Making Friends with Yourself (I)

(c) Andrew Safer 2015 You have a chat with your manager and let your guard down. On your way home, a familiar voice pipes up: “I probably shouldn’t have said that. Now he’s going to think I’m disloyal / stupid / not qualified / soft.” But the commentator in your head doesn’t stop there. “Why …

The New Anxiety

(c) Andrew Safer 2014 In the prehistoric pre-Internet days, there were far fewer distressing things to be worried about, and we weren’t finding out about them in real time. Today, headlines like this, accompanied by arresting images, greet us larger than life before our morning coffee: Most Face Masks In China Don’t Work And Pollution …

Happiness: “Automat” Style

© Andrew Safer 2014 When I was a young boy growing up in New York City in the late 1950s, I used to love to go to Horn and Hardart’s “Automat” to marvel at all the luscious treats that were displayed in plain view. All my parents had to do was put coins in a …