Hello winterglen: Sometimes I read, or hear, about people who have led successful lives & I wonder how it is I ended up the way I did. I never intended to be a train wreck. I intended to be a good person... a very good person. Instead, I ended up being an extremely BAD person... a completely & totally useless waste of skin. How is it possible that this happened? I don't know.

I am a poor student of the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. And, in her writings, Ani Pema says that one can believe oneself to be the worst person in the world and still be a good candidate for enlightenment. "That's a great place to start," she has written. I take her at her word... but I don't know...