Most of us never stop to consider our blessings; rather, we spend the day only thinking about our problems. But since you have to be alive to have problems, be grateful for the opportunity to have them.

Some spiritual traditions view the moment of birth as a passage from a state of wholeness and knowledge to a state of forgetting. In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born. If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we're healing.

My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people.

If nothing has helped you decide, go ask a child. Children know what they need, and more surprisingly, the know what we need. Adults think. Kids respond with their feelings. They don't think about what you will think of their answer, so they just speak the truth-if you can get to them before junior high school age. At that time, they grow up, stop feeling loved, become depressed and start thinking-and what they are thinking about worries me.

Getting well is not the only goal. Even more important is learning to live without fear, to be at peace with life and ultimately death.

One cannot get through life without pain...What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.

I truly feel the best doctors are ones who are criticized by nurses, patients and family. They do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes.