given the shrinking of the global village.

Like the rock tossed into the pond, the ripple effects of both the heartaches and the recovery efforts will continue to undulate throughout generations.

 

I recently accepted a lovely invitation for a visit to the shore. Schedules being what they were, I had just 27 hours, but those sun-washed, beach hours became time out of time.

The hours puffed up and expanded as if there were yeast-fed. There was time to revel in the moment, time to inhale ocean breezes, time to play tag with sea foam, and, even, time to stroll the boardwalk with lemonade and caramel corn at hand. It was grand.

The shift in time and perception began the moment when I found myself comfortably settled on the deck overlooking the ocean. In what felt like the immediate flip of a switch, I found myself dropping into a channel of being-ness. I was in heaven; grade A, first class heaven on earth.

Any stress I held seemed to slip off my shoulders as I inhaled salt-infused air and settled into the rhythms of the surf. The rushing roar of the water was like a lullaby soothing and comforting all the rough edges. The sound of the waves literally transported me into another dimension.

Later, as I sat in late-night solitude and tranquility on the deck, I felt a communion with the cosmos. I felt gratitude for all. I was awash in the beauty and bounty before me. And in that state of happy connection, there was a wee voice that echoed ominously. There was the startling and, somewhat embarrassing, whisper that told me I have been afraid to say, “Yes,” to God in a complete way.

This was a painful epiphany. Up until this moment, I felt I had an open, clear, all-systems-go connection with the Divine. In fact, I had felt a tad smug in my abilities to say, “Yes,” to the big things. I have repeatedly and willingly made those radical right turns. Uncharted territories have become old hat. I have grown comfortable with not knowing and just taking the one next step that was presented to me. And each of those leaps of faith was a very big deal to me – and they changed my life.

So, why is it that I can make the big leap across the chasm of unknowing, but when it comes to simply crossing the street, so to speak, I find myself hunkered down and turning my back on the new road before me.

Clearly, like St. Paul, I like the clarity and certainty of the big conversion experience. It’s the smaller choice points, and choice is always the operative word, that seem to stop me in my tracks. I enter into some state of denial and rationalize my non-action.

This makes me think of “monkey bread,” a new discovery found while strolling the boardwalk. Monkey bread is a loaf of bread composed of small balls of dough clustered together, somewhat like grapes if their vine was circular. Once it’s baked, you pull the bread apart.

There are days I feel like monkey bread; everybody wants a piece of me. I find myself pulled by assorted life demands. I get overwhelmed; I shut down and want to submerge myself in my turtle shell.

It’s hard to hear, much less see when I am encased in my shell with my head tucked all the way in. I don’t want to try anything new. I simply want to stay in my turtle sanctuary with a prominently hung “Do not disturb” sign.

And, then, as they say in the UK, the penny dropped. I got it. I understood.

Yes, I have said, “Yes,” but not always, not consistently and not to all the hands proffered or the doors presented. The irony is that I also had not said, “No,” enough so that I was rested, refreshed and balanced enough to consider opening the new door.

I owe you an apology, God. I did not stay in my seat at the banquet table. I kept jumping up or running out of the room. I lost that peace. It’s like that magnet quote that hangs on my refrigerator by some wise, unknown person; it reads, “Peace, it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” Amen.

My vision was distorted: I did not recognize my connection with it all. There were times where I refused to see the opportunity before me, the adventure at hand.  I was clinging to what was familiar. I only saw my little corner of the multiverse and forgot that I am, energetically speaking, part and parcel of it all. There is a whole world before me, and I had forgotten to look up from my desk.

I am embarrassed to admit that I am a woman over 50 who still struggles with some fear — and some very silly fears at that. And, I still deal with the ego dance. My turtle home is safe and comfortable; it offers protection, and it keeps me hidden.

And, yet, I also know there have been no missteps. Some quiet moments have been for healing and knitting together the splintered parts of me. Some moments have served to replenish and restore me; other moments have allowed the quiet voice to be heard and the guidance to be known.

I now choose to see differently. I have taken off my blinders. I want to say, “Yes,” to all, large and small, green and glorious, which makes me think of the wonderful e e cummings poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Cummings also said, “I imagine that yes is the only living thing.” I think he is quite right.

Today, I choose to live more fully; today, I say, “Yes, God” to everything.

 © copyright 2008 by Adele Ryan McDowell

For weeks and weeks after attending a professional conference where I first heard this story, I told everyone I encountered this tale. And I mean everyone.

At the time, I was a practicing psychotherapist with back-to-back clients. I told this story day in and day out for weeks. If you graciously asked me, “Hey, how was your conference?” or I had your attention for a few minutes, I was off and running. I felt this particular tale was so meaningful that I wanted everyone I knew to hear this very moving story. 

Additionally, I used this story over the years as a touchstone in several talks. It never failed to make an impression. It’s that good of a story. We’ll see if you agree with me.

 Stories that are told and retold often become like the game of “Telephone.” They become individualized and take on the tone and rhythm of the speaker. This is my version based on hearing the story from author and higher consciousness teacher, Caroline Myss; Myss was told this story by her friend, our protagonist, David Chethlahe Paladin.

I was also honored to have a telephone conversation with Lynda, our protagonist’s wife. She added her perspective and insight to this tale; she also shared with me some history, and we had a great discussion about what is the nature of truth.

This story has been tumbled in my psyche over many years. Like a rock, the sharp edges have been worn smooth, and, hopefully, you will be able to hold this tale in your hand, turning the stone over and over again, feeling the heft of it and sensing the ground from which it came.

So, without further adieu, let’s go back in time and let me introduce you to our hero:

David Chethlahe Paladin is a Navaho Indian living on a reservation in Arizona. David would laughingly say that his mother was a nun, and his father was a priest. It turns out his mother became pregnant by a visiting priest. She, in turn, decides to become a nursing nun and leaves her son in the care of the extended family of the tribe.

David and his cousin spend a great deal of time leaving the reservation and going into town. They drink a lot, and they think life is better in the white man’s world. The local constabulary is forever returning the boys to the reservation. By the time David is 13 years of age, he is an alcoholic.

David and his cousin decide that this time they are going to make it off the reservation – and they do. They find their way to California, wherein they lie about their ages and sign up for work with the Merchant Marines. During this time, David befriends another young man from Germany. He also begins drawing; some of his sketches include the eventual bunkers that the Japanese are building on the atolls in the Pacific Ocean.

World War II is declared. The US Army tells David that since he lied about his age with the Merchant Marines he has a choice. He can go to jail for a year or enlist in the army. David enlists. He is a teenager.

The army tells David as he is a Navaho, they are going to drop him behind enemy lines and use him as an information gatherer in their special services. David, using his native language, is to relay his findings to another Navaho in the army. Their language becomes a code that the Germans are unable to crack, much less decipher.

David is dropped behind enemy lines. Ultimately, he is captured and interrogated for information. The German officers find him useless and direct that he be sent to a death camp and executed as a spy.

Imagine, if you will, the scenes we all have invariably seen of the railroad station and the platform filled with lines of prisoners being pushed into box cars for transport to the camps.

Here is David. He is being pushed and shoved into a boxcar. There is German soldier behind him saying “Schnell, schnell” (quick, quick). David stops, turns around and looks at the German soldier. It is his friend from the merchant ship. The friend recognizes David and ushers him to a different box car that will send David to Dachau.

In the barracks at Dachau, David sees an older man, a fellow prisoner, drop something. David bends down to retrieve it. The guard, who has witnessed this moment, asks David, “Are you the Christ?”

The guard, then, orders that David’s feet be nailed to the floor and that David stand there with his arms outstretched for three days like Christ on the cross. Every time David would falter and crumple the guards would hoist him up again.

In the middle of the night, someone would sneak in and cram raw, maggot-covered chicken innards into David’s mouth.

When the Allies open up this camp, they find David a mere shell of a man, weighing maybe 70 pounds, and speaking Russian*. They turn David over to the Russians. David later speaks English and gives his name, rank and serial number to the Russians who transfer him back to the US military.

David is sent to a VA hospital in Battle Creek Michigan where he spends the next 2 years in a coma. At the end of two years, his legs are encased in metal braces, similar to what polio patients used. David, a young man, maybe not even 21 years of age, is to be sent to a VA home for the rest of his life.

David asks if he can visit his family on the reservation. The answer is, “Of course.” David literally drags himself onto the reservation. He meets with the elders of tribe. They ask to hear his whole story. David tells them every horrible thing that he endured. He is full of anger, rage and hate.

The elders confer and tell David to meet them tomorrow at a designated point on the Little Colorado River. David agrees and at the appointed hour he arrives. One of the elders tethers a rope around his waist; others remove the braces from his legs. They hoist David up into the air and as they throw him into the raging current of the Little Colorado River, they say, “Chethlahe, call back your spirit or die. Call back your spirit or die.”

And, that, dear readers, is what I think healing is all about for each of us. It is calling home our energy; it is calling home our disenfranchised pieces and parts. It is reclaiming ourselves.

In David’s case, it was releasing all the rage and pain that coursed through his system. It was moving into a place of release, a release catalyzed by forgiveness that allowed him to have the energy to move his withered legs and to reclaim his essential life force.

Those six words, “Call back your spirit or die,” are so powerful to me. They are a mantra for healing and transformation. They are a call to wholeness.

David would later say that those moments in the Little Colorado River were the very hardest of his life. He had to fight himself for himself.

David reported he was able to see the big picture; he understood why things unfolded as they did. For example, he realized that the raw chicken parts were meant as a source of protein to sustain him so that he might live.

David Paladin was thrown into the river as a very broken – and broken on every level — man. And David emerged out of the Little Colorado River like the phoenix out of the ashes. He had metaphorically walked through the fire, or, in this case, swum through the currents, and had come out alive. He was born again.

To my understanding, David did not need his braces anymore, and he went on to work with priests and addicts. He became a shaman, a teacher and an artist. He died in his middle years in the mid ‘80s.

* By the way, do you remember David drawing on his tour of the Pacific and that he spoke Russian when the Allies first found half-dead at the camp? It turns out that David was channeling, i.e., energetically merging, with the Russian artist Kandinsky. In fact, Kandinsky’s best friend came from Russian to spend some time with David. The friend, the story goes, told the press that he felt as he had spent the day with his best friend, Kandinsky. 

That’s right: There is no discussion; there is no equivocation. The door is closed; the conversation is over. I have holstered my pointing finger that wagged so definitively in your direction. I have recovered from my case of eye-rolling; there is no more exasperated and exaggerated sighing. I have stormed off in a fit of pique – and I was glorious in my dramatic exit, I might add.

I am not in a snit, where I might have spent a half day or so harrumphing around in my boots of glum because the world had not lived up to my expectations.

No, this is bigger; this is better. This is a full-blown case of the how-dare-you angries. That’s right: I am mad, and I am reveling in this stew of bubbling turmoil. There is steam coming from my ears; my face is red with rage. I am like the character in the classic movie “Network” who bellowed out the window, “I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore.”

Yes, I am mad as hell. Oh, how delicious it is. I can revel in it; I can roll around like a dog in the dirt. I can sink into this glorious, self-righteous place. It’s like the cushiest of sofas, where I can sink down and be swallowed up by all that comfy comfort. I am feeling downright fabulous in this tempestuous place.

I am puffed up with justification. The facts are on my side; my friends are unanimous in their support. I am perfectly – and that is capital “P” perfectly – right. Right … the word rolls off my tongue like I am sipping a fine wine.

Ahhh….the sheer triumph of feeling keenly acute, outstandingly aware and totally brilliant in my perceptions. It’s clear why I am good at my job: I can read a situation. I can understand the nuances, the dynamics and the subtleties. Hey, sub-texts are my specialty.

And there is the history. If only you knew what had happened before, if only you understood the repetitiveness of this egregious offense, if only you could see how much they hurt me, then you would really understand the heinousness of this offense.

And me, well, you know I am a paragon of virtue. I do so many nice things. I am uber-responsible. And I am right: 100% correct; 1000% accurate. I am willing to wager money that I am right, right, right.

Clearly, I can’t stop saying the word enough. I am right. I love the way that sounds. I love the way it feels. Does Hallmark make a card for this?

I guess if Hallmark did make a card, it might say something like, “Are you a schmidiot? No, you’re an idiot. And I’m not.” Maybe there will be a dancing cow on the inside. There is nothing like a dancing cow to make you feel beyond swell.

Or, perhaps, the message could be in one of their new musical cards – they are a personal favorite. Dolly Parton, undoubtedly holding a firearm, could be singing a baleful tune of “You’re wrong, darlin’, ‘cuz I know for damned straight sure that I am right.” I envision a bull’s eye featured on the inside.

And it is the satisfaction of hitting the mark dead center that is so like being right. Right is hugely appealing. Right is sitting next to perfect; they are kissing cousins, and how good does that get?

Excuse me, what is that racket in the back of the room? One of you in the peanut gallery has a question? OK, shoot.

“Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?”

Well, if I’m right – and I am – then, I am happy. I don’t get your point.

“Can’t constantly thinking you’re right get awfully lonely? Don’t people get sick of your gloating? You seem like you might be tough to take on a regular basis with that right-right-right happy dance of yours.” 

There is great luxuriousness in being right. It’s like a five-star hotel. Not everyone can afford a room, but when you can and when you are in there with the thousand-count bed sheets, the sumptuous furnishings, the fine view, you feel on top of the world.

But, I get your point. If I am in this snazzy hotel room by myself, it wouldn’t be as much fun. Truth be told, holding on to right can get pretty isolating and even a tad boring. I sometimes feel like I’m a one-trick pony, all I can do is be right.

“Do you ever forgive anyone?”

Forgive? Why should I? You want me to take the high road. Not likely, they never say they’re sorry to me.

“But if you could forgive them, wouldn’t that create some peace and then every one would be happy? And you would be even righter by taking the high road. Think of all that good karma you’d be creating.”

Hmmm … righter than right, less lonely, happier people and karma-building, I will take that under advisement.