Writing is just one manifestation of this tension, this nagging, lifelong struggle to be you or be perfect -- to live a messy, real, vulnerable life, or an edited one. In writing, you get to arrange things just so, like a museum curator piecing together the perfect exhibit.

It's important to honor and acknowledge your past, to tease lessons from the stories that make you, you. But at some point the past becomes a crutch, something to fall back on when you're uncomfortable in the present or fearful of the future.

In not knowing, just for a moment, you can directly discover yourself. This discovery does not arrive by thought, but by your own immediate direct experience. What is here, before every thought, after every thought and during every thought?

Storytelling is a two-way street. Illnesses unfold as stories, and physicians need to learn how to listen to those stories. The same is true of giving advice, for if good advice is given in the wrong way, the patient will not follow it.

It is truly amazing how much fog, depression, confusion and anxiety begins to lift when the story one narrates starts to be one's own. It needn't be a pretty story or even a wholly accurate story -- just one's own.

Last night, I decided to go jump in the canal for one final late night swim before going to bed. But when I turn around to swim back to the dock I don't see anything that looks familiar.