A psychiatrist once told me, “Statistically speaking, you should be dead.”  A long time ago, after suffering a multitude of tragedies, I went to see a psychiatrist on the advice of a friend who felt I was too happy, and thus, there must be something wrong with me.

I didn’t quite know how to take what that psychiatrist had to say to me, or what my friend had to say.  I dismissed them, but agreed to go into therapy.  I stayed in that therapy with that same therapist from the age of 19 to the age of 36, when I got divorced and moved to Florida.

He was an old man, this therapist, even when we first met, and reminded me of my grandfather.   He served as a sounding board, a sort of third party perspective.  He studied Tibetan Buddhism, and used to talk to me in parables and stories…