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I realized that I needed to release them to a broader audience. Not only do they address the larger, deeper themes I was trying to get across, but they are even more relevant today than they were when I was writing them all those years ago.

Why?

Because the problems they address have gotten worse, not better. As a psychiatrist I see the effect of this worsening every day. The pandemic, the proliferation of social media, greed, the dysfunction of our divisive political system. All these things have made our sense of isolation even worse. It used to be that the patient would walk into my office and leave the world's problems outside until they were done talking about themselves. Now, the patient's personal problems have to stay outside and it's the world's problems that demand attention in session. This makes sense. It is no longer possible to believe that our personal problems don't impact the world, and vice versa. I expand on this phenomenon in the pages that follow.

(I should also mention that I went through the essays and changed them so that they sit comfortably in today's world, which took shockingly little adjustment. Still, I don't think readers need to hear about my beeper going off.)

Therapy, without faith in higher forces, is likely to leave you feeling worse than before. Working on yourself doesn't have to be selfish. If you do, you have more energy, not less. That energy will transform the world.

This book shows you why and how.

Just an Illusion

Our culture denies the nature of reality. It holds out a promise that you can live in an ideal world where things come easily, a world in which unpleasant experiences can be avoided, where there is never a lack of immediate gratification. Worse, it suggests that if you do not live in this world, something is wrong with you. This ideal world is a realm of illusion. No matter how promising this world seems, it does not exist.

Be honest. Your own life experiences have been far from ideal. But what you have experienced is what is real, not what you would like to experience. In short, the nature of reality is this:

Life includes pain and adversity. 

The future is uncertain.

Accomplishment of any kind requires discipline.

You are not special. No matter what you do, you cannot avoid these aspects of life.

This will never change.

There is love, joy, surprise, transcendence, and creativity as well, but these never occur separately from the above five points.

Yet there always seem to be others who are exempt from the adversity of daily living. The media portrays them to us. They are physically more perfect, they do not worry, they are certain of their course through life. They never lack for love or companionship. They are secure in themselves. These people seem to have abolished the negative aspects of life. And this power makes them special. Products are marketed with promises of putting us in this group. We all feel a pressure to convince others that we are part of it. This holds true for the poor kid unsure if dinner is coming and the billionaire with six homes. When everyone acts as if a fantasy is real, it begins to seem real.

But only for someone else. In your own life, you find yourself unable to take a risk. You don't know how to make a decision. Your financial future is uncertain. Your face has a new wrinkle. There is no time to parent properly. You simply cannot get life under control. There is nothing wrong with this. This is how it feels to be alive. The problem is that the other group has become the standard, and self-esteem starts to depend on being like them. An adverse event feels like something is happening that is not supposed to be happening. The natural experiences of living make you feel like a failure.

Is there another way? Can you live life with its conflicts, uncertainties, and disappointments and somehow feel good about yourself? You can. But it requires a completely new orientation. The first step is to realize that life is a process. Our culture leads us to forget this fact and makes the destructive suggestion that we can perfect life and then get it to stand still. The ideal world with the superior people is like a snapshot or a postcard. A moment frozen in time that never existed. But real life is a process, it has movement and depth. The realm of illusion is an image, dead and superficial. Still, these images are tempting. There is no mess in them.