One of the hardest things about being in a relationship for me is witnessing someone so close to me suffer. We all have our own patterns, blind spots, and distortions of reality however when we’re in the swamp, it is often incredibly difficult to believe that it is just the swamp we’re in and not the entire planet.

It is also challenging to believe we know what someone else needs, that one little thing they can do to alleviate their own suffering. As I teach people each day, it is not for any one of us to tell another person what their problem is! Even if we think we know what it is! At best, we have the opportunity to ask for permission to share some insights we might have but without that permission, we are treading in dangerous territory. And our brilliant insights are likely to be met with animosity, resentment and mistrust.

Many people like to then ask, “so what’s the point of friendship, partnership, family, etc. if we can’t tell them what we think and where they are stuck?”

It’s a wonderful question and I believe that millions of people on the planet are right there with you. The truth is, however, that it is not our right, even if we care very much for them. It is absolutely our right if they ask for help or if they are willing to hear what you have to say. Some people believe it is their absolute responsibility to tell someone they love what they should do, need to do, must do! However, whenever we hear the word “should” rolling off our own lips, you can bet we’re headed for trouble.

The Tyranny of the Should is not only an enemy of our own, berating us for not doing more and being more, more, more… it is also an enemy of our loved ones. “You really should” is a problem for relationships across the globe. It is an indicator that we are actually not at peace with ourselves so we feel the need to change others. It can also be a close cousin of false righteousness, the cousin who always seems to know what I should have done and is so happy to let me know after the fact.

When I come from the Realm of the Should, the likelihood is that I, too, am nearing the swamp.

So, please remember: The swamp is not the planet, it is a teansie, tiny spec on the planet. When I am stuck and I feel the world is crap, it is a feeling, not reality!!! It will pass.

Well, today’s my birthday. 40. Wow.

I suppose as a kid I figured 40 would mean something. It seemed so old, so up there…

And yet, here I am. And well, it doesn’t mean much. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my birthday. Each year, I love to celebrate myself, my birth, my annual rebirth and the recognition of another cycle that has passed. However, the numbers? Well, they feel rather arbitrary. I only tend to compare myself to people in terms of their age when I am feeling bad about myself for something. Something akin to the notion that perhaps I have not lived up to my potential thus far.

Jesus accomplished so much before he was 34. In fact, he accomplished so much that people wanted him dead for all that he had done in 33 years. That’s impressive, no?

John Lennon died when he was 40 and he was a Beatle, for God’s sake. He was John Lennon, man. Imagine that. He was gunned down just a few blocks from Strawberry Fields Forever.

Martin Luther King Jr. died at 39. He had dreams just like me, but somehow he was able to mobilize a generation and well, yeah, um, they killed him for that.

Each of these role models changed the world, lived revolutionary lives and catalyzed paradigm shifts on the planet, all before they were 40 and they all wound up dead.

Now that I’m here, I suppose the idea that “I have plenty of time” seems a bit foolish. On the other hand, staring at the long list of my personal heroes leads me to wonder whether it is so surprising that I’ve been slightly resistant to changing the world. Everybody ends up dead. Seems like in order to make a profound difference on the planet, the price to be paid is often one’s life. Hmm.

Maybe I can still get something important accomplished and just squeeze under the radar, body, mind and spirit intact. Perhaps that is a worthy goal in and of itself: Develop a new paradigm where changing the world leads to respect and positivity without the desire to snuff out the messenger. I’m on it.

Emotional affairs are oftentimes an occurrence in a relationship that catches some spouses off guard. A lot of people assume that an affair is black and white- if there isn’t sex then there is no transgression. What often most startles these folks is when they realize that sex is the least of their worries. A one night stand can be bad, but after “the stand,” the threat typically goes away in the morning.

On the other hand, an emotional affair is a legitimate threat because it highlights the weaknesses in the primary relationship and then serves as a new focus for what life “could be like” with a potential new partner who seemingly fills many of the spaces one is missing.

An emotional affair is a liaison in which one partner in a committed relationship begins to project unmet needs and desires onto a third party, creating a triangle of focus and feelings that may or may not include physical contact. The emotional affair has more potential to do permanent damage to a committed partnership because it is not addressing or fulfilling sexual frustrations, but rather it is fulfilling the general state of feeling unfulfilled!

On the other hand, since there is oftentimes an absence of sexual contact in many of these cases, if the emotional affair is identified and addressed early enough, it can be a lightning rod in a marriage that prods a couple to address issues in a direct, focused manner and without beating around the bush, so to speak. Sometimes the other partner is able to hear why their spouse is looking elsewhere to get their non-sexual needs met without reacting in a jealous way because there hasn’t been a physical transgression.

Even better yet? Work on your communication together! Stop projecting your needs onto your partner and take responsibility for your unmet needs and wants. Remember what it feels like to be kind to your partner, just because you are a kind person. If you’re being cold to your spouse, you are being cold to yourself first. So, warm up!

I set out early this morning to walk the dogs and found the air crisp and cool, the sky clean and bright. The moist leaves sat clumped on the grass and naked in the street; they smelled like a bowl of soggy corn flakes that had been forgotten, abandoned for a cartoon or a pop tart. The smell, the cold, the clear light of the moment, all compiled, created a texture of memory that forced me out of the present moment, somewhere else.

Stanislov Grof, in his book The Holotropic Mind, discussed the concept of what I call memory clusters. Like an accordion of moments, events in our lives are grouped together at a particular point with similar frequencies, emotional levels and essentially, experiential textures.

For example, I lived in Santa Fe, NM for 9 years and the smell of roasting chili peppers along the road wherever I went during the months of Sept/Oct is indelibly inscribed in my consciousness. I also, however, associate the smell with intensity, prosperity, and sensuality due to a number of events that “seemed” to occur in autumn while I lived there, specifically some new relationships, work successes and the purchase of real estate.As a teen, I ran cross-country each fall and have numerous memories of padding half naked through wet leaves, through the crisp morning air, up and down the hills of Bear Mountain State Park. I felt free, alive, and determined.

This morning’s combination of leaves, smells and crisp fall air brought me right back to the autumn of 1987, a month before my 17th birthday. I managed my way up to Williamstown, MA for a long week-end where I hung out and interviewed at my number one college choice, Williams College. At the time, it was considered the hardest liberal arts school to get into and I planned to apply Early Decision. I wanted to go there so badly I could taste it. My week-end of beer, girls and rugby made it even more clear. In fact, in the middle of a crashed dorm room party that my rugby host smuggled me into, one of the students raised his plastic cup of beer and definitively announced: “Man, you’ve GOT to come here. You’re awesome.”

Can you believe the ego inflation I experienced as I threw on my new, thick, sweatshirt and headed home to NY, a giant purple “W” caressing/protecting/blocking my heart? At the top of my game, the apex of my world, I rolled down the windows of my old blue Nissan and let the cold, matted air redden my cheeks as I worked off the hangover, speeding down the Taconic Parkway so fast it made the windshield vibrate…

Several months later I received a “wait list” letter and while I was rattled by the delay of my destiny ride back to Williamstown, I had every expectation of being fully accepted in the spring.

Spring arrived, and with it, the stack of college envelopes. “As you might have heard, this has been a record setting year here for Williams College. We regret to inform you…”

It was the first major disappointment from the outside world I experienced, but it felt like the end of the world at the time. I had pictured my life as an adult beginning with a Williams College experience. I had not planned an alternative vision from which to weave my life story. I felt more than defeated, I felt wrong. As if there was a glitch in the Matrix and somehow the world just didn’t work the same anymore.

There is a different memory cluster associated with the demolition of my 17 year old’s expectation that I’d go to Williams. Thank God, really. There is something so profoundly perfect and beautiful and eternally hopeful about the Autumn Leaves Cluster. It is the moment when life feels right; when people think I’m wonderful and the timing of things work. It is the moment of transcendent hope that I am able to access when I need inner strength and support in order to accomplish or succeed. And like an accordion, I rely on the power and intention of dozens of similar events, feelings and experiences.

So, while I never made it back to Williams College, I found my way into many other streams of thought and consciousness. I constructed even more interesting, provocative, transcendent scenarios to play out in my 40 years… Some of which are still in motion. What do you think/smell/feel/remember/imagine right now?

How often is it that we take responsibility for our real feelings and actions in our relationships with others? For many, many years, I did not take a whole lot of credit for myself and what I was doing and saying to the people that supposedly meant the most. In fact, I oftentimes found contempt in others for exactly the things I was struggling with in myself. Here’s a brief video where I get into this issue and what I refer to as, The Law of Responsibility…