While I was writing my story about mental illness in form of a book later titled Balancing the Beast, I was also blogging and chatting on several mental health sites. Thus I befriended other mental health consumers like me. I remember a social site for this kind of people, where I was daily conversing with two men and two women. Both women were suicidal and the two guys and I were consoling them. I remember waking up every morning in fear they might have committed suicide. It was agony. Fortunately, after a few months, the site was restructured and I lost contact with the two suicidal women. It was...

Imagine our planet would be a planet of friends. Imagine five friends set up a date to meet over cakes and coffee. They are supposed to meet at five, but the organizing one allows the other four to be late. He waits patiently for half an hour and then orders a chocolate cake. Instead of being impatient and angry, because somehow he has hoped that at least one of the four would show up a little after five, he enjoys the music in the coffee shop, observes customers and waiters and the time flies. At a quarter to six the first invited friend shows up, and at six the second one. They chat joyfully till...

Often we follow tradition without thinking about it. If anyone asked us, why we are doing a certain thing, we would simply answer: »Because it’s tradition.« In general it is alright to follow traditions, if they are still functional in the present. It would be totally dis-functional to drive in coaches pulled by horses these days for instance. It would represent a hurdle in traffic. In addition to that, by taking up a lot of precious time it would deprive us of hours of sleep or some other spare-time activity, which makes it possible for us to fall asleep in the evening. Naturally today we...

Do you ever take the road less travelled? Or do you always do what the majority of people do, because it is easier? It is easier to read many books on meditation and even lecture about it than to actually develop a habit to meditate daily. It is easier to write a book on compassion than to actually be compassionate. Of course it is not difficult to be compassionate to visitors for that one hour they stay at our place. But let’s try to be compassionate to the partner, when we come home from work totally tired and (s)he has forgotten it is our anniversary. It is easier to preach to teenagers about a...