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a Hypothesis of Everything

PART 1: You are Here

By Eric Riley

PREFACE

Burundi and the Life of Riley

That’s me – Eric Riley that is.

Burundi, Africa:

There are a lot of little countries in the world that I don’t know exist nor really care to know. So I understand that when people ask me where I was born, they usually need more details explaining the geography of central Africa. Burundi is connected to the southern border of Rwanda and is nestled between Tanzania and Congo, with the shore of Lake Tanganyika covering much of its western border. I was born in a house on a mission station called Kibimba located near Burundi’s geographical center.

Why was I in Burundi? My parents were Quaker missionaries there. Dad was an electrical/mechanical guru. Although he worked tirelessly on the team that created and maintained a radio station, I remember him mostly for inventing things like a tic-tac-toe mechanical computer game from a manual typewriter using punchcard technology. Mom raised us kids and did accounting for the radio station.

The Kibimba mission station is historically relevant as a beacon of learning and health in a part of Burundi that was desperate for it. And Kibimba still represents a deep wound of racism and prejudice for the country.

In both Burundi and Rwanda, the predominant inhabitants are the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. There is a long history between them of racial tension and struggle for power and land. Tutsis have more distinct facial features and stature that resemble western cultures more than the typically shorter Hutus with flatter and broader noses. When the Belgians took control of that area of Africa in 1914, they were attracted to the appearance of the Tutsis and placed them in positions of political and military power. This made the Hutus bitter, fearful, and vengeful.

Burundi and Rwanda won their independence from Belgium in 1962, the year I was born. Although there were times of war between the tribes before the European control, nothing compared to the genocides that would be coming to both countries. The political struggles of the mid-1960s culminated in the first major Burundi genocide of Hutus in 1972. My family left the country shortly after, and as a family, we never returned.

The minority Tutsi tribe ruled Burundi and over the next two decades, there were a few reported massacres and even more that went unnoticed by the world. In 1993, there was an election that was open to the populace, and the Hutu opposition party won the vote. The first Hutu president ever was in power.

Early in the morning on October 22, 1993, the national radio station reported that the Tutsi military kidnapped the newly elected president. When the news of this reached the countryside, echoes of the 1972 genocide struck panic in the entire Hutu population. At the Kibimba mission station, many Hutus armed with clubs and machetes quickly captured many Tutsi students, teachers, and staff – both men and women. They led the large group to a small filling station building near the main road and stuffed them all inside – more than 120 of them and possibly up to 250. Some of them were already dead by the time they reached the small building, but they were all crammed inside.

The Hutu leaders demanded the kidnapped president’s release, threatening the lives of all the citizens crammed into the small building. The road in both directions immediately was torn out to prevent the military from passing or getting close to the situation by conventional means. What they didn’t know is that the militia had already assassinated the president earlier in the day. When news over the radio announced that the president was already dead, the local Hutus at Kibimba set the little building on fire. They also surrounded it so that no one could run from the flames. 

One badly burned student managed to escape late in the night, being shielded from death by dead bodies on top of him. He was a competitive runner and even though his burns were severe, he ran and ran to save his own life. His name is Gilbert Tuhabonye. After he healed, he continued to train and represented Burundi in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Gilbert’s name will come up again later on in the story.

To this day, the monument erected to enshrine that Kibimba gas station simply states, “NEVER AGAIN” as a constant reminder of the cultural scars that still exist.

The retaliation of the Tutsi military was swift and brutal. Many Hutus, including priests and nuns, were complicit in the massacre of hundreds of innocent Tutsis and the Tutsi militia slaughtered many thousands of them in response. Nearly 300,000 Burundians from both tribes were brutally killed. More than 800,000 refugees, mostly Hutu, fled to Rwanda, Tanzania, and Congo. That was the last part of 1993. 

In April of 1994, as a response to the missile attack that shot down an airplane containing the presidents from both Burundi and Rwanda, the Hutus seized the opportunity to enact horrific vengeance on the Tutsis of Rwanda. The movie, HOTEL RWANDA, gives a glimpse of the depths of evil when groups are blinded into the frenzy of killing in ways that only humans can. Of course, while the movie leaves a lot to the imagination to give you nightmares, it does not mention the details of the horrific intensity of human brutality. However, the main character of the film, Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager that rescued hundreds of people and fought for their lives, fled the country and now lives in the United States.

So let’s catch up. There’s so much more to tell you about my life, but THIS story seems especially important to me. I’m going to condense the first part of my life and jump to 2001.  

My family lived in Burundi until 1974, shortly after the most intense tribal genocide by Tutsis attempting to eliminate the Hutus. My oldest sister, Judy, had just graduated from high school, and Mom and Dad decided to be done with being missionaries for a while until my other two sisters and I could get our basic education complete. We ended up in a small town in Kansas that has a Quaker college. Dad worked in areas where his electrical skills were of the most value. Mom got her teacher certification to teach special needs students at the local elementary school, and all of us children made it through high school. My three older sisters got married to boyfriends they met in college. I was a freshman in the same college when Mom and Dad decided to be missionaries again. They went to Haiti this time. I graduated from college with a bachelor of arts degree, lived a couple more years in Kansas, and then moved to southeast Texas.

In high school and college, I had the opportunity to visit that area of Texas through my involvement in a couple of different choirs and singing groups. I also spent a summer doing a church startup internship in Austin, Texas, where an admired missionary that I knew from Burundi was the pastor. Through that experience and the impact of an extraordinary couple in the leadership of that church, I was convinced that Texas was my future.

I moved south of Houston and worked at a specialty trucking company and developed a small graphics department for them. I also did some low-level computer programming. After two years and a lot of support from my generous friends, I opened a t-shirt printing shop that let me explore graphic design on more creative levels. The business expanded to signs and embroidery and other printed products. That lasted about 17 years and included other projects such as publishing a local weekly newspaper called TIMES COMMUNITY NEWS. You can view the PDF versions of all of the issues on ericriley.com.

I was blessed to have amazing employees during this chapter of my life, including a remarkable manager. They all gave me the space to explore the possibility of traveling back to Burundi again after all those years.

Here’s a shout out to Jennye (Virginia) and Michelle at JM Custom Screenprinting. Visit their website jmtshirts.com or on Facebook, look for Virginia Enriquez. Virginia was my manager during all of my trips to Africa and took care of my company with confidence and security like no other. Her commitment to excellent customer service is second to none. Michelle was my screen printing department with her keen eye for perfection. I still get to do some graphics for them, so please contact them and place your orders.

I made plans to be away from my business for six weeks. The first two weeks would be in Kigali, Rwanda, and the other four weeks in various parts of Burundi. This was in 2001, before instant access to people via social media or WhatsApp. I wrote emails to my friends in Africa to confirm everything that I intended to do.

I updated my passport, got a regimen of shots for any possible diseases, and bought my round trip ticket.

I was one of the first to board the 747 at Bush Intercontinental Airport on the north end of Houston, Texas. It was thirty years since I was in Africa as a kid in grade school, but it seemed like only a few years had passed. Memories of fascination and fun were vivid, and I was beside myself with excitement.

As I settled into my assigned window seat, most of the places around me began to populate, except the seat next to me. I’m a big guy, so any time I’m in coach class with extra elbow room is an excellent flight, so I was crossing my fingers. Finally, a thin, young, well-dressed, and well-groomed black gentleman walked down the aisle with his sharp-looking book bag and sat next to me. Darn. There went my extra space.

After he settled in, I introduced myself.

“My name is Patrick,” he replied. His accent gave it away – he was from somewhere in Africa.

“Are you traveling from Houston?” I asked, generating as much relatedness as I could.

“No. I go to a university in Tucson, Arizona, and traveling back home to visit my family for a few weeks.”

I was eager to share my adventure, but I held back and listened a bit more. “Oh, really? That’s great! What are you doing in Tucson, then?”

“I have a full-ride track scholarship and am studying international business for now.”

“Running, I assume.”

“Yes, I run the 800-meter dash. I’m currently ranked number four in the world.”

“So, you were at the 2000 Olympics?”

“Yes, I didn’t win, but it was an amazing experience.”

At the time, Patrick Nduwimana attended the University of Arizona. He represented Burundi in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and still holds the Burundi national record in both the 400 and 800-meter dash.

“Where’s home for you?” Remember, I was in Houston, Texas, on a big jet with 400-plus assigned seats as the first leg of a journey that required five different flights over 24 hours.

“I’m from a little country in the middle of Africa called Burundi. That’s where my family is.”

“Really, Patrick? That’s where you are going now? I’m going there too. I was born there.”

I’m not sure if it was a relief for him that he didn’t have to recite the geography script about the location of Burundi, but I could tell he was genuinely excited to share something this big with a stranger he met only a few seconds earlier. “Where, exactly, were you born?” Patrick asked.

“Kibimba. Do you know where that is?”

“Of course I do!” he exclaimed “everyone in Burundi knows where Kibimba is. It’s beautiful there and holds so much history for us.” Patrick filled me in on the political mood since the genocide and some efforts for lasting peace between the tribes. There was such a strong and global public reaction to the pressing need in Rwanda and Burundi that it seemed that the whole world was participating in the peace process.

The first 747 flight ended in Newark, New Jersey, where we were cleared for international travel and then on to Amsterdam. Patrick and I arranged our seating on the TWA flight to continue our conversation across the Atlantic to Amsterdam, as well as the next jump to Nairobi, Kenya. Even though the destination for both of us was Bujumbura, Burundi, I wanted to visit some friends in Rwanda first. So we parted ways, and I arrived safely in Burundi a couple of weeks later.

Landing in Bujumbura national airport was surreal. I don’t know if I kissed the ground after landing, but I thought about it hard enough that it seems more factual than not.

Because my parents were missionaries, the community of benevolence and faith was the community to which I was exposed and participated. Meeting Patrick opened access to another group of people in Burundi – the Olympic community, which, in turn, introduced me to a few different government ministries. My adventure expanded and occurred as “magical” and “miraculous” every day.

Patrick’s older brother Henri also proved to be a very inspirational connection. He worked with the reconciliation between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. He went on to work in Kampala, Uganda rehabilitating child soldiers that were sucked into the conflict in the northern part of the country and rescuing child soldiers from southern Sudan. I met him there in Kampala a few years later to witness some of his fantastic work. I’ll mention Henri again a little later.

When true heroes are passionate about what they do, it’s impossible to ignore the results. The passion of a saintly school director in the interior of Burundi caught my attention most. Her sacrifice manifested effective and lasting peace education for children. 

Her name is Modeste Karerwa Mo-Mamo. During the intensity of the conflict in the early 1990s, she started a school for pre-primary age children that incorporated actions and habits promoting equality and peace. Primary education is available to some Burundians, but not all. So when the children in her class were old enough, she started a primary school for her kids. Modeste also recruited other children from various tribal backgrounds, religions, and income levels to learn and practice equality and peace daily.

“Igiti kigorogwa kikiri gito” is a Burundian proverb in the local language of Kirundi. “Straighten a tree when it is young.” This was the grand strategy – to create an educated generation of Burundian citizens that would live peacefully and not repeat the genocides of the past.

The students of Magarama Peace Primary School in Gitega, Burundi, scored in the country’s highest ten percent. But compared to the number of primary schools, there were only enough secondary schools to handle about 2% of the primary school graduates nationwide. Going to secondary school was a luxury, and a lottery system managed acceptance. So even though Modeste’s peace school offered some of the smartest children in the country, very few were allowed to continue. The government awarded some land to Modeste outside the city to build a secondary school and continue to educate her brilliant students.

Modeste and others in her group campaigned vigorously to raise the nearly $180,000 required to build an entire school campus. An organization in Holland sent enough to erect an administrative building and do some ground-work for the preparation of several other buildings, but that was it. No additional money had come in for the worthwhile project.

She introduced me to two of the watchmen who were hired to watch the property when she showed me the land and the progress. They were there to make sure that bricks and tiles weren’t stolen by other locals needing materials for their own homes or to sell for food. After the introductions and the translations from the local language, Kirundi, there was another conversation that sounded apologetic. I asked what was going on, and she explained that there was no money left to pay the watchmen who were without pay for already two months.

“How much do they receive?” I asked, feeling curious about what grown men with families get paid in the hills of Burundi.

“Eight dollars,” Modeste replied.

“Per day or what?” I continued.

“No. Per month. They each get paid eight dollars per month,” she said as flatly as she could, regretting that they couldn’t be paid more for their tireless work.

“Listen, please let me help. I don’t have a lot, but I know that I can cover this.”

Modeste accepted. So, for $32 US, I paid two grown men two months of wages. I then understood why Burundi was the second poorest country in the world at that time in 2001. For those of you curious, Sierra Leon was rated the poorest country in the world by Amnesty International in the same report.

Both watchmen were extremely grateful. But one of them said something in Kirundi and started giving some of the money back to Modeste as a payment for something owed.

“What is that for?” I asked.

“He needed malaria medicine two weeks ago for his five-year-old child, and he didn’t have the money to pay for it. I gave the medicine to him and he’s paying it back.”

“OK,” I said, looking a little confused. “And how is the child now?”

“She didn’t make it. She died the next day.” Modeste replied like this is just part of daily life in Burundi, Africa. My Mom and Dad told me that I had malaria when I was a toddler, but I don’t remember it and now feel incredibly fortunate that I lived through it.

I convinced Modeste to return the money to the watchman and I would settle his account later on. They were both deeply grateful.

This day was indeed very impactful. I never before knew the effect of what seemed like a small portion of my resources, making a big difference in another person’s life or, in this case, in the lives of two families.

Modeste’s peace education curriculum became nationally recognized, and she was invited to speak and share her passion internationally.

At the time of writing this, Modeste also makes a difference as a part of Burundi’s parliament. Modeste also heads up an international committee dedicated to regional multinational peace education.

Honestly, it was the accidental place of my birth that gave me the most inroads into this war-torn country.

My good friend, Burundian brother, and hero, Aime, taught me many Kirundi phrases, proverbs, and basics to present myself conversationally polite and capable for about 30 seconds. He was at Kibimba during the 1993 massacre as a 14-year-old student. Of course, he speaks Kirundi but is also fluent in French, Swahili, and English. He was the perfect guide and teacher in all of my visits to Burundi. I took some videos of him pronouncing words and phrases in Kirundi. You can see them and learn some Kirundi for yourself on ericriley.com.

“Navukiye mu Kibimba” translated from Kirundi “I am from (born at) Kibimba,” was one of the first phrases that I asked Aime to teach me. Of all of the basic Kirundi that I learned, this statement “Navukiye mu Kibimba” proved to be the most valuable.

“Navukiye mu Kibimba” became like a passphrase of instant cultural identification. It even landed me a meeting with a general of the rebel forces, General Evariste Ndayishimiye. His wife, Angelique, was also born at Kibimba. A mutual, well-connected friend informed me of the invitation and set up a time to enter the general’s well-fortified property and enjoy coffee, snacks, conversation, and relatedness by merit of my birthplace. I had my camera and took a picture of us all together. I took another picture from my hip of one of his fully armed soldiers most trusted for personal and family attendance. He seemed to be playing baby sitter holding the general’s baby while we visited. What an image of protection.

Eighteen years after that meeting, General Evariste is now President Evariste – president of Burundi.

Kibimba had a primary school and secondary school for basic education and a Bible school to train pastors and Christian workers. Even though I was born in one of its houses, it had a hospital, too. Kibimba, located at the center of Burundi, was a beacon of health and education.

There have been no missionaries there for several decades because of the conflict. However, it still exists as “Kibimba” and offers top education and medical care with only a nursing school because the doctors fled under threat of death during the genocide.

The doctor-less hospital and nursing school at Kibimba was in very short supply of basics like gauze, syringes, needles, antibiotics, scalpels, and large bandages. There was a non-profit organization in Houston, Texas, that specialized in international charitable medical resources. They prepared a couple of large trunk-size plastic containers for me to take on one of my trips. They were sealed with plastic zip ties and had “Kibimba” on the lids written with a magic marker. When I arrived at the airport customs, I knew that I would have to open the trunks and let them search everything. It was worse knowing that the valuable items would be thrown away if found – like antibiotics that were illegal to pass. The customs officer was in an army uniform. He looked at the plastic containers and back at me. I said, “Navukiye mu Kibimba.” and he waved me past without a word.

I delivered these supplies at the request of another of my heroes named Aloys Ningabira. Aloys was a nurse at Kibimba hospital when it had doctors to treat patients. Even with no doctors, many people relied on the hospital’s limited staff to treat their injuries and sicknesses. Aloys rose to the occasion. He was inspired to teach others how to be nurses and started the Kibimba nursing school. He also created a team of nursing students to travel to the nearby villages and educate them about the AIDS virus through entertaining dramatic skits and songs.

I made five trips to Central Africa in four years, including Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda, but I always ended my trips in Burundi. The last of those trips was in response to a wedding invitation from a friend that was getting married in Kampala, Uganda, 16 days after the request. His name is Andrew. He lived in the US for more than 25 years and was planning a traditional Ugandan nuptial with his bride, Selena. We were both living in a small Texas town and frequently joked about being African brothers.

One morning, the week after Thanksgiving, Andrew walked into my t-shirt and sign shop. Making no small talk, he declared, “Eric, I’m getting married on December 15, and you’re invited.”

“Great! Where? I’ll be there,” I answered, looking straight into his eyes.

He smiled, almost laughing, and said, “Kampala, Uganda.”

I felt like it was a dare, and I didn’t want to back down. “OK, Andrew. You bet! I’ll be there.” 

Fake it until you make it, right? I knew I only had about $400 in my bank account, and business was in its slow holiday season. But I felt empowered by my declaration against the $2,300 that it usually cost to make that trip.

There it was. It came out of my mouth. Another person heard it, and it became “real.” Andrew walked out, clearly pleased about the results knowing his “African brother” would be attending this important day with him halfway around the world.

I was a member of the local Chamber of Commerce. I knew another member that owned a travel agency a block away. Within the hour, I called her out of curiosity and told her the story and my current financial status. After a few minutes of looking, she said she could get a round trip ticket for me to Entebbe International Airport in Kampala for a rock-bottom price of $1,900. I thanked her for her time and went on with my day.

At 3 pm the same day, two men walked in, asking for me. My store manager summoned me from the production area. I invited the two men to go to the back area with me for a little privacy. They were regular customers of mine but the kind where I would always go to their business to meet them and complete their orders. Their presence in my shop was rare. They owned a couple “eight-liner” pseudo gambling salons that barely passed under the strict Texas gambling laws. My company designed and applied large and colorful graphics to their windows to attract customers. The older one said, “We hear you’ve been doing some good things in Africa and want to help a little.”

My ears perked up, and I replied with a smile, “Well, it’s funny that you should come in today. I just told a friend of mine that I would be at his African wedding. Afterward, I want to take a bus to Burundi for a few days and acknowledge a couple of friends of mine who have been doing such amazing things. So thank you for being here.”

The younger gentleman pulled a folded check out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here you go. I hope it helps.”

I thanked them from the bottom of my heart. We talked a little about their locations and more graphics they needed on a vehicle, and then they left. Out of professional courtesy, I didn’t unfold the check until they were gone. $1,500! Add that to my bank account balance, and it looked like I would be making good on my promise to be at Andrew’s wedding. What a day!

 I’ve learned that I do a lot of things in my life in response to a dare or the hidden possibility of bragging rights. Whatever it was, it worked. I made my trip to Uganda and stayed there a week to enjoy the wedding festivities.

Another meeting that happened during that week in Kampala was spending a day with Patrick’s brother Henri who was doing incredible work rehabilitating child soldiers. What a truly amazing individual and equally outstanding family.

Looking back, my stay in Uganda might have been a little longer. I remember spending Christmas Eve of that year in Kigali, Rwanda, which was my overnight stay between bus trips over two countries from Uganda to Burundi.

Burundi was the same as the previous four trips; only the mode of transportation made it different. I think I was the first white guy or “muzungu” ( a Swahili word similar to the word “gringo”), that any of these bus drivers had ever seen on their buses.

The next day, a missionary friend went up-country and gave me a ride to Gitega, Burundi, the site of Magarama Peace School. I arranged a meeting with my two heroes, Modeste – the director and founder of the peace school and Aloys, the director of the nursing school at Kibimba. I listened to both of them for about an hour. I took the opportunity to fully acknowledge them for their miraculous effectiveness amid everything against them that wanted to tear them and their projects apart. I just told the truth and was generous with it for about 10 minutes.

That was it. That’s what I went there to do, and it was done. The next morning, I caught a ride to the capital city, Bujumbura. There, I boarded the first bus of two that would take me back to Entebbe International Airport in Kampala, Uganda, and onward to my hometown in Texas.

At the time, I attended some seminars with Landmark Worldwide, a personal training and development company. There were several people in that community that knew what I was doing in Africa. A couple of months after my final return, someone gave me an August of 2003 issue of Texas Monthly. There was an article about the massacre at Kibimba – in Texas Monthly??!! The article was about the student running coach, Gilbert Tuhabonye, who escaped after being severely burned but was protected from death under a pile of smoldering corpses. Here’s a link to that article or added in the description: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/running-for-his-life/

After reading the article, I found Gilbert’s home number and called him. “Mwidiwe,” I said in Kirundi. He asked me who I was and why I knew Kirundi.

“My name is Eric Riley. I read the article about you in Texas Monthly. Navukiye mu Kibimba.” That’s all I needed to say. He demanded to meet with me. 

Gilbert is still a running coach with a team of runners in Austin, Texas, called “Gilbert’s Gazelles.” He also was the choice trainer for VIPs such as Governor Perry, and both daughters of President George W. Bush.

I drove from Houston and met Gilbert and his family at his house. Later that year, I joined them for Thanksgiving dinner as well. We had much to talk and dream about for Burundi and memories of Kibimba.

Two years later, my sister Teresa told me about a Burundian that she met at a refugee center in Dayton, Ohio, near where she lived. His name is Pio. Teresa told Pio about me and my trips back to Burundi. He requested to meet me. I had no plans to fly to Ohio, but he said that he was traveling to San Antonio, Texas, to see some friends and asked me to join him there.

Pio and his friends are a small collective of Burundians and Rwandans that has a deep passion for lasting peace for both countries. Included in this collective is Paul Rusesabagina. The movie HOTEL RWANDA was about a hotel manager that risked his own life to protect the lives of more than 1,200 Tutsis in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Paul eventually moved to the United States many years after and ended up in San Antonio, Texas. The meeting was at his house.

My buddy Matt and I met with Paul a couple of times after that for some possible business in that region of Africa. The experience of meeting and briefly participating in Paul Rusesabagina’s life was incredible.

Many key players were left out of this story who were crucial for the events to happen. Maybe I can share with you about them in a conversation some time. 

This story reflects the kind of fortune that the guy in this body has been blessed to experience. It was a series of events, people, and curious connections that have left an unforgettable impact on my life.

CHAPTER 1

Your Psyche and the Hero of Your Story

In this chapter, the 7-dimensional hierarchy model will be the context of distinguishing your “hero core” or “imago Dei,” as applied to the story of your psyche. This chapter has an intention to it. I desire that by the end, you view your life with more clarity and are empowered to embrace your trauma as access to personal confidence and a life that you love.From the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh to every Disney movie, it is clear that the most common and critical element in every story is redemption. Even if the moment of redemption seems dark and resigned, every storyteller must satisfy the listener with a reason to hear their tale.

Confrontation precedes redemption. In most stories, it is the protagonist or hero bearing the burden of the warrior battling against that which represents despair or doom.

Have you ever wondered why many of our fictional and mythological heroes are orphans or are dramatically alienated from their families?  Lilo and Nani’s parents died in a car accident, leaving Nani to care for her wild and rebellious little sister before Stitch showed up. Superman lost his birth parents and his home, his people, and his planet as he was jettisoned in a capsule toward his new home – earth. Young Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents being shot to death outside a theater. 11-year-old Katniss Everdeen’s father was killed in a coal mine explosion. After falling into a deep depression, her mother became useless, leaving Katniss to care for her mother and her younger sister, Prim. James and Lily, the parents of infant Harry Potter, were killed by Lord Voldemort trying to protect Harry from the same fate. Max Da Costa, the sacrificial savior in the sci-fi action movie, ELYSIUM, grew up as a troubled foster child with no parents. Merideth Quill, mother of Peter AKA “Starlord” in the film GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, died of brain cancer when Peter was only eight years old. Peter’s profound grief in losing his mother inspired his final victory over his estranged immortal father, who placed the cancer tumor inside Merideth’s head. The STAR WARS stories are full of sacrificial parents. Leah killed herself so that her passing into the force would save her son-turned-dark-side, Ben. Both Rey Palpatine and Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, were hidden by their parents before they were attacked and killed.

The storyteller is compelled to present a hero that is acquainted with our deepest sorrows. What can be more brutal for a child than the loss of their parents? We require a hero that has endured crushing grief. We demand that our hero knows what it’s like to be rejected and alone, abandoned of any sense of belonging. We don’t want a hero that is strong and smart, and attractive. We want the Hobbit orphan, Frodo, that is not appealing to the eyes nor intelligent or powerful but has a heart of gold and determination to match. We want Harry Potter, who is small for his age, with messed up hair and those trademark round spectacles. Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek the Halls, Shrek Forever After, Shrek the Musical, Scared Shrekless, Shrek 5… yes, we obviously identify with this big loveable green ogre and his true love, Fiona.  We want Forky from TOY STORY 4. Bonnie made Forky on her first day of kindergarten out of a spork, popsicle stick, mismatched googly eyes, and a red bendy pipe-cleaner for arms. Forky is convinced that he’s nothing more than trash until Woody explains why he’s Bonnie’s favorite toy.

Why do we want this? It’s because we long to know that even from the darkest depths of our anguish and despair can arise a broken yet victorious hero.

In the comic strip on Earth Day 1971, Pogo announced, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Don’t you think that it’s time to meet our hero instead? 

Who is your favorite hero? While you’re thinking about it, I’ll tell you about one of mine. Most of my heroes are real people, as described in the beginning chapter “Burundi and the Life of Riley.” Still, one of my favorite fictional heroes is Alita in the 2019 movie ALITA BATTLE ANGEL.

What makes your hero uniquely qualified? I’ll give you an example. At the beginning of ALITA BATTLE ANGEL, a doctor named Ido was scavenging through heaps of trash to find cyborg parts. He used them as prosthetics for potential clients. A unique object caught his eye in the debris. He uncovered it to discover a partial human girl’s body that included a head, shoulders, and a chest cavity containing an artificial heart. That’s it—no arms nor legs. Using a portable scanner, Dr. Ido determined that there was brain activity. He carried the barely salvageable scrap back to his clinic. Dr. Ido had already built a cyborg body that he intended to use for his paraplegic daughter that was previously killed. He fitted the body to the remnant he found in the junkyard and brought the girl to life. She had no memory of anything, including her name. Ido named her after his deceased daughter, Alita. As the story unfolded, Alita began to notice that she was driven to be some kind of warrior.

What made Alita uniquely qualified was that she had nothing to lose. She had no memory of the past to limit her, and her passion to be extraordinary, motivated her to get up every time she was knocked down – which was a lot.

What are the biggest problems your hero faces? For Alita, it was the gap between the innocent ignorance of her memory loss and the mighty battle angel in her DNA. Of course, she was also teased and mocked for being mostly a cyborg.

What is the percentage of your hero’s likely success? In our favorite stories, it is ZERO percent that the hero will succeed. That’s why we love the story so much. It is the impossibility of success that keeps us turning the pages or sitting on the edge of our seats. That theme is consistent in all of the blockbusters and best sellers. It’s Aladdin, a common street thief who fell in love with Princess Jasmine without any possibility of a relationship with her because he was not a prince. It’s the unlikely boy, Arthur, that takes a turn at pulling the sword from the stone to become king. It’s all of the orphaned and broken superheroes in comic books and movies. It’s the favorite son, Joseph, whose own brothers threw him into a pit to die but then decided to sell him into slavery. Joseph ended up as a prisoner in Pharaoh’s dungeon but eventually rose to power in the Egyptian empire by interpreting dreams.

Consider that you are the hero of your story and that your chance of having a fulfilling and successful life is slim to none. Now THAT is an exciting story!

In this Hypothesis of Everything, I believe that there are seven dimensions. By definition, a dimension is measurable, or its impact can be quantified as applied to the sixth and seventh dimensions of consciousness. Spoiler alert: Chapter 3 will dig deeper into this seven-dimensional model, but it is necessary to give a brief description here for this chapter’s context.

The First Dimension is a line – X – that has only length, no width, nor depth.

The Second Dimension introduces an intersecting line – XY – a plane. There are height and width but no depth. This is the dimension of everything visible.

The Third Dimension is another intersecting line to create depth – XYZ – a cube. This dimension is most natural for us to understand. It is the physical realm in which we and everything else exists. 

The Fourth Dimension is Time. For the physical realm to have movement, it requires time to arrive from one point in space to another. Time is the realm of the living. Before we are alive and after we are alive, there is no experience of time. While there is abundant evidence of the past before our existence, time is still the realm of only the living. The unique aspect of time is that it is linear and moves only forward.

Some physicists suggest that the fifth dimension is frequency or vibration. I agree with them. Included in frequency are rhythm, patterns, energy, light, sound, and brain waves. Specifically, for this model, the Fifth Dimension is Language / Imagination.

Imagination is distinct from thoughts. We are thinking all of the time. We “have” thoughts, yet imagining is something creative. Imagination is a voluntary thought to create images in our minds. All images exist in language. Even if the image itself is unique enough not to have a label, we can give it a description. Language authors and manipulates all of the other dimensions. In the third dimension, things exist, but they do not become real until they are given a name. Not only does a name assign reality, but it also provides us with the power to manipulate it or use it. With language, great pyramids are built. With language, Great Walls of China are erected. With language, the Berlin Wall was torn down. Language elects presidents and ruins economies. Language wages war and declares peace. Language unites in marriage and gives our covenants and contracts existence. Language defines our beliefs. Language seeks out the cures for diseases. Language kills reputations and ignites genocides. In our stories and myths of creation, there is first, language – “and God said….” Language is the dimension of order and chaos.

There is a portal between the fifth and sixth dimensions. This portal is motivation/inspiration to ACT upon our language or imagination, even if it’s language given to us by others. It doesn’t always feel like a choice either. Fear is a powerful motivator, but there is no meaning of the sixth dimension inside of “instinct and survival.”

The portal is also where language finds agreement and becomes real. Reality is language plus agreement. That’s why we have dictionaries and reference sources. But sometimes, the agreement can change.

For example, before 2006, there were nine planets in our solar system. All of the textbooks and exams required us to acknowledge that there were nine planets. It was REAL. And then, the agreement of the definition of the word “planet” changed, and Pluto dropped out. Reality changed because the agreement changed.

The sixth and seventh dimensions are dimensions of consciousness measured by their effects.

The Sixth Dimension is Responsibility. Responsibility takes language and translates it into intentional results. Responsibility is uniquely human. It is the dimension of meaning.

Love/Truth is the Seventh Dimension. The consistent pitfall of this dimension is that we understand it or know it fully. While “love” and “truth” have entirely different definitions, they both have everything to do with connecting. Meaning, significance, and individuality fades or disappears into love/truth when we get close to this dimension. We see glimpses and reflections of it and participate in it every day as we experience connections that feel like both love and truth. It manifests in the effects of gratitude, contribution, fun, play, peace, art, music, beauty, etc. Psychologists give it the label “positive emotion,” but I believe that it is something more. It springs forth from a source deep within us that sometimes feels lost or smothered. I’m convinced that the source is the intertwined double helix of love and truth, like the DNA in our psyche’s nucleus. It is the seventh dimension belonging to every human. It is the dimension of the divine and, in this case, the essential hero inside of you.

YOUR PSYCHE

The human cell is a brilliant model to illustrate and symbolize the human psyche. Let’s take a look.

Imagine an illustration of a healthy cell.  It has a thin membrane that is soft, flexible, and semipermeable. The organelles and nucleus are vital and functional. Nutrients can enter easily, and waste products can exit.

Now imagine the membrane of an unhealthy cell. It looks thicker and hard and rigid. Only some nutrients can enter and most waste products are blocked from exiting.

In the illustration of the healthy psyche, there is first, the semipermeable membrane. It selectively absorbs what is necessary to thrive and endure. Critical to the cell’s existence is also an external environment conducive to its survival as it interacts and cooperates with other cells for the health of that environment. Just like us in our multiple communities.

It seems that the human psyche is quite fragile and malleable. Here’s an example. In a world where individual identity is paramount, definitions of words are changing, and even the slightest hint of offense is met with a violent tantrum of resentment and anger. Whatever size your psyche is, it can fill up quickly with information and emotions. Suppose you don’t maintain a process of pushing waste out of your psyche. The results can be catastrophic. Those things can rot, fester, and infect you and everyone else close to you. A swift, fatal demise is inevitable. Think about it. In what context or environment does YOUR psyche dwell?

As with the human cell that houses organelles, there seems to be four in your psyche essential to life. The first one is your dreams and positive memories. The second is others in your life, and it’s not exclusive to other humans. Pets and sentient beings valuable to you are included. The third is your physical, emotional, and mental health. Sexuality and spirituality are connected, responding to the effects of fear in oddly identical ways. Combined, it is the fourth essence of life.

The nucleus is the brain and heart of the cell. The DNA double helix inside your nucleus represents the Love/Truth imago Dei or the origin of your story’s hero. 

In the area on the left, there’s another oval with teeth in it. Above it is angry eyes. It’s not bad or mean; it’s just aggressive and wants to consume like PacMan eating dots.

I call this the “Fear Protein”. Unlike the nucleus containing your core hero’s intertwined love/truth DNA, fear is initially foreign to you and not part of you from birth. Developmentally, it invaded your world when the protective word for your survival, “no”, was also used to defy you and your intentions. You figured out that you could use “no” to defy others as well. Here is where the fear protein set up business with a limitless inventory of entitlement.

WAIT A MINUTE!  WHAT? But I’m entitled to be entitled. No?

Oxford dictionary defines the adjective “entitled” as “feeling that you have a right to the good things in life without necessarily having to work for them.”

Dictionary.com says, “having a right or legitimate claim to something.”

Merriam-Webster: “having a right to certain benefits or privileges.”

Cambridge Dictionary: “feeling that you have the right to do or have what you want without having to work for it or deserve it, just because of who you are.”

Urbandictionary.com is classic. Here are some submissions for “entitled”:

1. to give (a human or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; typically something provided by a third party to which the person receiving actually has no part in producing.

2. The adjective given to a parent who believes that everyone has wronged them and their children and attempt to get those people in jail before getting arrested themselves. This adjective can also describe the child of an entitled parent who tries to use their parents to get them anything they want.

3. An attitude, demeanor, or air of rudeness, ungraciousness, or combativeness, especially when making excessive demands for service.

Elements of fear are entitlement, equity or fair/not fair, and morality judging good and bad. But they all can be melted down into the first one; entitlement. Your sense of equity or fairness is a function of entitlement. You may think you are benevolent in your idea of equity for all, but if you look closer, it’s still all about you and what makes you feel better or more righteous. Entitlement is a vicious killer of your psyche and your fear protein’s primary weapon to wreak havoc and chaos.

Although most of the planet’s spiritual identity is based on some sense of morality, I believe that the source of morality is fear. English is an odd language. Morality is knowing the difference between good and bad and creating subjective values accordingly. The word “moral” invokes only positive sentiments and similar to “virtuous”, “righteous”, and “upstanding”. All of these words are included in the language of sufficiency. So are “successful”, “abundant”, “powerful”, and “rich”. All efforts of sufficiency are projected against the empty backdrop of lack and insufficiency. Fear is always the context.

Morality gives you an entitled license to judge, assess, validate, and condemn with steadfast positionalism – especially toward yourself. Morality is the structure for assigning labels and classes to people and all subsequent prejudice and racism. It’s also where your sense of looking good and pee-your-pants fear of looking bad comes from. Morality is one of the most insidious, perverse, and dark elements of fear.

The core conversations of fear are “Something is wrong here.” and “I’m not ‘blank’ enough.” I’m not old enough. I’m not young enough. I’m not big enough. I’m not thin enough. I’m not rich enough. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not strong enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not popular enough. etc.

By its nature, the egocentric appetite of the fear protein wants to consume your psyche. It starts with the four organelles previously mentioned: dreams/positive memories, others, your health, and your spirituality/sexuality.

The fear protein has already killed off your dreams for the future and suffocated your positive memories leaving only despair and regrets to taunt you and haunt you. Inside of your identity’s traumatic past, you have systematically obliterated your most precious relationships or are in the process of doing so – even to your pets. Your health is taking a blow because life is much smaller now and filled with little more than anxiety and stress. You have stepped into a bear trap that restricts any possibility of actions that support body health. With only negative memories left and no one to fight on your behalf, why should you be healthy anyway? Of all of the new things that you feel that you deserve in life, a positive self-image is not one of them.

Your spirituality and sexuality are connected, and both become blurry under the influence of the fear protein. The blurriness harbors an exaggerated hypersensitivity with the primal tendency of fight or flight to any disagreement or perceived condemnation. You train others to fear you and avoid any conversation about your spirituality or sexuality and possibly even politics. You force them to relate to you as someone they never knew you to be before. Your fear identity perverts your spirit and your sexual nature. And you wonder why people avoid you like a zombie that wants to eat their brain, yet you claim that it’s them that marginalized you.

The ultimate purpose of the fear protein is to kill the hero of your story. This is when you contemplate how useless or unfair life is or turned out to be. Ending it all is probably the best option. You might even follow through and attempt suicide. But you’re ALIVE today, so something is still protecting the sanctity of soul. Your core hero isn’t dead quite yet.

The shell of your psyche thickens and hardens. It rejects any positive external stimuli, and anything less than positive stimuli is received as something personally annoying. Nothing meaningful can get out of your shell except useless or malicious speech and actions. The fear protein intends to create your own living hell and destroy everything you touch.

Symptoms of fear include selfishness, resentment, bitterness, hatred, betrayal, regret, superstition, anxiety, greed/corruption, a victim mentality, revenge, suspicion, contempt, boredom, judging/assessing, shame/guilt, addiction, and fearful anger. Emotions like anger, sadness, and grief happen frequently and call us to action or change. Fearful anger is merely a temper tantrum designed to validate yourself and expand your sense of entitlement.

Useless speech is the predominant outcome. This includes complaining, gossiping, lying, making excuses, blaming, exaggerating, and sarcasm. Every symptom of fear finds solace in useless speech.

Fear, its elements, the core conversations, symptoms, and the outcomes make up your identity. It’s what you usually see in the mirror and it’s never pretty. How ironic that the ugliness of the fear context still avoids looking bad at all costs.

As the walls of your psyche continue to thicken, the inevitable result is depression, narcissism, mental illness, or suicide.

Fortunately, professionals in dealing with matters of the psyche understand that fear can be treated and the thick shell can be softened. Fear responds to light. It wants to run into the shadows and darkness and hide in shame, but its position is weakened when exposed. Therapists dedicate their profession to helping their patients experience the security of truth and authentically wrestle with their symptoms. When confronted with authority, fear will often stop and submit. Parents can interrupt the trajectory of a child’s fear-identity by a spanking or imposed isolation or even a glance of acknowledgment. A trained priest will use authority to exorcise a demon out of a possessed victim or command the fear-identity to cooperate. The military has no use for your identity and uses authority to compel submission.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs reports that veterans are substantially more likely to die by suicide than non-veterans. The reasonable notion is that negative traumatic memories cause this. I think that it’s more than that. The release of the full force of the suppressed identity back into the psyche away from the structured discipline of the military, coupled with traumatic memories, creates a judge, jury, and executioner scenario. The core hero doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Prescribing drugs is another common solution. I believe that artificially manipulating serotonin with medication is risky. Still, it’s better to have a numb patient that isn’t killing themselves. The road to healing can begin.

But turning to chemicals to subdue the fear identity’s ravaging nature is much greater than only drugs prescribed by doctors. We are taught by example from an early age to rely on things we can consume to make us feel relaxed or more alert or a little more numb to our pain. Naturally, chemical addiction in many forms is a culturally facilitated solution to assist in managing survival.

So, where is the good news? I don’t know that there is any. Your identity is big and ugly and intends to destroy your life. Your core hero is small in comparison, like the story of young David against a giant Goliath that seems to grow bigger and more powerful every day.

In other words, your story is right on track. There is very little chance that your hero will be the champion in your life and lead you happiness. Yes, you have an intriguing story. It’s full of scandal and drama and betrayal and resentment and death and destruction. That road is wide and everybody is traveling on it. But that’s not what you want your future to be. It’s not the story of your life that you want others to tell after you’re gone. How do I know? I know because you are thinking of your hero from the beginning of this chapter. You ARE the hero of your story and you are uniquely qualified to win against all the odds.

When trauma happens, your identity hides for a few seconds while your core hero manages it like a pro. And then, your identity shows back up to complain about it and blame others. The point is that your hero is the first on the scene, not your identity. The lesson to learn is that each trauma is an opportunity for love and truth to take over. Notice it or remember when it happened. You had a type of power not usually packaged into your identity. Love and truth were heroically at work. 

We witnessed this on a societal level with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the beginning, every nation on the planet was in trauma response mode. The collective hero in us rose to occasion with decisive actions. The goodness of humanity was singing from the balconies and open windows to calm the neighbors, and generous citizens gave extraordinary contributions to care for employees hit hardest by the loss of business. Beer manufacturers set aside part of their operations to make hand sanitizer to give to first responders. Thoughtful people posted patterns and instructions online for thousands of citizens to cut and sew masks to send to front-line workers in hospitals, fire stations, and emergency clinics.

The biggest question is, “why can’t we be like this all of the time?” The answer is because our collective identity craves complaining, blaming, suspicion, equity, and playing the victim. Our national psyche looks a lot like our own and is on full display in every news media.

Trauma summons the hero. In our favorite stories and myths, it is the crisis or the series of crises that calls the hero to spring into action. Think about it. Clark Kent has a job at the Daily Planet for a reason. The media is always the first to know when something terrible is happening. It is the tragedies that pop the buttons on Clark Kent’s white dress shirt to expose Superman. When your fear identity engages useless speech to deflect or transfer trauma, you lose the opportunity to overcome it and find meaning in the responsibility of embracing it. All that remains is the shame and blame and self-pity you see in the mirror.

Your fear identity is perfectly satisfied with mediocre and boring. But life doesn’t give you that – it traumatizes you with the death of loved ones, loss, betrayal, resentment, shame, and bitterness. There are significant problems to solve. Your fear identity convinces you that it has everything under control, but look at the results? Are your addictions designed to help you win at life? Is your anxiety providing forward movement on any level? Is your all-consuming egocentric mindset connecting you with positive people or finding love?

You’re killing your hero, and my guess is that if you’re still listening or reading, you want something different. Beginning the process of unleashing your hero and forging a pathway to a life of consistent confidence and contentment is simple but not easy. It requires grace and determination.

Here are 15 hero exercises:

1. Look people in the eyes when you say, “Thank you.”
2. Practice smiling with your ENTIRE FACE. 
3. Look up.Practice lifting your head as you look up. You’ll experience immediate results in your attitude and positive outlook on life. And look up more often as you are walking.
4. Open doors for peoplewithout expecting gratitude or acknowledgment.
5. Breathe deeply five times and then relax. Repeat as desired.
6. Eliminate useless speech – complaining, gossiping, making excuses, lying, exaggerating, and being sarcastic. Notice that you might have a lot less to say than usual.
7. Enjoy beauty in ordinary things.
8. Explore your self-expression – whatever you love to do or want to love to do.
9. Celebrate small moments.
10. Notice your hygiene.
11. Move your body at least 20 minutes every day.
12. Spend time in the sunlight if your situation, location, and weather permits it.
13. Give yourself adequate time to sleep.
14. Practice leaving things in better shape than you found them.
15. “Stop saying things that make you weak.” Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

Now notice how the fear identity’s core conversations of “Something is wrong here” and “I’m not good enough” show up when you see a list like this. These are NOT the fifteen commandments of being your hero. But be deliberate to practice a few of them and add more when you can.

Your body is designed to naturally release hormones that make you feel confident, happy, and loving. Your fear identity has no room for that. However, you still recognize and experience pleasant emotions when you participate in what I call “elements of connection”. Contribution, mercy, music, community, beauty, fun, and gratitude, which is practicing speaking the truth, are just a few. Elements of connection point you to something higher or more profound or encompassing. Your hero is attracted to them and becomes more present and powerful as you add them more frequently to your life.  Here is a list of 100 common elements of connection that often feels like love:

Accepting	Contentment	Happiness	Peace
Accomplishment	Contribution	Honor	Pets
Acknowledgement	Cooking/sewing/hobbies	Humor	Prayer / worship
Admiration	Courage	Innocence	Presence / Being present
Adoration	Creativity	Integrity	Productivity
Adventure	Dancing	Intimacy	Reading
Art	Decorating	Invitation	Relatedness
Attention	Discipline	Joy	Respect
Authenticity	Eating/Drinking	Kindness	Responsibility
Beauty	Elegance	Laughing	Romance
Belonging	Embracing	Leadership	Sacrifice
Breathing deeply	Empowering	Learning	Satisfaction
Caring	Empathy	Leisure / Relaxation	Security
Celebration	Encouragement	Light/Brilliance	Self Expression
Cleanliness	Enthusiasm	Illumination	Service / ing
Commitment	Exercise	Listening	Sharing
Communicating	Fantasy	Meditation	Shopping
Community	Fellowship	Mercy	Simplicity
Compassion	Flirting	Music	Success
Completion	Forgiveness	Nature/outdoors	Teaching
Compliments / ing	Freedom	Order / organization	Touch
Compromise	Fun/Playing	Participation	Truth-telling/hearing
Confession	Giving / Gifting	Partnership	Unity
Confidence	Graciousness	Passion	Vision/Purpose
Contemplation	Gratitude	Patience	Vulnerability

 You’ll find some that you can adopt and use for yourself, but I encourage you to create your own list that best fits your hero.

Life isn’t about a destination or a series of destinations. Life is about the journey and shared experiences with other travelers on the path. You get only one path and one chance to walk that path, and it doesn’t last forever. By default, your fear identity is in control and will take you to the end. And people will put whatever they remember about your identity on your tombstone. Or you can choose to be the hero of your story instead.

The greatest struggle is the choice because your fear identity is the one that’s choosing, and it doesn’t want to let go. But don’t worry, the fear protein will always be around. You’ll wake up with it and go to sleep with it. Egocentric entitlement, equity, and survival will forever haunt your dreams, and every minute you spend in front of a mirror.

Your identity will never give you a life that you love, but your hero can. Take action. Make some declarations and talk to people that are close to you about your new intentions. BE the “happily ever after” of your story. Your friends will cheer, and some may be moved to tears to see how triumphant your hero is against the background of absolutely zero chance that you would ever find a life you love. Even though you’re not doing it for them – you’re doing it for yourself and your health. Still, everyone loves a good story of trauma, failure, struggle, redemption, and happiness.

CHAPTER 2

Your Gratitude Superpower

The last thing your fear identity will ever be is grateful for anything. The fear identity doesn’t know what to do with gratitude because gratitude has a sinister way of silencing your identity’s incessant rambling.

I frequently reference the serpent or snake in your head represented by the serpent in the garden of Eden that convinced Eve of her insufficiency and entitlement. “Something is wrong here. Your information is insufficient. YOU are insufficient and it’s not fair. But you are entitled to gratification. The catch is that it will cost you your personal dignity and probably the loss of your highest ideal.”

It’s human nature that the snake in your head begins the same way by presenting the notion that “something is wrong here and now,” including awareness of personal insufficiency or inequity. As you listen to that inner serpent, there will always be an invitation to deserve something. This invitation usually moves you toward an action that speaks the entitlement out loud in the form of a complaint or excuse from a victim’s perspective. The resulting activity is often to do something that rewards the voice in your head and expands on your insufficiency conversation. An example is this self-dialog in the mirror, “My God, you’re fat. Oh well. You can’t do anything about it. You might as well eat that candy bar. It will make you feel better because you deserve to feel better, right?” The same applies to any addictive coping mechanism. The end result is self-marginalizing and unworthiness, accompanied by the feeling that you deserve punishment. The experience is just more shame.

The antidote to the snake in your head is to SPEAK THE TRUTH. The biggest problem is that because that voice is the accuser and prosecutor, it knows your history of failures and limitations. It gets worse. The voice is also the judge, jury, and executioner that refuses to let you testify on your own behalf. But take the stand anyway. Boldly speak the truth.

But what is the truth? How do you start to practice the truth so that you know that it’s the truth and not just something deceptive that you’ve been self-trained to follow and believe? The answer is gratitude. Gratitude is the weapon against entitlement, and entitlement will destroy gratitude in a millisecond. But if you notice something for which you are genuinely thankful, THAT is the truth. Even in the moment, it is the truth to you.

Practicing gratitude is practicing telling yourself, the world, and the universe the truth. GRATITUDE or THANKFULNESS is the gateway drug to living a life that speaks the truth. It’s the kind of truth that silences the snake in your head and effectively dismisses the courtroom drama devised to condemn yourself.

YOUR GRATITUDE SUPERPOWER 

These aspects of the human condition are directly impacted and transformed by practicing gratitude:

1. Speaking the truth. – as previously mentioned.

2. The antidote to loneliness. In thankfulness, there is a realization that you are not alone. Something more significant than yourself is contributing to your life. In gratitude, there is also a realization of others that care for you no matter how small that care seems to express itself. If you fear a life of loneliness, practicing gratitude will train your brain and release hormones that contribute to confidence and security.

3. Responsibility and purpose. When you are thankful for something specific, that specific thing is meaningful to you. And you want to be grateful for it again tomorrow and the next day, and the next after that. You will naturally pay attention to that which you are thankful, including relationships. You will see yourself applying awareness and effort to enhance or expand the reality of the future of your gratitude.

4. Courage. When you can see something as an opportunity to grow or learn, you can be thankful for that opportunity even if it feels like you will barely endure it. You begin to see ways to approach that opportunity without fear or, inside of your gratitude, be aware that you might not be able to face it alone. You will bring along someone else for whom you are also grateful. Bravery and courage are natural results.

5. A happy life. Gratitude generates positive energy. Practicing gratitude releases neurotransmitters of health in your brain and body and creates a context of power, security, compassion, and generosity. Those things will always be returned to you more than you give.

6. Better sex and intimacy. Thankfulness invites affinity and creates a space for intimacy to happen. It’s naturally sexy and attractive, and people want to get close to it. The power of gratitude builds comfort and connected relatedness that enhances love. Gratitude also releases dopamine – a pleasure hormone. To achieve an orgasm, serotonin in a particular part of the brain has to drop quickly. There is a reported link between practicing gratitude and the intensity of orgasms.

7. Unconditional Love. Gratitude ties directly to love and a life that feels like love. Even more, gratitude opens you up to accept life and people the way they are and the way they are not.

8. Social equality and reform. When you’re thankful to someone, at that moment, there is an opportunity to share a space of equality that crosses class or social barriers. A grateful community experiences profound levels of equality and activity for the benefit of that community. If something like Marxism were to happen, it would have to be done entirely in the bubble of complete gratitude on the level that permanently eliminates the notion of entitlement or inequity. It’s not a likely eventuality with our current patterns of human responses. Still, we can start with a connected and sincere “thank you.”

9. Access to fortune. When you practice gratitude, you feel grateful AND fortunate. This practice expands your capacity to receive and store more good things in your life. Walking taller and “feeling lucky” is a common experience.

10. Successful business transactions. Gratitude is a peculiar and magical lubricant for a successful business deal to happen. It frequently results in receiving incredible service that often rewards you with discounts and quality of products and services that have an elevated value.

11. A Zen here and now experience. Gratitude doesn’t happen in the future or in the past. You can be thankful for both, but the experience of gratitude and the hormones released are a “now” experience. Practicing gratitude is a practice of thankfulness, contentment, and peace in each moment.

12. Better health. Digesting food when you are anxious or stressed is frequently not digested fully or absorbed into your system the way that it is designed. It affects your energy, immune system, the quality of your blood, and how all your cells respond to the absorption of nourishment. Practice gratitude when you eat to notice an improvement in your health.

13. Self-confidence. Practicing gratitude is a practice in releasing serotonin, a neurotransmitter much more complicated than just contributing feelings of well-being and happiness. Serotonin also impacts memory, reward, learning, cognition, and other physiological processes. It is a natural mood regulator that makes you feel emotionally stable, less anxious, tranquil, and even more focused and energetic. Psychology Today refers to serotonin as the “confidence molecule.” But beyond the chemical-hormonal release of serotonin, a practice of gratitude builds trust in yourself and your universe to believe in your dreams and fulfill your promises to reach your goals.

14. Experience of completion. Saying thank you at the end of a transaction or conversation signifies a satisfactory ending to that conversation or transaction. It also opens the opportunity for further interactions that are also satisfying and complete.

15. Access to simplicity and clarity as a lifestyle. You are grateful for the things that you like. The practice of gratitude filters out harmful elements in your life so that you can let them go and focus on the things that give your life intention and meaning. Complexities and distractions fall away.

16. Living a life of choice. Most of us live life in a way that feels like we don’t have a choice or say in the matter. And most of us cannot give a truthful answer to the question, “what do you really want in life?” Practicing gratitude hones your ability to actually want things in your life. The bonus of that ability is choosing what you want – learning that choice is a distinction that you can generate at any moment.

17. Alertness and sensibility. When gratitude is present, you are more open to opportunities to make a difference and readily see humanity’s struggle. You can act effectively for the better.

18. Access to humor. When you are grateful, it is authentic, and in that space of authenticity, there is room for lightheartedness. Being authentic can come across as a context for comedy and self-deprecation.  Just don’t say anything that makes you particularly weak.  There is also a dismissal of attachment that comes with gratitude, and humorous things can happen. In giving thanks, even suffering can occur as laughable. You can enjoy life rather than internalize the suffering with significance and sorrow.

19. A ticket out of our own head. It can be a rough neighborhood in there. Being grateful provides access to actions and thoughts of compassion and positivity free from complaints and excuses, and “something is wrong here, and I can’t do anything about it.”  Gratitude gets you back outside of yourself. If you are stuck gazing at your own navel, being thankful is the remedy.

20. Emotional intelligence. If you are worried about your emotional intelligence or that of someone close to you, practicing gratitude is a brain-trainer that results in an attractive personality and higher competency.

21. Discard notions of insufficiency. You are not given an environment that lets you know that everything will work out and be ok. If you are like the rest of us, you are trained to approach everything in life as insufficient. Make an effort to apply gratitude to all areas of your life, especially those you feel are lacking. There is an immediate warmth of settledness and peace on the other side.

22. Heightened access to positive memories. Your brain stores a multitude of positive memories. Regret is a giant magnifying glass with a filter that blocks out the positive memories and reveals only larger-than-life negative ones. Practicing gratitude minimizes regret. Positive memories push through like flowers in a field, reaching sunlight. Life occurs as fresh and limitless.

So why aren’t we doing gratitude? I already told you. The answer is fear, entitlement, and the notion that something is wrong or lacking sufficiency or fairness. There is no space for gratitude to occur inside of a life of complaints, lies, excuses, and listening to the inner dialog of personal insufficiency. The default mode of the human condition is to avoid domination and responsibility. It takes work to practice gratitude. But at least it’s not something totally foreign. We can take small steps and become more proficient in the art of a life worthy of living as a generous expression of gratitude. It impacts your life, your future, your family, your community, and beyond.

My sister Teresa was born at a leper colony in Burundi because it was the closest hospital to where my missionary parents lived at the time. Leprosy is not an automatic seal of death. Yes, the chances of dying from it increase a little, but the disease is entirely treatable. The biggest problem with leprosy is that it affects the body visibly. Historically, people with it were labeled “unclean” and ostracized from society. In the middle ages, leprosy victims had to wear clothes that made them quickly identifiable and had to carry a bell to announce their presence. Other impacts of leprosy included loss of employment, social rejection, being disowned by the family, and generally considered distrustful and immoral. As cultures and societies understand leprosy, leper colonies slowly disappear, and victims become partially integrated with some unspoken social limitations. And, no. Teresa never had leprosy.

There’s a story in the New Testament of the Bible about ten lepers that Jesus healed. Two identity groups are mentioned – “unclean” lepers and Samaritans, who were also commonly rejected and treated with prejudicial disdain. If you want to read it, look up Luke 17:11-19. Jesus was traveling near the border of Galilee and Samaria. Ten lepers met him and, of course, socially distancing themselves, called out to Jesus. “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.” Jesus gave them a task. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” As the ten men took action, they were “cleansed” from their leprosy. The impact is that they were no longer ostracized. Life went back to normal. They could find jobs, go back to their families, start dating, get married, shop, and do business without being marginalized like infectious zombies.

One of them, when he saw that the leprosy was gone, returned to where Jesus was. Enthusiastically praising God, threw himself at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The story reveals that this person was also a Samaritan, another identity group of outcasts. The inference is that the other nine were Galilean like Jesus and felt sufficient entitlement not to return and give thanks.  

Jesus expressed his surprise that the only one of the ten to return with gratitude was a foreigner and acknowledged his faith and sent the man on his way.

Sometimes, I randomly ask my friends what they are thankful for and occasionally receive the response, “I don’t have any reason at the moment to be thankful.”

Of course you don’t. Gratitude is made up. Being thankful is an act of creating from nothing. It requires something from you.

Are you a person that deserves everything in life to be handed to you freely and bitter when something goes wrong – like not finding a parking space or ending up at the back of the line? How is the experience of being that way?

If culture is similar to that story, you’re in the majority – the 90 percent. Only one person out of ten isn’t so entitled to deny themselves the pleasure of being thankful. Don’t you think that it’s worth the effort? 

Note: There is a direct correlation between the eagerness to practice gratitude and the company we keep. People can suck the life out of us if we let them – especially if you tend toward being codependent. It may be necessary to distance yourself from these people at least emotionally so that you can give yourself space to heal with gratitude. As you transform your own life, they will also be drawn into the infection of a life that they can also love. 

PRACTICAL GRATITUDE EXERCISES

Exercise one – Gratitude Zones: For example, we all have to go to the bathroom. You most likely have privacy when you do it. For some of you, it’s the only privacy you have during your day. Make it your gratitude zone. It doesn’t need to be significant with a long list or a pious prayer time. Just think of a couple things for which you are thankful. Simple.

If you have multiple bathrooms that you use during the day, such as work and home, just choose one to start. When I worked as a DJ at bars and clubs, every urinal was my gratitude zone. My first thought of thankfulness was that I had a job. And then I would usually think of someone I worked with or a client that was a blessing to me that day or week.

The point is – a place that I went to frequently became somewhere sacred. I didn’t let the stupid judgmental voice in my head or superego dominate my valuable alone-time. It was reserved for gratitude. Find your “gratitude zone.”

Exercise two – Six plus one (6+1): This exercise is a list of seven things. Write down six things for which you are thankful every day and one regret that you have for which you can forgive. It might be an event that brought you shame. Your one item can also be someone else or group that you forgive. If you don’t write that one down in your list, that’s ok. It’s the one thing that is probably shouting at you most of your day anyway. Practice forgiving yourself. 

If your thanksgiving mode is being thankful that the world didn’t beat you up today, use that. Think of six ways that the world didn’t kick your ass and start noticing how your brain remaps your thinking.

Remember that it is YOUR list. Repeat items on your list as often as you want.

Exercise three: Make a reminder to yourself when you wake up to be thankful. When you begin your day with gratitude, you unlock your brain to be receptive to positive things. You are more alert to opportunities and have a generally happier day.

Exercise four – Gratitude by giving gifts: Sometimes, I like to show my gratitude by giving a gift or a card because I’m grateful and want to share it in a special way. I also notice that it creates a context of thanksgiving for them too, and they get to celebrate that moment by connecting with me and thanking me. It’s a happy space to experience together. HOWEVER. If you tend toward codependency, your motives can be contaminated, as will be the experience of receiving your gift. Check yourself and your heart before choosing this exercise that you are genuinely thankful. You could be giving something to buy a future favor or make up for what you did in the past. Remember that gratitude and “something is wrong here” or not good enough, can’t share the same thought nor the same gift.

Exercise or effort is what you do to form a habit.

Habits are what you have that form behavior.

Behavior shows who you are and how the world listens to you and perceives you.

Gratitude is Boolean in nature. A one or a zero. On or off. Not, “I’m a little or half-way thankful.” You’re thankful, or you’re not. Practice being deeply present to your gratitude.

CHAPTER 3

Your Life in Seven Dimensions

The intention of this Chapter is that you do what is necessary to clarify who you are in this world.

DIMENSION: From the Latin root to “measure out”.

The first four dimensions are time-space dimensions. The fifth dimension occurs as the most prevalent in all aspects of life. It also provides a gateway to the final two dimensions of consciousness.

The zeroeth dimension is more of a philosophical discussion than one of physics, yet for this model is worth mentioning. If the first dimension is a line, dimension zero is a point. It is an infinitely singular instance with no length, width, or depth but necessary as the source of all measurements.

You are the point from which the occurrence of your universe begins. You don’t live outside of your body nor outside of your consciousness. Your perception of everything comes from you, no one else. Yet your self-image isn’t how you see yourself – it’s how you think others or your environment perceives you, and you manage yourself accordingly. The measure of everything in your perceived world outside of yourself originates from dimension zero – you

However, you are also a singular point of an infinite number of points that make up the first dimension line. The line of your life represents you as a point and whatever quantity of other points with which you connect in the very short line, or hyphen between the year you are born and the year you die.

When a pen rests on the paper to write, that landing coordinate is you full of potential for what is next. What will be the expression of that pen? Will it write out words to create a story or letter to someone dear? Will it draw a picture to illustrate life? Will it make numbers to formulate a problem and proceed to solve it? Or will it be random and aimless scribbles until the ink runs dry?

By reason, a lower dimension cannot include a higher dimension. A line doesn’t contain a plane, and a plane doesn’t encompass a cube. If a lower dimension was given thought, it could not even conceive of higher dimensions – like an ant imagining what it’s like to bake the cake from which the crumbs are its food.

The first of seven dimensions in the model is a line – X. It has potentially infinite length. Fortunately, because of the zeroeth dimension, the line can be measured from an immutable reference point. There is no philosophical association to the first dimension besides the comparison to the hyphen, as previously mentioned.

The second dimension is a plane by introducing an intersecting line – Y – to X or XY. I call this the dimension of everything visible because we see only light reflecting off of surfaces. If we were like Superman with x-ray vision, that would be different. Our perception of the world is two-dimensional, even though we experience it mostly in three dimensions. When we grasp something, our hand doesn’t go through it. In reaching into a pile of sand, we still touch only the surfaces of the grains of sand. Your foot slides into a shoe, but your perception is merely the two-dimensional surface of the inside.

The second dimension’s length and width are augmented by another line providing depth – Z – the third dimension. Our five senses live here, observing empirical evidence of reality. Logic and theory are absent. The third dimension is the domain of everything that exists.

For the physical realm to have movement, it requires time to arrive from one point in space to another. Time is the fourth dimension.

Although other calendars exist, the most popular and globally common is the Gregorian calendar. Even though the Gregorian calendar has BC and AD signifying the zero point of the birth of Jesus Christ, there is no negative time. And there is no year zero. It is 1 BC or AD 1 before and after Christ’s birth. Although the religion-neutral terms “CE,” common era, and “BCE” before common era are standard in science and academia, the event in time zero is still the same; the birth of Jesus. Will we ever adopt another time standard of measurement? Well, there used to be nine planets in our solar system. So, if they’re smart enough to kick out Pluto, I’m sure that they can convince the world to have a different type of calendar and units of the duration of time, which is already evident by the initial adoption of the Gregorian calendar. 

The fourth dimension’s unique aspect of time is that it is linear and moves only forward – never backward. Ironically, most humans hold on to the past with an iron grip like their future depends on it. We can take a lesson from this dimension. Time holds no regard for the hour that just passed nor is consumed by regret. Time doesn’t worry about the hour ahead, either. Why should you?

There is abundant evidence of the past before you are born. The past also makes the future predictable. But time is the dimension of only the living because there is no experience of time before and after you are alive and being alive, you are acutely aware that your time is limited.

Some physicists calculate higher dimensions to be the result of vibration or frequency. Many spiritual gurus and self-proclaimed masters teach that we operate on vibrational planes and attract what we have in life. I believe that there is truth to both the physicists’ and the gurus’ claims that the fifth dimension is vibration and frequency. Included is rhythm, energy, patterns, light, sound, brain waves, and specifically for this paradigm, imagination and language.

Medellín, Colombia, is globally recognized with various awards that spotlight its metro transportation system of busses, trains, and cable cars that connect every barrio in its metropolitan footprint. The scale of this undertaking astounds me every time I board one of the trains or climb into a cable car. I wonder what conversations happened to fuse the various ideas that encapsulated the project’s initial vision. What happened that created the agreement of all of the municipalities to participate? The Medellín metro system prides itself in the “cultura metro” sentiment that fosters cooperation and prioritizes the disabled, elderly, and pregnant women. Every bus, cable car, and train and every inch of concrete, glass, and steel was formed and perfectly positioned because of language. And how many conversations happen daily to maintain and expand this massive entity?

Magic spells are cast in language. Sacred texts are revered and regarded to contain a higher power than just words written on a page. The United States Declaration of Independence is foundational to the framework of the American culture, as is the Emancipation Proclamation. The same verses of the Bible and Quran that give us promises of hope and connection are in the same books of verses that have ignited endless wars.

When the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he could have never predicted what social media would do to incite rage and shame and obliterate the reputations of others – even unto death. How many playwrights, movie producers, comedians, and restaurant owners place their fate in the words of reputed critics?

Politicians and religious and military leaders marshal the media to spread propaganda and orders for citizens to kill their friends and neighbors in the furry of genocide. In 2014, two high school seniors at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California, produced a film called “Cut the Tall Trees: The Killing Power of Words.” The short documentary by Noah Bennett and Max Cho was about the Rwandan genocide that happened in 1994 before the students were even born. 

In Kigali, Rwanda, a popular radio station filled its programming with energetic cultural music and announcement breaks between sets of songs belittling and dehumanizing the Tutsi minority tribe. The masses of Hutu listeners were being conditioned over the airwaves to carry out murderous brutality. All that they were waiting for was the right set of words to take action.

As mentioned in the first chapter, language is the dimension of order and chaos.

But there is also language that does nothing. It is the product of entitlement, survival, and fear. It includes but not limited to:

1.  Lying
2. Complaining
3. Making excuses
4. Gossiping
5. Blaming
6. Superstition
7. Tantrums of fearful anger
8. Worry as in attachment with no action
9. Projected false empathy, i.e., “you must be so embarrassed,”
10. Exaggeration
11. Most Sarcasm – some well-placed and well-timed sarcasm has an illuminating effect like shining a light on ignorance or apathy. It’s also useful if there is a humorous intention. Please leave it to the professionals.

This language has only a negative value or is, at best, totally useless.

Here is a list of some useful speech:

1. “Yes”, and “No”. Keep it simple.
2. Gratitude. Say, “Thank you.”
3. Affection / Affinity. Say, “I love you” or “I like you.”
4. Positive acknowledgment. Tell the truth to someone about them and be generous with the truth. Apply effort.
5. Promises. Declare and keep them with integrity and clear communication.
6. Say things that help people have fun and laugh.

As you can notice, useless speech requires no responsibility and mostly denies responsibility, whereas useful speech is clear, illuminating, and creates a meaningful future to enjoy.

So then how does language relate to the fourth dimension of time? All of us regularly manipulate time with language. Did you buy anything recently or enter into an agreement that required your signature for a future reality of ownership? When was the last time you called or sent a text promising to meet someone for lunch or coffee at a specific time and place in the near future? Every promise that you make includes shaping time at some level.

What about traveling to the past? Isn’t the past unchangeable and set in stone? Consider this. Has anyone ever apologized to you with the depth of sincerity that changed your relationship with them? Did the trauma of the pain that they caused lessen when they humbly took full ownership of their words and actions? When they told you that they desired to have a better relationship with you after their confession and apology, did you feel a sense of redemption? Did some of the resentment and bitterness you had against them fall away? Did even your memories of bitterness and resentment fade? THAT is traveling to the past.

The only access to traveling to the past or future is using the fifth dimension of language and incorporating the sixth dimension of responsibility. In fact, your promises and apologies are only as effective as the degree of responsibility applied. You’ve heard promises from friends or politicians that hold no weight because there is no evidence of reliability. Your credit score is the only window into your level of responsibility that the car dealership has so that they can trust you to pay them or the bank over time.

In our magical thinking about manipulating time, responsibility is usually the last item in our list of considerations. If time travel does exist in the dimension of frequency or vibration, the igniter and fuel that drives it resides in the sixth dimension of responsibility as a dimension of consciousness.

There is also a passageway between language and responsibility. For language to manifest action, motivation is required. Basic motivations are responses to physical needs such as hunger, thirst, shelter, and fundamental comfort. We are also motivated to protect ourselves from danger and react to pain. Besides the primal urges of instinct and the survival of the species, however, motivation comes from one of two sources – inspiration or fear. Lusts for power, money, and attention are all based on your fear identity. Fear of loss, rejection, or looking bad drives most of humanity and is a compelling motivator.

Motivation that creates emanates from inspiration. Inspiration is future-based as opposed to fear, which is a reminder of past trauma and failure that implies a predictable tragic outcome. Words like “faith”, and “hope” lead us to responsibility that, in turn, gives us meaning and purpose.

Reputations exist only in language, but the results are genuine and also dwell in the portal of motivation.

The phenomenon of agreement is one of collective consciousness. It’s how we measure reality. Whoever receives the most votes is president, governor, or mayor. Authors are more real if they are on the bestsellers list. Facebook pages are measured in “likes”. Youtube designates your channel as more real when you reach 1,000 subscribers agreeing that your channel has value. Advertising and marketing are forces for establishing reality in agreement. Social media influencers get paid to make you or your product real – all inside of this passageway between the fifth and sixth dimensions.

Note: not all reality is given only by language and agreement. PAIN is very real independent of agreement or language.

But none of this has any impact on the world without the sixth dimension of responsibility. Responsibility takes language and translates it into intentional results. Responsibility is uniquely human. It is the dimension of meaning and purpose.

Not only is the sixth dimension uniquely human, it is also necessarily human. The denial of responsibility is a paradox. Yes, you can pick and choose which responsibility appeals to you most. But without responsibility, you go crazy, literally. Emotional support animals aren’t there just to look cute or charge up your egocentric demand for unconditional love. Without you, your pet dies. It generously gives you the gift of being responsible. Depression and anxiety are alleviated when you have something to do that makes a difference.

I have a friend named Charlie. Charlie is in his late sixties and has suffered from chronic depression since he was a teenager. Most days, he can’t even get out of bed feeling crushed under the pressure of acute anxiety. His mania is polarized, as is typical with that type of mental illness. Periods of hyper-discipline of walking many miles per day and eating only healthy food with a focus on low-calory meals are contrasted with spells of binging on sweets and fattening food. The only time that he leaves his house during his binging periods is to buy his daily liter of ice cream. The events or notions that trigger the pendulum to swing from one side to the other are elusive, even to himself. Charlie has a prescription for an SSRI antidepressant but doesn’t like to take them.

As a retired teacher, one of the saving graces that alleviated Charlie’s depression was a volunteer job as a teacher’s assistant. It gave him a familiar routine, a predictable destination, and, most importantly, responsibility. When that job assignment finished, he told me on multiple occasions how he wished there was a similar opportunity to give him another sense of responsibility. Without it, Charlie resigned himself to filling his days binge-watching downloaded series of mostly crime investigation shows with a redemptive ending for the hero and the villain getting what they deserved.

Responsibility was the thing that Charlie needed to feel better and consider himself a functioning part of humanity. In the absence of something meaningful, Charlie was visited daily by his demons that incessantly mocked him and left him sobbing against the rail of his sixth-floor balcony, desperately wishing that he had the courage to end it all. After a few months of sharing life with Charlie, I’m convinced that if he ended up in hell, it would be an existential upgrade.

Knowing Charlie was a gift of grace. I knew that this book, A HYPOTHESIS OF EVERYTHING, demanded a specific enlightenment that only exploring the dark and treacherous underbelly of the fear identity could offer. My personality type isn’t given to chronic depression. Even spells of sadness are rare. I remember contemplating the necessary exploration in this book and praying to God to help me understand depression more intimately. I didn’t ask God to spare me from making me go through it, but I hoped that He would read between the lines. He did. I met Charlie days after that request, followed by another man named Paul, who suffered from a different flavor of depression. My time with them has taught me much. I’m not sure that deeply depressed people are allowed to have friends, but I think that I was close to being one for each of them. It wasn’t my idea of a barrel of fun, but if there is something in this book that touches you in a way that speaks truth to your sadness, regret, or shame, much credit goes to Charlie and Paul. 

We have access to whatever we declare in this world and for which we can be responsible. Culture and society rely on responsibility for balance and community. However, there exists in this dimension, a natural gravity like the gravity we experience every day. There is nothing inherently “wrong” with gravity. We learn how to use it, get around it, or get over it. The gravity in responsibility is “significance” and “fear,” usually wrapped up in some form of shame or regret. These pull at our declarations, promises, and intentions. When the choices we make are made in a powerless context, we always see how significance and fear are at work. When we notice that our communication falls lifeless in front of us, we can focus and try to make significance and fear disappear, or we can simply add the Seventh Dimension to our choices and responsibility.

I believe that the seventh dimension is an intertwining of love and truth. They are not the same word nor concept, but each is bigger than our experience and shares an indication of something essentially perfect, absolute, and ultimate.

The icon I use to symbolize the Seventh Dimension is light overwhelming darkness. There is a lot we now know about the sun that also reveals how much we don’t know. For sun-worshippers, there is the acknowledgment that the sun nourishes us and that there is no life without it. Whether we bless it or curse it makes no difference. The sun still manifests and maintains whatever it wants. There is something much higher and more true than our comprehension of it. As an example of ultimate power, the sun is definitely the biggest kid on the block. We cannot look directly into the sun on a clear day for much time without injuring our eyes. I believe that love and truth can be similarly brilliant and penetrate us in immediately uncomfortable ways. Our first response is to turn away from it or quickly shut down our consciousness. As the symbol that I use for the seventh dimension, there is illumination, authenticity, nourishment, and life. And something inherently unknowable is inviting us to engage in it and discover more.

Like responsibility, love/truth is a dimension of consciousness. I believe that it is naturally embedded at birth in each human because both love and truth function as proprietary receptacles. Examples would be a coffee mug or a shot glass. Tossing back a shot of milk doesn’t work. A shot glass is designed for something much more potent and mind-altering. Your ceramic mug labeled “coffee” isn’t for lemonade unless you’re playing a practical joke on someone.

My Christian friends explain that there is an emptiness in every human that only God can fill called a “God-sized hole.” I believe that there is a space in the human psyche uniquely designed and capable of holding love that only love can fill, and it is the same for truth. There is also something about love and truth that function as mirrors that each reflects back to the giver. The only access to truth outside of you is the recognition of truth within you that connects with the external. Everything that isn’t love or truth blocks or smudges the mirrors to the extent that neither are discernible in their capacity to reflect anything. Clean your damned mirrors once in a while. Practicing gratitude is the perfect glass cleaner.

The next chapter is about ideals and aiming higher than yourself. If your highest ideal is family and you think that you already know everything there is to know about it, you have already failed or are about to. Ideals are everywhere in life as we will explore, but your highest ideal is something for which the notion of sacrificing your life to it is both the obvious choice and evident lifestyle. And that sacrifice does not occur to you like a destiny of suffering; it is an immediate encounter with joy and meaningful responsibility. Your thirst for your highest ideal will never be fully quenched, and you will never stop trying.

CHAPTER 4

Your Highest Ideal

ideal: noun

1: a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence

2: one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation

3: an ultimate object or aim of endeavor

Here is an example of what I mean by ideals. The final trilogy of the Star Wars saga introduced a gritty Force-sensitive scavenger girl named Rey – just Rey. She sought out the Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker, to not only return his lightsaber but also get trained in the ways of the Force. In the following episode, after Luke’s battle with Kylo Ren and sacrificing himself so that Rey and the others had time to escape, Rey turned to Luke’s sister, General (Princess) Leia, to continue her training.

Before being a General, Princess Leia and Han Solo had a son named Ben. After submitting to the Dark Side, Ben’s name became Kylo Ren as a shift of his ideal from the light side of the Force to the dark side. However, Ben was also the last of the Skywalker lineage.

In one of Kylo Ren and Rey’s confrontations, Kylo Ren told Rey that her parents abandoned her on a desert planet and sacrificed their lives to protect her from her grandfather, Emperor Palpatine, who founded the Empire. Rey was destined to carry the curse of the Palpatine name as the apparent source of the Force’s malicious, chaotic dark side. But it was clear that for Rey, the highest ideal in the universe resided in the name “Skywalker”.

After the destruction of the Emperor with the aid of the resurrected Ben Solo, Rey returned to her home world. When a local citizen asked, “What is your name?”

Rey answered, “My name is Rey.”

“Rey, who?” inquired the citizen.

An image of the ghosts or Luke and Leia appeared above the horizon of the desert, and Rey responded, “Rey SKYWALKER.” Thus, the title “The Rise of Skywalker” – the highest ideal adopted as a declaration of chosen identity.

Ideals as a distinction:

Let’s take a look at some of the things that are ideals for humans in random order:

Royalty positions are ideals – Queen, King, Prince, Princess, etc.

The Dalai Lama – as a title and name change.

Most tattoos represent ideals or memories of ideals.

The Buddha – as a title and name change from Siddhartha Gautama.

Money is an ideal. It is the most shared ideal on the planet.

Christ incarnate – self as the archetype of the Christ ideal.

Zodiac signs are ideals.

Monuments are symbols of ideals.

Patron Saints – more than 10,000 embodiments of ideals.

Religious titles – Priests, Cardinals, Bishops, Pope, etc.

Every Military Rank represents an ideal

Creating a possibility is creating an ideal.

Most artistic expressions reveal profound ideals.

Every job title is an ideal.

Any education/vocation degree/certificate is an ideal.

Hindu Gods are ideals – 33 million of them.

The Judaeo Christian God – name too sacred to speak and many other names to describe God.

Every god is an archetype of an ideal or set of ideals. 

New Year’s resolutions represent ideals of transformation.

“Professional” status – sports, music, acting, etc.

EVERY Superhero and Villain in books, movies, and comics are archetypes of ideals.

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, etc. are titles for ideals.

The changing of names in the moment of enlightenment – Bible: Sarai becomes Sarah, Saul becomes Paul, Simon becomes Peter, Jacob becomes Israel plus similar representations in nearly every culture.

Every tribal initiation or coming of age celebration is a passage toward an ideal.

EVERY FEELING OR NOTION OF REGRET AND INSUFFICIENCY IS AGAINST A BACKDROP OF A DESIRED OR EXPECTED IDEAL

Books are ideals.

We turn some of our memories into ideals.

Fear structures/phobias are ideals for some people.

Everything we do and avoid doing may be concerning ideals or the exchange of ideals.

As babies, we are wired to develop by emulating whatever is presented as the ideal. The same is present in all of child development, such as language, walking, bantering, and socializing – everything.

Humanity cannot get enough of ideals. Ideals are pervasive in every age, class, and culture on the planet. It’s the essence of being human.

Your WORLD VIEW is an ideal – good or bad.

I was in my last year of wearing braces when I was a freshman in high school. The orthodontist’s office was in Dodge City, Kansas. The small town where I lived was about 55 miles directly east. My appointment in February of that year was on a school day. Although we were warned about wind gusts blowing across the snow-packed highway, Mom made a judgment call that we could get to my appointment if we left more than an hour early and drove slowly. Kansas is as flat as the movies let you imagine, and all of the roads are predictably straight and boring. There is a slight direction change about 15 miles before Dodge City, where the road curves right toward the northwest and then corrects itself westward about a half-mile further.

As our large, 15-passenger white van entered the curve, mom compensated for allowing more room for a passing farm tractor with a snowplow blade attached. One of the grooves left in the road by heavy semi-trucks threw us back into our lane and directly toward the snowplow. We hit the snowplow at an angle, but the added obtuse angle of the blade pushed us into a perpendicular trajectory toward the opposite guard rail.

Our van predated federal requirements for shoulder belts and legal requirements to wear any seatbelt. I don’t know if we even attached our lap belts. Upon impact with the guard rail, mom flew through the front windshield breaking her right leg and multiple ribs and badly bruising the rest of her body. I was sitting shotgun in the passenger seat and ducked. The right side of my head was fractured by hitting the passenger door near the handle when we glanced off the snowplow. And the impact of the guard rail resulted in a lot of swelling on the back of my skull. My sister Susan was lying down in the back bench seat and ended up on the floorboard in front of the driver seat with a badly sprained ankle.

I passed out but was choking on my tongue. Susan was aware enough to crawl over to me and reach into my mouth to dislodge my tongue so that I could breathe. Of course, I bit down hard on her fingers and nearly broke them.

 The ambulance from 15 miles away took us back to the Dodge City emergency room. Fortunately, one of the best doctors in Kansas for the injuries that Mom sustained was also there at the hospital. Because my injuries required a skilled neurologist, I was prepped for transport 150 miles away to Wesley Hospital in Wichita, Kansas.

I don’t remember anything about that day. Everything about this story is details that others have told me. My memory picks up again about two weeks later. The bits and pieces I remember were a gift of a tennis racket anticipating my first tennis season in high school. And I definitely remember when my urinary catheter being pulled out.

Mom was in the Dodge City hospital many days, and Dad stayed and attended to her as he could. I think that my sisters took turns to see me as well. I was released a couple of weeks after the accident to go home.

As I remember it, a generous individual gave us a hospital bed so that mom could spend her time in a body cast at home. Mom’s right femur shattered and required a plate and ten screws. She was in and out of the body cast for a year and a half as she kept dislodging pins trying to get back to normal too soon. Mom almost died in the accident. There were times that she begged for death under the excruciating pain. This wasn’t a perfect alternative by any stretch of the imagination. But it was an alternative that was effective to make us a strong and solid family and a mother that was alive and still with us. Mom learned to walk again and resumed teaching for three more years.

My mind seemed fuzzy for several weeks after being released from Wesley Hospital, and the part of my brain that processed math, which I loved, took years to return. My algebra teacher spent many hours with me after school, but I think the passing grade I received at the end of the semester was out of mercy. My sisters said that the neurologist’s prognosis of the damage to my head was that if I didn’t die, I would be mentally retarded the rest of my life – whatever “retarded” means today in the PC culture. Well, the good news is that I didn’t die. 😛

My family was part of a large community that believed in the power of prayer. You know the stereotypical little old ladies who have their prayer lists. Well, I was on their list. I know that I was on my mom’s list too. I’ve witnessed her suffer severely on several occasions, but she never missed a day of praying for each of her children – ever.

I’m not sure that anyone remembers every detail of their life four decades ago, but in my memory, the rest of my 16th year is spotty at best. Teresa told me that after school, members of my family would ask me what I had learned or remembered from the day, and it was rare for me to recall anything. My short term memory took a beating in the accident. My brain was doing its best to rebuild neural pathways, and I worked on having a positive attitude. I needed to create as much stress-free space for healing as possible.

One memory is still very vivid. Enough time passed after the accident for me to get the impact of Mom’s injuries. All of the energy and effort that our family could muster was required to ease her pain and help her heal. It was the evening of a chilly school day that one of my sisters informed me that the doctor found a cancerous lump on one of Mom’s breasts. It was dark outside and late enough that there was no traffic on our street in the town of 600 people. We lived across from the high school. The K-8 building was about 100 yards to the north and a baseball field 100 yards beyond that. I don’t know how many times I paced down to the end of that street and back, sobbing in confusion/frustration/anger that my saintly mother would be afflicted with cancer. Beyond all odds, she barely survived the brutal accident, and now she’s going to die of something like cancer? “GOD! How can you let this happen?!” It was all I could utter through my tears, over and over again.

The biopsy of the lump proved benign, but the trauma on my soul did something big.

I created my worldview. Yes, the refining fire of struggle and suffering brought my entire family closer together. But that fire also gave me three of my deepest values. 

1. YOU HARVEST WHAT YOU PLANT (reap what you sow) – always. That might have been my teenage Christian take on karma. Whatever you put into the world, that’s what you’ll get in return. I think that it is irrefutable. It’s the same with what we consume physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. “Garbage in, garbage out.” “Good in, good out.” There’s an illustrative verse in the New Testament of the Bible. Luke 6:45 “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”

2. BE CONSISTENT. My missionary kid upbringing conflated the words “integrity” and “morality.” The term “consistent” was the best I could come up with to meet the definition of what I now understand as the correct meaning of “integrity.” Live life consistently. I didn’t have to be predictable, but I had to be true to my values in a way that people around me knew that I wouldn’t waver from those values. Have I been consistent all my life? Hell no. I’ve messed up a lot and often. But I still know who I am and what I believe. It is a standard or ideal that I can restore when I fall or take myself out of the picture.

3. “NO ONE IS IMMUNE” – Be careful when you think you have it all together and when you feel you are more “right” than others. Being humble as in knowing who you are, being alert, and not asserting entitlement out of arrogance, will save your life.

The language around these values has changed and expanded, but the core world view has remained the same for decades. And adding a practice of gratitude has made life more fulfilling and fun.

So, what is the lesson? You’re surrounded by values and ideals. Pick one or two or three. Make them your own. Create your world view and have something solid on which to stand. Your age doesn’t matter. I know people who are late in life and still don’t know what to believe. I was 16.

What I see universally in the pattern of ideals is that we respond in one of three ways when we lose or abuse it.

I’m using the Genesis serpent event and the Cain and Abel story in Chapters Two through Four as an illustration of it, but nearly every story and myth in our world has these elements as related to an ideal.

1. You are confronted with the loss of the ideal and refuse to be responsible for self-marginalizing. Such as Adam and Eve – “It’s HER fault.” “It’s the serpent’s fault.” Not only is the avoidance of responsibility evident, but the result is also identifying a community to which you can find validation for marginalizing like Adam+Eve=identity group of outcasts. A victim mentality is present, and your life opens up to whatever hell comes with it.

How do we see that today? New letters/symbols added to our gender ID chain, but this is one of the thousands of new groups created as we marginalize from our ideal. Note that I don’t use the word “acceptance” into the formed identity group because I don’t see evidence that true acceptance is essential but validation? Definitely.

2. You can do what Cain did. Cain didn’t make an excuse. He flat out lied about killing Abel. The distance of self-marginalizing from your highest ideal is profound when confronted by shame. The “Cain” response is to kill or destroy “being” itself, but if you can’t kill others, the only alternative is to kill yourself.

3. You can RESTORE your ideal. The only practical instruction on how to do that from what I see is stated in 2 Chronicles 7:14 of the Bible. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 

You can filter out your “personal God” opinion, paradigm, or myth and apply this to your highest ideal. At one point, you have identified yourself with your highest ideal in such a way that you are the embodiment of that ideal, if my people, which are called by my name,” ie. “Skywalker”. The mandate is to humble yourself, pray, and seek again your highest ideal. Quit doing all of the things that are distracting you, such as your coping mechanisms for managing the pain of your shame. Your ideal will return to you and restore you and heal the entire context of your life.

In Star Wars, Kylo Ren killed his father, Han Solo, and his Jedi Master uncle Luke Skywalker. Rey and Kilo Ren were in a passionate battle to the death when the presence of his mother, Leia, vanished into the force as she died. Stricken with emptiness and sadness in the moment of his mother’s passing, Rey took the opportunity to inflict a fatal wound. In a rare moment of clarity between them, Rey infused her healing force into Kilo Ren and saved him from death. After Rey rushed away to return to her friends, a manifestation of Han Solo appeared to Kilo Ren. 

Han: “Hey, kid.” Long pause. “I miss you, son.”

Kylo Ren: “Your son is dead.”

Han: “No. (pause) Kylo Ren is dead. My son is alive.”

Kylo Ren: “You’re just a memory.”

Han: “YOUR memory. (pause) Come home.”

Kylo Ren: “It’s too late. (pause) She’s gone.”

Han: “Your MOTHER is gone. But what she stood for, what she fought for – that’s not gone. (pause) Ben.”

Kylo Ren: “I don’t want to have to do it. I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

Han reaches out with his left hand and puts it on his son’s cheek. “You do.”

Ben grasps his lightsaber and raises it a little. “Dad.”

Han: “I know.”

Ben turns and throws his lightsaber as far as he can into the abyss of the stormy sea. He turns again to see that his father has vanished yet appears resolutely restored as the son of Skywalker.

Adam and Eve could have done that, but ENTITLEMENT took over. That’s why I say that entitlement is a FUCK-ASS MOTHER-FUCKING life stealer. As much as we sugar-coat it, I promise you that the feeling of being entitled or the perceived fact of entitlement will never be a source of inner happiness. I am serious about this. I firmly believe that entitlement is the poison of the cosmos and the curse of humanity. It will always keep you just out of reach from your highest ideal.

But there’s a risk in following your ideal with all of your heart. People will want to destroy you or kill you. And it’s usually the people in the second response category that want to kill their own ideal that you represent as Cain did to Abel, and the masses did to Jesus.

Notice the villain archetype of familiar stories. The hero represents the ideal that was once belonged to the villain, but it got lost and now the hero is the one who must be destroyed like the Green Goblin in his quest to kill Spiderman. In ordinary life, you do kill the hero, and the ideal dies with it, but that’s not the ending you want. You want your ideal to win and live forever. These are my favorite stories. I don’t watch any other kinds of movies. I still gasp with emotion at the moment of redemption and reconnecting, especially when even the villain comes to their senses and turns from evil to embrace the good, like Kylo Ren or Harry Osborn in Spiderman 3. It’s the most popular story in the world. How do I know this? We spend the most money at the box office for this storyline. These movies are the most watched on streaming video services.

In this model of consideration, you can reverse engineer it as well. Your coping mechanism or addiction is in response to a loss of your highest ideal. What victim conversations are you using to avoid responsibility for being the one that initiated the separation from your ideal? What entitlement is in place to keep you separated? That same entitlement convinces you that it is the IDEAL that cast YOU away, and you will never be more than a victim of it. If you can identify your highest ideal, humble yourself. Deny your entitlement. Use your language to make an effort for restoration. Seek it. Lean into it. Begin to push away the structures you have in place to make you feel comfortable, justified, and distracted from your highest ideal. I promise you, something big will happen. It will occur to you that your ideal has heard you and forgiven you. It will restore you to itself, and you will see how the context of your life heals and thrives.

Take a good look. What is your highest ideal? Start there.

You may not have a clue about your highest ideal. That’s OK. Pick SOMETHING. Add it to your conversations. Take deliberate actions. If it is not your highest ideal, your highest ideal will begin to surface. Search for what calls your inner hero into action. There will be evidence of contribution and passion and will include noticeable elements of love and truth. When it is in clear view, embrace it, and keep going forward with your conversations and actions.

CHAPTER 5

Your Suffering Hero  Sandwich

The problem is that we don’t have a menu of sandwich choices. There’s just one – SUFFERING.

Before returning to Burundi in 2001 to see the house where I was born, I did a little research to update my general knowledge of the country. Amnesty International listed Sierra Leone as the poorest country in the world. Number two was Burundi. For some reason, I thought that it would be Ethiopia since there was an abundance of media covering the country’s desperate starvation and poverty. But I understood. After all, Burundi had been through nothing but decades of massacres scattered throughout the country, let alone the random assassinations of community and religious leaders against the backdrop of multiple genocides. I braced myself to see shocking scenes of suffering, malnourished children, and blank expressions or sadness on everyone’s faces. But I didn’t see any of that. I saw the opposite. I saw laughing, playing, singing, and people happy to see each other with hugs and energetic handshakes.

For me, just take away my iPhone and I’m done. To live the way that people in Burundi live would be brutal for me. But they have no context of anything different. And whatever way I live now, another person would deem as suffering if they had to live the way I do. It’s all relative, isn’t it?

Life changes, things happen, we get hurt, we make bad decisions. People lie to us and hurt us and we personalize it like it’s about us and not them. We are the victims. 

Here’s the point. Suffering is subjective on an individual level.

What IS suffering? Here’s the dictionary definition:

suffering noun – the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

The word itself denotes that something else is the norm. You shouldn’t suffer. Pain is for other people. Life should be without hardship. If you fully embraced the fact that life is suffering and suffering is life, the notion of pain, distress, and difficulty would lose significance and simply disappear. But that’s not how we are wired. We expect life to include as little suffering as possible and are somehow surprised when suffering shows up.

What causes suffering? According to the Buddha, suffering is caused by the yearning or thirst for something better or different. There is no awareness of suffering without desire, which is the Second Noble Truth of Buddhism. 

This is what happened in the garden of Eden. The serpent disrupted Adam and Eve’s perfect world by introducing desire and entitlement. Gen. 3:4 “..when you eat this delicious and beautiful fruit, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” First of all, life is suffering because you’re NOT eating this perfect, delicious fruit. Second, life is suffering because you are blind to the fact that you could be enlightened and equal to God. Life in the garden wasn’t so good after all. Adam and Eve lacked experience and knowledge, and the serpent was so generous to offer it all. And of course, they ate the fruit. Why not? It only cost them their dignity and loss of their highest ideal. What about their suffering? Did it go away? I don’t think so. The yearning, thirst, desire, and subsequent entitlement just began. And as a species, we humans grabbed that baton and ran with it and never looked back.

Micro-transactions of trading dignity for desire happen every day when we use our addictive coping mechanisms to manage our suffering. Or when we get a notice that we are pre-approved for a credit card with no APR (Annual Percentage Rate) for 15 months. You deserve everything, and you deserve it now – not later when you can save up and buy it without debt.

The first of the four noble truths of Buddhism is Duḥkha, which is associated more with dissatisfaction than suffering, including “stress”, “difficulty”, “anxiety”, and “sadness”. Dissatisfaction runs rampant in the consciousness of every human. Distinguishing insufficiency is part of that. If you think you are different and are always satisfied with everything, go look in a mirror. The reason you are looking in the mirror is a conversation of insufficiency. If you avoid mirrors, that conversation is even louder. How much makeup is in your makeup bag? What do you use to measure your exercise or health or weight? How and on what is your spouse spending their time, and what does it mean about you? What kind of job or rank do you have? Are you satisfied with your current position? How much time do you look at Facebook, TikTok or Instagram envious of the lives of others? How are your most important relationships? Who have you lost in your life lately? What is happening in your body that merits the consideration of a visit to the doctor? What are your deepest regrets? Yes, life is suffering.

I was raised with a lot of evangelistic Christian influences. It was common to hear and say ridiculous things like “Christ suffered so that I don’t have to.” Christ called me to be an expression of himself in the world, not only to bear my own suffering but also to be responsible for the suffering of others. Does that set me apart from other people on the planet? You might think so, but no, it doesn’t. RESPONSIBILITY IS THE MANDATE OF ALL HUMANITY. It is where we find meaning and purpose. Without it, we go crazy. Most (and I’m being generous) psychological and social disorders arise from refusing to be responsible in some area of life.

Life is a suffering sandwich. Eat it!

What is a SANDWICH? It’s something we eat that’s usually between two pieces of bread. We don’t mention the bread because it’s the foundation of the construction of a sandwich. It’s also the most crucial part. If the bread is stale or soggy when it’s not supposed to be, your sandwich is ruined no matter what is inside. You might say, “Well, it’s a suffering sandwich. It’s already ruined.” No. It’s just life. It’s YOUR life – your meaningful life. 

Would Superman be nearly as cool if even Kryptonite didn’t weaken him or that he had to hide out as Clark Kent? If Bruce Wayne’s parents were still alive, would he have any purpose of being the Batman and saving Gotham City? It’s vital for us to identify with our heroes in their suffering. They know what it’s like to be rejected and alone. They experience loss and sadness. It is the victory over their brokenness that makes us cheer. And why do we cheer? Because it is proof that there is hope for us too. We CAN rise out of the heap of garbage we were thrown into being considered useless or irrelevant. We CAN begin the process of remembering that being a warrior is in our DNA, like Alita Battle Angel.

Brokenness, struggle, sadness, pain, rejection, and loss are the prelude to redemption and restoring that which is good or just.

Say hello to the top slice of bread from the suffering sandwich. It’s partly the hero archetype that calls us to be great. It’s partly the universal hope for a brighter future. It’s the individuals with near-death experiences that report profound equality, beauty, peace, love, and acceptance on the other side of living this life. It’s good and goodness.

The bottom slice of bread is also good and goodness. It is the beginning of our stories when everything is safe and comfortable before the evil invasion or rise of the villain. In the story of young Prince Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), a strong castle protected him from knowing the pain and sorrow awaiting him outside the walls. Adam and Eve had provision and security in the Garden of Eden. Life was good. The story of the six days of creation in Genesis 1, ended with God’s observance, “It was good.” The creation of man and woman on the sixth day merited something special, “And it was VERY good.” The last verse of Genesis 2 says, “And they were naked and unashamed.” You can’t get much better than that.

We talk about “the good ole days.” Or, “back in the day when life was more simple.” Or “glory days.” There was a context before the current occurrence of suffering that seemed better or “good”. We feel nostalgic when we see the innocence of children, and we hope that innocence will be restored to us.

The structure of the suffering sandwich is the bread of “good and goodness” on the top and bottom with a big, fat slice of suffering in the middle. It’s the whole sandwich that makes it all worthwhile and meaningful. Enjoy it with a tall glass of gratitude.