We swim in the soup of constant discourse. The content and meaning of that discourse flavors our lives.
Say you are driving your child to school, and I cut you off in traffic (dead …

Why start with spicy soup? Because it is easy? Because it is nutritious? Because it is warm and somehow enveloping without ever suffocating? Because it is global, utterly. Love isnʼt spring-time. What brings a man to hit a baby? what brings a mother to ignore her own feelings of love to let it happen? If love ruled we would all have more courage, more hope. Hard stuff but remember fear, not hate nor indifference, undermines love. Love is all-time. [...]

You can be unhappy any time, any place. Moreover, life without unhappiness would probably be unbearable for it would have no light and so shadow, no day and so night, no loss and so no real gain, no sorrow and so no real joy. It would be devoid of meaning. Discontent is the source of creativity, perhaps of creation.

I am amongst other things the Secretary of the Howard League in Scotland. John Howard was the 18th century founder of the penal reform movement: between 1775 and 1790 he toured Europe seeking humane forms …

Rabbits are ancient symbols of fertility and so symbolize the return of spring. In thinking of them, of Easter, and of Sherri Fisher’s excellent article, Positive Psychology is more than happiness, I spoke with a …

Our brains are attics – they have to be, storing all our past stuff. But we live when we can in the dizzy day-room delights of children’s laughter, family chaos and even work. Spring …

Europeans generally don’t celebrate Thanksgiving[1]; we have important, though quieter harvest festivals, and we wish you North Americans ease.  Sitting between Diwalli (Hindu) and Christmas (pagan in its timing), the Thanksgiving celebration of harvest brought …

Is it wrong for anyone to be happy in prison? Is there to be no redemption once banished? Should the exchanges between the guards and the prisoners be always suspicious, judgmental? The US, …

Hobbling down the stairs and across the street I realized too late that I had left my wallet in the office. This meant that I missed the bus, and later had to get the train which sensibly stopped at the train station some two miles from the bus station. So, that evening’s plan for Jess – a student driver – to drive us home from the bus station was abandoned, as was the car which was, of course, a vital player in the plans for the next morning travels. Jess had a party to enjoy. For recovering from my broken leg I had clear goals (well advised) which included starting to drive again ten days hence. But returning from the train station I recklessly then drove down with Shelagh to get the other car, and drove back. I have been driving since. Events and circumstance accelerated both the motivation and achievement of my goal. [...]

Preparing for a workshop I was running last week, I e-mailed the 20 or so participants with briefing notes and added a PS to the warn them that I would be hobbling on crutches as I had “recently broken my leg whilst roller-blading in the Andes with a bunch of Brazilian dancers.”

Two delightful people initially believed my explanation to which I could only say, “I really wish I were the kind of guy that could be true of.” [...]