Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well - Jack Pransky

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Lisa with the mountain, Tammy with the needles and me with my car, all demonstrate how our thinking is our only experience of life. Our thinking is our life.

      * “Health Realization” is a term used primarily in the past to describe the understanding shared in this book.

      * Note: I do not mean that feelings aren’t important. They are! I will explain their importance in Chapter VI.

       A word of caution: A few people have told me they felt uncomfortable reading this next story. Interestingly, in a perfect illustration of what the last chapter points to, others felt no discomfort. Still others have had important insights from reading this story. The fact is, for better or worse, this story happened exactly as written. I decided not to whitewash it.

      Out of the blue a woman named Diane sent me an e-mail telling me how much she appreciated my books. She wrote that Health Realization helped her so much her life was “99.9% better.” Only one little thing kept her from total 100% health.

      I e-mailed back, “What’s that?”

      She wrote back saying she’d been having an affair for five years, and that was the one thing keeping her in a state that wasn’t perfect health.

      “It sounds like you’re in pain,” I responded.

      She wrote back. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it! I didn’t realize I was in pain, but I am. What you said just turned me around about this, and I know now that I need to end this relationship. I’m ending it right away.”

      A couple of days later I received another e-mail from her: “I ended it. Everything is fine.”

      A few days later she wrote back again: “At first the man I was having the affair with was fine, but then he wrote me this long, heartrending letter, and now I’m really troubled.”

      It so happened I had an opportunity, on my book tour, to be in the Midwest city where she lived. I asked her if while I was there she would be interested in a counseling session. She said yes.

      When I got to town I called her and we arranged a place to meet. It was a beautiful day so she suggested a nice park, which sounded fine to me. When I arrived at our rendezvous spot she had changed her mind and said we should go to a different park, not as pretty but closer. Didn’t matter to me.

      We parked ourselves at a picnic table. Immediately Diane began talking a mile a minute, telling me she ended that affair but now found herself embroiled in another.

      Whoa! I had to shake my head. This was almost too much to comprehend.

      Diane was in her mid-40s. She volunteered that she had been sexually abused by her father for many, many years and was pretty much a mess because of it. She told me she recently spent a lot of time working out at a gym and had lost twenty pounds. She dressed provocatively to show it. It wasn’t hard to tell she wanted men to notice her. Apparently it was working because in the gym this new guy became attracted to her. They went out together, then started having sex.

      Listening deeply to her, something nagged at me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t know Diane, but she seemed extremely uncomfortable. Something was up that she wasn’t telling me. I kept listening. She told me how this new guy was giving her advice about how she should be with her husband.

      “Diane, let me get this straight,” I said. “The guy you’re having an affair with is giving you marital advice?”

      She said, “Yes, because I haven’t known what to do with my husband. Our sexual relationship isn’t good at all. I think my husband is gay. I love him as a friend but there’s no real intimacy in our relationship.”

      “Whoa, Diane, slow down.” It was hard to get a word in edgewise. “Let’s back up a moment and take one thing at a time. First, do you really think this guy is in a position to give you advice about your marriage? He’s having an affair with you! Do you really think those two things mix?”

      Diane began looking very sheepish. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she said, “but he’s here.”

      “What?”

      “He’s sitting in a car over there watching us, to make sure that nothing goes wrong.”

      “You’re kidding, right?”

      “No. He is.”

      “Diane, come on! Do you really think we can get anything accomplished with you being distracted about the fact that this guy is here?”

      “No.”

      “You need to ask him to leave.”

      “I can’t do that.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because I just can’t.”

      I’m thinking, “If you don’t, kiddo, this session is over.” I mean, it was freaky enough to think we were being spied on. Besides, I didn’t know this guy, and she had only known him for two weeks. For all I knew he could be dangerous. But I didn’t want to alarm her with that thought; mostly I wanted her to come to her own conclusion.

      “Look,” I said, “What is your wisdom telling you to do about this?”

      “I can’t tell him. That’s not the kind of person I am.”

      “That’s not what I asked, and yes you can. You know what’s right. He’s over there spying on you. I repeat, what is your wisdom telling you to do about this?”

      Diane reflected a moment. “I guess I have to tell him to leave,” she sighed.

      “You’re right, and if he doesn’t leave when you ask him, that will tell you a lot about him, won’t it?”

      “Yes.”

      I prepared her a little for what she might say if he didn’t leave, and she got up and walked over to tell him.

      I kept my eyes glued to the table in front of me, hoping the guy wouldn’t do something we’d all regret. Apparently I hadn’t listened to my own wisdom when I agreed to meet this strange woman in a park.

      After a few minutes Diane came back and said, “I told him to go.” She felt good she followed her wisdom and was strong enough to do it.

      “Great,” I said. “I knew you could do it.”

      “But he said something really weird at the end there.”

      “What’s that?”

      “He said, ‘You know you’re going to be thinking about me, whether I leave or not.’”

      I sat up straight. “Diane, what do you think he’s trying to tell you? Doesn’t that sound a little off to you?”

      “Yeah.” She peered over to where he’d been. “You know what? I think he just moved to a different part of the park. I don’t think he left altogether because he’s got to drive by here to get out, and I didn’t see him drive by.” She couldn’t see him though.

      “Do you think that’s a problem? Are you going to be able to focus?”

      “I am. I know him. He’s not going to cause a problem.”

      “Okay, but as I said, if he hasn’t left after you asked him to leave that tells you something about him, right?”

      “I know.”

      We walked into the middle of an open field away from any cars and where we could see anyone approaching. Diane again started to speedily ramble on about what she’d learned from Richard Carlson’s book, You Can Be Happy No Matter What,

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