(This article is dedicated to R.M. who inspired it. Thank you for reminding me of what we are supposed to be doing.)

For some reason lately I have been seeing quite a number of brand new social workers for supervision, some of whom are still in graduate school. It has been a poignant and privileged rite of passage for me after all these years to be passing on what I’ve learned.

One in particular touched me. She worked some time ago in a hospital emergency department in another state. As you might imagine, she bore witness to countless tragedies and sorrows, the worst of which was one little girl who had been beaten so severely by her mother’s boyfriend that they didn’t know if she would make it.

When she originally came on the ward she had been warned by the other professionals on staff to “watch her boundaries.” That’s a trigger point for social workers who, as a group, have been known to go the extra mile for patients and clients. This has become an “issue” for the profession as it has grown over the years and tried to maintain its status along with psychologists and physicians. What the well-meaning advisers meant was that she would be facing horror and that she needed to “detach” and “not bring it all home with her.” The real meaning: don’t get involved.

Those were their words. People warned me the same way when I started out.

I have been a psychotherapist and crisis counselor for nearly 30 years. I have worked with rape victims, survivors of war, children who had been abducted by drug lords, parents who were abused by their own offspring, addicts who had been lost and left to die on the street, and a full retinue of the mildly neurotic. I have stared into the abyss with friends and colleagues at Ground Zero and had to breathe the acrid smell of death.

But what I have learned is that there are boundaries and there are boundaries. Some should be zealously guarded and some not so much. And whenever I have made a real difference I have absolutely become involved though not in the way you may imagine or some may fear.

I will explain through her story.

As the baby was being treated, she called the proper authorities, as was legally required. She watched as the mother and boyfriend were carted away. And she stood nearby as the baby, broken and battered, moaning in pain, was gently set to rest in a small bed in PICU.

She was told to go home, that she’d had a hard day, and to have a glass of wine. There was nothing more to do.

But something inside her rebelled at that: there’s nothing more you can do.

And, against all the advice of authority, against all the warnings, she went into the PICU and sat with that little girl, breathing gently with her, resting her own fingers carefully in the child's small hands, smoothing the downy hair on the little girl's head, the one place that had gratefully been spared from the brute’s rant. She sat with her for hours until the little one was able to rest. She talked to her. She sang to her. She hoped for her. And then she reluctantly went home.

The case moved on from there and she doesn’t know what happened to her or the family. But there she was in my office, years later, wondering if she’d done something horrible by not letting go, by not listening to the advice of the nurses and administrators who told her to detach, to not take it home. “Did I make a terrible mistake?” she wanted to know.

Through tears as I listened to her and through tears as I write this, I said “No. You did everything right.”

She didn’t understand how she could be right and feel pain that way and disobey the warnings she’d been given. But I did. And I have found that when you do the right thing, there is often no way to sidestep the pain and sorrow that is common to us all. Nor should there be.

Suffering and Professional Boundaries

Social workers’ boundaries are important, but not in the way we might think.

I think there are actually two separate questions in this larger issue and it is a far more complicated topic than people might imagine.

Boundary Question One: How do we face suffering and not get lost in it? How do we help people in pain without absorbing it? How do we have empathy and compassion without becoming the patient? What do we do with suffering if we can't fix it?

Boundary Question Two: How do we treat people in a clinical setting and keep our focus on them rather than using the session or relationship as a way of working out our own lingering issues? How do we stay clear-sighted about the pathology and vigorous in our pursuit of  health and the well-being of our patients?

These are two separate issues and I believe that we often confuse them in clinical practice.

I hope I can answer them both briefly and simultaneously by drawing on my experience and explaining what I think is necessary in any healing relationship.

Over the years, despite accruing more and more “tools” for my clinical tool bag, despite learning more and more techniques and styles, I have actually simplified. One of my mentors in graduate school told me, “Learn them all well so you don't have to use any of them.” I didn’t know what she meant then, but I do now. She also told me, “Don’t for a second think it’s you doing the healing. It’s the love.”

So, the distillation is this:

• Presence and Pacing

• Compassion and empathy

• Seeing someone fully without bias and without projection

• Spiritual context

Presence and Pacing

Presence is paramount. It is foundational. The ability to be fully present in the moment with whomever is there, with whatever situation confronts you, is to be adaptable, available, and genuinely healing. It addresses both Question One and Question Two in that being in the moment (as opposed to the past or the future) allows you to feel fully, be ready to do what is needed, and then move on to the next moment. When you are in the moment truly, you will be more adept clinically. You will know the situation at hand is not about you and that it will not last. You can fully feel and know that when you go home you will be fully present to the joy and life that is there.

This is not easy and it has taken me many years to learn. Being present has a caveat. It means we are there for all of it—the pain, the glory, the defeat, the sorrow, the loss, and the redemption. All of it.

Pacing is a term coined by Milton Erickson, M.D., the greatest hypnotherapist in American history. It  is also a technique I focus on quite a bit when I teach Verbal First Aid to first responders, medical personnel and clinical professionals. It means to "move with" or "walk along." It can include mirroring (to some extent) but I use it mostly to stress the act of being with another person. When a person is in pain and we are hoping to move them to a state of greater comfort, we do what is called pacing and leading. We pace their pain (I can see your wound and your discomfort…) and then lead them, sometimes one tiny step at a time, to healing (…so as I hold your arm and apply this bandage, you can rest more comfortably and stop the bleeding). Without the pacing, there can be no proper leading.

Pacing requires presence. Presence implies pacing. It is an emotional and spiritual partnership that may last anywhere from a few seconds at an accident scene or at an ER or go on for years in a psychotherapy setting.

Compassion & Empathy

This is not the same thing as taking on another’s pain. It is a communion, an experience of commonality, not a sympathy or an absorption. It is also NOT a projection of our own feelings onto them and this is where our skill must be honed and refined over and over again. Sometimes it means feeling what someone else is feeling, but that doesn’t mean it’s ours. It is a subtle difference, but an important one.

Many of the patients that come to social workers have been hurt terribly. We may in fact be the first person in their lives to genuinely feel them. (S.W. Recall: Winnicott’s “The Good Enough Mother.”) This can be in and of itself enormously healing.

What I have come to both believe is that feeling is not the problem. Over-interpreting and/or ignoring feelings is the problem. And that’s where we—as healers—can get into serious logjams.

In fact, it is the social worker’s ability to feel fully (and know what to do with those feelings) that is the hub of all clinical work. If we can’t do it, how do we expect our patients to do it?

Seeing Fully

When I was in school for classical homeopathy, my teacher used to warn us, “If you can’t see your patient, you can’t heal him.” He spent five years talking to us about the power to see.

I think this is true in any clinical setting. We open the door, a patient comes in and sits down. What do we see? What do we want to know? Can we see the hurt? What’s broken or bruised? What still works? How does it still manage to work?  These are the questions we want to ask and have answered.

Seeing someone truly may also entail some detachment, but not in the way it is used colloquially, which is to “not feel” what our patients are feeling. To see the truth means not get beguiled by façade. Most patients will come to us with a well-practiced façade in place, a mask they use to get through their lives—to hide pain, to forestall an accounting, to deceive and manipulate for one thing or another. We have to see past those deceptions, both conscious and unconscious. We have to see past the acquired skills and into the recesses of a person’s heart. We have to observe carefully. They may say they feel fine, but they can’t stop biting their nails. They protest over much about how calm they are, but their feet don’t stop tapping, they sigh repeatedly, or their eyes twitch.

As healers we are observers. Both of ourselves and our patients.

Spiritual Context

I cannot imagine doing this work at this point without two backups: One is the homeopathic philosophy and Materia Medica of Samuel Hahnemann and the second, most important one, is God. Suffering is intolerable (our own or anyone else’s) without some context within which we can hold it. Suffering or pain without meaning in a purposeless, random world is utterly intolerable. When there is meaning and purpose, even the worst pain becomes manageable.

Over the years, my work has become more about serving God (this is not about proselytizing by any means) than adhering to an agency code or a diagnostic manual, more about being present and truly healing than politically correct for the moment, more about truth and love than techniques.

I explained it to that young social worker that while others may not have understood what she did for that baby, God did. And the baby did. I am as sure of that as I am of the nose on my face. That baby heard her soothing voice, felt her calming breath and heartbeat, rested in her loving hands. Is there a better “technique” than that? I don’t think so. Those few hours she spent with that child may have changed the trajectory of her entire healing process.

I no longer aim for detachment, though I respect it. I no longer aim to fix every broken thing that is presented to me, though I very much want to alleviate suffering and disease. I no longer aim solely for technical skill, though I love learning.

What I am for is this: I aim to be present. I aim to see the truth. I aim to serve. Doing this work for so many years has required that I become more like a tube than a vessel. I do not “hold” other people’s pain, but I allow it flow through me and then up to God, Who can do with it what must be done, whatever that is so that peace and health and love are restored.

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It happens with Hummers, with houses, with degrees of “handsome” and with holiness. People will even huddle around their own humility, if you can wrap your mind around that one. I know at least one person who not only announces how humble she is, but attests to the humility of all those she associates with.

When we “huddle” like that or use a quality or item as a source of pride and superiority, we are simultaneously shaming others, whether we intend to or not, whether we are even conscious of it or not. When I googled "snob" I was rather surprised to see how many websites (millions) were snob sites. There were cigar snobs, brew snobs, bag snobs, pot snobs, coffee snobs, and beauty snobs. There were snob snobs, which I took to mean people who were snobs about being snobs. There were so many levels of elitism, I lost count.

But the essence of it goes like this:

I have a Hummer. Hummers mean success. Success means I’m favored. Being favored means I’m better. Better than who? Better than you. Why? Because you don’t have a Hummer. (And if you do, I’ll find a way to make my Hummer bigger, better, and badder.) This can be done alone or in a group. Just take out the “I” and substitute a “We.” It’s the way most problems are started in the world as much as in the playground.

So…speaking of playgrounds…

My colleague came in to the office the other day shocked and dismayed by what he heard transpire between his young granddaughter and an older, obviously way more sophisticated nine-year-old girl.

“Look at what my grandpa got me,” the little one said, happy to be in her soft, fuzz-lined boots.

The nine-year old looked her up and down. (Can nine-year-olds watch Desperate Housewives?)

“My grandpa got it for me for Christmas!!!” Her joy was palpable. There was no pride, just a fuzzy delight. “They’re UGGS!”

The nine-year-old pursed her lips in disapproval and said, “Those aren’t real UGGS. I’ve got real UGGS. Yours are fakes.”

Then she pivoted and walked away, leaving a little girl confused and deflated.

Why did the nine-year-old do that? Because someone had shown her how important it was to have the “right” label. Someone had instructed her already—by the ripe old age of nine—how to have pride in a thing that meant literally nothing. Someone had given her the ability to attach her sense of self to an article of clothing, a pair of boots, to make her image more important than her integrity, rightness of being, her compassion, or her relationships.

My husband is a musician and he sees a fair cross-section of people when he plays in clubs and public forums. Recently, after a gig in another state, he told me about a group of 20-something men and women who had paid fairly good money to be seated at a table near the stage. Every single one of them had their face lit up green by their palm pilots (or whatever they’re calling them this week). Not one of them was listening to the music. Not one of them was in actual communion with anyone else.

I have been a psychotherapist treating trauma and anxiety for more than 25 years. I have been teaching Verbal First Aid and therapeutic communication for almost 20. I have seen many forms of emotional fragmentation. I have seen pained children and lost parents, angry spouses and lonely ones. The world is no stranger to suffering.

But something that is happening now has not happened before. While we are physically closer in proximity than ever before, we are less—far less—connected to one another. The trend is a disturbing one: It is as if our own manifest destiny were a version of a microcosmic “big bang.” Post-boom, western culture is moving out like a speeding centrifuge, pushing itself further out to the edges, farther away from each part of itself, leaving its center empty.

If, as it’s said, nature abhors a vacuum, that emptiness has to be filled by something. If we are wise, that emptiness gets filled by God and we are released back into communion, re-centered, and freed. If we are unwise, we buy more and more Uggs so we can lord it over little girls who wear other-than-Uggs and buy into the delusion that it somehow makes us better. We are then pulled by those forces farther and farther away from the only things that really will make us better. Each other and God.

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It's axiomatic that you get what you pay for. On observation, however, I believe that there are times we get more than we bargain for, not all of it good. In the case of current media-incitements, we get much more and we are rarely aware of it.

Viral fear, that generalized anxiety induced and spread by the media in all its forms, is evident not only in advertising but in most television programming. There's the famous It Could Happen Tomorrow series on the Weather Channel and that important reminder Armageddon Week on the History Channel. For the thoroughly inured and brain-injured there's also a 24-7 fear channel on cable in case someone needs to scare themselves to sleep. Of course, it's not enough to watch horrifying dramatizations of our last days on earth. Advertisers do their duty when they alert us to the more imminent dangers to life and limb if we don't buy their ________ (insert one or all of the following: security system, flu vaccine, dietary supplement, colon cleanser, or SUV).

There are statistics that suggest that while our diets are no good (by in large, they're awful), they're not the sole culprits in our poor health. While our intake of alcohol is high, that too is not the bullet that hit the artery. Same with cigarettes.

The Europeans eat and drink and smoke and suffer fewer heart attacks and less cancer. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us but the Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of  sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

Something else is at work, then.

I've been a psychotherapist for 25 years. Licensed in five states at one point. Seen hundreds, if not thousands of people. The one thing that seems to be the most prevalent and devastating to the most people is the constant fear, the unrelenting stress to perform to some impossible standard, and the agonizing inability to meet those standards and resulting inadequacy. This is just observation, not analysis.

But I did have a question or a thought on the topic. Is it possible that part of our cultural nature as adventurers and conquerers has something to do with it? When we are not scaling sheer cliffs, jumping out of planes, or conquering the west, where does that energy go?

There's a truism in Homeopathy that a remedy exists on a polar spectrum. It can be bright red (for instance) with heat or appear to be so white it looks cold. It can be enraged or as silent and coiled as a snake. It can be delighted or deranged. Each one existing within the same remedy state.

Could the same be true for Americans? That when we're not engaged in the extremes of conquest, we're trapped by our televisions? That the kissing cousin of adventure–fear–grabs us as soon as we stop leaping off of cliffs. And one thing I DO know is that fear kills us faster than anything else I've seen.

Just a thought to consider.

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The commercial was a thirty-second spot in which a group of teenagers (“punks,” according to my husband) rushed into the home of one of the boys in the group. Within seconds they had taken over the kitchen opening every cabinet they could reach, offering unsolicited commentary—all negative—on the food they found there.

Rush to rescue…enter the servant mother with a tray full of freshly cooked (previously frozen) chicken (by-product) tenders.

“Yeah, mom,” they barely uttered as they flung her offering down their throats.

“No one I ever grew up with, tough guy or not, would have ever had the gall, the unabashed audacity to walk into someone’s home and, forget just rummaging through their pantry, but to criticize what they found?” He was clearly disgusted. “That’s just the height of entitlement. That’s insane.”

Who can argue with him? Even those of us who were raised in more open, less structured homes than my husband’s can see the problem in the scenario and, more importantly, the cultural calamity it forebodes.

He wasn’t done…“I would’ve gasped if any of my friends had done that in my home when I was a kid…or if I’d found out that any of the kids I raised went into someone’s home and behaved like that. God, I’d be thoroughly embarrassed. And today…if I was greeted with a horde of self-centered punks ransacking my kitchen and dissing the food that I’d worked hard to provide, I would not run out and hook them up with a platter of chicken tenders. Tender would be the last thing on my mind.”

(For the full article, please log onto http://www.opednews.com/articles/Chicken-Tenders-and-the-De-by-Judith-Acosta-091101-884.html)

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She was seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist who both agreed her anxiety was a symptom of her depression. So, even though she's an adolescent, she was put on Lexapro. Within 28 days her symptoms of anxiety spiraled into massive agitation, self-mutilation, delusions, and auditory hallucinations.  She was placed in an allopathic hospital.

What did they do?

They doubled her dosage. So now she was clawing at herself with her own fingernails and threatening to kill herself.

What was the next step?

Leave her on the Lexapro and give her thorazine as a chaser.

Her symptoms have not only not abated, they have worsened and become life-threatening.

This is not the first time I have heard or seen a patient unravel this way because of allopathic dosing. It is frightening in and of itself, but it is much worse when the parent is pleading with the doctors to take her child off the medication that has clearly exacerbated the situation and they will not listen. To make matters even more desperate, if the mother were to take the child out of the hospital and bring her to a healer of her own choice, in their state she could be incarcerated.

Thankfully for this Albuquerque psychotherapist, New Mexico has passed the Healthcare Freedom of Choice Act, which allows individuals to choose their own medical care, whether they follow the advice of their tribal shaman or choose to use the chemotherapies of western medicine.

Happily, the young lady's story doesn't end there. The mother, armed with the literature that demonstrates how ill-advised it is to use an SSRI on an adolescent female, has finally gotten one reasonable physician to agree with her and, while titrating her off the Lexapro, substituting it with Resperdal, an anti-psychotic.

When she is stabilized from this episode, they will be seeking out homeopathic treatment in their area, where finally she will be heard.

And what they might find out is that what they were calling "depression" may not have been  a standard depression at all, but either a borderline personality disorder or a prodromal psychotic state with agitation and some delusions (or perhaps both). In such cases it is highly INadvisable to give SSRI's, which tend  to do exactly what they did to this young woman.

When your doctors don't listen to you, be sure you listen to yourself.

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So imagine my surprise when a chance tumble onto CBN brought me to four charming, bright, enthusiastic young men who are on a drive across the country to ask questions, reach out to others, and explore their committment to God, faith, and purpose.

We don't see much good news in the media. If it's been a slow day local anchors find ways of making the banal seem ominous. "Well, we had those terrifying storms the other day in the southeast of the state and there may be a chance of some more weather. Stay tuned." There may be a chance of weather. Imagine that.

And if it's not banal, it's gruesome. Between CSI, Bones, and the other forensic human chop shops available for pre-slumber viewing, there's not much to choose in the way of hopeful, soothing, uplifting, or faith-inspiring.

And if it's not gruesome, it's supremely decadent, violent, and ironic. For that there's Family Guy and all its animated spin offs.

What's a person to do?

That's what I asked my husband, who said, "Why don't you write about some good things, like those guys on the drive?"

So, I am. I am letting you know to go to www.thedrivetv.com and take a look at what four determined, beautiful young souls can do instead of having cyber-relationships, getting lost in video games, and moping in helpless entitlement. It moved me to tears and made me terribly proud for their parents.

Bravo, fellas.

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There has never been a nation of more deliberately sculpted beauty or a culture that has spent more money on beauty because it is convinced that it is ugly.

Women starve themsevles, men fill themselves with toxins in search of the on-command erection and everyone spends hours in front of mirrors terrified of being unattractive as if our sexual desirability determined our worth in the world and our chosen-status by God.

The truth is we haven't a clue about what is really attractive or beautiful. And we miss all the real opportunities for love which have far less to do with plumped lips than we'd like to think. After all, if it were just a matter of a little collagen, that would be a relatively easy fix. No one would actually have to work at intimacy, forgiveness, or sharing.

This disease has American by its chinny-chin-chin. And we're spending a fortune "fighting" it.

The last disease we'll talk about in this series is the "I'm-1-N-1" Virus or the Centerless Self.

This is the deepest expression of all the above pathologies. Because of all the others–the distortion of self and body-loathing, the sense of never being or having enough, the constant fear–we've also become exceedingly self-centered. Which is actually much more disastrous than it sounds because in our cultural psyche, there is no self and there is no solid center. We've become painfully insecure AND entitled. And when we don't get what we want–because we have no center, believe that we need that thing to fill up our emptiness, fear what may happen and loathe ourselves without it–we become violent.

The evidence for that is all over the news on a daily basis.

All these diseases, these cultural, collective delusions form a sort of intellectual and emotional breast milk for us and our children. They are the formula for how we think and how we live.

So what heals these delusions?

The first and most important antidote is Love. A spiritual Love. We have to know and learn to experience that we are not the center of the universe. Something else is and that IT centers us. We have no center without a relationship with the creator.

The second is Faith. When we can put our faith in something beyond ourselves, there is nothing to fear. When we can trust that a God who literally loves us is running the show, we can relax in the moment. We don't have to buy anything. We don't have to run away anymore.

The third and perhaps most difficult for Americans is a Correctness of Desire. The medicine for unrestrained want, irrepressible fear, and self-loathing is gratitude.

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People think that hypnotherapists only put people INTO trance. But a vastly significant percentage of the work a good hypnotherapist does is help people OUT of the unhealthy trances they’re in. Take a look around and see if it isn’t so! Who doesn’t have an IPOD attached to their head or a phone on their ear? Who isn’t spending hours staring at a TV or hooked into the internet. Our culture is now almost entirely media driven—we’re surrounded (all the time!) by advertising, media, and even music that tells us what we need, who to love, and what drugs to take to make us happy.

We don’t know who we are or what we’re doing here, but we are convinced that Viagra or a breast implant will somehow make it all better.

There are more pervasive cultural delusions that I can go through in one post but this is a brief list. We'll go through each one of them in a series.

1. Viral Fear

2. Moritis

3. The Eruption of Ugly

4.The I'm-1-N-1 Virus

5. Flushing's Disease

All of these are pandemic in proportion and are driving American culture headlong into the critical care unit. Is there a fix for them? I think so.  Stay tuned.

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The other day I was leading a group for multiple DWI offenders. One of them, a middle-aged man who was particularly angered by the bracelet he was being forced to wear on his ankle, the legal routines that filled his life, and the fact that he had to go to two A.A. meetings a week interrupted the group process with a rant on how he was being brainwashed.

I turned to face him directly, more amused and disbelieving than annoyed or angered. “And before this you were…” I opened my hands, motioning for him to fill in the blanks.

“I was sure as hell nobody’s puppet the way I am now,” he said indignantly.

“Really? So, all the times you picked up a drink and drove, knowing you could get slammed with one more DWI and put in prison, no one had you in his pocket? You were a totally free agent? And all the things you bought when you didn’t have the money and found yourself with debt you couldn’t pay, you weren’t brainwashed?”

He became quiet, but an interesting discussion ensued about the media, about fear, about the brainwashing that saturates us nearly every minute of every day. Most advertising is based on fear. The fear of not belonging, dying, pestilence, catastrophes, terrorist pandemics, war, drought, flood, erectile dysfunction, menopause, arthritis, driving an ugly car…the fears being drummed into our unconscious minds are innumerable.

Some people are so afraid, they go numb. This is particularly true where some traumatic episode has interfered with their lives. They drive too fast, drink too much, laugh too loud, get far too irritated too easily or remain blithely passive when they should be responding. Their thinking gets short-circuited. The cultural milieu does little to support their recoveries and in fact does a great deal to inhibit their healing. The culture—represented by the media—floods them yet further with messages promoting anxiety, infecting them again and again with their unique brand of viral fear that keeps them numb and buying. If you’re tired and can’t sleep, buy one of our pills. If you’re unable to be intimate with your partner, buy a new car to change your image. If your relationships are falling apart, don’t waste any time thinking about the reasons for it, come to our Happy Hour and meet someone totally new.
And on it goes.

What Should We Do?

1. Start with awareness. If we wake up and see the media’s message for what it is, we can become less susceptible, less automatic in our responses and hopefully more thoughtful. When an ad comes on or you see a product being promoted on a show or in a movie, remind yourself who and what put it there and why they’re spending so much money to do that. Awareness limits the impact of the messages that bombard us. If a sentence in an advertisement starts with “could,” “would” or “should” we can safely assume there’s an incoming fear missile. “Could it happen here?” “Could there be a bomb on New Year’s Eve?” “Should you get the vaccine now?” “Would you know what to do if…” Grammar is an extension of intent. Listen to what’s being said critically.
We can then remind ourselves that the way products and services are presented (as image, as icon, as identity or extension of self) is illusory and speaks to our fears and inadequacies more than our good judgment. They will never satisfy us in the way we are told they will. Be conscious of the truth and you will recognize the lies.

2. Do the obvious. We can limit the amount of time we (and particularly our children) spend with television, i-pods, game-boys or cyber-tennis and make a conscious effort to spend more time with one another. I do not for a second imagine that Americans will all start taking up Buddhist meditation, but having a few minutes a day without having our senses assaulted might be a good idea. The other day I met a friend at a place called the Hyatt Tamaya. It is a resort of sublime beauty, filled with roaring fires in handmade kivas, Native American artwork, sensual flute music and captivating views from every angle. I had to wait for her a while and sat near one of the fires when a man and his wife sat across from me. Presumably they’d come to the hotel together, but she sat in one corner of the couch reading a book and he sat in a chair with earphones blasting percussive music I could hear from more than 10 feet away. Why bother spending $300 a night to tune out the place you’re paying a fortune to be in doing what you do at home?

3. Ask yourself: What drives you? And spend some time with that question before you answer it. Think about what motivates you to buy, what you buy and when you buy.

4. Spend time doing things that are diametrically opposite to what is promoted in the media, such as being still, being with your family without electronic accessories, pray, walk, think, read. Live slowly, breath deeply, linger.

5. Be present. Don’t pursue anything. Especially happiness. It’s a waste of time and will only serve to make you frustrated. The only place you can really have what you long for is where you are right now with exactly what you’ve got.

6. Find someone to really talk to—a religious leader, a friend, a therapist, a doctor—anyone who knows how to actively listen without judging and who can be a true set of eyes with a perspective on things that get you out of the delusion maelstrom we call daily life. Make sure you don’t just find someone who’s going to agree with you. Get the reality check you need.

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Then the other day I saw an ad in Delta's flight magazine. It read:  The five things that stand between busy professionals and dating: Work. Work. Work. Work. Work.

And I wondered: Why are we working so much?

And I answered that pretty quickly: To buy stuff. Mostly stuff we will outgrow or throw out in a year or stuff we don't need at all.

Fine, then. But we're tired. Why don't we rest?

I mentioned it to my husband.

And he answered, "Because there's no sabbath anymore. We'll rest when we have no choice."

Well, why don't we have a sabbath? Americans are an overwhelmingly religious group of people and most do have some sort of affiliation with a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, a tribal group. Something that gives them a structure. Almost all have philosophies that stress balance and the cultivation of quiet time as part of worship.

Then, the thought struck me: What if democracy killed the sabbath? What if we don't have a sabbath because we have so many different ones? How do you keep the stores closed on Sunday without accidentally penalizing Jews, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Muslims who would rather close stores on Saturday or Friday? And vice versa? What started as a way of honoring diversity has become a capitalist cramp–now we all have to keep working all the time.

I decided to do an informal survey of colleagues and friends who range from doctors to social workers to teachers of theology, priests, and lawyers. I asked them a few questions:

Do you feel a day of rest is a good idea? Should that include shutting down businesses for the day and giving people who work in the retail industry a chance to rest as well?

What day would be a good day? And why?

Many Christians said to keep it on Sunday since the majority of the United States is Christian of one denomination or another.

One woman–a very diplomatic social worker–said to choose a universal sabbath that was neither a friday, a saturday, or a sunday and that anyone who wanted another day off could take one without penalty from an employer.

Another woman suggested having a 4-day work week, which she believed was not only a good idea emotionally and spiritually, but environmentally. This sounds like a great idea if you work for someone else, travel to work by car, or don't need the money at the moment.  Many local governments are, in fact, opting for this because it lowers their maintenance costs significantly. If, however, you're paying a mortgage and raising a family and can't afford to work fewer hours or you're running your own business and every day you're not open, you're not earning, things become complicated once again.

What to do?

So far, the universal solution has eluded me. But, personally, I take one day a week and dedicate it to one part quiet contemplation and prayer and two parts outdoors. On that day, work stops. I don't shop. I've also made the decision that when I am sick I will (and do) wait till I'm well to go back to work. If that means I make less, so be it. The decision to have a Sabbath, whichever day it is, is a deicision about priorities. On that day, money, stuff, and bottom lines take a back seat to God and home and friendship.

In fact, the latest data support this as a basis for overall happiness. While gross national product is important in predicting the wellbeing of a country, it's actually personal productivity that weighs in highest.

According to one study: "Wealth alone does not bring the greatest degree of happiness. Norway has the highest GDP per capita on the list — $98,822 — yet it ranked ninth, not first. On the other hand, New Zealand's happiness level is 76.7 out of 100 on the OECD list, but its 2009 GDP per capita is $30,556."  In an editorial British Medical Journal (Delamothe, 2005), he noted that research done in numerous countries shows that while people may get richer, they don't get happier. " It is family, social and community networks that bring joy to one's life," according to Delamothe.

The OECD data shows that another important factor is work-life balance. While Scandinavian countries boast a high GDP per capita, the average workweek in that part of the world is no more than 37 hours. In China, which got a low score of just 14.8, the workweek is 47 hours and theGDP per capita is just $3,600.

Working too much seems to be the American Way, but it doesn't seem to be working very well. As the Chinese are rapidly finding out.

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